15January2009
Anticipating the market; Creating great products
The first thing someone asks me when I go to get my hair cut is, “How do you like it?”
This is the wrong question to ask. It presumes that I (not the expert on hair) have a preference that’s relevant.
(Sure, we’re creatures of habit, so we may well have a preference, and hey, we’re paying for it so we get to choose. But bear with me.)
What a stylist should be asking is questions like, “What do you do for a living?” and “how do your co-workers dress?” Perhaps they’d ask, “Do you have time to towel and blowdry it in the morning?” Or maybe they should wonder, “Do you play sports like wrestling in which hair length is a factor? Are you on a team that needs helmets?”
A good stylist would try to discern a pattern of needs (which the customer knows a great deal about) and then applying their domain expertise (cutting hair) to choose what’s best. In many companies, the people in charge of product direction are like stylists. Which causes lousy product decisions.
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14January2009
Communicating
Social networking for business is a two-edged sword: You have to keep track of many followers, but automating the process thwarts efforts to remain genuine. And yet we don’t spend enough time analyzing unfollow behavior. Here are the results of some informal surveys over the past few weeks.
How many people can we really follow?
How many people can we follow? Take a look at this excellent study by Huberman, Romero, and Wu. It shows that there’s an underlying hidden network of friends, and that the remaining follower/followee relationships are really just social courtesy.
If humans can normally handle around 150 social relationships then, as JP Rangaswami observes, tools like Twitter help push this limit up to perhaps 600 people.
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7December2008
Creating great products; Startups
Several of the companies I’ve worked with in the last year have gone through a software launch. While I usually focus on the business side of startups, and this post is more like something from Bitcurrent or Watchingwebsites, it’s pertinent to any web startup that needs to test and launch a successful product.
There are ten distinct stages of defining, testing, and launching a web application. Each stage has some tools you can use, involves different people, and focuses on different kinds of data collection.
If you go through these stages in the wrong order, you’ll waste time and money. Do them in the right order—using some of the tools we’ve found here to help you along the way—and you’ll be much more likely to launch the right product at the right time and make it easy for your customers to access you.
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4December2008
Startups
My friend Raymond Luk has a great post on the ten tough questions entrepreneurs need to ask themselves before starting a company. He’s right on all counts, and if you’re considering a startup, you need to read them and answer them honestly.As I was reading the list, it reminded me of a recent conversation about some of the delusions that first-time startup owners have, and that need to be dispelled before they can really get to work. Read the rest of this entry »
20October2008
Exit strategy; Funding; Startups
By now, you’ve probably heard about the grim tidings from VC meetings this month. If you haven’t, well, let’s just say your investors would like a word.
In the wake of economic collapse, founders and CEOs are being told to reel in spending and prepare for the worst. There are two obvious reasons to do this: Less funding and lower revenues. But it’s the third, less talked-about reason that should really make you worry.
Update: Stacey at GigaOm has a great piece on this, looking at some hard numbers.
8October2008
Startups
Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that there are three kinds of CEO. If you run a startup, you’re one of these three. And there lie your strengths and weaknesses.
The good news is that by recognizing yourself, you can capitalize on your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses. The bad news is that many leaders don’t realize which of the three they are until it’s too late.
So today, it’s time to meet the product CEO, the sales CEO, and the finance CEO. And to decide which one you are.
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