Reframe outcomes, abstraction, scenarios, continuous discovery, peripheral problems, smart sailboat, brainstorm alone shortlist together.
use customer discovery to find high-priority problems significant segments struggle with, clarify your target customers and build the right product for them.
The article provides examples, data, and questions to help you evaluate your idea and market at each step. It also warns you about common pitfalls and misconceptions that can lead to failure.
Getting clarity on the BIG picture and articulating it well
Understanding the importance or lack thereof of each SEO factor
Possible reasons why your startup is worth joining, and how to communicate them well
A Framework for Data-Driven Product and Customer Discovery Research.
Data mining uses statistics from large amounts of data to learn about target markets and customer behaviours
Ethnography is based on observing existing or prospective customers to learn how they use a product or service.
Quick tips: 1. Build prototypes and test your early ideas on real customers; listen to their responses, and anything short of “I want this!” is really a “No thanks.” 2. Don’t build a full product until you’re feeling real pull from the market. 3. Figure out who you can sell to most easily, and start there. Market analysis can come later. 4. Develop a product that unlocks revenue for your customers.
What is a good vs great growth rate from an investor’s perspective?
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.
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 the idea you’ve identified as a problem and develop a hypothesis of the solution.
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
A blog from teachingentrepreneruship.org about using process pitches vs shark tank pitches how to improve student pitches using
Shedding light on what Airtree means by "signals of product-market fit (PMF)"
Deciding what metrics startups should follow and how. Best suited to post-launch startups, pre-seed and seed stage
Change what you are asking, change how you are asking it and change the perception.
it’s important to have a strong understanding of what product/market fit looks like before investing in growth
We learned more in 2 hours using this stack ranking approach than we did in 100+ customer discovery interviews.
How can you go even more minimal here?
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.
Don't waste your time on great ideas that are meant for other people.
Startup's Playbook for Running Impactful Virtual Offsites
Starting point to identify interesting, unsolved problems in the world that may turn in to great startups
Deep dive into the idea of leading through product first
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.
This is a great read on doing the right thing as a manager to achieve the optimal outcome
There’s a real, psychological fulfillment of being “in” with the crowd and stoking envy among those around you
Down with marketing funnels up with growth loops
The WOM Coefficient tracks the rate that active users generate new users via word of mouth
Talks to the complicated nature of people management
You take money from someone and they are now relying on your business to succeed
A great product does not equal large scale growth
Argues 100 fans paying $1000 per year will be the passion economies future
The importance and how-to of self maintenance from Silicon Valley's perspective
You want to increase the engagement with early adopters, this is some ideas on how
it’s not as simple as just hosting a webinar. There’s a lot more to a virtual event than that.
Goes through what VC's in Australia are really looking for
Keep the 25 percent of lifetime margin as a customer acquisition cost rule in mind.
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
Think through and answer the 6 questions before seeking capital
If you build it they will come is wrong
How a financial model works for a SaaS company
The golden rule is that nothing in a board meeting should be a surprise to anyone
Most products are competing with alternatives. Alternatives are the other ways your target audience are solving the problem today.
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
explores 1:1s as a way of managing and updating expectations
Many CEOs think the chief financial officer (CFO) is a utility position… and they’re dead wrong.
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?
The team at Lighthouse has great content for building leadership skills. Here's their take on 1:1 meetings.
Difference between TOM and Org Design and how they work together. The simple answer: Org Design is a part of you company's TOM
Data sets to use when learning People Analytics or practising to build dashboards and such. Useful for when you're testing People tech too!
Tips from Emplify on using data to roll an initiative to increase employee engagement (4-day week)
Career Framework case study in a Product team - article by https://www.linkedin.com/in/daladamson/
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.
Building question-based dashboards and drill your data from there
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.
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
Article by https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonbkirk/ about how InVision manages change using Prosci's ADKAR methodology.
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 Case study of building a People Analytics function from scratch. Written by https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredvaldron/, People Analytics Specialist @Github
Different sources you can use to build your HR dashboard
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'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 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
Covers techniques, examples of when analytics is useful, and tips on how to make the best case and use for people analytics
Article by Tech Nation with input from guest from Zoopla, Funding Circle and Crowdcube