Every day. Fast Forward.
Currently it’s not for the fainhearted to follow the developments on the worlds stock exchanges. 15 years of bull market has been replaced by an ugly bear which seems to send anything with an incling of tech down, down, DOWN in the market. Well, it pretty much sends everything down to an extend where it… Continue reading The new reality
Every time I see a startup pitch for funding, the founders include an assessment of the size of the market, they are going after. The more detailed ones also give an assessment of the size of that market, they believe they can make their own and why. It is all well and good. Sometimes I… Continue reading The beachhead pitfall
What intrigues you the most? Going after the same things everybody else is going after? Or going counter and look in places that most other people have abandoned? I am all for the latter. While I recognize that there are indeed major trends out there and obvious opportunities, I personally find those that run counter… Continue reading What excites you?
As a former business manager at Microsoft, I am almost bred up on KPI’s, metrics, tracking progress and so forth. Sometimes even to the extend where I have a hard time understanding, why it is a more alien concept to many. Including some startups. The way I usually frame it is that you cannot play… Continue reading Tracking progress
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
There are quite a few really good arguments for why you should focus on the problem rather than the solution, when you're trying to build a successful company. But there is one that I think takes the prize as the most powerful one: By focusing on the problem, you broaden the opportunity for yourself, your… Continue reading Be problem-driven
One of the hardest things to do when you're trying out an idea for a new venture is to separate your own feelings from the data. After all, you probably came up with the idea because you thought it was great - perhaps even the greatest since sliced bread. And now you're bringing it doubt… Continue reading Your idea is not about you
"They will love it, when they see it. And they will realize that this is just what they have been waiting for." Trying to build something for a market that's nascent is super hard on so many levels. Yet, it is also one of those areas where time and time again, I meet founders who… Continue reading Arghh, it’s good enough