Big Shoes has a positioning advantage – competitors, incumbents and mainstream shoe shops are reluctant to pursue the market of abnormal shoe sizes. First, the market is not perceived large and hence lucrative enough compared to mainstream markets. Second, customized shoes require customized inventory and production lines.
Reverse marketing
When a mainstream shop cannot provide for the customer that shoe size s/he is looking for, they refer to Big Shoes, a sales person told be. Big Shoes receives referrals from competitors because they are in fact not yet competitors – they target different segments. Rather, for the mainstream shop, it is a matter of customer service.
Customer service
Since Big Shoes is about the only big-shoes-specialist in Norway, customers come back. As customer retention is high, Big Shoes builds a stronger relationship to its customers who again share the news with new customers.
Jobs-to-be-done
People with extra large feet do not mainly need a spectacular design or shock-absorbing functions with their shoes. They need shoes that fit. Big Shoes excel at solving that problem for this particular segment. The shop has even started providing shoes that competes with regular shoes on design.
By getting the job done and solving a real customer need, Big Shoes are able to provide great customer service, keep clear of competition, and accordingly charge extra. The shop has added mail order as distributions channel and expanded into additional XXL product ranges. Big Shoes is on the disruptive track.
What are other examples of disruptive, jobs-to-be-done marketing startups?
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]]>Early and often
This blog was started at the very end of 2009. Prior to this, I had attempted to start blogging several times. Each time I’d configure the LAMP stack, source a cool WordPress theme, and fine tune look-and-feel. My mind was completely locked-in on the technicalities – I never got to write any actual content. Consequently, there was no room for feedback and motivation stalled. The pattern repeated itself in a continuous cycle.
Entering 2010, I figured that it was time to go quick-and-dirty. I had to break with the pattern; forget about that stunning domain name, forget about database design, forget about adding features. Instead, I’d just publish that first post and start collecting feedback (more in Foundora’s interview). Without going into that content is king thing, this has been more of a learning path understanding the value of interacting with real audiences. Nonetheless, one year later I’m still using standard WordPress.com hosting and theme, and subscriptions are growing.
Minimum Viable Blog v.2
Now, if you swap the word "blog" for "product" or “startup” in the short story above, you’ll find that the pattern has a thing or two in common with startup methodologies – the very thing I have been ranting about the past year.
Launching a Minimum Viable Blog did not only enable me to measure visitor, click and subscription metrics. It enabled me to test and validate value propositions with real audiences. Initially, I had this plan on writing about digital strategies. An idea grounded in a recurring problem I had experienced through consulting: existing strategy frameworks were not adapted to the web. However, first, I couldn’t resist scratching my own itch as a feature entrepreneur and decided to write a quick piece on trade-offs between deliberation and creativity. Soon I was having Skype calls with inspired bloggers in the field of technology entrepreneurship. I had discovered early adopters who encouraged me to continue down that track.
Following, this motivated me to revisit shelved ideas about early-stage business models, and methodologies of integrating marketing and software development. Since, I have learned about customer development, lean startups, minimum viable products, pivots, product/market fit, and metrics-driven marketing among other inspirations, which I brought into teaching at the University of Oslo. From theory to practice and back, I expect to give such topics a real try this year.
No longer in hiding
As of 2011 I am founding an Internet software startup (more to come). So far, I have studied, taught, worked in and ranted about startups, but have yet to go all in. Going forward, I will share here my pursuits in search of the product/market fit.
A special thanks to all subscribers for following me in 2010.
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]]>In creation of such rapid prototypes the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) idea is key. Neverthless, open source platforms such as WordPress are key enablers to the Lean Startup. As my previous post on 9 Minimum Viable Product WordPress Themes received pretty good interest among aspiring enterpreneurs, I decided to share some more recent WordPress themes that can help you in quickly launching your minimum viable product.
Inspire, a clean-cut theme from the rockstars at Woothemes. The theme leverages a clear value proposition and call-to-action alongside usable design. We are working on this for EasyPeasy’s tablet OS, and I must say it feels good (is that a disclaimer?).
SaaS Web App. This one I liked so much that I kept it in my browser tab for days. The makers knows all about sizing and positioning elements for increased conversion. The Plans & Pricing is simply right-out-the-box.
