Lean B2B Newsletter :: Edition 01

Too many entrepreneurs convince themselves that the opportunity they're pursuing matters, when it doesn't.

It's a pretty key issue because if the problem you're solving, or the opportunity you're going after isn't very important, you'll need to work a lot harder to get your first sale, to scale, to raise capital, to convince employees to join up, and ultimately, to build a sustainable business.

Maybe everything works out. Or maybe it doesn't.

But... what if we could reduce the risk of fooling ourselves early on? I wrote a few key tips to help entrepreneurs avoid fooling themselves.

Read them on Twitter

How to Iterate Product Value to Reach Product/Market Fit In B2B

The first version of a product never fully meets customer expectations. A team's likelihood of finding product/market fit is often determined by how fast they learn, and how effective their iteration process is. In this article, we dig into how founders should be learning and iterating the product early on.

How First Movers Fail

Baremetrics invented 1-click SaaS analytics in 2013. Yet, competitors like ProfitWell (acquired for $200M this week) and ChartMogul (much more revenue) became much larger. How did both of these products pass them? Baremetrics founder Josh Pigford shares thoughts on Twitter.

Speed Is an Under-Rated Competitive Advantage. Fast Eat the Slow.

If you can make 2 or 3 moves every time a competitor makes one, you have a big advantage. In this thread, Peep Laja shares different strategies he's used at his company to accelerate learning, and ultimately speed up the sales cycles. He shares good ideas that can be worth testing.

How to Measure the Added Value of a Product

There are more products than there's ever been. With so much competition, it's becoming harder to deliver differentiated value. How do you even know if your product delivers extra value to customers? This article shares a process for calculating the added value of a product.

The Seven Kinds of Entrepreneurial Debt

According to entrepreneur Arvid Kahl, there are 7 types of debts that can impact a company, and its founding team. Beyond the too common financial and technical debts, the concepts he introduces are interesting, and can point to useful metrics for startups.