I have worked both at an enterprise size company and a startup trying to do business to business (B2B) sales. Here are my two cents on five problems you must overcome to succeed. 1) The “Everyone is a customer” problem When you are building a product with a small team, you can’t afford everyone to …
For me programming has always been a very creative activity, like drawing, playing an instrument or gardening. There is something about sitting in front of a computer and realising that there are endless possibilities to create something almost magical, if I just put my mind to it and figure out how it works. I started …
“We need to go mobile”. Well, what does is mean? Here are 3 definitions of “mobile” that totally contradict each other, and you need to consider them all! In a world where “mobile first” is a mantra for new startups and expressions like “adopt to mobile or die” scares and confuses the established market leaders …
The old expression “Time is money” is true. Time is the only thing every person have about equal amounts of in this world and that’s why we get so frustrated when we are wasting it on something. Turned the other way around it’s also a master unique selling point for entrepreneurs. Lew Cirne the founder …
Which is the most important task to work on right now? When working in an agile environment, this needs to be crystal clear to everybody involved. Is it a newly discovered priority 1 bug or maybe the most critical feature for this sprint? Who decides? The product manager, the team or the stakeholder that shouts …
What’s Your most important Key Performance Indicator (KPI)? New users? Sales per day? Website visitors? I would argue that they are all secondary to User Retention, i.e. retaining users and make to come back after one day, one week and one month. Here’s why: User retention is the most accurate metrics to show that people …
Let me tell you the story of why you are here, why you do what you do and why you will save us all. Friends and allies, we are on a mission. The enemy is destroying our land. For too long have we stood by and let our brothers and sisters fall victim for the …
I work at Osom. I used to say “I’m starting a company”, but these days I’m not starting, I’m working. So what’s the difference? About a year ago, I met with Anton Johansson, at the time CMO at Twingly. We had lunch and talked about how much we loved startups and discussed the exciting companies …
How do you grow a company really, really big? I read this great article called “The Surest Way To Build A Billion-Dollar Internet Company”, by James Slavet, partner at venture capital firm Greylock. Slavet brings up the few companies (Amazon, Yahoo, Skype, Dropbox and others) that actually crossed the magical line of having a billion dollar …
Ok, you’ve built a product and now you’re trying to nail the product’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP) to create a compelling marketing message. Let me stop you right there. The first mistake we do is to treat the USP as a product feature. It’s not. The USP is about the customer. It’s either what the …