Week 2 – Customer Discovery & Listening

My favorite part of presenting the customer discovery process is a discussion of the attributes of listening that I got from Marshall Goldsmith’s “What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There“. This is a subset of the “Dating Skills for Engineers” presentation.

A big “Thank You” to Bill R for his presentation on the early days of the Saturn Development Group. Thanks Bill.

Listening Tips and applications of Customer Development

Here are some listening tips from Marshall@BusinessWeek

For those asking, “What does our investor pitch look like if we follow the customer development model?” Here is a great post, by the inventor of the Customer Development process, Steve Blank on Raising Money with Customer Development. I like his covering line

This is a radical departure from a traditional VC pitch. It will blow the minds of 70-80% of investors. The others will throw you out of their office.

My First Week – Burn the Biz Plan

The first reading always inspires me. It’s a Babson College study that concludes

“… there is no compelling reason to write a detailed business plan before opening a new business.”

Do Business Plans Make No Difference In The Real World? A Study Of 117 New Ventures — enjoy.

tip to Steve Blank for introducing me to this reading

Marketing Connects

Yesterday’s Marketing Supports Sales post reminded me of an old Marketing Connects rant I posted a while back.

The key point is that marketing people get the ball rolling, and keep the ball rolling so that “others can finish”. Marketing people fail if they decide/want to be the star. Their success is directly proportional to how big a star they make of others.

Marketing Supports Sales » Steve Blank

It became clear to me that the mission of marketing in most companies has to be to support sales. … “Sales is the sharp end of the stick, and marketing at best, is the stick.” » Steve Blank The Sharp End of the Stick

This is a very good “what does marketing do” post. It gets right to the heart of “Marketing vs Sales” politics/wars. The two biggest egos in the room are not gonna work it out amongst themselves. It’s got to be defined up front. Sales is the most important thing. End of story.

Updating Entrepreneurship Links – Fizz Page

I’ve updated the Fizz page so that none of the links are dead.

Changes

• The biggest change is that Marc Andreesen took his posts offline. Luckily the archives are available at http://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/
• Good news Steve Blank now has a blog

Barry’s New Stealth Gig – Ice Light Solutions

Finally caught up with Barry in the last month. He’s excited about his new stealth project Ice Light Solutions. The careers page indicates that he’s looking for DSP and Firmware experience.

2009 Version – BAEN 502

The 2009 version of my BAEN 502 course outline is now online. An early “thank you” to all the guest speakers who have signed on. download it

Briefly this course is based on Steve Blank’s Four Steps to the Epiphany and borrows heavily from his course. It is all about Customer Development which you can read about here on Steve’s Blog or here on Eric Ries’s Blog.

In a nutshell this process is very close to what I’ve experienced myself. It has really helped me explain my own past successes, and failures.

I’m Talking About Dating – Fizz 2009 – Entrepreneurship Presentations

The best comment I received this year could be rephrased as — The second presentation could be titled “Dating Skills for Engineers”

Here are links to the Entrepreneurship presentations I made in the last few weeks.

• 1 Entrepreneurship and You
• 2 Entrepreneurship Fundamental Skills – Listen, Communicate, Learn, and Don’t Be an Asshole or more humourously “Dating Skills for Engineers”

Sidebar

Thanks again to Jon, Bernhard, Chris, and Andre for giving me the opportunity to speak to the Fizz Project Lab students. Finally, a big tip to Chris for the “dating” observation.

Big Bucks and Choking

Sport’s analogies creep into business speak all the time. Here is a good one relating big pay with stress and eventually “choking”.

Those who are intrinsically motivated, who work at creative or cognitively challenging jobs, and who want to do great work because it gives them great satisfaction, may discover that their performance suffers when financial rewards balloon – as they do with huge bonuses. It’s called “choking under pressure,” Susan Pinker: globeadvisor.com: The motivational paradox of big bonuses

Summer has ended It was time to do a “serious” post.

Which of MG’s Twenty Annoying Habits Do You Have?

I really like Marshall Goldsmith’s 20 Annoying Habits List. It’s a gem that I need to re-read every year. My better half has it posted next to her computer. Here are the first three points.

• 1. Winning too much: the need to win at all costs and in all situations – when it matters, when it doesn’t, and when it’s totally beside the point.
• 2. Adding value: the overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion.
• 3. Passing judgment: the need to rate others and impose our standards on them.

I reviewed this great book here