Category : Uncategorized

How many sales calls can you make a day? 10? 20? You prep for each one, take notes afterwards. That last one was stressful and the guy yelled at you, so maybe you get a cup of coffee. You’re barely break even, and you’re paying yourself peanuts. Sales guys have way higher salaries than you do. [...]

This is a follow-up to Give it away in response to the question: “How do you validate interest before the product is built?” I’m going to walk through my thought process and strategy around a new project I’ve been playing with to [hopefully] show what’s happening under the hood. After failing at business blogging several times [...]

The quickest way to validate your value proposition is to give it away. If they aren’t lining up to take it for free then they aren’t going to buy it. If you want to open a consultancy, try having open office hours. If nobody knows you exist, you’ve got a visibility issue. If people hear [...]

Happy new year! This is a new post format. Does this sort of once-a-week curation deliver any value, or is it just blog spam? Please let me know in the comments, on twitter (@robfitz), or via email (rob@thestartuptoolkit.com). Thanks! All the very best. The idea that we need to be sane and organised to do [...]

Merry Christmas! Here’s some homework. It will take somewhere between five minutes and a week. I’m going to do it too, and my answers (and the consequences thereof) are down below. First, write down what this is all about. Second, Write down the top three things you need to learn to achieve that. I know you’re [...]

Before you’ve begun, the most important thing is to give the ball a blind, forceful kick and get it rolling. Until you’ve done this, inertia will kill you dead. Perfection and planning are inertia’s tireless guardians and your enemies. Once you’ve started, the most important thing is to learn how to learn. The universe helps [...]

I’ve noticed myself become increasingly conservative in evaluating early-stage ideas. You can do the math yourself, dividing burn rate by price point and judging whether it’s plausible to sell enough copies and reach profitability before bankruptcy. If that equation goes red, what do you do? Radically overhaul the pricing model? Play to investor interests? Fight [...]

I was talking to a buddy who ran digital for a big entertainment brand and he told about the best pitch he ever received. The startup making the pitch began by giving away everything. Here’s a video of the particulars (2 minutes, with apologies for the wiggly camera). PS. I’m going to start doing a load more [...]

It’s pretty common to have a great project idea and no resources to build the thing — whether you’re strapped for time, cash, or coding talent. The worst plan is to do nothing and let the idea become irrelevant. Instead, you should find a way to either benefit from giving it away or create enough [...]

I just got a chance to see the businesses-in-progress of a bunch of product design students. They’re using etsy to sell their prototypes and one-offs as a pre-channel test. Kickstarter is awesome for avoiding channel issues and overcoming fixed setup costs, but the successful projects are pretty far along by the time they become funded. [...]