What Founders Need Beyond the Lean Canvas
The Lean Canvas is one of the best tools for building a growth company, but it's a planning framework, not a business operating system. Founders need to know what it does well, where it stops, and how to fill in the gaps, to build the complete management toolkit they actually need.
Struggling with Growth? You Can't Create Demand—You Need to Find It
If your emails, ads, or other sales and marketing activities are falling flat, it might be that you’re trying to generate demand where none exists. In this post, I break down what’s at the root of PMF and growth by reviewing the basics: uncovering real problems felt by people actively trying to make progress.
Overlooked Traits of Successful Startup CEOs
To build a successful startup is hard. Worth it, but hard. It takes a rare combination of skills and abilities. However, we must expand and add some nuance to the traits we commonly associate with startup CEOs and founders.
What I Need to Know to Make Investor Referrals
These are the six things I need to know to make investor referrals for CEOs and founding team members when we haven’t worked together before. Answering these six questions is also a valuable shorthand for quickly vetting any new business idea.
How to Learn Jobs to be Done
Find out how to get started with Jobs to be Done, do your first JTBD interviews, get colleagues on board with the concept, and deepen your outstanding of the framework, methods and tools--to start and grow a business and align a team.