Every day. Fast Forward.
When I meet with young startups there is one thing that often springs to mind on the commercial side: The tendency towards picking a business model on the shelf, often inspired by what others are doing, and settle on that as the model going forward without much further thought than that. The reasoning seems to… Continue reading Map your GTM options
When looking at B2B startups, it’s super easy to get impressed by a well-executed growth model that brings new customers in in droves. Of course it is; sales is an art and can be a super tricky one at that, so every time a startup succeeds in closing a deal, it’s reason to celebrate. But… Continue reading Keep winning
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
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
One of the great misconceptions in working to build a startup from scratch is that you need only be great at one thing - typically product development - and then you can wing and learn the rest. Why do I think it’s a wrong approach? First of all, you’re essentially working on a wrong assumption… Continue reading It takes a full team
One of the worst things you can do is to try and make important decisions when you’re under great stress. While it can sometimes be necessary, the chances that you get it right are rather slim. The best way to mitigate the risk of ending in that situation is to always have a contingency plan;… Continue reading The crisis plan
When you’re building something to solve peoples problems, it can be tempting to build feature after feature and try to sell them all to the customers at the same time. What often happens is that it can be hard to get the customer engaged in a dialogue or a trial - simply because you’re overwhelming… Continue reading Easy to buy
Until now it has been somewhat of an established truth that if you’re a software engineer, and you know your programming languages of choice really, really well, you can do pretty much anything; You can bring new ideas to life, build new products, build new business even, if you’re an engineer with a keen interest… Continue reading A new kind of rockstars