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02 Dec 09

Hacker News | Ask HN: How did you market your app when there were already a lot like yours?

  • Google this phrase or buy the book:

    http://www.amazon.com/Differentiate-Die-Survival-Killer-Comp...

    My favorite passage:

    "The best way to really enter minds that hate complexity and confusion is to oversimplify your message. The lesson here is not to try to tell your entire story. Just focus on one powerful differentiating idea and drive it into the mind. That sudden hunch, that creative leap of the mind that "sees" in a flash how to solve a problem in a simple way, is something quite different from general intelligence. If there's any trick to finding that simple set of words, it's one of being ruthless about how you edit the story you want to tell. Anything that others could claim just as well as you can, eliminate. Anything that requires a complex analysis to prove, forget. Anything that doesn't fit with your customers' perceptions, avoid."

    with particular emphasis on:

    Just focus on one powerful differentiating idea and drive it into the mind.

    Why should anyone choose you?

  • Differentiation is good and all, but the #1 thing I've read that helped grow a business is being there for your customers when they need you most. Answer emails ASAP, fix your product ASAP, offer discounts, extended trial time, everything you can to make your customers super-happy.
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29 Nov 09

Asana

  • The challenge of groups of people working together effectively is
    fundamental to human endeavor, but the state of the art falls far
    short of real efficiency. Despite advances like email and wikis, the
    friction and overhead of communication remain acutely painful to
    organizations large and small. Group leaders spend an enormous portion
    of their time trying to keep everyone on the same page, and knowledge
    workers struggle daily with inadequate, disparate tools to wrangle the
    information they need to do their jobs.
28 Nov 09

A Lot Can Happen In Five Years

  • I think the hardest part is figuring out what to focus on and staying focused on it. If you do you can get a lot done in 5 years. If you don't you end up spinning your wheels a lot.
  • I think that's paraphrased from an old Bill Gates quote about people overestimating what can happen in a year, and underestimating what can happen in 10.
19 Nov 09

We perfected our simple first product, won the market, and now have nothing to do. | Jon Steinberg

Is it Time for You to Earn or to Learn?

  • Over time I took to telling people the following, “join BuildOnline because you think you’ll get great experience.  Join because you like the mission of what we’re doing.  Join because if you do a good job we’ll help you punch above your weighclass and work in a more senior role.  And if you ever feel that in the year ahead of you you don’t think that you’ll increase the value of your resume and you’re not having fun then go.  Join because we pay well but not amazing.  Stock options are the icing on the cake.  They’ll never make you rich.  Don’t join for the options.”
19 Oct 09

Patrick Collison » blog » Surprises

  • Tied to this, the realization that a good product is so much more important than first mover advantage. Obvious, but keeps surprising me. Facebook, the iPhone, Dropbox, Skype, etc., have an amazing array of failed predecessors.
24 Sep 09

Silicon Valley coming back strong and here's why... - @alexdmoore's posterous

  • New startups need waaaay less cash than before. This means a dearth of VC money is irrelevant. The charts in WSJ showing less VC going into startups is meaningless and outlines this point to a T. This is creating a huge gap in what is going on and what people think is going on. Plenty of companies are being started. Enough are.
  • It's still uncool to work for large tech companies if you are a CS major at Stanford.  You can do it, but it's not cool. This leaves the warm embrace of cool startups warm.
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10 Sep 09

5 Financial Rules for Startups

  • So … I spent more.  The money flowed like beer at a frat party.  We hired people right and left – even though we didn’t have time to orient them and put their talents to good use.  We sponsored events and went to tradeshows – even though our time would have been better spent on making individual sales calls, rather than the distractions of picking out tradeshow booths.  We spent oodles of money and, worse, time commissioning swag and marketing materials and advertising creative – even though we had little revenue coming in.  

    In the end it didn’t help the business.  While speed is important, a startup paradoxically also needs time – time to iterate on product development, time to get the team aligned with the business vision, and time to focus on closing sales.  Startups are like babies – you can’t force babies to grow up faster just by throwing money at them.
  • Be picky.  In the words of Evan Williams, a founder of Blogger and Twitter, startups have to be willing to say no – no to partnerships and unnecessary product features and the wrong employees.  More wasted money and time comes from going in too many directions than from focusing.
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