Recording the right information to make better strategic decisions. #bmgen #leanstartup
Strategic decisions, even pivots, are messy. The information we collect is messy, and the conclusions are subjective and debatable. In spite of staying focused on data we’ve collected, we weigh in opportunity cost, and also less fashionable but important factors like market trends, competitors, barriers to entry, etc. Trusted Systems give you back relevant information when you [...]
Why you don’t need to be a programmer to start a tech startup
A lot of would-be founders with ideas and passion allow themselves to be paralysed, waiting for a tech co-founder. Yet, seasoned tech founders know the hardest parts of startups usually don’t involve tech. That’s why their eyes glaze over when you tell them your idea and ask them about how to build it. So why [...]
Founder-centric workshop notes /by @maxua
Lately, I’ve been doing one-day workshops, based on the Foundation Skills day at Founder-Centric, with different accelerators around Europe. The goal of this day is to teach the principles behind Lean, Lean Startup and Business Model Generation, with a particular focus on practical application and “gotchas” for startups. Max, founder of DOU, participated at Startup [...]
What’s your learning bias?
“If you already think you are a great singer and a well-happening front person, we have a problem. It means you will have the sort of ego that will render it totally impossible for you to be objective about everything else that’s got to be done.” - The Manual (How to Have a Number One [...]
How we get a @leancamp started. Combining the principles of runway, Affordable Loss and MVPs in the event business.
As part of our support program for up-and-coming Leancamp organisers, we’ll be sharing our lessons learned from past events. Leancamp, like most startups and non-profits, can’t afford to lose money, so our financial risk needs to carefully managed. Effectuation and Lean Startup principles help here – but they look different than the typical startup business. [...]
What can Google Campus teach us about @paulg’s perspective on startup hubs?
With the launch of Google Campus in London, I think there’s a chance to observe and potentially take away practical, repeatable lessons for nurturing startup communities elsewhere. Last year, Paul Graham posited that in order for a startup community to be an effective antidote to startup death, it needs to provide a supportive cultural environment and a [...]
For us, by us. Lessons learned from validating the Leancamp model.
Since the first Leancamp, it’s been clear it built community. The problem has been that it is more expensive than a Barcamp, so the sponsorship model has been much tougher to make work. The question of what Leancamp was – a community, a charity, a barcamp, an event business, a knowledge transfer platform, a social enterprise [...]
Should you invest in community? Where’s the payoff?
People have this idea that you can or should “invest” in community. But if you dig deeper, do you find anything more? A moral argument that it’s “good” or “aught to” be done? Or a rationale in hard sales – pressing the flesh and making deals? I think both of these miss the real value. I’m coming to [...]
A Visual Language For Finance Patterns
You don’t need numbers to understand many important dynamics in accounting. When accountants look at businesses, they spot problems and patterns in a similar way that architects, programmers and user experience designers do. As entrepreneurs, being able to spot the same patterns makes our businesses financially-sustainable and healthy, and I’ve seen it lead to serious [...]
Better learning through velocity. How to use Kanban to learn faster.
Always choose the option that minimizes the total time through the feedback loop. – Eric Ries As the pro-learning attitude of Lean Startup takes hold, startups face a challenge not only in learning, but in figuring out how to learn quickly, actionably and repeatably. I’ve found that Kanban is very useful here. Kanban is a [...]
Torture your data long enough, it’ll tell you anything. The antidote? Falsifiable hypotheses
Torture your data long enough, it'll tell you anything View more presentations from Salim Virani.
My Twitter this week: 2011-11-28
What can stop Lean Startup from becoming dogma? /cc @pv @__tosh @flowchainsensei @jmspool http://t.co/WaM90HXe # Technologies that fail to be distributed can’t become the future. So where do entrepreneurs step in? http://t.co/sE454lg7 # @endashes How does that work? # @capotribu Oh – didn't see you had a fire! Hope all's well. # LIVE from #LeanStartup [...]