Apz, also by Woothemes, is a simple theme aimed at iPhone application developers. Simple and landing page-ish, perfect for that Minimum Viable Product version zero-point-something.
Coming Soon is a dead-simple landing page theme. Change the picture and do some copywriting, and you’ll be up and running.
SaaS Web App II is based on the same ideas as the SaaS Web App above, but with some modifications. Myself, I like the 1-2-3 description at the bottom.
AppPress by ChimeraThemes, has crafted a promising framework. AppPress really makes use of call to actions and conversion mechanisms as well as a good pricing page.
Fullside is AppPress’ brother theme, having some different design options. Have a look at the 37 Signals inspired decleration module at the bottom of the page. Get ready for ramping your conversion funnel.
What I love about WordPress is its take on simplicity and modularity. It allows you to do rapid testing of features, design and value propositions, and easily integrate third party forms and survey modules for getting customer feedback critical to customer development.
Going forward I would really want to see one Lean Startup-specific theme that leverages the back-end dashboard with consumer-focused metrics for testing business model hypothesis.
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]]>How would you use test-driven development in building your business model? A good start would be to iteratively identify and test key hypothesis for each component with your business model.
Previously I suggested a mash-up of the Lean Startup/Customer Development methodology and the Business Model Canvas. On the higher level, the “back-end” business model structure aligns with agile development principles, and the “front-end” structure with customer development principles. Causally executing product development alongside customer development would optimally lead to problem-solution fit, followed by product-market fit corresponding to your value proposition.
[フレーム]On the lower level, typical Lean Startup and Customer Development principles are segmented according to each of the nine business model building blocks. These are the techniques and tools that you would take into consideration when testing your business model hypothesis.
[フレーム]As all business model components have their own characteristics they also have their own hypothesis testing schemes. The following is an overview of techniques and tools to be used for testing each and one of your business model components from a Lean Startup and Customer Development perspective.
Customer segment is where you identify with customer prospects a specific problem that they agree upon. You would put the Customer Development methodology in order by getting out the building and mapping out a Customer Problem Presentation. For what questions to ask, the guys at Survey.io provide an excellent starting point.
Value proposition.Here you test to see if your solution fits the customer’s problem. The key is Minimum Viable Product. A Minimum Viable Product has just those features (and no more) that allows the product to be deployed and tested. Especially if you are in the online business you would consider putting up landing pages. Further, A/B testing, split testing and multivariate testing are super techniques for testing hygiene factors. This allows you to test and validate customer demand and positioning. Unbounce provides you with many of these tools.
Distribution channels.Do conversion optimization whether it includes your web page, social media accounts, Google Adwords or partner’s pages. Ask your self what is most cost-effective channel. Eric Ries wrote these awesome posts on how to use search engine marketing and Google Adwords in testing demand and value propositions.
Customer relationship.This one is bit more qualitative in nature than the distribution and product offering schemes. It is more about making an arena for collecting feedback from your early customer segments. You would consider using tools such as wikis, forums and social networks as a basis for collecting data. It may include making a beta testers’ community allowing for feedback, and distributing surveys and newsletters for measuring reach. Survey and form services such as KISSmetrics and WuFoo are useful tools for gathering feedback on-site.
Key activities.“Release early, release often” is a key tenet in agile software development. Question your self – how often you ship product. Do continuous deployment to learn and adjust. Testing should be a key activity itself. Automattic CEO Toni Schneider reported that WordPress.com averages about 16 product releases a day. Beat that!
Key resources.Arrange for the tools that you need in order to test the remainding components. For an example by signing up to Google, you can run Optimizer for split testing, Google Analytics for conversion optimization and Adwords for testing clickthrough on different value propositions. The good news is that this is cheap. Perhaps the most important resource – your co-founders and team members should embrace a learning culture and test-driven environment.
Partners.Here you would consider a similar approach to that of the customer segment. Your partners may also be the ones who provide you with key resources, such as Amazon for hosting or Google for distribution.
