Paul's posterous

I flaggeded this using Instapaper back in December when it first came out from Nivi at Venture Hacks and finally got around to reading it on the plane on my flight home from IBM Pulse last night. I highly recommend that regardless of what stage your tech company is in (or you think its in) that you listen/read/make notes on the attached interview.

If you are unclear on what product/market fit is, you need to....listen
If you are pre product/market fit....listen
If you are post product/market fit...listen

There are some great examples as well as great lessons in when to market and when not to market, how to save early $$ and how to make sure that you are on the right path.

Love to hear your thoughts and comments on this...do you agree? disagree? any examples? need help? Let me know.

BTW...if you are not following @seanellis and @venturehacks please do...very much worth your time.

OK so I am a big Neil Peart fan and a bit of a drum geek but having heard Neil speak and his story it is an excellent example of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hr rule in his Outlier book. (I have linked to my favorite solo of his on Youtube for my pleasure as much as yours)

In my opinion Neil is probably the greatest drummer in the world, if you disagree thats OK as long as you can acknowledge that he is one of the best at his craft. Neil started as a kid (pre-ten years old) laying magazines out on his bed, listening to music and beating the covers the magazines. At 10 he got a drum pad (not a set) and practiced on the pad. As an early teen every spare moment was spent on a second hand drum set. Playing along with songs he liked, making up new stuff, trying stuff he hadn't seen done before and being creative...innovating (even though he didn't see it that way at 14). Neil played in bands and played solo's eventually forming the band Rush continually driving himself to do more, get better, push the envelope.

The interesting thing that most people who are true outliers will understand is that he did this not just because he was driven to be the best (although that was 'a' factor). He did it because he LOVED IT! Whether it is Gladwell or Vaynerchuk or any of the other experts it is obvious to all that everyone should be looking to match what they LOVE doing with what they get paid to do.

The formula looks like this:

The more you love something the more you are prepared to do it, the better you get at it, the more people will find you and ask you/pay you to do it for them, the more fulfilled and happy you will feel and the better person you will be for all your loved ones.

Find your passion, follow it, work hard at it.

Are you? If not, make a change. Don't say you can't afford to...be practical about planning the swith but...can you afford not to?

I know I am late to the game but I FINALLY ordered my copy of "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steve Blank....can't wait to read it as it has been one of the single most frequently recommended read from folks. Not exactly an early adopter on this one but I'm hoping better late than never!

I'll post my thoughts as and after I get through it but for those who have I'd like to hear how it changed your perspective? What you did differently after reading? Do you recommend it to friends? Why or Why not?

Really great illustrative piece of work by Brant Cooper that nicely outlines the customer evoluation...go to Brant's Market By Numbers blog and add to your reader if you are at all interested in customer development.

The hardest part about making good software that ships on time is knowing what and when to sacrifice. As programmers and designers, we often fall in love with our requirements and are unable to kill our darlings. We mistake what we said we’ll do with what must be done. It’s rarely so; you can always do less.

What stops most people from doing less is the fear of failure. The misconception that if you don’t get it all done, the rest is worth nothing at all. That without this feature or that tweak, nobody will want to use it at all. Bollocks. Most software has a tiny essence that justifies its existence, everything after that is wants and desires mistaken for needs and necessities.

The easiest way to force the insight of what can be lived without is by playing a game of constraints: You have to ship on Friday, you can’t add more people, you can’t work nights. Fixed resources, fixed time. All that’s left to give is scope. It’s amazing how creative the cuts and sharp the sacrifices become when you’re backed into a corner. It’s when you have to choose that you make the best choices.

For every 1 day estimates of a task, there’s a simpler version of that you can do in 3 hours, and an even simpler still you can do in 30 minutes. Back yourself into a corner and these versions will vividly appear before your eye. You can always do less.

Jason Fried and 37Signals are a company to be admired for lots of reasons. This is one of their recent short posts which is a great reminder that what customers want and what they need are not always the same thing and that adding features to a product does not necessarily make it better and in fact can make it worse!

Don't build a custom application for a broad target market.

I think it is fair to say that perhaps the best business lessons of our time were not taught by Rocky Balboa however I came across this courtesy of @msuster and his blog Both Sides of The Table (http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/).

For all entrepreneurs, startups and business folks this is an important lesson to remember. Mistakes are going to be made and that is good. Failures will be had and those are learning experiences. It is what you do after you have been hit that is important. There is no such thing as an overnight success, ask anyone who you think is one to tell you their story and I think they will tell you....

"It ain't about how hard you hit, it's about how many hits you can take"