Yesterday I found out that Lean Analytics is now available in Polish! I’m still sort of amazed by it, so I figured I’d share it here with folks–and who knows, some of you may know Polish and be interested in analytics too. Alistair and I were told awhile ago that O’Reilly was translating the book […]
Archives for January 2014
The Challenge of Changing People’s Behavior
Building a product is easy. Getting people to use your product consistently is hard. The real challenge is changing people’s behavior. In most cases, people already have a solution to the problem you’re trying to solve, and now you’re coming along and claiming that you’re better. Often founders believe it’s a no-brainer to be able […]
Jason Becker and the Power of Technology
A few days ago I was flipping through the channels on TV and came across a documentary about Jason Becker. The documentary is called Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet. It came out in late 2012. I had never heard of Jason before, but the movie caught my attention quickly. Jason Becker was a guitar prodigy. […]
Want to Raise Money? Ask for Advice
When you start raising money for your startup, people will tell you, “If you want advice, ask for money. If you want money, ask for advice.” You might dismiss this as generic, cookie-cutter advice, but there’s definitely some truth to it, particularly the second part. If you want money, ask for advice. Recently, I was […]
The Building Blocks of the Web
Building applications for the web (or mobile) has never been easier. And it will continue to get easier, as more companies develop what I think of as “building blocks”. These aren’t the low level fundamentals needed for web technologies to work, but the abstracted, easy-to-use components that more and more people are able to literally […]
Every Startup Employee is a Marketer
In an early, small startup, everyone wears many hats. One of the more important hats for everyone to wear, which doesn’t always come naturally to people, is that of marketer. Most early stage startups don’t have a marketer, and may have very little marketing expertise. This “role” often falls to the CEO, but in a […]
Don’t Glorify Startup Failure
Yesterday I wrote a quick post about founder failure and how difficult it can be to recover from that. Startup failure is a fact of startups. If you start a company, you’re most likely going to fail. And we’re seeing many more entrepreneurs write about their experiences, which is a good thing. Startup failure needs […]
Founder Failure
Yesterday, Chris Poole (known as ‘moot‘, founder of 4chan) shut down his startup (which created Canvas and DrawQuest). You should go read his post: Today my startup failed. The TechCrunch post is good too, and highlights just how hard it is to get real growth in a consumer startup. One quote stood out for me: […]
You Can’t Will Things Into Existence
Unless you’re a Jedi knight with voodoo super powers you can’t create things with your mind. Sadly enough, you’re not Dr. Strange with power over the mystic arts and wicked hair. (And apparently, creepy blue eyes?!?!) As much as you’d like it to be the case, you can’t will things into existence. I know, I’ve […]
Encourage Company Transparency Through Chat
Most companies (big and small) use some form of internal chat. At GoInstant we use HipChat. Most chat applications allow you to create public rooms, private rooms (where you only invite specific people) and message people privately. Some time ago I noticed that we had a lot of private rooms at GoInstant–in some cases for […]