#20 - What I am allowed to share with you from spending time with other startups this week
This weeks has been amazing because I have been getting more into Tech than ever and being exposed to other peoples challenges.
#1 - A B2B product in the travel industry where the value proposition wasn’t clear
#2 - An eCommerce site with no data
#3 - Hearing a Founder pitch their startup idea without an idea of the size of the addressable market
#4 - Working with engineers and data
For the first 3 at least, I can say that at the heart of it all there still needs to be a clear understanding of the Customer & Data. Potential customers is number one on my most shared article and I realised most people find this part difficult. I finally get why it’s worth going through all the effort storyboarding, user journey mapping and all the other cool Agile frameworks. This is to ensure you are ruthlessly focusing on your users.
P.S. I am currently working on a survey to understand more about CTO’s and why Founders are finding it hard to recruit them. The findings have been insightful and we should all try and learn more about what engineers do because they are the true architects. If know a Senior Lead who is skilled enought to go out on his own. Please reply to this mail and I’ll send you the survey
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ALSO, not a major announcement but you will have noticed that renamed the “From Me to You” section to “Sundays Reads” - it fits better and you get this every Sunday anyway.
Let's Build Great Products
Aggregation Theory
This week was really interesting and I have been thinking more and more about the time that we’re in.
The value chain for any given consumer market is divided into three parts: suppliers, distributors, and consumers/users. The best way to make outsize profits in any of these markets is to either gain a horizontal monopoly in one of the three parts or to integrate two of the parts such that you have a competitive advantage in delivering a vertical solution.
Do you train your user or do you reduce the need for them to learn something
If you’ve ever said to yourself we need to train/educate the user slap yourself and read this
Sunday Reads
Google’s Secret Formula for Management? Doing the Basics Well
Employees learn how to run meetings, have conversations, and set goals.
Helpful Tool(s)
Mixpanel
Very popular tool and they guys there were kind enough to give me socks!
Jokes aside this has been a tool recommended within the community and I plan to play with it more
Have a good week and if you enjoy this please forward it to two people who you think would benefit