John V Clifford

My goal is to help startups learn how to suck less at marketing and customer development. I help startups leverage speed and agility to design a plan to systematically reduce the risk of failure. Startup founders and like student pilots learning how to fly. Having the wrong mindset can be fatal for pilots. For startups the consequences of blindspots in their mindset leads to the death of the startup. I am committed to creating tools and educational resources to reduce the pain, stress and wasted time, money, and energy of building things that people don't want to buy. Building a reliable dashboard to guide customer development and product decisions is one way to reduce the chance your startup will crash and burn. This blog will explore ways to develop mastery of the lean startup mindset. I will explore building a lean startup marketing dashboard using a wide range of resources. Topics of exploration will include business models, incubators, social entrepreneurs, Startup Weekend, Lean Startup Machine, agile marketing, design thinking tools, lateral thinking, practices to hone a lean startup mindset and more. I encourage feedback to help improve the learn startup educational ecosystem and the sharing of lessons learned.

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Seth Godin's video  on " The Lizard Brain" and the mind and emotions of the startup journey. I suggest Seth's book "LinchPin" for more insight into this mindset that can hamstring the efforts of startup founders.

Lizard mind is useful when chased by an animal that could eat you.

In that scenario, time to think is not useful for survival.

You just run away and escape to safety without verifying that the rustling in the bushes is a lion and not the wind.

Recognizing the false alarms and panic frame of lizard mind is one skill that enhances the quality of feedback loops that founders use as part of the lean startup mindset.

Startups must make decisions without the time to get as much detailed data as they would like to include. Speed and agility require educated guesses and testing hunches. Beware of how the Lizard Mind effect can reduce the quantity and quality of  options that are considered for product and market pivots.

[hiten]

“Live the life you’ve imagined.” Thoreau (Photo Taken with Instagram)

[rethinkdigg]

On July 20, we announced that we were turning Digg back into a startup and rebuilding it from scratch in six weeks. After an intense month and a half, we managed to get the new Digg up and running on a fresh code base and infrastructure. We now have a solid foundation on which...

[johnvclifford-blog]

6 weeks to a built from scratch new version of Digg

[curiositycounts]

When designers are looking to be “innovative,” many often forget that it’s not just about trendy aesthetic appeal. It’s about genuinely improving an experience and filling a need. Korean designer Joonhuyn Kim’s “Flat Bulb” does just that, reducing its volume to be 1/3 smaller, reducing the cost of packaging and transport. Better yet, its slim shape allows bulbs to be easily stacked and prevents breakage as it does not roll.” Simple, yet effective. That gets design daps. 

(via)

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New symbol for innovation in design. Flat lightbulb designed in Korea

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Apple VP marketing testifies in Samsung court case

We don’t use any customer input in the new product process,” Mr. Schiller said. “We never go and ask the customer, ‘What feature do you want in the next product?’ It’s not the customer’s job to know. We accumulate that information ourselves.”

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Link above  to the Microsoft PR website copy of 1999 Bill Gates  article.

Is Bill Gates describing the Microsoft Surface Win 8 tablet here ( or macbook air, ipad, iphone )

Here's some favorite Bill Gates quotes from 1999 Newsweek article:

"If you want to find the best price for a new car -- and check out your budget to see if you can afford it -- you'll be able to do that at the dealership, on the device you have with you. Wherever you are, whatever you want to do, you'll have all the information you need."

"There will be "instant-on," so you won't have to wait for your PC to come to life."

"And the PC will morph into many new forms, such as book-size "tablet PCs."

"In this new "PC-plus" era connectivity will be king."

"It will take the PC's power and make it available almost anywhere, on devices that haven't yet been dreamed up."

[courtneypowell]

My first visit to the Valley was in October of 2011. I was in Santa Clara attending a mobile dev conference when a friend suggested I stop by and chat with the partners at 500Startups. What was meant to be a five minute meeting turned in to three days of getting to know the 500 team and...

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The best way to predict the future is to design it.

Buckminster Fuller

[david]

Startup customer development and getting paying customers

“I mowed lawns to get my first Nintendo system, so my measure of success was to create a product a kid would want to mow a shitload of lawns in order to get.”

— Charles Forman

[jonathanmoore]

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I love how this builds trust in the organization. Check out Charity: Water  for an example of kick ass branding.

How Branding and Transparency Help charity: water Stand Out

Scott Harrison from charity: water stopped by the new 37signals office to speak to the team about the unconventional ways that charity: water stands out from other charities through branding and transparency.

Another key to CW’s success is that 100% of donations are used for direct water project costs. (A group of private donors, foundations and sponsors help pay for the everyday costs of running the organization.) CW even pays for the paypal and credit card transaction fees when people donate online so each penny goes straight to actually building a well.

Read the post “How branding and transparency help charity: water stand out” on 37signals - signal vs. noise blog.

(via jonathanmoore)

[theverge]

If you look at your iPhone when its face-down you’ll notice that the camera and the flash face “up.” Fortunately, Apple thought through how to use the flash to alert the user when a message has been received. You’ll find this brilliant feature under Settings > General > Accessibility. Scroll down to “LED Flash for Alerts” and turn it “on.” The camera flash will now blink when a message comes through but no where near as bright as when the flash is used while taking a photo.

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What does it cost you to hold tightly to your belief that you are right ? What we can learn from the challenges of being wrong ( and learning from the experience). This mindset can be costly l for teams building a lean startup. But, mayeb i'm wrong.

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This  video  uses the data of games  from Hockey's Stanley Cup creatively. How does this apply to a lean startup ?

Hint: "penalties" or missteps  shorten the runway by depleting the fuel that a startup requires to get off the ground.

Examples like the Color app launch and Segway come to mind.

A startup runs has limited time and resources time to figure out what the customer cares about, and how to build a Minimum Viable Product that customers will spend time and money on.

Stay out of the penalty box with your target customers and you increase the odds of success.

[instagram]

Make a Dent Crazy Texas-Sized Hail edition

@cale14y

@chunkysalsa420

@mycrazybeautifulife_16

@stefandgabeandhoney

@monicafrid

@sandrajevans

@joelle_marie

To see more images of the terrible destruction in Texas, search the hashtag #hail.

A hail storm passed through Dallas, Texas late Wednesday afternoon. Though the storm lasted only 20 minutes, it is estimated to have caused as much as $400 million in damage, primarily to cars.

Thankfully, no serious injuries were reported.

[quotediaryofficial]

You can DO IT!

[blakemasters]

Here is an essay version of my class notes from Class 1 of CS183: Startup. Errors and omissions are my own. Credit for good stuff is Peter’s entirely.

CS183: Startup—Notes Essay—April 2

Purpose and Preamble

We might describe our world as having retail sanity, but wholesale madness....

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This is a very useful summary of issues that startups face in building a successful business.

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4 year old numbers (Taken with instagram)