Negative feedback hurts. It’s easy to take personally and get offended. It’s easy to dismiss too. But negative feedback is a lot better than no feedback at all. The worst thing for a startup -at any stage- is crickets. … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Ugh. Silence […]
Archives for January 2012
HighScore House Launches at 500Startups
HighScore House is one of our portfolio companies at Year One Labs. After leaving Year One Labs, they decided to join 500Startups and go through the 3-4 month acceleration program to continue building their product, learning and growing their network. Yesterday, they presented at 500Startups’ Demo Day. It’s interesting to see the pitch evolve – […]
Schoolwork, Dating or Hacking Side Projects: Pick Two out of Three
My history with hiring university students and recent graduates for technical positions has not been a good one. In my first company (~15 years ago) we tried hiring recent university and technical college graduates for junior developer positions. I was struck by the near carbon copy similarities between most of the resumes. Very few of […]
Competitive Differentiation that Matters
How you differentiate from competitors only matters if it matters to customers. Pick any differentiation you want – pricing, features, target market, market gap, performance, etc. – unless customers really, really, really care about the difference, you’re shit out of luck. Hell, pick two or three of them and it still doesn’t matter. You can’t […]
Kids and Computers
I got into computers fairly early because of my father. He went back to university in 1986 in his early 40s and did a BSc. in Computer Science. I was 11 years old. Our first computer was a PC of some kind; I don’t remember what it was, but I remember it was expensive, $7,000+ […]
One Customer Doesn’t Make a Market
These days, most entrepreneurs I talk to understand the importance of speaking with customers before building a full-blown product. They’re getting out of the building. And that’s great. A few years ago it wasn’t like that at all. But unfortunately, I often speak with entrepreneurs that have only talked to one or two customers. That’s […]
The Resume Black Hole
Anyone that’s ever applied for a job has experienced the resume black hole. You apply for a job and don’t hear anything back (you might get an automated “thank you”). After a few days you send a follow up message (if you can find an email address) and wait some more. Nothing. No word whatsoever […]
A Massive Opportunity to Create Massive Damage Success
Massive Damage is the location-based mobile game company that graduated from Year One Labs last year. I’ve written about them in the past. Their first game, Please Stay Calm (a zombie apocalypse game) is killing it with a strong, dedicated user base, fun / addictive gameplay, and lots of cool stuff coming soon. Plus, the […]
Reward Customers Earlier
Customers should be rewarded earlier and more often in the relationship they establish with vendors. This is true of any type of customer and any type of business. Keurig does a nice job of providing members with 10% off purchases. That’s not a ton of money when you’re buying coffee, but it’s something. More importantly, […]
There’s No “Shitty” in MVP
Lean Startup isn’t responsible for the deluge of crappy products being released by mediocre startups. Erick Schonfeld makes that suggestion in his recent post Details Matter. I’d argue that the mainstream usage of things like Twitter and Facebook (along with social media’s ability to create incredible influencers), lower costs and barriers to entry (development is […]