Learning How to Stop This is my last post about thoughts I had coming out of the NYC Lean Startup Meetup that I spoke at a couple weeks ago. Being lean, the discussion went at this event, means not doing extraneous things. While it’s true for startups that it’s important to make great decisions about what to do up front, it’s also true — especially as companies get larger and more important older — that organizations and individuals have to be vigilant about stopping activities that become extraneous over time. This is HARD. Once things — product features, business processes, reports, ways of communicating or thinking about things — get ingrained in an organization, there’s never a natural impetus to…
Archives / December, 2009
Innovating in New York City
Innovating in New York City Last week I wrote about speaking at the NYC Lean Startup Meetup. One of my other key takeaways from this, which I’ve known for a while and have been meaning to blog about, is just how vibrant the tech startup community is here in New York. I know others have been blogging about this like mad – Fred has some thoughts here, here, and here, and Charlie has some here and here. Chris Dixon’s seminal post on this is here. (I even blogged a bit about why NYC is a good place to start a business back in 2006 here.) I’ve had a little more time for networking and speaking in the past year than…
Pivot, Don’t Jump!
Pivot, Don’t Jump! I spoke last night at the NYC Lean Startup Meetup, which was fun. I will write a couple other posts based on the experience over the next week or so. The Meetup is all about creating “lean startups,” not just meaning lean as in cheap and lightweight, but meaning smart at doing product development from the perspective of finding the quickest path to product-market fit. No wasted cycles of innovation. Something we are spending a lot of time on right now at Return Path, actually. My topic was “The Pivot,” by which the group meant How do you change your product idea/formation quickly and nimbly when you discover that your prior conception of “product-market fit” is off? …
Book Short: Innovation and Discipline
Book Short: Innovation and Discipline The Puritan Gift, by Kenneth and William Hopper, is a bit of a mixed bag. The authors have a wonderful point to make — that American businesses have thrived over the centuries due to a mix of innovation and discipline that descended from the country’s Puritan roots, and that when they lose their way, it’s because they diverge from those roots. The book is also an interesting, if somewhat cursory, history of American industry. And it playfully debunks some great myths of corporate American life over the last 50 years. But the book has a few too many moments where assertions aren’t supported by data — where its theories overreach into explanations of other aspects…
A Perfect Ten
A Perfect Ten Return Path turns 10 years old today. We are in the midst of a fun week of internal celebrations, combined with our holiday parties in each office as well as year-end all-hands meetings. I thought I would share some of my reflections on being 10 in the blog as I’ve shared them with our team. What being 10 means to me – and what’s enabled us to make it this long: It means we’ve beaten the odds. Two major global economic meltdowns. The fact that 90% of new small businesses fail before they get to this point. Probably a higher percentage of venture backed startups fail before they get to 10 as well We’ve gotten here because…