A Tale of Two Entrepreneurs
Both of them studied at the same university and got good grades, and after graduation, both worked at a high-tech startup where they quickly grew into key roles. After a few years, they both got hi...
All Those Who Wander Are Not Lost
Getting to product/market fit (aka the inflection point in the hockey-stick curve when a product's traction starts rapidly growing) is one of the most significant milestones for a startup.
How to Find an Idea Whose Time Has Come
A recent [Bill Gross TED talk](https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gross_the_single_biggest_reason_why_startups_succeed?ref=blog.leanstack.com) where he found timing to be the single most important fact...
Position Against Your True Competition to Win the Customer
Most entrepreneurs never bring up their true competition during a product pitch because either they
Scaling Flow in a Startup
Last year, I outlined ten work hacks I use for managing conflicting pulls on my time in a post titled: [“Achieving Flow in a Lean Startup](https://blog.leanstack.com/achieving-flow-in-a-lean-startu...
Start With Mindset
Time flies. We’re already at the 10 year anniversary of the Lean Startup. Yes, it was a little over 10 years ago that Eric Ries started sharing a series of blog posts and giving talks on a new way ...
The 10x Product Launch
You’ve painstakingly defined and built an MVP through 100+ customer interviews. You’ve collected thousands of emails from potential prospects through a teaser page. You’re ready to launch. But…
The Bootstrapping Startup Operating System
Bootstrapping an idea is more relevant today than ever, but the rules have changed.
The Different Worldviews of a Startup
In his groundbreaking book, [“All Marketers are Liars Tell Stories](http://www.amazon.com/All-Marketers-Liars-Preface-Works/dp/1591843030),” Seth Godin defines a “worldview” as the set of rules, va...
The Entrepreneur with a Thousand Faces
In _“The Hero with a Thousand Faces,”_ Joseph Cambell described a narrative pattern for the archetypical hero’s journey. Every hero story, from Luke Skywalker to Neo, follows this structure.
The Power of a Good Strategy
When Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in 2004, he wasn’t the first to build a social networking platform. There were dozens of other social networking platforms before him — many with millions of d...
The Simple Shapes of Startups
Inspired by this short lecture by Kurt Vonnegut on “the simple shapes of stories,” I thought it would be fun to sketch a few shapes of what starting up looks like:
The True Value of Your Time
_Time is our scarcest resource. Resources like money and people can fluctuate up and down, but time only moves in one direction._
Vitamins Don't Have a Triggering Event
Were you in the middle of launching a new product or startup when the pandemic hit? Like a lot of entrepreneurs, you probably hit the brakes on your project or put your new ideas on the back-burner...
How to Deliver an Elevator Pitch That Gets Anyone to Ask for More
The elevator pitch is one of four foundational pitches every founder should master.
Achieving Flow in a Startup
Eliminating waste is the fundamental principle of lean thinking.
Bootstrapping + Lean Startup = Low-burn Startup
While bootstrapping provides a strategic roadmap for achieving sustainability through customer funding (i.e., charging customers), lean startups provide a more tactical approach to achieving those ...
Raise Your Startup's Odds of Success By Up to 8x
Most founders set Product/Market Fit as their first significant milestone. The problem is that getting to product/market fit typically takes two years (for most products), and 80% of products never...
The Just Start Manifesto
While we may look different and speak different languages, the world is flatter than it’s ever been. We are living through a global entrepreneurial renaissance that can be witnessed through the wor...
Start with Premium Before Freemium
The thinking goes that when launching a new product, it’s often a good idea to lower friction by giving away your product for free so you can 1️⃣ Learn from users 2️⃣ Get them to try before ...
The Customer Factory Manifesto
All businesses, irrespective of business model type (b2b, b2c, digital, hardware, services, etc.), share a common universal goal: