Do more faster

date May 19, 2011
authors David Cohen, Brad Feld
reading time 1 min
business
innovation
  • Book Title: Do More Faster - TechStars Lessons to Accelerate your Startup
  • Author: David Cohen & Brad Feld
  • Some extracts:

Avoid Tunnel Vision… what does best entrepreneurs have?

  • develop passion and vision for the problems they are trying to solve
  • identify and understand what they have to do to make it happen
  • combine sheer will, determination and focus to make it happen with a healthy sense of urgency
  • have a perspective that things rarely go as planned

Characters of great startups:

  1. no politics
  2. it’s not a job, it’s a mission
  3. intolerance for mediocrity
  4. watching pennies
  5. equity-driven
  6. perfect alignment
  7. good communication
  8. strong leadership
  9. mutual respect
  10. customer obssessed
  11. high energy level
  12. fun
  13. integrity

Email…

  1. use the subject line
  2. 3 sentence rule
  3. spell check
  4. reply to important emails right away
  5. use “unread” status
  6. be conscious of how much you suck - if you send out emails that you consider are important and you don’t get a response, think about why

deadly strategic mistakes:

  1. built a sales effort, but too weak of a product
  2. waited too long to address the “nice to have” problem
  3. went after enterprise sales model with non-recurring small price

deadly cultural mistake

  1. didin’t focus on learning and failing fast
  2. didn’t care about or focus enough about discovering how to market
  3. in hiring, choosing expediency over talent and competency

5 key metrics to measure by Dave McClure:

  1. Acquisition - how are users coming to your site through various channels?
  2. Activation - Are users happy with their first experience?
  3. Retention - Are users coming back?
  4. Referral - Are users telling others?
  5. Revenue - Are users spending money or allowing you to monetise?