Bad market feedback

One of the hardest things for many startups is dealing with bad market feedback; the sense that what you have been trying to bring to the world just isn’t being that well received at all. It is the flipside of doing market testing and validation. While obviously the right thing to do, we always go… Continue reading Bad market feedback

Cash value of communication

Often times I meet people who question the value of a focused, operational communications strategy. The argument is that there are plenty of other more important jobs to get done before looking coherently at communications. Allow me as a former communications professional to take a step back and look at the kind of value, great… Continue reading Cash value of communication

Always stay alert

Just because you have made it once, doesn’t mean that you have made it forever. Just as you replaced an incumbent by delivering a better, smarter, cheaper or whatever solution to your customers pains, somebody else could come in tomorrow and do to you what you did to them. Just as you worked tenaciously to… Continue reading Always stay alert

”What’s your pain?”

One of the worst sins you can commit with a customer IMHO is to just babble on about your own qualities and all the cool things your product can do, without even considering getting a feel for what the customers problem first. I know. Because I have committed this sin a lot of times. And… Continue reading ”What’s your pain?”

(In)efficiency rocks

Maybe the headline is a bit controversial, but let me try to explain what I mean. Oftentimes I see products that are super efficient in who they are targeted towards. You can see from the product and the words being used to tell about it that the team behind has been guided by a very… Continue reading (In)efficiency rocks

Solve my problem, please

Normally, we’re used to seeing startups looking to solve the problems of their customers. But lately, I have realized that there is actually quite a lot of startups, who are essentially asking their customers to solve their own problems. I typically see it in outreach emails asking me to go to a service or a… Continue reading Solve my problem, please

What’s the right price?

There are a number of fundamental questions in business, and one of the most fundamental ones to any business is the one of what to charge for your product? Clearly there is not one 100% correct answer for that question as it always depends on a lot of different things. And yes, pricing is a… Continue reading What’s the right price?

Dealing with lost outcome

A couple of years ago I had the great pleasure of helping an interesting startup in the data management and analytics space get off the ground. Part of that was to help them pitch to early angel investors in order to get the first funding. And one of the international investors we talked to had… Continue reading Dealing with lost outcome