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Procrastinate for Success!
Procrastination can be a useful tool. You can't do everything. So don't.
Not disruptive, and proud of it
I remember "disruptive" when it was called a "paradigm shift." You should be worrying more about making something people want to buy, and less about disrupting everything.
"It's a Balance" isn't always the answer
Resolve decision-making conflicts by selecting the right approach: Make a bold choice, synthesize a new solution, or find the balance.
Being who you are, while becoming better
We're told "be yourself" to seek happiness and success. But what if "being yourself" also means striving to become better? What is "yourself?"
The Lindy Effect on startup potential
On average, you're halfway to your final destination. How, then, do we not only double from here, but 10x?
When being "first" is not a competitive advantage
Is it good to be "first?" It seems so -- what's the point of being a copycat? While "first" sounds impressive, in reality it's often not an advantage.
Disentangling the three languages: Customers, Product, Business
Stop talking past each other. Translate between the three "languages" of customer desires, product features, and business goals.
Rare things become common at scale
Software doesn't scale through architecture and automation alone. New, more difficult problems appear that didn't exist before, causing new downstream consequences.
Hello, I'm 1074018628
Is "customer service" a genuine service? Or is it a shield so that most people at your company never have to speak to one of those pesky customers?
Adjacency Matrix: How to expand after PMF
A simple workshop that evaluates new business ideas relative to your existing strengths -- the key to expanding without overreaching.
Capturing luck with "or" instead of "and"
Luck always plays a role in startups, but there are ways to better capture upside and mitigate downside.
It's a torturous chaos until it isn't
Even at wildly successful startups, the first few years are gut-wrenching, uncertain, on the brink of collapse, where pessimism is realism, and yet optimism is required.
Learn by Copy
In America we're trained that all copying is bad; of course plagiarism is, but perhaps we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The "Convergent" theory of finding truth in darkness
How to tell the difference between a truly great startup idea, and people saying "Sure, sounds good" when they really mean "No, I'm not buying."
Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy
Why do startups typically fail? It turns out that "avoiding those things" is already a plan for success.
Color Wheels are wrong? How color vision actually works
Artists say all colors are a mixture of red, yellow, and blue. But physics and TV screens and printers disagree. How does color really work?
Stubborn Visionaries & Pigheaded Fools
How do you know when to stop, versus when to push through? You don't, not even in hindsight. But these guiding questions can help.
The Pattern-Seeking Fallacy
We humans are terrible at discerning patterns from randomness, and in marketing data we unwittingly find "insights" that are actually noise. Here's how to fix that.
AI startups require new strategies: This time it's actually different
The typical dynamics between startups and incumbents do not apply in AI as they did in previous technology revolutions like mobile and the Internet. Ignore this at your peril.
How startups beat incumbents
A startup can beat a large, successful incumbent, if it does things the incumbent can not or will not do. Here are those things.