You know your product best. You know every feature, how it all works, the bugs, nuances and hiccups too. You know what’s coming next in the product roadmap. You definitely know more than your customers, right? Yup, you have the Curse of Knowledge. The Curse of Knowledge is described in Dan and Chip Heath’s book, […]
Pick Your Early Beta Customers Very Carefully
The goal of a startup is to find a sustainable, repeatable and scalable business model. And so much of a startup’s success is dependent on the early “beta period” where you provide access (to your product) to a limited group of prospects. If the beta period is a complete flop (no one uses the product, […]
The Specification is Dead; Long Live the Specification
In the olden days, most people followed a waterfall method. It involved writing “complete” specifications on exactly what had to be built, how it would be built, how it would work, look, etc. You’d have the “complete” package of documentation up-front and then you’d start coding. Seems like eons ago… Then we were introduced to […]
Don’t Sell Technology, Sell Magic
Tech startups aren’t in the technology business. They’re in the magic business. I’m not talking about sleight of hand tricks, fooling people with funky props, or pretending to saw off someone’s head. I’m talking about providing magical experiences to customers. Startups need to sell magic. Most customers don’t understand the technology that exists behind the […]
The Future of the Web is Shared
GoInstant makes it possible to share the web. That means two or more people can browse the web together, in real-time. I like to think of it like a “3rd web browser” that sits between the people who are sharing it. Jevon MacDonald (co-founder & CEO) published a guest post on Joyent’s blog about the […]
Being Responsive is Critical for Successful Customer Development
Most customers tolerate bugs. Most customers tolerate products with missing features that they need (or think they need!) Most customers tolerate the quirks and hiccups that come with new technology and software. This is true of early adopters, but it’s even true to some degree, of late adopters. Customers can be quite forgiving. But what […]
Change
I’m just starting the process of changing a great deal in my life. It starts with my professional life, where I’ve taken on a role as VP Product with GoInstant. That’s the catalyst for a lot of other change as well. Most of the moves I’ve made in my professional life have been fairly drastic. […]
A New Challenge and a New Opportunity: Joining GoInstant
Recently I announced that Year One Labs was mostly complete; at least our active incubation phase. Instead of rehashing that, I’ll just re-publish this part of that post: Year One Labs was the perfect antidote to my experiences just prior to starting it (which involved trying to build a company in the recruitment space during […]
Year One Labs Completes its Incubation Phase
Today we announced the completion of Year One Labs’s incubation phase. I’ve been working on Year One Labs since April, 2010. For those that don’t know, it’s an early stage accelerator using the Lean Startup methodology. We made five investments (which was our plan) and have been very pleased with the results so far. In […]
HighScore House is Hiring
HighScore House is a Year One Labs portfolio company. The company was founded by Theo Ephraim and Kyle Seaman. HighScore House is rethinking the way kids earn the things that they want, while making the lives of families easier and more positive than ever before. They use game design to motivate kids to take on […]
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