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Continue reading →: Are you getting enough negative feedback?
It’s been widely accepted that a product should not be built in a bubble where feedback isn’t being collected from target users along the way. What’s not always focused on enough, however, is the pursuit of negative feedback, which is incredibly valuable when trying to address the needs of a market. People naturally say pleasantries about how they liked your party, whether your baby is cute, or how they share the same hobby as you — all to be polite. It’s human nature to not want to say something negative to another person. The thing is, it’s crucial to hear negative feedback when…
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Continue reading →: Tips for Entrepreneurs: Getting out of jury duty
If you’re working on an early stage startup, tell the court that you have a business that’s not making money, that’s not paying you, that requires you to work 12-16 hours per day in order to have a chance to some day make money, and that working 8 hours less per day during jury duty would hurt those chances. After hearing this (and after looking at you funny and wondering why in the world you would do that), they will likely excuse you. (Note: When summoned for jury duty, you have the opportunity to get excused by the court if…
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Continue reading →: The work-life balanceAt this time of year, I can’t help but think back to when I had “a regular job” (as some members of my family like to remind me of), and how I would look forward to the holiday season when others around me would be slowing down a bit as they approached days off, and therefore I could also slow down a bit. (And come to think of it, this was also the case every week leading up to the weekend…) With so much needing to be done for an early stage startup, however, going even a day without doing…
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Continue reading →: Everyone should be an engineer
Okay, that’s a little bit of wishful thinking, so how about we say that more non-engineers should be tech savvy? If you’re business and can’t talk tech, can you really expect a technologist to work with you on your startup? It’s hard enough for a business person to recruit a good engineer to build their idea, so if there’s a way to close the gap then it should be pursued. The Bare Minimum:A non-engineer should be able to hold a basic technical conversation. If you don’t know the difference between “front-end” and “back-end” development, you have some Googling to do. If you think…
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Continue reading →: Is the customer always right?
Consider the following movie clip a case study of how co-founders handle a customer service situation: Note: there are a couple of inappropriate words in this scene The job of an entrepreneur is to listen, and then to act on what’s heard. You know your product or service better than anyone else, but if a significant amount of your customers (or potential customers) clearly want something, you should work toward satisfying that demand. Even though co-founders Primo (Tony Shalhoub) and Secondo (Stanley Tucci) would have ideally liked to serve a customer in a different way, they made an informed decision…
About Lonnie
Product Leader in Tech
8x Startup Veteran
Strategy | Execution | People
A blog on product management and leadership 