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With all the recent hype about ChatGPT, I thought I'd revisit and update one of my early pandemic posts about startups trying to cash in on trends.
A high Net Prompter Score (NPS) can become a good problem to have. An experienced founder is always skeptical of easy success, so here are the mistakes I might have made.
* Featured In Inc. Magazine *
The success of a startup is based on the brilliance of the idea and the excellence of the execution, not how much money you can throw at it.
* Featured In Inc. Magazine *
We all know about CNN+, Google Glass, and Amazon Fire Phone. Were those brands powerful? Absolutely. Were those products marketed poorly? No. Should you emulate them? Most definitely not.
* Featured In Inc. Magazine *
We've covered theory, first touch, and landing page. Here's what to do with the prospect when they show up at your website and give you their email address.
* Featured In Built In *
When discussing marketing and sales strategy in the digital age, it helps to first ask this question: Why does most startup marketing fail?
* Featured In Built In *
These are the four frustration-borne behaviors I've seen lead to failure most often, why they happen, and what I do to avoid them.
* Featured In Inc. Magazine *
Great startup ideas are a dime a dozen. Great ideas executed to perfection are diamonds in the rough. The difference is often stated but rarely discussed.
* Featured In Inc. Magazine *
One of the best ways to kill a startup is to spend time on activities that produce a low return on the time invested. Yet we entrepreneurs do this constantly.
* Featured In Inc. Magazine *
For entrepreneurs, complexity creep is a natural phenomenon, and it will always happen unless we're proactive about keeping it from happening.
* Featured In Inc. Magazine *
What goes in a startup's investor pitch deck comes from the investor data room, and the data is produced by making and selling the product.
* Featured In Inc. Magazine *
Over the years, three massive changes have shaken the startup universe. In 2022, those changes shifted the traditional growth path, possibly permanently.
* Featured In Inc. Magazine *
The startup malaise phase is enough to make good founders give up. But overnight success requires years of preparation. Don't give up. Do this instead.
* Featured In Inc. Magazine *
When a startup is trying to break into a market, you need to get ready for "no," because "no" is usually the best possible outcome, and it's where learning starts.
* Featured In Inc. Magazine *
When building a new product, I'm not interested in what the customer wants. If I figure out what they're doing and why, I can automate it, eliminate it or reinvent it.
* Featured In Built In *
If you're going to have a free tier, you have to make it work like quicksand in the customer funnel. That is, keep customers stuck. In a good way.
* Featured In Built In *
The timing of when a startup founder hands out equity is important. If you get it wrong, you'll wind up with underperforming and over-entitled employees.
* Featured In Inc. Magazine *
There are a few guidelines every startup founder should follow to increase their chances of landing early investor funding.
* Featured In Inc. Magazine *
Use your product roadmap to break down the path to your ultimate destination into manageable chunks. At each milestone, ask, "Did we do what we said we would do?"
* Featured In Built In *
At startup velocity, a product roadmap has to be flexible, has precious little room for error, and has to be brief and to the point. Here's an example.
* Featured In Built In *