Lessons Learned from Week 4 of Fall Quarter 10/31/2011
Ethics
Add Comment Notes on Blue Ocean Strategy 10/19/2011
I recently read Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim and Mauborgne. Its focus was on ways to create and release products that are so different from the competition's that the "ocean" is blue, not bloody red. It was a quick, useful read, and what I enjoyed most were the company examples the book analyzed. I found the sections that actually prescribed theory and mechanisms for creating blue ocean innovations the most lacking in specificity, but the overall frameworks made sense to me. Below are my main notes and takeaways. Part 1: Blue Ocean Strategy Ch. 1: Creating Blue Oceans
Ch. 3: Restructuring Market Boundaries
Ch. 7: Overcoming Key Organizational Hurdles
Notes on G-d No by Penn Jilette 10/17/2011
As a fan of Penn and Teller, when I heard that Penn released a book, I knew I had to read it. I didn't know it would turn out to open my mind to new ways of thinking about religion, science, and magic, and make me laugh so much. It was especially a treat to hear Penn himself read the book in the audio version. Below are my main notes and takeaways from Penn Jilette's G-d, No!. Atheism
What's the g on the joint?
Learning to fly, strip, and be weightless on a 747
Lessons Learned from Week 3 of Fall Quarter 10/15/2011
Ethics
I had the pleasure of seeing Steve Blank at a LeanLA event at UCLA Anderson last week. It was epic. Everyone in the SoCal tech community came out, and I learned a lot of useful stuff from the creator of the customer development movement himself. Below are my notes on the talk. Background
What's a startup?
Business model found
Business model canvas
Customer development
Second decade: web, mobile, cloud
His slides on slideshare Miscellaneous
Recommended books Notes on Neuromancer by William Gibson 10/11/2011
I finally made it through William Gibson's Neuromancer, which was on my reading list for a while. (I'm trying to mix it up a bit with some fiction.) A ton has been written about this book, which many say was one of the most seminal works of science fiction of all time. I'll just concentrate on my own takeaways and the things I found most interesting in the book. First of all, my biggest reaction came as a fan of The Matrix. Did the creators of the movies take 90% of their inspiration from this book, or is it just me? The locations, the scenes, the "jacking in to the matrix," even some of the characters (Molly/Trinity, Case/Neo) -- they're almost copies. I guess this might be an example of the saying, "imitation is the highest form of flattery" (or that "good artists borrow, great artists steal"). I love The Matrix, but I am now more down on it since I see it as less original. Overall, I found the book extremely well-written and quite different in its language than other science fiction I have read. The biggest thing in the book that made me think was the issue of technology to change our physical bodies and minds -- upgrades and implants. Things like heads-up displays (augmented reality), improved physique, geolocation -- wait a minute, is this sci-fi or real life? It's exciting and scary that these things are converging. Should there be a line we draw? When are we no longer human? Or is humanity just defined by our brain/mind, so if we change everything else we're still human? What if we change/improve/fix our brain with a machine? What if a machine runs our brain? The epilogue of the book was actually one of the most interesting chapters for me to read as it was written by another sci-fi author analyzing Gibson's work. The analysis focused on how Neuromancer was a projection of Gibson's past and present onto his vision of the future. How much of our hope (or fear) about the future is defined by our past and current reality? Fun book -- definitely recommended to any Matrix fans out there. Lessons Learned from Week 2 of Fall Quarter 10/07/2011
Ethics
Lessons Learned from Week 1 of Fall Quarter 10/05/2011
My second year is off to an incredibly busy start. Though my class load is not heavy, working on launching Ridacto, being a career coach, and TAing a class together make life pretty crazy. Below are some of my biggest takeaways from my classes last week: Ethics This is a really challenging class that poses way more questions than it answers. In TAing the class, I'm lucky to hear the varying opinions of my classmates and consider my own viewpoint on how to act in various difficult situations.
This class basically overturns everything taught in traditional finance classes and explains how the "real world" works in terms of actual trading behavior and stock performance results. We're going through the main academic articles in the field over the past 20 years and combining finance with psychology to better understand how people make (and should make) investment decisions.
This class is a very interesting blend between business and law and covers both the theoretical and real-world aspects of "making it rain [not in the club]." We work in teams of 2 business students and 2 law students to dissect unedited deal documents for a different deal each week, varying from financing, to acquisitions, to partnerships in a variety of different industries. I absolutely love being able to see real-world documents and understand how they evolved and see how the negotiations progressed. It's also really neat to hear from the principals of the transactions in each class what it was like from their perspective and what lessons they learned.
