Thoughts and discoveries

"We could have spent 3 months chasing money, or 3 months earning it. We chose the latter and have a much better product because of it. As an added bonus if we ever did take money, we now have powerful leverage.. called profit."

This is so in line with my own thinking that I had to post it here. The full post is fantastic, too.

Of the 26 companies that I consider realized or effectively realized in my personal track record, 17 of them made complete transformations or partial transformations of their businesses between the time we invested and the time we sold. That means there a 2/3 chance you’ll have to significantly reinvent your business between the time you take a venture capital investment and when you exit your business.

Also check out Eric Ries' post on the Pivot.

I have never been involved in a successful software-based web service that raised and spent boatloads of money before it found it's sweet spot.

Fred Wilson has just posted an article opposing the article The Case For The Fat Startup by Ben Horowitz.

Fred Wilson's emphasis here is that he invests in startups who have reached Product/Market Fit and have traction. This ties in nicely with the poster I put up a while ago "Stop Pitching and Get Traction".

We're relentlessly working to gain traction with OnePage. Are you?

If you find my posts interesting, you should see ways to connect with me at my OnePage here.

You know that old saw about a plane flying from California to Hawaii being off course 99% of the time—but constantly correcting? The same is true of successful startups

I love this little snippet from an old post by Evan Williams, discovered thanks to Signal vs Noise.

If you find my posts interesting, you should see ways to connect with me at my OnePage here.

In order to build a great company, you have to be absolutely crystal-clear about the goal you are trying to accomplish. For startups, that goal must be to create a rapid-iteration feedback loop that enables you to learn what customers want and will eventually pay for. Everything else, including anything that optimizes any other goal, is waste.

In developing OnePage, I am completely convinced that metrics and data driven product and customer development will be a key factor in our success. By using metrics and having a tight feedback loop with our customers, we can avoid waste in terms of our development time. Get in touch if you want to chat further about how this is done, as I thoroughly enjoy discussing these topics.

The above quote is by Eric Ries in his article Throwing away working code.