Today, we’ll dive into the kinds of alternative solutions most founders miss when they attempt to validate their ideas. A quick word from our Sponsor, Paddle.com. I use Paddle as my Merchant of Record for all my SaaS businesses. They take care of all the taxes, the currencies, tracking declined transactions and updated credit cards … Continue reading The Missing Piece in Your Validation Strategy
Category: Validation
The Job To Be Done: Understanding Customer Value Communication
One thing that I really struggle with is communicating clearly to my prospective customers what the value of the product is for them. There are several reasons why this is the case. https://share.transistor.fm/s/06455cb3 I'm building a product that is both a podcast database and a podcast alerting system and a podcast forecasting or trend analysis … Continue reading The Job To Be Done: Understanding Customer Value Communication
The Age of the Gatekeeper Is Over
The more I work in the world of podcasting, watching the crazy amount of content that people produce, the more convinced I become that we're living in a time where the age of the gatekeeper — the editorial, the pre-selection, the pre-filtering — is over. Working with my customers at Podscan.fm has given me a … Continue reading The Age of the Gatekeeper Is Over
Business Validation Traps
I’ve listened to so many signals I thought would validate my business, but they turned out to actually mislead me or take me in the wrong direction. So, let's talk about validating a business and just how challenging that is. Remember, there's no real validation. You can't prove a theory is valid; you can only … Continue reading Business Validation Traps
Avoiding the Entrepreneurial Planning Trap
Let's talk about planning fallacies for bootstrapped founders. As a founder, especially if you're starting a business alone, planning is important. But you have to get it right. There are a few common mistakes to avoid when developing your strategy for a bootstrapped business. The M in MVP stands for Minimum One mistake is spending … Continue reading Avoiding the Entrepreneurial Planning Trap
∀𝑦∃𝑥 ≠ ∃𝑥∀𝑦: The Dangerous Misconception Founders Have About Their Market
(The mathematical notation in the title means “’For all 𝑦 there exists a 𝑥’ is not the same as ‘There exists an 𝑥 for all 𝑦”.) We’re always on the hunt for the silver bullet. The Golden Ticket. The quick fix. Even when writing resumes. We tinker, we optimize, and we look for services to … Continue reading ∀𝑦∃𝑥 ≠ ∃𝑥∀𝑦: The Dangerous Misconception Founders Have About Their Market
Negative Reviews are Good for You
I was recently listening to the early episodes of my favorite Star Trek podcast, and the hosts talked about the unfairness of a particularly nasty Apple Podcast review. One star, paired with a snide comment about the show. One of the hosts was confused: why would anyone who this show clearly isn't for leave a … Continue reading Negative Reviews are Good for You
Avoiding the Validation Trap
When founders talk about validation, we often engage in wishful thinking. We say that we want to validate an idea, an audience, or a problem, but in reality, we hope to find a way to be sure. We hope to discover a guaranteed win—a surefire way to build a successful business. There is no such … Continue reading Avoiding the Validation Trap
Customer Exploration: Seeing Through Your Customer’s Eyes
At this stage of your business, you have a mostly mature product that is used by many customers. You can expect that for most of their use cases, it is good enough. But instead of guessing, I recommend setting aside some time every few months to do some customer exploration. Consider it to be continuous … Continue reading Customer Exploration: Seeing Through Your Customer’s Eyes
The Myth of The Finished Product
Before the internet made transferring large amounts of data cheap and easy, software used to be distributed on CDs or DVDs. For any given application, there was the "Golden Master," a final version of the software, ready to be copied millions of times. These days are over. Every day, millions of software updates get dispatched. … Continue reading The Myth of The Finished Product