Revenue streams/cost structureis about defining the equation of your business model. If you are going for that 1 % of China’s users cliché you are pretty soon on thin ice. Instead, do it bottom-up. For an example, numbers of users times ad revenue per user. The point is to convert your assumptions into metrics that are actionable. Sooner you would be a low-burn startup. By removing what is broken, test-driven business model development enable you to do so.
The bottom line: In systemizing hypothesis by the business model components you will simplify testing methods and reduce risk in building a lean business model.
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]]>While I was studying and working my own market research practice, I had the pleasure to work with a couple of fine venture finance agents. I did customer interviews, and created business plans and investor presentations. It was first when I got the assignment to carry out a method with the goal of evaluating risk in early-stage ventures that I understood the dilemma.
[フレーム]What I quickly learned was that there is a minimal quantifiable track record within a startup. Accordingly, analytic models get dismissed in favor of qualitative variables such as team, customer insight and technology. For a couple of reasons I believe that this creates a dilemma to the Startup Samaritan.
Instead, early startup formation requires an understanding of entrepreneurial patterns – talking failure as well as success. Methodologies such as Customer Development and Lean Startup identify and learn from common challenges that occurs in startups and then describe methods that aid in overcoming such challenges. In exchange for meter-long spreadsheets, they embrace so-called Startup Metrics that are trackable, actionable and drive better product and marketing decisions. Of course you can not ignore financial data, but focusing on the assumptions behind the numbers is meaningful when there is no such track record. Dedication is more likely when motivation, knowledge and methods are aligned.
The bottom line:
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[i] Mapping Your Innovation Strategy, by Scott D. Anthony, Matt Eyring, and Lib Gibson
]]>In one of my favorite articles, Casting of the Chains (pdf) from 2003, authors Ø. Fjeldstad and E. Andersen make a fruitful observation.
The world has changed. From 1960 to 1999 manufacturing companies’ share of GNP in the US, as well as its workforce, fell from 30 per cent to 15 per cent, with the consequence that such businesses are now a minority of the S&P500. Banks, transportation, building, healthcare, research pharmaceuticals and other services companies have taken over. Strategic models of the world, however, have not changed. When managers develop strategies for their companies, they still use the tools and language of the manufacturing organisation.
In brief, the authors found limitations in applying Porter’s Value Chain to other than traditional assembly line-based manufacturing businesses. Consequently, the authors extended the Value Chain to two more models; the Value Shop and the Value Network. The Value Shop creates value by scheduling activities and applying resources in a fashion that is appropriate to the needs of the client’s problem (typically management consulting, lawyers and doctors). Value in a Value Network is created by linking clients or customers who wish to be interdependent (typically banking, social networks and dating venues).
Business Model Patterns on Value Chain, Shops and Networks
When I joined my current employer to work with the web and startups, I did at the same time choose from working on Lean methodology alignment with one of Scandinavia’s leading media companies (see also Bharat N. Anand‘s Harvard Business Review case). Regardless of my interests in innovation methodologies and owing my conviction to entrepreneurship, I wanted to work with growth ventures rather than cutting down “corporate bacon” (is that innovation?). Later I discovered the Lean Manufacturing Startup, which basically adopts Lean Thinking and Customer Development to early-stage ventures and startups.
Although Lean Startup principles are argued to be generally applicable, it has mainly been applied to Enterprise- and Consumer Software cases. However, as far as Microsoft Windows creates value by linking consumers with third party software developers, and Google links consumers with advertisers, the software business generally acts as a value network. Hence, I believe that we start to see cases with the lean paradigm being adopted to the new economy.
In this manner, I assume that new schools of Lean methodologies not only help traditional management thinking avoid cramming business models with manufacturing approaches, but also preserve new-product introduction and disruptive innovation alongside continuous improvement.
]]>Finding Product / Market Fit: introducing the PMF matrix
Since being introduced by Marc Andreessen and popularized by the Lean Startup movement, Product-Market Fit has evolved into a great deal in tech entrepreneurship. Several bloggers have addressed the subject lately, yet as a concept Product-Market Fit has been missing a-picture-says-more-than-1000-words. Earlier I suggested the Product-Market Fit diagram. Here Rishi Dean presents the Product-Market Matrix aligned with Customer Development and Lean Startup methodologies.
