When Would You Give Up?
If you’re a startup founder and you feel good about yourself, you just might justified. But you’re much more likely to be delirious, experiencing that temporary elation that comes from something that makes no difference to your actual business. For example, you’ll meet a lot of startups feeling good about themselves on the way home […]
When Does a Startup Accelerator Succeed?
There’s a lot written about startup accelerators. At least, there’s a lot written by outside casual observers; very little is written about them from the inside. There are reasons for that. In my experience running an accelerator, I wouldn’t share much about the startups until after demo day (more about why in a later post). […]
Four simple things that make a better accelerator experience
With a growing number of startup accelerators, bootcamps and incubators out there, here are some tips for having a good experience once you’re in a program. This comes from running two startup accelerators (three-month full-time programs) and three bootcamps (three-month part-time programs). Be Coachable. Disagreeing with feedback is fine and necessary at times but be […]
How I Tried To Be a Better Startup Weekend Judge
[I originally wrote this piece in early 2013. I just revisited it again in March 2018. I hope you enjoy it.] Working with many startups, I get to see how lots of people test ideas and build their startups. I also get to see how lots of people want to rush off and build in […]
The Recommended Daily Intake Approach to Startup Activities
You’ve probably seen the “Recommended Daily Intake” used as a way to gauge how much of a particular nutrient or substance we should ingest in a given period. I was thinking about how startup people spend their time and ended up writing this table of “Recommended Startup Activity Intakes” for early-stage startups. Reading popular tech […]
The Two Sides of Demo Day You Might Never See
I’ve run three different startup accelerator programs. Two of them ran demo days, but the one I currently run does not. For an explanation of why, see this post on side effects. Demo days can be good or bad depending on your goals and the people involved. I thought that this would be a good […]
Startup Weekend Toolkit
Here’s a Startup Weekend Toolkit I put together after mentoring and judging. It’s a lot of info, so it’s best to read this before you go since you will be busy enough (and sleep deprived) during the weekend, but these resources will save you lots of pain. Startup Weekend isn’t a hackathon or a business […]
Going Gonzo to Build a Better Bootcamp
Hunter S. Thompson practiced Gonzo journalism, a format where the reporter participates in the story. Here’s the start of the Gonzo startup advisory (what I used to run as a “bootcamp”). In my experience, if you’re an early-stage entrepreneur and working with someone like me to learn Customer Development techniques, you will have some common troubles. […]
Why Startup Lists Don’t Matter But You Read Them Anyway
It just turned 2013 in Hong Kong and I feel like it’s 2008 in New York. Usually when I say that it’s because the startup growth I witnessed (and hope helped) in New York years ago reminds me of what I’ve seen in Hong Kong recently. This time, however, I’m talking about the latest in […]
School’s Out
A few years ago when I started working on a social voice service I thought a potential customer segment was college students. I spoke to around 120 students to test the concept. During that time I learned a lot about design and UX but also realized that this segment did not have the problems I […]