Some of you may have noticed I took a break last week. Well, this week I'm back with a BANG. Got lots of resources this week. Hope you enjoy!
Cindy Alvarez is blogging again!!!
After a long break from blogging the sage of customer development is back. To celebrate I've selected some recent articles and one classic from her blog.
- Which one solves the problem better?
- 3 Questions We Should Stop Asking
- Build-Measure-Learn or Learn-Build-Measure?
- 10 Things I’ve Learned About Customer Development (2014)
I look forward to more content in the future from @cindyalvarez
Good Reads
Seth's Blog: Do-able
"Lean entrepreneurs can talk about the minimum viable product, but far more important is the maximum do-able project."
Great words of advice. Sometimes people say yes to too may things and limit their time/resources.
You need to ask yourself. Can you actually devote that time and effort to a project in order to move it forwards? Am I in it for the long haul? (Bearing in mind that most projects are not over-night successes) Can you stick at this for 2, 3, 5 or 10 years?
What is do-able?
Building a Startup Growth Engine
I love the idea of the value proposition, user onboarding and USP all rolled together into one concept, the "product story". This is then key to your marketing and growth.
Dan explains, discover the marketing channels and a craft a compelling product story. Then create a product growth engine
Finally - here is how to extract your product story
What to do about every product idea you’ll ever have: a step by step guide.
I'm one of those people that have loads of ideas and only move forward with small number of them. My process for deciding what to work on is, to be honest, a bit ad-hoc.
I really like the step by step system that Anton lays out.
Definitely aimed at a bootstrapping entrepreneur (i.e. aimed towards revenue and not a "moon-shot" SpaceX startup)
The system helps you evaluate ideas quickly and work out which to move forwards with and how .
LEARN
Landing Page Tests Aren’t Useful for Validation
YES, YESY, YES!!!
"Landing page tests are overused and, in my opinion, uncreative. I’ve seen quite a few in action, and I don’t think you get much useful, believable information. "
How to validate a startup idea?
eFounders really have boiled down validation of a product idea into a simple formula.
Use this method to quickly find out if your solution brings enough value to the table for your target customer base.
BOOK
Intercom on Customer Engagement book
A follow up to their first excellent book. Intercom's guide to customer engagement has lots of good tips on...
well...customer engagement.
They have been leading this space for a while so they really know thier stuff.