Cars, books, business.
Great intro into building a small software company. Some really good advice on finding and serving your market.
Order of importance is market, marketing, aesthetic, function. Go into niche markets and create focused products. Target small businesses and consumers. Create complementary products not products across niches. Build an email list. Outsource tasks and automate processes.
Continue reading “Book: Start Small, Stay Small, Rob Walling”A must read. If you build any kind of products, you need to read this book.
Customers are less price-sensitive about products around which they have formed habits. They increase the dependency by storing value in the product. Two factors for habits: frequency and utility. The more users invest time and effort into a service, the more they value it. Identify habitual users, codify the steps they took (“Habit Path”) and modify the product to fit the new insights.
Continue reading “Book: Hooked – How To Build Habit-Forming Products, Nir Eyal”Great book, reminding us in this day and age, no matter how big or small or how successful your company is, you need to always innovate and “be paranoid”. Recommended.
Look for connections and try to understand the patterns. Be a hunter (insatiability, curiosity, willingness to destroy), not a farmer (complacent with success, repetitive, overly protective). Understand your customer, adapt, and fashion fast solutions. Experiment with new ideas. Target niches.
Continue reading “Book: Better and Faster, Jeremy Gutsche”Really good book and very fun to read. It reminded me again of the importance of systemizing work and focusing on your best customers. Highly recommended.
Find the top clients (/client type), treat them preferentially, fire all other clients (/client types). Ask the top clients about their frustrations and solve them. Don’t work, build systems for people and things to do the work.
Continue reading “Book: The Pumpkin Plan, Mike Michalowicz”Great look at one of the most interesting companies on the web, WordPress. While not everybody is as lucky to be able to focus only on product and leave everything (especially marketing) as a second thought, this book still has some great lessons and ideas, especially on managing employees. Definitely a recommended read.
Hire by trial. All employees participate in support. Scoreboard for the entire company. 5 people in team is best. 1. hire great people, 2. set good priorities, 3. remove distractions, 4. get out of the way. Always ask “how will this impact the user?”.
Continue reading “Book: The Year Without Pants, Scott Berkun”
