It’s easy to think of a great concept and then start adding to it. Adding things that really don’t matter to consumers. Adding things that you think make your product cool. Adding things that your competitors have and you think you need to have them too. The real results? You’re wasting time and polluting your decision making process by adding too many things to consider. Focus on what really drives the number of customers you have, how much they’re willing to pay and how fast you can reach them. Focus on exploiting the weaknesses of your competitors. Focus on making your customer’s purchase experience as quick, easy, and painless as possible. Make their experience completely intuitive and test the hell out of the design. Don’t lose site of what’s (in)valuable. Your customer data is invaluable. Feedback on the purchase experience is invaluable. Figuring out how to get from your innovative customers adopting your product (which is fairly easy) to your early adopters taking it up (more difficult) is valuable. Getting their feedback as their using the product is invaluable. If you’re not clear on what I’m talking about, re-read Crossing the Chasm, especially chapter 4, Target the Point of Attack. Learn to edit yourself, scale back and launch with the bare minimum solution. See how people react to it and go from there.
Now Reading
Planned books:
- The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. by Daniel Coyle
- The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development: A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Brant Cooper, Patrick Vlaskovits
Current books:
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Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want (Strategyzer) by Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Gregory Bernarda, Alan Smith
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Beyond the Obvious: Killer Questions That Spark Game-Changing Innovation by Phil McKinney
Recent books:
- Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant
- Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, Braden Kowitz
- Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, Chris Fussell
- Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than your by Salim Ismail, Michael S. Malone, Yuri van Geest
- Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
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