Customers Do Not Always Know What They Want

June 3, 2014

“That is exactly what product strategy is all about – figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.” –Ben Horowitz, in The Hard Thing About Hard Things One important aspect of product management is knowing when to ignore customer feedback and instead rely upon your own understanding. It turns out […]

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Hide of an Amardillo

June 2, 2014

I recently ran across an article that said every leader needs the hide of an armadillo. I think that’s true. Many would-be entrepreneurs do not have thick skin. The thought of facing the bullets of leadership can deter people with great ideas and great competence from entering the entrepreneurial world. Over the years I’ve learned […]

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Considerations Between Working In a Startup vs a BigCo

June 1, 2014

I have written many times about considerations prospective employees must make when considering the option to come work at ArrayFire versus working in a BigCo. Recently on Hacker News an article became popular that does a good and fair job explaining the pros and cons of many different considerations at play. I recommend reading the […]

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Buckling Down

May 31, 2014

Sometimes you’ve gotta just buckle down to get ahead of the pack. That is the kind of weekend I am having. So just a stub post for today while I’m off chasing an opportunity. Have a happy weekend. My head is in the sand.

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Cofounder Relationship Struggles Are The Most Volatile

May 30, 2014

In the past week I have reconnected with two old friends seasoned in startup experience. Both related stories of cofounder struggles that have been particularly difficult. These stories are very common. More often than not they stem from poor agreements. I’ve written before about how cofounder vesting is vital. More than 5 years of vesting […]

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Thoughts on Crucial Conversations

May 30, 2014

I love the book Crucial Conversations. It is a must read. I’m not the best at crucial conversations. I often mumble or say things more dramatically than I mean. I often miss important elements of the conversation and only think to have said them hours after the conversation. In those cases of missing elements, there […]

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Takeaways from Mary Meeker’s 2014 Update

May 28, 2014

I don’t like @marymeeker, I love her. http://t.co/7NsFv4f0uu — Brian Halligan (@bhalligan) May 28, 2014 Mary Meeker’s 2014 industry trends report came out today. She always does a phenomenal job at succinctly capturing macro industry trends. A couple that caught my eye: The internet is becoming unbundled. It has gone from multi-purpose web apps, to […]

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Being Genuine

May 27, 2014

One of the greatest things startups can do is be genuine. BigCos often struggle with saying genuine things. There are too many layers of approval required to say anything interesting. Startups can say interesting things. They can be gracious towards and honest of their competition. They can be honest about nonsense in the market. They […]

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Measuring Entrepreneurial Success

May 26, 2014

There was an interesting twitter conversation today in Atlanta about measuring entrepreneurial success. Success is hard to measure. It is personal and means different things to different people. One obvious form of entrepreneurial success is revenue. That is directly related to success. However revenue is really different for different business types. A company with $5M […]

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Hiring Detectives for Business Purposes

May 25, 2014

I was recently meeting with a group of entrepreneurs and one of them mentioned hiring a detective as a viable option for gathering intelligence in a very important business transaction. It struck many of us as an odd solution. He went on to explain how many banks hire detectives to investigate business people before taking […]

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