Notes on The Lean Startup 10/01/2011
 I had the pleasure of recently finishing The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. I got the book as part of an AppSumo Lean Startup bundle last year, and so it came in the mail as a surprise. I thought it would simply be a nice summary of all the things I had already seen from Lessons Learned and various LeanLA meetups I've attended over the years. Oh, how wrong I was. This book literally turned my world upside-down. I dropped all my other reading and worked hard to finish my first pass through the book as quickly as I could. Yes, the book did highlight all the major parts of the lean movement, including customer development and agile development practices, but it did so in a way that was much more effective and novel than I ever expected. The examples used are immediately understandable, the language concise and ultra-specific, and the book is full of advice I could put into action immediately. I'm in the process of planning the launch of a start-up, and this book has caused me to question and reinvent much of the launch strategy (take a wild guess -- we're planning to launch ASAP, like yesterday if possible). I don't often recommend books so highly to close friends and family, but I've already hyped this book to over 10 people, and I know for a fact that at least 5 have purchased and enjoyed their copy at my recommendation. If you're an entrepreneur working on a start-up, buy a copy today, and read it now. I'm serious. Below are my main notes on the book. Eric, thanks for your support to entrepreneurs everywhere. I. A startup is any institution trying to innovate/create new product or service in conditions of extreme uncertainty. a. Entrepreneurship is management of an institution; needs discipline and process. II. Sustaining innovation vs. disruptive innovation III. Goal of a startup is to get validated learning as quickly as possible a. Use innovation accounting (cohort analysis and split tests to measure what you're learning) b. Continuous and frequent experimentation with real users IV. Launch now V. Test 2 assumptions a. Value hypothesis: that people will get value from your product b. Growth hypothesis: that your product will spread and increase in adoption c. Must test both as quickly as possible d. Learning milestones VI. Validated learning: empirical a. Qualitative learning, then quantitative, then back and repeat VII. Vision triangle a. Product at top; can be optimized; tuning the engine b. Strategy in middle; pivot c. Vision at bottom (foundation); changes less VIII. Goal is to get through Build Measure Learn cycle as quickly as possible a. Learn -> ideas -> build -> product -> measure -> data -> learn... b. Minimize TOTAL time through the loop IX. Minimize batch size X. Build only what need to directly experiment with in order to know if need to pivot or persevere a. Remove every other feature or task XI. Genchi gembatsu (get out of the building and interview; see for yourself instead of relying on others' reports) XII. Concierge MVP: do all the work manually behind the scenes and fake automation a. Actually build real automated product later XIII. Video MVP: show a video of how product works and fake it behind the scenes a. See how many people sign up XIV. Quality not a concern with most MVPs; learning much more important a. Can learn where customers care about quality and where they don't XV. Secrecy not worth it; learning more important a. Startup assumes it can go through Build Measure Learn cycle faster than competitor XVI. KISSInsights XVII. No vanity metrics a. Gross sales, gross customers signed up, etc. b. Will go up and right but won’t know if it's because of your recent work or rising tide XVIII. Actionable metrics a. Only meaningful metrics are cohort analyses to see if what you're building new is actually making any difference b. Three learning milestones: establish baseline, tune the engine/optimize, pivot or persevere c. Spend $5/day on Google Adwords to get 100 clicks; use those clicks to experiment and learn i. Analyze customer adoption funnel XIX. Kanban cycle: backlog, in progress, built, validated a. Limited # in each bucket b. Cannot move forward in process unless get through validation c. Design everything in mind with validation and experimentation XX. Analogs and antilogs: disruptive changes can’t just be compared to other different successes in past XXI. Pivot: structured course correction designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about product, strategy, or engine of growth a. Zoom-in pivot: focus on one feature of a larger whole b. Zoom out pivot: whole product needs more features c. Customer segment pivot: focus on one customer segment i. Sign LOIs d. Customer need pivot: change in understanding of real need e. Platform pivot: change from app to platform or back i. Like creating self-serve model to create similar apps f. Business architecture pivot: high margin/low vol to low margin/high vol (or back) g. Value capture pivot: different monetization h. Engine of growth pivot: viral, sticky, or paid growth models i. Channel pivot: change sales channel j. Technology pivot: change underlying technology k. A pivot is a new strategic hypothesis to test l. A startup’s runway is the # of pivots it can still make i. Get to each pivot faster to extend runway XXII. Hypotheses to test: Registration, retention, activation, referral XXIII. Batch size a. Stuffing one envelope at a time more efficient than large batch step by step i. No WIP to move around ii. Find out about quality or customer demand problems earlier iii. Little rework b. Continuous deployment including automated defect tests and reversions for problems and automatic rollout and experimentation to small subset of clients i. ~50 releases per day XXIV. Metrics a. Actionable: specifically related to things you control b. Accessible: understandable and available to all c. Auditable: should be able to check data against real customers XXV. Big batch death spiral: incentive to keep increasing and never ship XXVI. Pull, not push XXVII. Just in time XXVIII. Engines of growth a. Sticky: want high retention rate; metric: new customer acquisition rate minus churn rate b. Viral: natural spread inherent in product; viral coefficient (# of new customers one customer refers) c. Paid: customer acquisition cost and revenue per user XXIX. Product-market fit XXX. Building an adaptive organization XXXI. Ask Five Why's to get to root problem XXXII. Net promoter score | About Max Mednik
Max is an avid entrepreneur and student of life. He is a graduate of Stanford and founder of Ridacto and AMA Capital. He is a member of the business school class of 2012 at UCLA Anderson. He lives in Los Angeles with his family and spends his free time enjoying his many hobbies and interests.  ArchivesJanuary 2012 CategoriesAll SubscribeConnectFollow Me on Twitter  Connect on Facebook   Shazam Tags |
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