My Twitter this week: 2011-11-28
What can stop Lean Startup from becoming dogma? /cc @pv @__tosh @flowchainsensei @jmspool http://t.co/WaM90HXe # Technologies that fail to be distributed can’t become the future. So where do entrepreneurs step in? http://t.co/sE454lg7 # @endashes How does that work? # @capotribu Oh – didn't see you had a fire! Hope all's well. # LIVE from #LeanStartup [...]
What can stop Lean Startup from becoming dogma?
There’s a conversation unfolding about the future of Lean Startup on RoundTables, andPatrick Vlaskovits pointed out: Lean Startup needs to avoid becoming dogmatic or a religion. It is terribly ironic when some well-meaning enthusiasts take Lean Startup as the Holy Grail of startup methodologies and expect miracles based on faith & unquestioningly “following the rules” alone. Lean [...]
It’s not the entrepreneur’s job to predict the future, it’s their job to make it happen.
Just as you don’t need to predict the future to put yourself there when it starts, it’s not enough to put yourself in the right place at the right time – you have to make the future happen. Leancamp was at the beginning of two strands of thought-leadership in Entrepreneurship, the Lean UX movement, and the [...]
Where your sphere of control meets your potential
If you’ve ever pitched an investor, you know they love trends and growth markets. The cliched question, “is this a billion dollar business?” has merit.You want your company to rise to scale and continue to exploit the nature of the trends as they are in the future, not now. The problem with this way of [...]
Earlyvangelist t-shirts – what do you think?
via skitch.com Thinking about doing some kind of Earlyvangelist t-shirt for swag or fund-raising for Leancamp. What do you think? Worth paying for? Would you wear something like this? (Tell me like it is – I can take the criticism if you think it’s a silly idea!) Posted via email from I’m Sal
5 Traits of Earlyvangelists, aka How to solve problems that pay.
While mentoring at Lean Startup Machine London, I covered one of the most fundamental concepts in Customer Development, the 5 characteristics on an Earlyvangelist, which Steve Blank covers in more detail in his book Four Steps To The Epiphany. Trevor grabbed me for a quick interview. Early-Evangelists: Have the problem you think they have Knows [...]
Will your customers bite? The Dogpark Test. /cc @christianralph @pv @brantcooper @ericries
via ow.ly When you think a customer group will have a specific problem that’s painful enough that they’re already looking for a solution, you can validate that through Customer Development interviews. When you need prospects to see it to get it, lightweight paper prototypes can help you learn and evolve quickly. But what about the [...]
A Leancamp including Architecture, Fashion and Science? Leancamp Barcelona Mission
UPDATE: The Leancamp Barcelona waiting list has opened here: http://register.leanca.mp/leancamp-europe-2011/ Tickets will be available to the waiting list first. My first few days in Barcelona have been great. I can already see how a very unique Leancamp could take shape here, an event where new approaches across entrepreneurship, design and architecture are born. If this [...]
“Building faster without measuring is like driving faster without looking.” Article: How Much Process Is Too Much? /by @ericries
Every process a startup uses operates at one stage of the feedback loop. But lean startup practices have the effect of optimizing the total time through the loop. Practices that are harmful are the ones that optimize our ability to do just one of the three stages well. For example, you can build much faster [...]
Using FiveSecondTest to quickly spot the right improvements in landing page designs.
I use FiveSecondTest.com to test landing pages before I build them. It shows a mockup of your page to random people for 5 seconds, then lets you ask them questions to learn what they recalled and understood. This is very valuable to make sure the message you intended is getting communicated, which is important to [...]
Lean Wireframing – choosing the right tools for the right job /by @giffconstable
This is a strong example of truly Lean Thinking (not just Lean Startup Thinking) used in practical design research. A wireframe is meant to communicate and test. You want to do the least amount of work required to fulfill those functions. Anything more is a waste of time and resources. A simple product change might [...]
I’m Salim Virani, an entreprenerd & business advisor. I'm a founder of 
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