by Brant | Jan 26, 2013 | Brant's Rant, Lean Startup
Whether you are a government entity attempting to grow a startup ecosystem, a university trying to commercialize technology, a big business intent on reinvigorating (or saving) your business, or an entrepreneur seeking to change the world, you’re likely using old-school, 20th-century “innovation” methods in a new, unrecognizable, global economy.
by Brant | Mar 15, 2012 | Brant's Rant, Economy, Lean Startup
Those who run in #LeanStartup circles know too well the problems encountered with language. Eric Ries, Steve Blank and others are criticized for choosing terms and phrases — lean, customer development, MVP, fail fast, etc. — which unintentionally lure...
by Brant | Dec 21, 2011 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Startups
When you hear concepts over and over, you often wonder is it because it’s swarming or because your ear is newly attuned to it? Did you know there’s a lot of people who believe that the #11 has super powers and that’s why when they look at the clock, it’s always 11 after? Seriously.
UX is hip. And rightly so. I thought I’d share a theory why this is so and what impact it might have on your startup. This despite the fact that I’m relatively new to UX concepts.
by Brant | Sep 12, 2011 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Startups, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development
As an early believer in Lean Startup movement, I can perhaps be excused for my unbridled enthusiasm for the release of Eric Ries’ new book, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Not however, for the reasons you might expect.
In fact, some early adopters of Lean Startups — those who have already bought into the framework to the extent that they’ve applied its practices into their high tech startup — might be a tad disappointed. They might have to look a little deeper; there’s no vanity steps to success herein.
by Brant | Aug 29, 2011 | Customer Development, Lean Startup
Here’s what I submitted to Eric Ries as an idea for the cover of his upcoming book: For some reason, it didn’t get chosen. : ) Actually, it’s a just slide from my You are (not) a Visionary deck I presented at last week’s Wisconsin’s...
by Brant | Jul 26, 2011 | Brant's Rant, Lean Startup
As technologists working on new products and new markets, we tend to forget where we are on the technology adoption lifecycle curve. That’s a mistake. Here’s why: 1. Nobody cares See all that white space under the middle of the curve? Those are people...
by Brant | Apr 28, 2011 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Startups
Despite Dave McClure’s imploring to “kill a feature” and Eric Ries’ urging to “cut your product in half, then halve it again,” most startup founders I encounter are trying to work their way toward Product-Market fit by planning and building new features. The analytical mind of an entrepreneur, both engineer and business-side, naturally tends toward solving problems and ostensibly, features solve problems. But it’s the wrong approach for most startups.
by Brant | Mar 21, 2011 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, San Diego, Startups
At long last, here’s the video from Steve Blank’s presentation last month. Steve Blank speaks to San Diego Tech Founders from Brant Cooper on Vimeo. Contents: 00:00 My Intro 03:17 Why Accountants Don’t Run Startups – Old constraints on startups...
by Brant | Mar 15, 2011 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Startups, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development
Steve Blank and Alex Osterwalder have combined their respective methodologies, Customer Development and Business Model Generation, into a powerful business model generation and testing framework. There are several good sources for how these two mesh, including this...
by Brant | Feb 23, 2011 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup
I haven’t weighed in on Customer Development thoughts for several hours, so it’s about time. Interesting series of tweets in the last several days got me thinking about the biases we bring to Lean Startup Customer Development practices. Unfortunately, but...
