“In a startup no facts exist inside the building, only opinions.” – Steve Blank Summary: In Four Steps to the Epiphany, Steve Blank lays out a customer development process that complements a startup’s product development process. This post includes video and slides where Steve explains the ideas in his book. About a year and a [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Books'
Customer Development: How to develop your customers like you develop your product
November 5th, 2008 · 12 Comments · Books, Customer Development, Presentations
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Books for Entrepreneurs: Agile Software Development
November 4th, 2008 · 3 Comments · Books, Lean
“For heavens sake, if you haven’t gotten comfy with Agile techniques and thinking, get on it right now.” – Tim Bray, Editor of XML 1.0 Summary: Start learning how to be lean by reading Agile Software Development. It isn’t the cheapest book in the world but it’s one of the cheapest investments you will make [...]
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Books for Entrepreneurs: Bargaining for Advantage
July 14th, 2008 · 5 Comments · Books, Negotiation
This is the first in an ongoing series called Books for Entrepreneurs. We’ll use these posts to recommend books that we’ve found useful as entrepreneurs (duh). Our first book is Bargaining for Advantage by G. Richard Shell. Richard is a professor at Wharton and this is my favorite negotiation book period. It synthesizes the principled [...]
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Randy Komisar’s 'The Monk and the Riddle'
June 25th, 2008 · 3 Comments · Books, Entrepreneurs, Value Add, VC Industry
More wisdom from Randy Komisar‘s The Monk and the Riddle (emphasis added): Passion “So why were they doing this? Why was it worth their time? I am always amazed that venture capitalists don’t ask that question. Perhaps at this point everyone assumes it’s obvious: to get rich. “Passion and drive are not the same at [...]
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Randy Komisar on the Rocket Ship investment model
June 24th, 2008 · 5 Comments · Books, Customer Development, Quotes
I’m reading Randy Komisar‘s book, The Monk and the Riddle. He wrote it before he became a partner at Kleiner Perkins and I like his description of the Rocket Ship model of investing (emphasis added): “Over the last several years… a new investment model has taken hold. Fill each startup with rocket fuel as fast [...]
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John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins on building Intuit
March 23rd, 2008 · 3 Comments · Books, Case Studies
There is lots of wisdom in John Doerr‘s (Kleiner Perkins) introduction to Inside Intuit (emphasis added): “Inside Intuit is a tale of missionaries, not mercenaries. It’s about a founding team that prevails through tenacity, frugality, and an obsession with the customer experience… “Kleiner Perkins first learned about Intuit in 1985… But when it came to [...]
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