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Daniel Benoni

What is the best way to do customer discovery when all I have is an idea? I don't want ... - 0 views

  • What is the best way to do customer discovery when all I have is an idea? I don't want to build a prototype until I know the idea is valid and that it's worth doing.
  • Read up on Lean Startup from CustDev.com and AshMaurya.com.
  • write down your hypotheses and assumptions around the idea you have
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  • Benjamin Yoskovitz
  • identify a target market and speak to (ideally in-person) 30-50 people in that market and validate (or invalidate) whether they have the problem you think you can solve.
  • If they do have that problem, then you can find a way to build a prototype or even just put together an HTML prototype or a Powerpoint deck together and go back to those people and interview them about your solution. If that validates, then you build.
  • Chances are when you do Problem Interviews you’ll find there are holes in your reasoning. You’ll go back and change your hypotheses and assumptions and do it again.
  • Bottom line – you absolutely do NOT need a prototype to validate an idea.
Daniel Benoni

The Struggle in Finding An Addressable Problem - Lean Startups - blog - kyle ... - 0 views

  • focusing on a market before an actual product idea
  • By starting with a market and focusing on data/interviews to find an addressable problem, rather than building software from day one, we encountered problems I would never have predicted
  • spent our time talking to as many parents/teacher/psychiatrists that would give us their time
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  • The more we narrowed our focus the less motivated we became.  We went from looking at a massive addressable market to a subset of people and a minimal product offering.
  • Focusing, as difficult as it was, was necessary given the reality that we were two
  • Write everything down.
  • best ways to drastically narrow your scope, it’s easy to list four or five options but having to pick just one and describe it fully really focuses things.
  • Pitching everyday
  • it helps you to iterate much faster.
  • People tend to love your idea when it’s vague, as they develop their own picture of what it will really be.  -- What we found to really work well was building a baseline pitch deck and iterating on it every day based on what we had learned.
  • Take all the “ands” out. 
  • We help parents to fix the problems in their child's daily routine and to encourage them to try new things
  • We help parents to fix the one or two main problems in their child's daily routine. 
  • It’s tough to not start writing code after your first positive interview.
  • Not because we found the best problem/solution mix, but rather because we found one solution that we can quickly test and on which we can iterate.
Daniel Benoni

Build, market, measure in parallel - LaunchBit - 0 views

  • First-time web entrepreneurs often tell me "Oh we're moving really quickly...we're launching in just 6 months."
  •  The trouble is that product traction isn't just about getting a product out the door.
  • Your biggest competitor isn't any company or individual.  It's time -- the duration you have before you run out of money, morale, and the enthusiasm your significant other/family has for your endeavors.
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  • The trouble with my last company was that our experience in software development came from large companies, where your job is just to ship code.
  • So we thought that a launch was just about writing the code.  And, we did that in 6 months.  But, what we didn't account for was that in a startup, you don't have a ready large group of users just waiting to use your product. So, your launch time must also include a cycle of user experience and marketing.
  • So, if you do everything in series in a drawn out way like we did: build, market, measure, it's a cycle that can turn months into years.  Eric Ries suggests that shortening an iterative loop and going through such a loop multiple times quickly is the key to success.  I would take that a step further and suggest not only cutting activities to shorten that loop, but to do as much of this loop in parallel.
  • Our workflow looks like this: get your Unbounce or LaunchRock page up from Day 1 and start marketing before you have a product.  You can gauge interest and get signups from the very beginning until you're done with the first iteration of the product.  Start getting the Craigslist posts out there on Day 1 to get feedback and potential customers immediately.  Once you have enough of an idea of what to build, start mocking up your idea.  Get those mocks back out to potential customers to make sure you're on the right track.  Iterate as much as possible on paper before building, because it's much faster to re-draw than to re-code.  "Delete features" on your paper prototypes as well, reducing what you need to actually build in code.  Try to code as little as possible to shrink that build time to about 1-2 weeks.  By the time you're done building your first prototype, you've already acquired users from doing marketing in parallel.  This puts you in a position to start measuring usage and gauging interest immediately before iterating through that loop again.
  • Build, market, measure should happen as much as possible in parallel to reduce your launch time and keep your money, morale, and support up.
Rachel Chaikof

100 Most Creative People - 0 views

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    Just some fuel for inspiration and ideas!
Rachel Chaikof

TBD - 0 views

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    "TBD is a free newsletter that delivers one world-shaking idea and one collective action to improve our future."
Rachel Chaikof

How to Make Your Personal or Professional Landing Page Stand Out - 0 views

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    Landing page ideas
Rachel Chaikof

Here's How Apple Makes You Fall in Love with Its MacBooks - 0 views

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    This article can give us some ideas for when we are presenting Invup's platform to potential clients and letting them try out the demo.
Daniel Benoni

Companies Adopt Gaming Techniques to Motivate Employees - WSJ.com - 0 views

  • Striving to make everyday business tasks more engaging, a growing number of firms, including International Business Machines Corp. and consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd., are incorporating elements of videogames into the workplace. They're deploying reward and competitive tactics commonly found in the gaming world to make tasks such as management training, data entry and brainstorming seem less like work. Employees receive points or badges for completing jobs or meeting time limits for assignments, for example. Companies also may use leaderboards, which let players view one another's scores, to encourage friendly competition and motivate performance, experts say. This "gamification" of the workplace, or "enterprise gamification" in tech-industry parlance, is a fast-growing business. Companies have used digital games for a number of years to help market products to consumers and build brand loyalty. What's emerging is using games to motivate their own employees.
  • Tech-industry research firm Gartner estimates that by 2014, some 70% of large companies will use the techniques for at least one business process. Market researcher M2 Research estimates revenue from gamification software, consulting and marketing will reach $938 million by 2014 from less than $100 million this year.
  • SAP even turned its gamification efforts into a game, holding a series of "Gamification Cups" to generate ideas for turning various business processes into games.
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  • 400,000 employees, roughly 40% of whom work from home or on the road, gaming is a way to help colleagues connect and stay engaged, explains Mr. Hamilton.
  • found that employees trained on video games learned more factual information, attained a higher skill level and retained information longer than workers who learned in less
  • Still, gaming experts say there are some pitfalls for companies when implementing games internally. Companies need to make sure that the games are designed to actually reward desired behaviors and are not just doling out meaningless awards or badges.
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    Gamification Article
Daniel Benoni

CharityVillage® Research: Say "Thanks," keep in touch, and deliver on your pr... - 0 views

  • Bell Canada, for example, receives 9,200 requests for either philanthropic or sponsorship support each year
  • ell faces a major challenge in dealing with these applications, and making the difficult decisions concerning which to support and which to turn down, while striving to get good value for its sponsorship investments. Overall, she points out, the objective is "to connect to the things that matter"
  • Bell does not sponsor individual athletes, individuals who simply have an idea or cause they wish to promote, or business launches. If applicable, Foster points out,
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  • The applicant must be financially sound, and Bell will be strongly impressed by organizations with low administrative costs which can offer a partnership that will fit its corporate vision and strengthen its position in the niches it wants to occupy.
  • crucial for Bell to have telecommunications exclusivity in the project
  • s it a unique made-in-Canada concept?
  • Is it likely to attract positive public attention?", "Is the applicant a Bell Canada customer or potential customer?", "Does this proposal present an opportunity for a commercial return for Bell?", and "Will there be a role for Bell employees to play?" No organization, Foster points out, will ever meet all of the criteria, "... but the more 'Yes's, the better your chances."
  • Offer proposals that make commercial sense to Bell Canada
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    Charity Sponsorship.. from the company point of view. Good to read before we go meet a company for a feedback!
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