“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.
The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
– Thomas A. Edison Continue reading
Tag Archives: Developer
Google Launchpad Accelerator – The 3rd Class
In the past ten months, I’ve been busy working with startups in Google’s new program for startups, which we call: “Launchpad Accelerator“.
What?
In this unique program we doing our best to help tech startups build successful business.
How?
We are running this program by working closely with these startups and helping them with the most critical challenges. The analysis and guidance are being done by mentoring sessions. In these sessions we leverage the vast experience of Google’s engineers and other external mentors from top companies and venture capitals in silicon valley. Their value is huge and I’ll update here with specific examples.
When your startup is selected to the program, you get a two weeks at Google Headquarters full of learning and networking opportunities. After that, you have another six months of work with Googlers on your objective and key results. In other words, you get access to Google engineers, resources, and mentors. Which are all aimed to help you do your things better/faster/cheaper and make your startup a success. Continue reading
Want Great Startups Ideas? Think On Problems!
A question I get from time to time is going around “How can you come up with a good idea for a startup?”
It’s the wrong question. In order to get to an answer you do not want to think on a great idea for a startup. Because this won’t lead you in the right path. It might be a cool idea that you and your friends think is wonderful but if it’s not a real problem in the real world, most chances are that people won’t find it useful.
If it’s not useful, you won’t be able to monetize it and build a sustainable business. After all, a startup is a temporary organization in a hunt of scalable, repeatable and profitable business model. So you want to improve your odds in this hunt by identify a common problem.
It’s not only that the better way is to look for problems. It should be a problem that you have.
The very best startup ideas usually contain three aspects:
- You (the founder) want to have it. It’s your personal pain point.
- You can solve it.
- Few others realize that these ideas worth the time and energy to pursue.
How To Kanban?
Kan-what?
That is the first thing you hear when someone is hearing about this for the first time. In my last two startups, I used it and it works quite good for us. Like in Agile / Scrum and all the other methodologies, you need to try and take what works for you. The magic in Kanban is the ability to keep most of the ‘things that works’ and gain productivity. If you like to do daily stand-ups meeting – keep them. If you push new version to production every week – keep it and the list goes on. The power of Kanban is in the ability to improve the communication and to put everyone on the same page, or a board in this case.
The Kanban technique emerged in the late 1940s in Toyota. It was their effort to invent a new approach to manufacturing and engineering. Line-workers displayed colored kanbans (=cards) to notify their downstream co-workers that demand existed for parts and assembly work. The system’s highly visual nature allowed teams to communicate more easily on what work needed to be done and when. It also standardized cues and refined processes, which helped to reduce waste and maximize value.
How to use it in your startup?
Mentoring Entrepreneurs And Developers
In the past six years I had the pleasure to mentor hundreds of entrepreneurs and developers. For some, as an investor and for others as an external advisor or a domain expert. These days I’m doing it mostly as my day job which is really fun! Here are some of the lessons learned over time.
If you are an entrepreneur who is asking:
“Why do I need someone to mentor me?”
Well, there are many good reasons, but check the graph below. Continue reading
App Monetization Course #StartupTips
In the past year, I had the pleasure to work with @JessicaUelmen and the rest of the professional team in Udacity on a course that aim to help developers and entrepreneurs. There is no higher form of user validation than having customers support your product with their wallets. However, the path to a profitable business is not necessarily an easy one. This course blends instruction with real-life examples to help you effectively develop, implement, and measure your monetization strategy, iterating on the model as appropriate. In a nutshell, it will help you make money.
Go try it at: udacity.com/course/app-monetization–ud518
