First 1000 community members
great article for everyone to get a good perspective on the value of community, regardless of what you’re building (company or a podcast). Building an amazing product and experience is only half of the picture. The rest and arguably the important remaining half is the community who are on this journey with you because they’re inspired by your mission. Pivots are inevitable so product etc will change; but the loyal community you build and look after will always be an asset to learn from and bounce off ideas.
How to write a great startup survey
Your goal as a founder is to learn. Learning in the most efficient way possible means balancing learning deeply and moving quickly. Surveys achieve neither.
How to validate a problem (and find a solution)
How to validate the idea you’ve identified as a problem and develop a hypothesis of the solution.
Paper Airplane Storytelling
In this exercise, students get to learn the importance of storytelling as they design and build one-of-a-kind paper aircraft and try to convince the rest of the class that their design will fly the best. A lesson from teachingentrepreneurship.org
Improving Student Pitches
A blog from teachingentrepreneruship.org about using process pitches vs shark tank pitches how to improve student pitches using
B2B SaaS benchmarks: What metrics do VCs look at for signs of Product-Market Fit (PMF)?
Shedding light on what Airtree means by "signals of product-market fit (PMF)"
Startup Metrics That Matter Masterclass
Deciding what metrics startups should follow and how. Best suited to post-launch startups, pre-seed and seed stage
Casey’s Guide to Finding Product/Market Fit
it’s important to have a strong understanding of what product/market fit looks like before investing in growth
Customer Problem Stack Ranking: How Stripe Validate New Product Ideas.
We learned more in 2 hours using this stack ranking approach than we did in 100+ customer discovery interviews.
Speed up the rate you learn from marketing
It’s hard and uncomfortable to do new things, which tempts us to spend months of planning and creation in isolation to get it right. But you don’t learn anything in the basement.
Idea Generation
Starting point to identify interesting, unsolved problems in the world that may turn in to great startups
1:1's done well
OK - 1:1s align you on the week.
Great - 1:1s are a forum for feedback.
Exceptional - 1:1s are a place for reflection and upgrading.
High Output Management
This is a great read on doing the right thing as a manager to achieve the optimal outcome
Effects of Hype and Exclusivity on Launch Strategies
There’s a real, psychological fulfillment of being “in” with the crowd and stoking envy among those around you
Tracking and influencing Word of Mouth Traffic
The WOM Coefficient tracks the rate that active users generate new users via word of mouth
How to Turn around a Disengaged or Underperforming Employee
Talks to the complicated nature of people management
Steve Blank on the liquidation event
You take money from someone and they are now relying on your business to succeed
Founder Emotional Fitness
The importance and how-to of self maintenance from Silicon Valley's perspective
Building online events to foster community
it’s not as simple as just hosting a webinar. There’s a lot more to a virtual event than that.
Killing Your Startup By Listening to Customers
If you serve all your customers you will eventually become a Frankensteins's monster, instead focus on the customers who would miss you the most as they are most likely to be the most profitable as well
Six questions to ask before raising capital
Think through and answer the 6 questions before seeking capital
Batko on Board Meetings
The golden rule is that nothing in a board meeting should be a surprise to anyone
Alternatives not competitors
Most products are competing with alternatives. Alternatives are the other ways your target audience are solving the problem today.
What A CEO Does - AVC
Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank
The Five Meetings Every CEO Should Lead- 3: 1:1
explores 1:1s as a way of managing and updating expectations
Hire a CFO
Many CEOs think the chief financial officer (CFO) is a utility position… and they’re dead wrong.
The Equity Equation
An investor wants to give you money for a certain percentage of your startup. Should you take it? You're about to hire your first employee. How much stock should you give him?
1:1 Meeting Template
The team at Lighthouse has great content for building leadership skills. Here's their take on 1:1 meetings.
Target operating model vs organizational design | Concentra Analytics
Difference between TOM and Org Design and how they work together. The simple answer: Org Design is a part of you company's TOM
7 HR Data Sets for People Analytics | AIHR Analytics
Data sets to use when learning People Analytics or practising to build dashboards and such. Useful for when you're testing People tech too!
How a software startup measured employee engagement amid the pandemic - Business Insider
Tips from Emplify on using data to roll an initiative to increase employee engagement (4-day week)
We built a career development framework - The Startup - Medium
Career Framework case study in a Product team - article by https://www.linkedin.com/in/daladamson/
The Only Thing More Important Than Product/Market Fit - NOBL Academy
Great article by Nobl on the importance of culture/market fit along with product/market fit. Love the examples they use to explain the relationship between your culture and the market you serve, along with what winning in that market means to you:
1. If winning in your market means delivering the most seamless customer experience, you better have a culture that values collaboration more than individual control.
2. If winning in your market means understanding external cultures better than your competitors, you ought to value speed and listening above product and messaging consistency.
3. If winning means elevating a tool to a work of art in both form and function, you need a culture that appreciates and values beauty and elegance even over convention.
4. If winning means producing a flawless and reliable product, then you need a culture that values process even above creativity.
It also introduces a Culture/Market fit model broken down in 4 categories that represent the examples above.
A Different Kind of Dashboard | AIHR Analytics
Building question-based dashboards and drill your data from there
The HR Scorecard: A Full Guide | AIHR Analytics
Strategic HR measurement system that helps to measure, manage, and improve the strategic role of the HR department. Discusses its link with the company's balance scorecard (to define business strategy), how to build one (including KPIs) and a real case example.
How to develop an HR strategy for a startup company | Talk Business
Key HR challenges of startups
1. Unclear Goals
2. Lack of capacity and knowledge to take on HR strategy
3. Lack of Finances
4. Difficult Hiring
5. Too early scaling
Managing change in high growth startups | LinkedIn
Article by https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonbkirk/ about how InVision manages change using Prosci's ADKAR methodology.
Organisational Design: Keeping Your Eye on the Ball | HRD Australia
Advice on how to organise your people to deliver a stated business strategy, including warning signs as to when that might not be happening.
A Journey Towards Bare-Bones HR Analytics Infrastructure | AIHR Analytics
A Case study of building a People Analytics function from scratch. Written by https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredvaldron/, People Analytics Specialist @Github
21 HR Data Sources for Analytics | AIHR Analytics
Different sources you can use to build your HR dashboard
People analytics for SMEs | AIHR Analytics
What's the impact or purpose of People Analytics in SMEs? Most SMEs are in the first layer of the People analytics maturity model (operational reporting) so how do we get better at using data to drive our people initiatives?
Prosci - Change Management Process
Prosci's recommended CM process, covering:
Readiness assessments
Communication and communication planning
Sponsor activities and sponsor roadmaps
Coaching and manager training for change management
Training and employee training development
Resistance management
Data collection, feedback analysis and corrective action
Celebrating and recognizing success
After-project review
HR Key Performance Indicators: An In-depth Explanation with Examples
HR performance KPIs - I think the first paragraph summarises it pretty well: "It is impossible to improve at managing people if you do not measure the results of your work. If you do not define what ‘good performance’ looks like and how you can measure it, how will you find out if you’re doing well?" - it covers:
1. What are HR KPIs?
2. List of HR KPIs
3. Creating an HR KPI Scorecard: A Real Business Case
4. Human Resources KPI template
5. Characteristics of Good HR KPIs
6. Leading vs. Lagging KPIs
The 10 Golden Rules of HR Analytics | LinkedIn
Covers techniques, examples of when analytics is useful, and tips on how to make the best case and use for people analytics