It’s been a year since I’ve been blogging. The 100 or so posts add up to about 300 pages of text.
One of the downsides to a large number of blog posts is that older stories tend to get buried and hidden. Categories and indexes on the web pages aren’t quite the right metaphor or substitute for random access. So bowing to popular demand the 2009 blog posts are now available on Amazon on a portable device which provides instant and random access to any post and does not require power or an internet connection.
Recursive History
These blogs began as an attempt to explain why a “book” I wrote wasn’t a book. And now they’re a book of their own. (Confused? Read on.)
After I retired, I began teaching Customer Development, a theory of how to reduce early stage risk in entrepreneurial ventures. The first time I taught the class at the Haas Business School, U.C. Berkeley, I had a few hundred pages of course notes. Students began to ask for copies of the notes so I threw a cover on them and self-published the notes as a “book” at Cafepress.com.
As a pun on my last company as an entrepreneur, E.piphany, I called the book The Four Steps to the Epiphany.
Two years later, Eric Ries mentioned that I could list the book on Amazon. I never imagined more than a few hundred copies would be sold to my students. 15,000 copies later, the horrifically bad proofreading, design and layout is now a badge of honor. You most definitely read the book for the content. (Congratulations to all of you who actually managed to slog through it.)
You tell much better stories than you write
A few years later my teaching assistants at Stanford and Berkeley said, “You tell much better stories than you write.” They suggested that sharing those stories on the web was the best way to illustrate some of the more salient points of what even I will admit is a difficult text.
My blog also allowed me to indulge my interest in a few other subjects: The Secret History of Silicon Valley, thoughts on a career as an entrepreneur, observations about family and startups, etc.
It Wasn’t Just Me
It’s possible to read this past year of posts and think that I was the only one at these companies. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve been lucky enough to work with, around and near some extraordinary people: Bill Perry, Allen Michels, Rob Van Naarden, John Moussouris, John Hennessy, Skip Stritter, Jon Rubenstein, Gordon Bell, Glen Miranker, Cleve Moler, Tom McMurray, John Sanguinetti, Alvy Ray Smith, Chris Kryzan, Karen Dillon, Margaret Hughes, Peter Barrett, Bruce Leak, Jim Wickett, Karen Richardson, Ben Wegbreit, Greg Walsh, John McCaskey, Roger Siboni, Bob Dorf, Steve Weinstein, Fred Amoroso, Fred Durham, Maheesh Jain, Will Harvey, Eric Ries, Kathryn Gould, Jon Feiber, Mike Maples, Ann Miura-Ko and many, many more.
Getting Organized
These blog posts were written as I thought about them, with little thought about organization by topic.
This new “book,” Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost, attempts to remedy that by organizing the 2009 blog posts in a coherent fashion.
Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost:
Table of Contents
Startup Culture
Am I a Founder? The Adventure of a Lifetime…………….. 3
Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA………………..5
Faith-Based versus Fact-Based Decision Making……….. 8
The Sharp End of the Stick…………………………………… 12
Preparing for Chaos – the Life of a Startup……………….. 15
Speed and Tempo – Fearless Decision Making for Startups….. 16
Killing Innovation with Corner Cases and Consensus….. 18
The “Good” Student……….. 20
Touching the Hot Stove – Experiential versus Theoretical Learning……. 22
Burnout……….. 24
The Road Not Taken……….. 28
Ask and It Shall be Given……….. 31
Selling with Sports Scores……….. 34
Love/Hate Business Plan Competitions……….. 39
The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer Free……….. 41Stories from the Trenches
Raising Money Using Customer Development……….. 47
Lessons Learned – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch……….. 52
Can You Trust Any VC’s Under 40?………………. 56
Are Those My Initials?……………………………… 60
They Raised Money With My Slides?!……………. 62
The Best Defense is a Good IP Strategy………….. 65
Elephants Can Dance – Reinventing HP……….. 69Customer Development Manifesto
The Leading Cause of Startup Death: The Product Development Diagram. 75
Reasons for the Revolution (Part 1)……….. 79
Reasons for the Revolution (part 2)……….. 84
The Startup Death Spiral……….. 87
Market Type……….. 90
The Path of Warriors and Winners……….. 93Customer Development In the Real World
Customer Development is Not a Focus Group……….. 99
Lean Startups aren’t Cheap Startups……….. 102
Times Square Strategy Session – Web Startups and Customer Development……….. 105
Coffee With Startups……….. 108
He’s Only in Field Service……….. 110
Let’s Fire Our Customers……….. 113
Durant Versus Sloan……….. 116Family – This Life Isn’t Practice For the Next One
Lies Entrepreneurs Tell Themselves……….. 121
Epitaph for an Entrepreneur……….. 124
Thanksgiving Day……….. 129
Unintended Lessons……….. 137Ardent – Learning How To Get Out of the Building
Supercomputers Get Personal……….. 141
Get Out of My Building……….. 145
Supercomputer Porn……….. 148
You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When They Offer You a Job……….. 151
The Best Marketers Are Engineers……….. 154
Listen more, talk less……….. 157
Closure……….. 160SuperMac – Learning How To Build A Startup Team
Joining SuperMac……….. 165
Facts Exist Outside the Building, Opinions Reside Within –……….. 167
Customer Insight Is Everyone’s Job……….. 174
Repositioning SuperMac – “Market Type” at Work……….. 176
Strategy versus Relentless Tactical Execution — the Potrero Benchmarks… 179
Building The Killer Team – Mission, Intent and Values……….. 184
Rabbits Out of the Hat – Product Line Extensions……….. 189
Cats and Dogs – Admitting a Mistake……….. 194
Sales, Not Awards……….. 196
The Video Spigot……….. 200
The Curse of a New Building……….. 205Rocket Science Games – Hubris and the Fall
Drinking the Kool-Aid……….. 211
Hollywood Meets Silicon Valley……….. 214
The Press is Our Best Product……….. 216
Who Needs Domain Experts……….. 219
Rocks in the Rocket Science Lobby……….. 223The Secret History of Silicon Valley
If I Told You I’d Have to Kill You……….. 227
Library Hours at an Undisclosed Location……….. 248
Happy 100th Birthday Silicon Valley……….. 254
Every World War II Movie was Wrong……….. 258
We Fought a War You Never Heard Of……….. 263
A Wilderness of Mirrors……….. 270
The Rise of Entrepreneurship……….. 271
Stanford Crosses the Rubicon……….. 279
The Rise of “Risk Capital” Part 1……….. 285
The Rise of “Risk Capital” Part 2……….. 289
“Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost” is now available on Amazon
