Problems Don’t Exist

Problems do not exist

I have long held the belief that entrepreneurs should stop talking about abstract solutions and frame their pitches in terms of solving real problems, but I was wrong.

Problems don't exist.

They are in no sense real. You can't touch them. You can't see them or hear them in and of themselves. They certainly don't smell or taste like anything in particular.

They are not ontological entities.

And here's the biggest problem of all (pardon the recursiveness)...

...when entrepreneurs start talking about problems, they stop talking about people.

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Lean Startup Machine Tips and Tricks

10 Lean Startup Machine Tips and Tricks

I was at Lean Startup Machine in New York last weekend. (LSM is a 48 hour excursion into lean startup techniques created by Trevor Owens to push your boundaries and help you learn something about your business model.) I was so impressed by a post by Cindy Alvarez that Trevor distributed, 10 Things I've Learned, that I decided to blatantly copy her and create my own top ten list specifically for attendees of the event.

Unfortunately I'm a terrible editor. So here are 21 things:

Problems don't exist. You can't go out and talk to a problem. Focus relentlessly on people. Cash in hand beats bullshit on slide. A pretty powerpoint isn't impressive. Go get a real customer to hand you money. If your teammates don't buy in, then test fast and let reality convince them. You're not going to win by arguing, you'll just wind up working alone. If your MVP can't prove you wrong, then it can't prove you right either. Ask questions like a child. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

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Kent Beck's Itchy Goat

Build Measure Learn vs. Learn Measure Build

The first time I saw Kent Beck speak he was going on and on about an itchy goat. I had I now idea who he was or why he was talking about this goat or why he was scratching it on the back. But he said something that struck me and keeps coming back.

The Build Measure Learn loop is backwards.

There is a presumption there that if you start building something and slap some analytics on it then you will inevitably learn something.

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Minimum Viable Lemonade

User Experience is Not a Feature

Is anyone else out there sick of signing up for on-line products that don't do what they promised?

Or more commonly, products that don't actually do anything?

Seems like every day I'm running into another landing page which requires access to all my social networks, yet provides no actual value.

Minimum Viable Product

I am a huge fan of creating Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) in order to test business ideas. I advocate it on a daily basis because too many people build too many products that no one is really interested in using. A minimum viable product is a great way to test customer interest in your solution and figure out the minimum feature set that you can build a business around.

However, even if you're running a basic smoke test just to see if anyone will sign up for your business idea,

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Stop SOPA / PIPA

I'm generally not the type to go stage a sit in, but I'll be attending tomorrow's protests against SOPA / PIPA. And this site will go dark tomorrow in solidarity with Wikipedia, Reddit, and others.

For those of you who may not know, the US Congress is once again demonstrating it's complete lack of internet understanding by drafting a law that potentially opens up some lovely security holes and nice legal DoS possibilities. Perhaps they are trying to stop the kittens from clogging up the intertubes.

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Lean Startup vs. Visionary Entrepreneur

At the risk of rehashing an argument, there is an ongoing misconception that creating a company under a lean startup approach is incompatible with a big entrepreneurial vision. Paul Higgins recently published an article in Entrepreneur Country Magazine based on his blog post again suggesting that the lean and big vision were incompatible.

Some of the reasons were worth thought and response:

Customers Don't Know What They Want

Henry Ford allegedly once said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

So if customers can't be trusted to know what they want, what hope is there for building a company on 'lean principles' through experimentation and constant customer feedback?

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The Blind Pivot

Taxonomy of the Lean Startup Anti-Pivot

Pivoting has been up and down the Gartner Hype Cycle at least twice now. Sometimes it's an accurate term to describe what entrepreneurs have to do to survive: adapt to customer feedback.

However, sometimes it's an annoying buzzword that is poorly understood and grating to the ears. I'm on a constant search for good patterns for entrepreneurs to follow and bad anti-patterns to avoid. So as a follow up to my Taxonomy of the Lean Startup Pivot, here is the Taxonomy of the Lean Startup Anti-Pivot. Complete with a piñata!

(Special thanks to Mike Woloszynowicz - @mkbiz for coming up with the term "Blind Pivot" and inspiring this post.)

Blind Pivot - Changing business models without getting out of the building and talking to the humans.

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No Customer Persona

Design does not equal Pretty Pixels

Since I started writing more about design and user experience, I've been getting emails from entrepreneurs asking for design feedback. These emails usually have some screenshots attached and some sort of description as to what value the website or app is supposed to provide.

Unfortunately, no one seems to include a description of the customer.

You Can't Design in a Vacuum

Leaving aside the ridiculousness of anyone asking me for my aesthetic opinion (my photoshop skills are weak at best), how can you give feedback on a design if you don't know who it's being designed for?

Design != Pretty Pixels

Is it pretty? Sure.

Does it look Web 2.0ish? Sure.

Is that what your customer wants? I have no idea.

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