Tag Archives: startups

Eat The Bug: Do What Others Can’t Or Won’t Do

in entrepreneurship, Strategy

Every organizations lives and dies by its strategy. What makes a good strategy? The best strategies are simple and answer 5 fundamental questions: who, what, where, how and why.

Still, developing a strategy is hard. There’s a tendency to make it a very complex activity, which I believe drives most organizations to fall for many traps; one being the the copy-paste approach.

Startups, by their very nature, do not fall for this trap. But this doesn’t mean their path to victory will be easier; but much more harder.

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How Do You Overcome The Early Adopter Challenge?

in Innovation, Leadership

There are three forces needed for innovation to happen: ability, infrastructure and market. When all three exist you have an industry. Creating a new industry is a long-term challenge, which many people and organizations will not take on. When starting out, every startup is in a race to create find product-market fit. It’s not about being first to market, it’s about getting the business model right.

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How to Boost Your Startup’s Attractiveness to Venture Capital Investors Using The Business Model Canvas with Martin Luenendonk

in entrepreneurship, Podcast

big bang podcast 50 Martin Luenendonk

My guest for this episode of the podcast is Martin Luenendonk, CEO of RoadToFunding.com, who just published a super actionable, in-depth 7,000+ words guide on how to boost a startup’s attractiveness to venture capital investors using the Business Model Canvas. He looked deeper into what does a venture capitalist really want from your business in order to invest $1m to $5m. To get more ideas you can always check with the experts at Wimgo.…

Oil and Water: Why Corporations and Startups Rarely Mix

in entrepreneurship, Innovation, Leadership
what you know limits what you can imagine

Illustration by Christian Laborin

There are many  experienced, talented and well intentioned people who are, without knowing, blockers to innovation. I’ve seen and experienced this way too many times, and experienced it again recently while advising iAir Platform; who have developed a potentially ground breaking technology that could be used in the various industries with a wide variety of applications.…

How Startups Slay Giants

in competition, entrepreneurship, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy
Killing giants

Illustration credit Christian Laborin

Slaying giants is fun, almost every new disruptive company slays a giant or two. Last week I had a chat with a team based in Puebla Mexico working on a cool augmented reality application for museums. They asked for my thoughts on their app and business model, I happily answered their questions. One of those questions comes up every time I talk with startups: How do you protect yourself from giants who might copy your idea?
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Innovators Don’t Outwork Non-innovators, They Out-think and Out-execute Them

in Innovation, Leadership, Strategy

outthink

Ask any person or team who’s ever worked on and delivered a better future about their process and they’ll tell you it was a messy journey; not a straight line. Those of us who’ve been in the trenches know that delivering the future doesn’t happen in a straight line, as most things rarely do, yet most people want to believe there’s a silver bullet prescription, secret, hack, tip and the like to follow to avoid the mess that is innovation.

There isn’t one.

Sure, there are methodologies that are growing with popularity every day but following them to the T doesn’t guarantee anything. You might eliminate a few headaches here and there but for the most part their value is in helping you think through things, giving you a sense of security and certainty; not giving you the right answer. …