Great post by Nabeel Hyatt on Hyper-Growth startups and the waves that enable them to happen.
Required reading if you’re making something on someone else’s platform.
Entrepreneurs are Explorers
You and I are explorers.
Take a minute and think about that. Being an entrepreneur already means that you’ve chosen to ignore the status quo of how things should be. You’ve given up a job, or a college degree. You’re pursuing something because you believe it can be done better. Heck, the YCombinator program (and 20 under 20, 30 under 30 and other programs) are now rewarding people for dropping out of high school or college and giving them a serious alternative.
Being an entrepreneur already means that you’ve gone off the highway that the rest of the 98% follow, and you’re taking the back-country roads.
That makes you an explorer.
The 40-hour Experiment (part 2 – results)
This is a follow-on post from the original 40-hour experiment post. The problem: is there a market for what you’re building? Is there a product-market fit, and more importantly how long should you continue to try before giving up? Too many start-ups spend more than a year building a product that no one really wants. The 40-hour experiment was about spending 40 hours in a focused way on marketing a new product, and dumping the product at the end of 40 hours if nothing came of it. I kept track of the hours I spent on a little whiteboard, slowly counting them down.
Rules
Each hour must be spent totally focused on marketing or customer acquisition. No Facebook, Youtube, random calls or meetings allowed. Stay “In the Zone.” Time measured down to the minute. Logging 45 minutes does not count as an hour of work. Food, water & other breaks, managing team, answering emails etc not included.
Here’s what happened…
Facebook IPO Roadshow presentation
Here you go. Knock yourselves out. The Facebook $95 billion IPO is coming next week.
How to Hack your way to Viral growth
Youtube (ofcourse) didn’t grow with marketing ads.
Great post from Andrew Chen on how to be a Growth Hacker, which is replacing Marketing roles at tech start-ups. Friends from the Facebook and iOS platform industries who make apps already know this. It is engineers, and product-engineers, who drive viral growth, not a VP of Marketing with an MBA…
This is what Business Development is really like…
Great post from Forbes on what BD really is, for all you slackers out there 🙂 Enjoy.
Peter Thiel CS 183 Start-up class at Stanford: Class Notes
Class Notes from Blake Masters on Peter Thiel’s Start-up class CS183 at Stanford. Great 10-minute history of the 90’s tech bubble-and-bust, as well as as inside look at Paypal.
Last 60 days: built 2 companies to $20k/mo in revenue
Murti and I have been laser-focused for the past few months since HiGear on experimenting with speed. In the past 4 months we’ve tested nearly 11 products that we built and launched. 2 of them actually received sales orders for $20k each in their first month of launch.
Yes, you read that right.
On Ad testing
Cool post from Plenty of Fish on Ad Testing. Which ad do you think won? 15K impressions each in a controlled Facebook Ads test. Click here to find out.
The 40-hour experiment
Have you ever had this problem of incubating something brand new – a project, a business idea, an experiment – but not knowing how much time and effort you need to put into it exactly before you know, really know if its working?
I run into this issue. All the freakin’ time. This problem gets magnified with new start-up experiments. Let’s say you want to experiment with a start-up selling cupcakes online. You setup your site in a few days, bake some delicious cupcakes, and are ready to roll. Your marketing plan is to email all your friends and have a local newspaper feature your new business. Heck, everyone wants a cupcake right? If a 1000 people hear about it, some will buy, right?
Ali on Start-ups & Entrepreneurship 