Launching a startup and guiding it to success is essentially a trial-and-error process of finding product-market fit. We test ideas and concepts on potential customers, then proceed with the ideas customer love most. That’s the ideal. But most of the time
Why You Shouldn’t Build That App
I often come across great ideas that would obviously make for blockbuster mobile apps. I proceed with almost none of them. The reason I hesitate to build new apps outside of my current project, Power 20, is because mobile apps
How To Fail Fast
In the past 10 years I’ve founded 3 companies, have been part of the executive team of two, have built ten different products, and am currently running my latest venture, called Power 20. Among all these efforts, only three projects
$100,000 & 100 Days
We closed our last venture, ClearGears, with $100k in the bank and a very low burn rate. We could have closed the company and returned the remaining money to investors. I decided to keep the team together because we have
Why We’re Closing ClearGears
Over the past decade, I’ve been on a mission to improve life at work. Many of my solutions are experimental and weird (MetroNaps, for example), so I expect my failures to outnumber my successes. It’s therefore vitally important for my
Failure: 3 Early Signs
If you’re thinking of joining a pre-funded startup as an employee, or you’re considering investing in a startup (and you’re not a professional investor), look out for these early-warning signs that forebode failure. 1. The founder is unemployable. If your
This Is Going To Hurt
This week’s global stock market gyrations foretell tough times ahead for startup entrepreneurs. When investor confidence dips, VC investment dives. We need only look to changes in investment in 2008 and 2009 to predict how 2011 and 2012 will shake
No ‘Happy Ears’
Recently at ClearGears my business partner Steven called me out on my assumptions about how many happy customers we have. Our goal for mid-year was to validate the product with a specific number of happy customers. In conversation, Steven heard
The Costly .Com
Websites Are Cheap. Online Businesses Are Expensive. My full-time job as VP of business development at Crowd Interactive gives me some insight into the costs associated with online businesses. Every day someone asks me: how much does it cost to