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Kindle Notes & Highlights
They say that startups don’t starve, they drown. You never have too few options, too few leads, or too few ideas. You have too many. You get overwhelmed. You do a little bit of everything.
Before we can serve everyone, we have to serve someone. By thinking about who would be most likely to buy,
By getting specific, she was able to cut through the noise, stop drowning, and start making progress.
In my case, I bottlenecked so hard that our CTO quit while saying, “We’re never going to succeed if you keep changing what we’re doing.” In my defence, the stuff I’d learned was true (at least, I think it was). But it didn’t matter anyway since I hadn’t properly communicated it to the rest of the team.
On the surface, it appears to be a refusal to face the reality that there might be something wrong with the product’s foundations. But having seen it in several teams now, I think it’s actually the desire for speed, where speed is measured by building features instead of by de-risking and validating the business.
“If this company fails, what is most likely to have killed it?”
Prep questions to unearth hidden risks: If this company were to fail, why would it have happened? What would have to be true for this to be a huge success? The second question is a flipped version of the first, from Lafley/Martin’s strategy book. “What would have to be true for this to be a huge success?” In
After a conversation, just review your notes with your team and update your beliefs and 3 big questions as appropriate. The goal is to ensure the learning is now on paper and in everyone’s head instead of just in yours. Talk through the key quotes and main takeaways of the conversation, as well as any problems you ran into. I also like to talk about the meta-level of the conversation itself: which questions worked and which didn’t? How can we do better next time? Were there any important signals or questions we missed? This stuff is more craft than science: you have to actively practice it
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You can't outsource or hire someone to do customer learning. There are exceptional team dynamics where it works, but generally speaking, the founders need to be in the meetings themselves. When a hired gun brings you bad news (“This problem isn't real and nobody cares about what we're doing”), properly assimilating it is difficult.
hasan
The process before a batch of conversations: If you haven’t yet, choose a focused, findable segment With your team, decide your big 3 learning goals If relevant, decide on ideal next steps and commitments If conversations are the right tool, figure out who to talk to Create a series of best guesses about what the person cares about If a question could be answered via desk research, do that first During the conversation: Frame the conversation Keep it casual Ask good questions which pass The Mom Test Deflect compliments, anchor fluff, and dig beneath signals Take good notes If relevant, press
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summary of book
People love startups. Startups do cool stuff and make their lives better. Everyone supports the entrepreneur. When entrepreneurs screw up, people want to forgive them. They want the entrepreneur and the startup to succeed.
akshay
