Entrepreneurs have a lot of ideas. It’s easy to tell when you’re talking to one because they’ll come up with at least 2–3 business ideas in a half hour conversation on nearly anything.
But an idea is not the same thing as a business. In a startup the most important people are those who execute, who get shit done when others simply talk about it.
Something I’ve learned from both investors and experienced entrepreneurs is not to worry about keeping secrets in the early stages of a business.
There are exceptions — like security software or the first idea in a niche market— but for the most part ideas are worthless because everyone has them, and reaching 400,000 customers has a whole different set of concerns than reaching 40 (or 40,000, for that matter). It’s mostly the execution, and team, that matters.
So how do you know if the walk matches the talk? It’s a critical question if you’re investing, partnering, or considering working in a startup.
Here are a few things I’ve noticed about companies that are experiencing significant traction…
Read MorePeople and businesses send crappy emails all the time. We tolerate it because there is some value being exchanged or because we have some type of relationship with them, but ultimately if you don’t respect your audiences’ time and attention they’ll unsubscribe the second they think they can get that value elsewhere or if they just get annoyed enough.
Seth Godin wrote something related to that back in 2011 (links here and here) calling it the “attention economy.” With technology increasing the things that demand our time, it’s an idea that will probably continue to grow in importance.
The most important thing to keep in mind with email marketing / newsletters is that while they are usually labeled as owned properties, they are also earned via the trust of your audience.
Read MoreFinding and increasing growth is critical to an early stage business.
But it’s also hard to explain, and on the surface it can look very tactical: you isolate something that works, then test to see how much you are able to increase it.
If you’re good you’ll work on a bunch of these tests at once, and funnel them into one metric that drives all of your efforts, and revenue. That one metric is often something like average daily use (DAU) or how likely they are to refer a friend (using net promoter score or similar). The key is to focus on a metric that drives your core business, and rises all of the other metrics, including revenue.
Read MoreThis past week marked graduation for the 2nd cohort of the Creative Startups Accelerator. It’s a terrific venture and I’m a huge fan of how they support and challenge creative folks to build a business, and, especially, use lean startup principles.
I dropped in for a couple of days to say hi, and unintentionally ended up offering my perspective as an alum of the program. One of my favorite mentors from last year, Lena Ramfelt, asked what 3 things stayed with me a year later, and it prompted some reflection…
Read MoreOne of the worst habits an inexperienced business owner / entrepreneur can develop is to try to close a new user, customer, or employee on the first meeting.
This is in direct opposition to a whole lot of data…
But outside of the data, there’s also a kind of psychological structure at work that even experienced entrepreneurs can miss.
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