Product Strategy, Boards, Market Fit, Scaling, Pricing, Marketing, Structure, and more, Weekend Roundup Must Read August 31 2013
This weekend’s Roundup #8 from Startup Management is a manual selection from the hundreds of weekly articles being curated. Previous issues are available here. There are 19 links in this edition, and please FORWARD to a friend, so they can sign-up.
Community
In an ode and a tease, I ask Do Comments Matter? But it’s largely a Yes, because I was celebrating 10,000 comments on Disqus. This post generated some good comments from old and new community members.
Entrepreneurship
Should MBAs Learn to Code? Yes, according to Tom Eisenmann and 715 students who take the CS50 course at Harvard. One of the key reasons cited by students is that it “helps persuade recruiters that they were committed to a career in technology.”
Product Strategy
Robert Hacker wrote a succinct post, How Companies Can Avoid Incrementalism, naming 3 ways. It follows the excellent article by Aaron Schildkrout, Value-Driven Product Development: Using Value Propositions to Build a Rigorous Product Roadmap, where he focuses on the importance of the value proposition in your product roadmap. I tie these concepts together inDon’t Fall in Love with Your Product, and revisit Aaron’s thoughts in 10 Core Principles of Product Development from Aaron Schildkrout.
Sales
Predictability, profitability and diversity are What High-Quality Revenue Looks Like, according to Anthony Tjan. It’s an aspiration for most startups, but it is a sign of maturity.
Boards
In The 4 Must-Have Qualities of Every Board Member, Scott Weiss says one of them is “does real shit”.
Product/Market Fit
In the Product/Market Fit Mirage, Eric Paley says not all products need to go viral to reach success. “Some products just require a more meaningful marketing investment to educate and acquire customers before they achieve success.” It’s a quick read, although somewhat biased for the B2B/SaaS side.
User Experience
In The Future of User Behavior, Will Critchlow talks about the importance of “query enhancement.”
Growth Hacking
Bronson Taylor asks “is growth hacking a process or a set of tactics?” in The Growth Hacker’s Dilemma: Process vs. Tactics. It’s a good question, and it ties in with what I’ve said before, that you need to “operationalize what works in growth hacking.”
Business Models
Paul Chowdery has 3 case studies of social networks (Path, NextDoor, City Networks) where he discusses why some of them won’t scale well, in The Secret to Scaling Social Networks and Local Marketplaces. One of them is not viral, according to Paul.
Scaling
9 short slides on the organizational structure progression for Scaling a Product Organization, by Akshay Kothari. I loved the org chart diagrams in it. And Jeremy Edberg, the first paid employee at Reddit has written an insightful article, Lessons Learned from Mistakes Made Scaling to 1 Billion Pageviews a Month. “Treat nonlogged in users as second class citizens” is one of them.
Marketing Communications
In 7 Ways to Kill the Press Release, Ed Zitron says the PR world can learn a lot from Tesla’s amazing release, because it is so detailed with useful information, and not fluffy. I like that approach a lot.
Organizational Structure
In The Joys and Benefits of Working as a Distributed Team, Joel Gascoigne shares the fun side of being distributed and making it work well.
Pricing
Des Traynor has an insightful thinking process for Picking Your Pricing Model. It’s biased for SaaS models, but it’s an excellent read..
Product Management
Brandon Chu says to inject some poker-like decision-making in Product Management is a lot like Playing Poker.
Venture Capital
Sindhya Valloppillil says “VCs don’t know how to really measure and value a brand” in Startup Bias & The Culture of Money.
That SUMs it up! Don’t forget to share, forward to a friend, Follow us on Twitter, or just visit the website often and daily.
William Mougayar
Founder & Chief Curator
Startup Management