How do you come up with great startup ideas? It is often excruciatingly hard. It is a time of self-doubt and introspection, and often you are concerned that people aren’t giving you honest or constructive feedback. The truth is, unless you have had practice, your idea probably does suck and people really aren’t giving you honest […]
New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Entrepreneur and co-founder of Superpowered, Patrick Vlaskovits, talks about how to apply growth hacking and lean startup principles to your company to find product-market fit and avoid common mistakes and pitfalls many entrepreneurs fall into. From coming up with startup ideas to evaluating them and marketing them, […]
I am writing a startup thriller novel right now called The Term Sheet. It is like Dan Brown meets Mark Cuban meets Edward Snowden. It has a lot of startup advice, but is full of thrills, mysteries, twists and a few near-death experiences. The traditional way to write a novel is to spend months, sometimes […]
Have you heard of the one where you throw an entrepreneur off a 50 story building? His investor checks in with him at every floor to see how things are going. “49th floor, everything’s great … 48th floor, great view … 47th floor, gaining great speed … 46th floor, couldn’t be better …” There is […]
When I was a teenager, I had a mentor that was like a father figure to me. One day, he taught me that often simple questions hide ulterior motives. Like asking: what do you do for a living? In typical geeky teenage naiveté, I asked Tom how could such a simple question hide anything meaningful. […]
Being a startup founder is hard enough, but making common mistakes can often lead to total disaster. Here are some common things to look out for: Stop drinking your own kool-aid. – If you are not brutally honest with yourself, you can’t make informed decisions that will truly improve your company. You will hide behind excuses […]