BizPlan Academy

A company will only survive as long as it continues to have a strong customer base. Even the best products will fail without a steady stream of users. Luckily, once a company has attracted its first customers, maintaining demand becomes considerable easier.

Whether your venture is a new pizza parlor or the hottest new software product, beware: These nine flawed assumptions are toxic.

I had breakfast with two of my ex-students from Singapore who were building a really interesting startup. They were deep into Customer Discovery and presented a ton of customer data on the validity of their initial hypothesis – target customers, pricing, stickiness, etc.  I was unprepared for what they said next. “We’re going to do a big launch of our product in three weeks.”  I almost dropped my coffee. “Wait a minute, what about the rest of Customer Development? Aren’t you going to validate your hypotheses by first getting some customers?”

This is the question that haunts many entrepreneurs and demotivates them from working on their business Idea. The best way to start when you have a business idea in your mind is to think of the problem it is trying to solve.

Let's Go to Lunch

At Rocket Science our video game company was struggling. Hubris, bad CEO decisions (mine) and a fundamental lack of understanding that we were in a “hits-based” entertainment business not in a Silicon Valley technology company were slowly killing us.

When the student is ready, the master appears. — Buddhist Proverb

Lots of entrepreneurs believe they want a mentor. When in fact, they’re actually asking for a teacher or a coach. A mentor relationship is a two-way street. To make it work, you have to bring something to the party.

Last week I got a call from Patrick an ex-student I hadn’t heard from for 8 years. He was now the CEO of a company and wanted to talk about what he admitted was a “first world” problem. Over breakfast he got me up to date on his life since school (two non-CEO roles in startups,) but he wanted to talk about his third startup — the one he and two co-founders had started.

A minimum viable product (MVP) is not always a smaller/cheaper version of your final product. Defining the goal for a MVP can save you tons of time, money and grief.