[フレーム]The UX Driven Startup
What to do as a founder when you actually can’t build things? Say no more, Alexa Andrzejewski, founder of Foodspotting, gives you a memorable pitch on how to craft an experience vision at startup.
[フレーム]Why fighter pilots run startups
Originator of Customer Development and serial entrepreneur Steve Blank shares an arsenal of great ideas on entrepreneurship, including Customer Development, Lean Startup, business model validation, market types, the pivot and the OODA Loop. Perhaps one of his most encompassing slide decks.
[フレーム]Continuous Deployment at kaChing
From a more technical perspective than the reminder on this list, Pascal-Louis Perez gives us an introduction to and examples on continuous deployment at startup. I am a strong believer in his statement “Release is a marketing concern”, which I also covered in What’s in a Startup Methodology giving an example of Spotify’s beta releases.
[フレーム]Product Management 101 for Startups
I enjoyed Dan Olson‘s talk on Lean Product Management for Web 2.0 Products at web 2.0 Expo earlier this year. His recent slide deck includes a section on What is Product Management, as well as covering subjects a such as Product-Market fit, value proposition, usability, the pivot, and continuous improvement together with a case study.
[フレーム]In continuing the Essential Startup series I appreciate any tips on killer startup decks, tools and ideas.
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]]>In my approach writing for the scholarship program for lean startups, I pitched how EasyPeasy could learn from attending the conference and the Lean Startup Intensive. I described how EasyPeasy currently is seeking to validate Product-Market fit and, presumably in the customer validation phase, searching for its first transactions.
The Grand Pivot
Arriving at the conference after a 20 hours travel from Oslo, Norway and suffering from a mild jet-lag, I finally got to see Eric Ries, Steve Blank, Sean Ellis and Dave McClure and the reminder of the Lean Startup movement at work. In nearly every event that I was attending that week, either it was the in the talks, keynotes or unconferences, “Lean Startup” was buzzing. One major highlight was attending Matt Brezina‘s talk: 5 stages of Xobni’s growth and 5 pivots along the way.
Having been a fan of Xobni for some time, I was excited to learn from their practical implications in pivoting from offering an e-mail analytics suite to that of “just” an outlook sidebar plug-in. Nevertheless, by talking to @brezina and @hnshah I had my thoughts about customer validation and pivoting matured. One week later, EasyPeasy is smoke testing for a new product offering.
Minimum Viable You
During the Lean Startup Intensive one common denominator came into view. Steve Blank, advocate of validating hypothesis about business models, talked about how a startup must strike balance between a product’s minimum feature set and maximum sales. Accordingly, Dave McClure talked about how a startup must balance between user hypothesis and revenue. Lessons learned, and one key tenet with the Lean Startup methodology is that a focus on validated learning will enable startups to mitigate risk in new-product introductions, often by including continuous deployment, arguably a start-charging-now and learn fast/fail fast philosophy.
This is where the minimum viable product comes into the picture. At the second day of the conference a case of minimum viable tactics was elaborated by @drewhouston and @asmith in their excellent talk: From Zero to a Million Users – Dropbox and Xobni lessons learned. I think that this presentation gave a great many startups, including EasyPeasy, a lean toolbox at hand.
People Analytics
The Lean Startup advocates use of metrics for validated learning. Yet, there still is one vast amount of metrics to track, dependent on what line of business you are in. At the second day, Neil Patel gave an exciting talk on Web Analytics – Tracking People and Not Just Numbers, and an amazing Q&A session about what metrics you ought to track. In plenary, Neil asked the audience for their websites’ URL, he quickly analyzed their pro and cons, and gave the audience applicable tips and tricks, all in real-time. I highly recommend his slides to be found on Slideshare, 5 Metrics You Ought to Track.
iPad, Flash and HTML5
Soon after arriving San Francisco I found that nearly every overseas visitor who I got to meet at the conference, in their very first morning in town, had been rushing over to the Apple store. Ourselves, arriving one day after our Norwegian fellows (we organized by extending the #w2e Twitter hashtag with #w2eNOR), we found that the iPad 3G edition was already sold out. We put our names on a notification list, hoping that another delivery would arrive at the store before we were on our way back home.
