Winning Lean Startup Machine: Follow the Energy

I recently attended Lean Startup Machine (LSM) Tokyo, the first LSM in Japan. In the last year I’ve been reading Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup and Steve Blank’s The Startup Owner’s Manual which both define and espouse the ‘lean’ methodology of business creation, a methodology so simple in theory but with one characteristic that perhaps trips up many: the need to get out of the building, which means getting away from your computer, going out, finding your potential customers and learning … Continued

How To Win a Startup Weekend

I attended the Kyoto Startup Weekend in 2011 and the London Education Startup Weekend in 2012. Between those two events, the focus of Startup Weekends apparently shifted from being about creating startups to teaching idea validation. While this now makes the name of the event a little misleading I do think this is a very smart move indeed: in the Kyoto weekend the teams were all focussed on producing a great protoype/demo and wowing the judges. My team had a … Continued

Don’t Just Look Busy, Cover Ground

I love this talk [1] by Geoffrey Moore —it covers a lot of topics but the underlying theme is about identifying that which is core to your business and focussing your energies on that core aspect. He suggests that if you don’t, your chance of putting real distance between you and the competition is quite slim (if you are starting your own company I highly recommend that you watch it). I think this idea of lining up effort in one … Continued

Throwing a Spanner in the Works – On Purpose

I’ve just been reading an interesting article by the Netflix staff which describes their experience with moving their infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS). This is something I was pondering for our systems again today so I took particular interest in it. One paragraph describes something very cool, something that I’ve not witnessed in any companies I’ve worked for [1]: One of the first systems our engineers built in AWS is called the Chaos Monkey. The Chaos Monkey’s job is … Continued

What to work on today?

Paul Graham wrote a great article about how to find out what to work on out of your many ideas by using a signal, what you think about in the shower [1]. Rather than working out what to do by thinking, you just pay attention to what your mind and body is already telling you. Recently I’ve had no problem working out what I need to work on as there’s usually something that sticks out as the thing I want … Continued

Rejection Therapy

Now here’s an interesting game: for 30 days straight, you pass if every single day you’re rejected at least once. This could be when asking for a discount on something or not receiving a ‘hello’ back when you greet someone while out walking. The key here is that if you ask for something and actually get it, it doesn’t count. You need to ask for so much that you’re rejected. The fact that asking for a ‘hello’ is potentially too … Continued

How to Deal with Complainers

I’ve found that the best way to deal with people who are complaining, particularly about others, is to simply ask them how they are. A number of things may then happen. They might get angry, retorting, “of course I’m fine!”, or they might tell you what’s really bothering them, thus sidestepping the complaining. Probably the last thing you want to do is acknowledge or worse respond to the complaining. This person came to you because they thought you’d either patiently … Continued

Even Professionals Need ‘Stupid’ Tricks

I recently started working through Betty Edward’s workbook, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain since not being able to draw has always been something I’ve been ashamed about and I like her approach (more on that later!). In the introduction she talks about finding the time to draw, reminding us that our inner voice is expert at finding something to tell us so we can feel ok about not doing something, be it going running or, in this … Continued

Kill Your E-mail Notifier

Even only as an experiment, try killing your e-mail notifier and turn off automatic mail checking on your phone. Two things will most likely happen: 1) You will catch yourself reaching to check your mail far more than you expect, resulting in an uncomfortable feeling that you’re addicted. Ignore it! It will pass. 2) You’ll also realise that you’ve just worked for more than an hour on something without being interrupted. How did that feel? Lots of other things could … Continued

Clawing Back Attention

Do you sit down at your desk with a clear idea of what task you are about to tackle? Do you then sit at your desk, head down, and 90 minutes later have 90 minutes of work done on this task? During the last 6 months of my PhD I found ways to focus properly for long periods of time and as such finished slightly earlier than the average Computer Science PhD student. After finishing I’d become so used to … Continued