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.
How to come up with and validate your startup idea
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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 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.
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
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 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