Nevertheless, web 2.0 Expo hosted a couple of very popular talks on the tablet innovation, here and here. iPad were on everybody’s tongue and the big discussion tended to be about Flash vs. HTML5 and Adobe vs. Apple. Among a many good keynotes, Brady Forrest‘s chat with Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch did comb the debate. As when it comes to EasyPeasy, currently offering an open source operating system for netbooks, you might have a clue about how this might affect a pivot.
Learn Fast, Fail Fast
Truth is that there was many interesting talks, and unfortunately one did not have the time to attend all. The main theme of the conference being Web as a Platform, there was a lot of interesting stuff on social media marketing, cloud computing, mobility, usability, virtual and social gaming. Many more events and people should be mentioned, yet I think that the above is sufficient to draw some main characteristics.
Pivoting, minimum viable products and analytics were just some of the themes that were buzzing throughout web 2.o Expo. What these subjects have in common and what was an overall takeaway, whether we are talking about ever changing technologies, markets or startups, is that a strong learning culture can be source of success, or at least to fail fast. I certainly will attend the next year’s web 2.o Expo.
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]]>Author of Crossing the Chasm, Geoff Moore, suggested a great template for making and baking your elevator test. Yet as I needed an even more high-level pitch, I had a look at the value propositions of promising web startups. Luckily I didn’t have to go far. Guy Kawasaki is a true master of crafting value propositions and mantras, as he prefer over [corporate-ish] mission statements. On his blog I found some killer examples:
I like these. They are short, simple, playful and to-the-point. Guy is not afraid of polarizing people. Its premise is that you will rather take a “sniper approach” than using a shotgun in aiming value propositions at your customers. Generally Guy seems to put a verb or call-to-action first, followed by the application and a differentiator. That is [verb; application; differentiator], or VAD if you like.
Another interesting value proposition is that of Xobni. By highlighting “Drowning in Email?”, Xobni immediately makes you aware of your problem and invokes some kind of thank-god-I’m-not-alone-feeling. Instead of being everything to everyone, Xobni makes it clear that it offers you an Outlook sidebar plug-in. Following, Xobni highlights it main features and user perceived values – “searching your inbox and finding information about your contacts fast and easy”.
Now consider EasyPeasy. Its current value propostions are:
When using the VAD technique we came up with the following high-level pitches:
I admit being scared of polarizing main audiences within open source and Linux. Yet, VAD helped us drill down customer segments and perceived user value. From a positioning point of view these value propositions polarize new netbook users, and focus on solving the problem of current netbook users that feel pain with their pre-installed OS.
There sure is more to it. If you would like a more in-depth approach to value propositions and business models, I recommend reading chapter 2 in Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur.
Now, feel free to slaughter or embrace the high-level EasyPeasy pitch, or throw away the shotgun, load your rifle and craft your own VAD-style value proposition.
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]]>Take for an example the Perpetual Beta and Spotify, a successful online peer-to-peer music streaming service. Spotify did not only use beta versions to test engineering requirements with early users – using beta-invites enabled Spotify to create demand for their service at the same time. Software developers have been embracing practices such as Continuous Deployment for years, but merely from a technical viewpoint. I believe that the Perpetual Beta represents a new line of ambidextrous practices that not only enables a startup to plan, test and build – but also serve, distribute and market their product at a lower cost.
Astonishingly, methodologies that help entrepreneurs facilitate software product development alongside commercialization are still scarce. At the one hand there exist a variety of methodologies to manage risk in agile software product development, including Scrum, Extreme Programming and Adaptive Software Development. However, none or few of these methods, to my best knowledge, encapsulate risk in commercialization. To simplify, think of it as Scrum + marketing (Scrumm). At the other hand traditional management practices have been argued not to fit the extreme uncertainty in startups, and often comes to short in terms of aligning with disruption driven by Internet technologies.
At that time I was also more than inspired by Crossing the Chasm that addresses the specifics of marketing disruptive high-tech products. However, I still find the Pre-chasm phase left unintended. In my last post I wrote about diagramming the product-market fit, in which I have aligned with the Technology Adoption Life Cycle below.
