A podcast with Charles Broskoski. founder of Arena, which "boasts a healthy, creative community and stable finances while rejecting many of the hallmarks of popular social media".

A 2022 year in review from Sari Azout, Sublime founder, starts by succinctly summarising their mission: "build a more human and nourishing internet... a platform where curious humans come together to curate and interconnect the best knowledge ... because our search engines and algorithmic news feeds are letting us down. The right idea, or the…

"In the first nine months of 2021 crypto startups, especially those that are creating the tools to build a blockchain-based future, raised $15bn in venture capital", triggered in part by "retail speculators... Investors are also betting that, as regulation becomes clearer, institutions will take it more seriously, stirring demand f…

Although this looks like someone looking for problems because of the apparent near-future success of "solutionism", some good points here: we need "an institution that will know what ... regulations to suspend (eg libraries and IPR) ... to fully leverage the potential inherent in digital technologies for the public good."Recent…

"A framework for building enduring products"Level 1 is to focus on growing uses completing the core action, which forms the product's foundation, usually correlates with retention. So design features which optimise for people completing the core action. Level 2 - retain users by creating accruing benefits: customer usage improves t…

"first mile of a product’s user experience is almost always an afterthought. The welcome/tour, the onboarding, the explanatory copy, the empty states, and the defaults ... the “top of your funnel” for engaging new users... increasingly neglected over time despite becoming more important ... products built for a tech-savvy ... early adopters …

"Focusing on individual features and experiences is good, but you should never forget about the position you’re trying to hold." Know "Which problems are good fits for you and which ones are bad fits?" so you don't build features for problems which are incoherent with your position.Snickers can’t take a feature request to …

"the most efficient way to operate during the earliest phases of a startup lies in between a formal business plan and unstructured iteration... documenting your initial product/market fit hypotheses, systematically validating each of the most uncertain hypotheses, and continually iterating on and updating [them] ... through customer validatio…

How to measure & optimise for product/market fit? Use this leading indicator: "just ask users “how would you feel if you could no longer use the product?” and measure the percent who answer “very disappointed.” " You need at least 40%.Article goes through the process step by step, and comes with an interactive tool:A) Ask people who&…

Sets out a solution to the "TiVo problem": essentially, TiVo had the innovative product but not the content to operate it on. This usually ends badly for the innovator, who gets screwed by the incumbent, who has the distribution (eg ComCast). Despite the example, Tivo "did not fail... a patent troll of sorts... collected more than $…

Andreessen Horowitz on sales channels, because "products often fail because the company chose the wrong route to market... A properly designed sales channel is a function of the product that you have built and the target... you wish to pursue."Presented as a function: the channel (c) is derived by a function (f) - distribution design - …

most crucial ... question to answer as a founder: “What exactly does your company do?” ... here are four storytelling blunders to avoid... [dont] spill an alphabet soup of generic industry buzzwords ... too much technical jargon ... [do] refocus on the problem you’re solving... concrete evidence of your company’s upside ...be succinct... clear…

I officially launched the MyHub.ai alpha phase right smack in the middle of the 2020 coronavirus crisis.

Most successful entrepreneurs are older—and the ones running the highest growth businesses, according to research at MIT and the Kauffman Foundation, are nearly twice the age Zuckerberg was... I consistently see five traits that give older founders an edge. The takeaway, though, is that there are ways to hone that edge, even if you’re younger.

from 2010 to 2014, five American metro areas had the same level of business creation as the rest of the country...Rapid technological change, along with other drivers like the Great Recession and decreased dynamism are creating three economic challenges: Divergence between geographic regions... Concentration of startups and their value ... conc…

for anyone who’s eager to control their entrepreneurial destiny, bootstrapping can be an excellent choice... payoffs can include freedom (both financial and personal) and a better sense of work-life balance. You can grow at a sane pace and maintain a healthy personal life.

the GEM framework... to deliver value ... the company must never lose sight of ... growth, engagement, and monetization.... Growth is all about how a company finds new users or customers.... getting the right message in front of people who need what you have... “external triggers.” ... delivered through various channels.... The growth question to…

startups today need to build systems of intelligence™ — AI powered applications — “the new moats.”... SaaS and cloud services can have strong economies of scale; ... your product or service has “network effects” if each additional user ... accrues more value to every other user;... Proprietary software or methods is where most technology compan…

Here’s a discussion of the way machine learning-first startups are built, which ones are pushing the ecosystem forward, and why they look so different than the SaaS startups that came before them... you can do very interesting things with IBM Watson... if you spend a few months and a significant amount of money training it... their marketing claim…

“Governments in Europe have been spending money for years on improving the availability of services online, and uptake was always below expectations... citizens didn’t want to use the online platform. The idea was to digitise a process without improving it.”... there is a much bigger prize ... an opportunity to use the internet as a platform for…

SocialChallenges.eu is a new, highly interactive platform dedicated to pilot-testing a new approach to stimulating startups, making innovation ecosystems more efficient and solving social and environmental problems. 

Now, if you want to create a new company and provide a new service, you need to provide your consumers a product where the marginal benefits exceed the switching costs in a manner that is obvious and as big as possible.

Technology companies often fall into one of these two... categories. ... are like the first professor.... “it should be clear that…[our technology is superior].”... scoff when others don’t see just how great their technology is. The second ... also recognizes how amazing their technology is... But they also understand their audience, or in the bus…

every great business addresses a real customer need. If you’ve ever found expressing your customer need slippery, this is for you... The need narrative outlines a thesis on how to make peoples’ lives better. A clear need narrative helps you prioritise features, communicate the product effectively, and hone in on the most important niche. Every fie…

I talk to at least a dozen new entrepreneurs each week and probably review two dozen email pitches. Here’s what to expect the first time you contact me and how to get the most out of it.

I don’t think announcing a seed round to the press has ever been helpful.Here are my reasons:

Ironically, the VC world, having fuelled the creation of computing, is one of the last areas of business to introduce computing to decision-making... Evernote, Spotify, Etsy, Zynga, Palantir, Cloudera, OPOWER... The list featured not only names widely known to the public and leaders of industries, but also high performers such as Ibibo... Twenty p…

in an attempt to overcome controversies with the Copyright Reform, some are proposing an exemption for startups... the idea is more of a curse than a blessing... 94% of startup acquisitions were completed by non-European companies, and 70% of the startups were younger than 5 years.

From talking and working with founders, a number of websites regularly come up as go-to resources for startups. So we’ve put together a cheat sheet of the 27 best websites and resources for startup founders…

become the best at something no one else is attempting... Attracting customers isn’t something you “bolt on” in the end. It’s something you work on at every stage of your business, and your unique selling proposition is the first stage... how do you define yours?... when you try to please everybody, you end up pleasing no one... connect more stro…