In many ways I think that new-product introduction is about ramping the Pre-chasm, where building and taking new products to market are not two separate activities. Obviously a startup needs ambidextrous qualities, and working engineering and marketing in parallel will enable a startup to discover the holy grail of product-market fit – a key tenet with Customer Development and Lean Startup thinking. Together with elaboration on 37signals’ Getting Real and Rework, I look forward to seeing what this emerging school of startup methodologies brings.
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]]>A startup achieves product-market fit when it masters the balance of building a solution, or product that acts on a customer’s problem, or vice versa. Both product development and customer development each has its own iterative loop structure. I believe that the two should be reciprocally acting and proceed in parallel towards the goal of product-market fit and that this makes a multiple-loop system. This invokes an ambidextrous challenge to early-stage ventures.
Building on my former post on Disciplined Creativity with Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s Flow diagram, I would add to the Lean Startup model.
[フレーム]The diagram above shows product-market flow as a result of efforts in parallel iteration between agile product development (at the y-axis) and customer development (at the x-axis). In order to achieve a product-market flow state, that is product-market fit, a balance must be struck between customer development and product development. If a startup is drifting too far along one of the axis without iterating, flow cannot occur.
I believe that iteration beyond the product-market flow zone could be considered pivoting – that is when you change a fundamental part of your business model in regards to products and customers. To successfully iterate between product and customers and achieve product-market fit, you would develop a minimum viable product offering that enables you to learn about your customers needs and wants.
At startup you must pay close attention not only to the iterative tasks within customer development and agile product development separately, but also to the feedback loops in between the two. However, time is limited, and you should be aware of trade-offs in achieving flow in a Lean Startup. This is where continual iteration and validated learning allows for greater risk reduction under extreme uncertainty.
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]]>With the raise of cloud computing and SaaS, the website often makes the product itself. Nevertheless, commoditization of Amazon-ish hosing services, search marketing, free and open source software such as the LAMP stack and publishing systems like WordPress – allows startups to build and market their products at a lower cost. This is a simple overview of – cut to the chase – minimum viable WordPress themes.
1. Optimize by WooThemes is a product and feature-centric theme that emphasizes a clear value statement and sense of call to action.
2.iPhone App theme by Templatic. The name speaks for itself. The theme is designed for, but not limited to marketing of iPhone apps. The call to action button is nicely positioned in the mid of the screen. Although the blue area/the header is static, I’m sure that this can be changed with ease.
3. Feature Pitch by WooThemes is an out of the box theme suitable for marketing that one compelling product of yours. Also take a notice of that lighting orange tab at the upper right. Good thinking.
Feature Pitch Minimum Viable Product wordpress theme
4. eBook theme by Templatic. Although the name implies a focus on eBooks, its message can easily be changed to work for any product. It comes with widgets for testimonials and newsletter sign-up right out of the box.
5. Coffee Break by WooThemes has unlike the others put the call to action buttons at the leftmost side. It is clean and clearly built with usability in mind. The slider can easily be disabled.
Coffeebreak Minimum Viable Product WordPress theme
6. iProduct Theme by Templatic. Yes it is a product-centric theme. Its layout differs from the others as its download buttons are centered underneath the product image. iProduct comes with a pricing plan module, as well as a testimonials and customer service widget by default.
iProduct Minimum Viable Product wordpress theme
7. Eminent is a simple company-product hybrid. It provides call to action along with Twitter aggregation and client list features.
Eminent minimum viable product wordpress theme
8. Ignite is one dead simple theme. It is primarily a landing page, but it might make a good basis for starting the design of a minimum viable product site.
ignite minimum viable product wordpress theme
9. GetBusiness is a Web2.0-style theme more focused on company profiling. However, with slight modifications it would work as well as a minimum viable product theme. The call to action button and value proposition is at the heart of the front page.
GetBusiness minimum viable product wordpress theme
The themes have in common the emphasis on minimum viable product techniques. Their design is built around the product rather than the other way around. There is a clear slogan and value proposition, as well as product feature listings. Call to action buttons, along with testimonials and customer service widgets are at the center of the templates. Perhaps the most important, the minimum viable theme should organize for customer feedback and simple testing of ideas.
You may have noticed that WooThemes and Templatic themes dominate the list. I believe that this is not by accident. If you have a look at their respective sites, you’ll see that they make good examples of how to design a compelling reason to buy.
Stay tuned for more minimum viable product themes to come.
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]]>Mint.com Pre-Launch Pitch Deck makes a great example of a startup pitch. For more on pitching it is definitively worth looking into Pitching Hacks: How to pitch investors from Nivi and Naval at VentureHacks (PDF and free sample) to be used in companion with Dave McClure’s Startup Viagra: How to Pitch a VC.
[フレーム]Mint Founder Institute Accounting, this time by Mint founder Aaron Patzer, is a must read on how to draw your business case together and getting the numbers right.
[フレーム]Startup Metrics for Pirates by Dave McClure is the nuts and bolts of how to formalize traction and accountable metrics for your startup, including methods from the Lean Startup.
[フレーム]No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup by Xobni founder Matt Brezina takes us through its phases and tactics for building critical mass.
[フレーム]The Lean Startup methodology by Eric Ries combines the best from the agile development paradigm with Steven Blank’s Customer Development methodology (which might as well have been included) into a low-burn startup methodology.
[フレーム]Drop the business plan?! The Business Model Canvas by Alex Osterwalder, is an one-slide template and systematic approach to analyze, brainstorm and sketch out your business model. If you are not familiar with the framework you might want to start with the Business Model Generation book, the lean startup business model pattern and Steve Blank’s post on how to process it.
[フレーム]There sure are several interesting startup decks, and no such list goes without mentioning Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start and Garage‘s Perfecting your Pitch. I will read SEO Moz’s Venture Capital Process again. Not to forget Getting Real and Rework – the business, design, programming, and marketing philosophies of 37signals’ (see aslo Eric Santos’ summary). Neverthless, keep up to date with Lean Startup news.
Do you know of other essential startup decks, we would love to know about them.
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]]>With EasyPeasy, a community providing an open source operating system for netbooks, I observe that some competitors makes use of open source software alike. However, they do not necessarily share their source or new builds back with the community – which in the first place provided them with the opportunity. Open source software may be an impetus to entrepreneurship, but is it mutual? Should open-source enabled entrepreneurs contribute back, or does the argument "we give back when we grow big" hold?
My take is that with the dissemination of open source software, technology becomes commodity and allows entrepreneurs to shorten development and time-to-market cycles. Since open source software is available to almost everybody, it is not the technology itself, but its application and capacity to meet with customers’ needs that makes competitive edge. As a consequence the basis of value creation migrates from “back-end” product development towards “front-end” customer development. For a simple example, the threshold for putting up a LAMP architecture and yet another Digg-clone script is minimal.
I believe that entrepreneurs that are using open source should share their modifications and extensions from the start. Even in spite of competitive risk. And it is more to it than ethics. The nature of open source methods allows startups to leverage the true value of building user and customer relationships, learn from and test their hypothesis with early adopters. This is essential to user-lead product development which turns out to be a promise of value creation. As with social media, community management becomes a necessity and startups will be able to get a head start when it comes to tapping into their users’ needs. When done right the startup will be able to recruit from the open source community, and create market evangelist as they get ownership to the product.
There is probably more to it, but I hope that open source entrepreneurship adapts open source software thinking but exploiting it. See also Matt Mullenweg, WordPress founder: Why it pays to stay faithful to open source. In the long run “giving back” will help the open source paradigm to evolve, and in turn spur entrepreneurship.
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]]>The management challenges presented by entrepreneurship are different [2]. Nevertheless, the management challenges presented by the networked economy (read cloud computing, social web, you get it) are different. Network companies create value by facilitating connections between two or more customers. Not by efficiency in A-to-B manufacturing. Too often managers try to use traditional strategy methodologies when dealing with new technology paradigms. Similar to what Clayton Christensen & co may think of as cramming. When dealing with the introduction of disruptive technologies of any kind, managers still have to align with entrepreneurial approaches. Indeed, there is a need for change methodologies.
[1] There are some excellent work on value networks and multi-sided markets by among others Ø. Fjeldstad and E. Andersen‘s Casting of the Chains , Tom Eisenmann, and the contributors at the Catalyst Code blog.
[2] This post was also inspired by Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? by Eric Ries for Harvard Business Review
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