Once upon a time, we tried to figure out what products and features we should develop on an annual basis. We set a strategy and went forward, coding like a machine for the year. But after Marty Cagan wrote the blog post on Continuous Discovery in 2012, a number of product and UX teams started to think about a better model, if they weren’t already. This emerging model was about constantly looking for ways to improve products based on what customers actually need and using that to feed the product development process. This is the crux of continuous discovery. Many were experimenting, but now they had a label. And companies…

The first time we do most things is usually the hardest. Once we get through one or two repetitions, most tasks get easier. About 400 podcast episodes in I’ve had a lot of failures that maybe just maybe anyone reading this article can avoid. So first, let’s look at why organizations make podcasts: A podcast can help humanize an organization. Despite our efforts to build solid cultures, our work to define our values, and the interpersonal relationships we form within an organization can’t scale with external perceptions as an organization grows. By putting humans from the organization in front of an audience, we are able to allow the audience to…

Web + seminar = webinar. A webinar is just a presentation streamed over the internet. Webinars are usually hosted by an organization looking to sell something. We use webinars to educate potential buyers about how to do things in our industry or with our products. Notice I stopped that sentence there. I could have said “in order to capture information about potential buyers or move them down in our sales funnel.” But I didn’t. We’re not going out to conferences or running in-person seminars these days. So if they weren’t always, webinars are now a key aspect of the modern business to business sales funnel when done right. To read…

The digitization of the world is an amazing, crazy, sometimes boring, and often surprising process of often seemingly disconnected technologies, philosophies and scientific advances that came together to form a whole far greater than those parts. Digitization has changed humanity in ways we could never have expected and somehow continues to be stifled in ways that go back hundreds of years. From raw scientific discoveries and rational thinking to very specific engineering challenges, the process of automating our lives and getting more and more visibility into the world around us continues – just as progress does. To read more, see: https://www.bootstrappers.mn/post/100-podcast-episodes-on-the-history-of-computing

I have a lot of conversations about how to price products in startups. It took a long time to realize that before any meaningful conversation about pricing can be had, we first need to understand currency.  Currency is a term generally used to describe a system of money for a given country. Companies, like governments, end up establishing a currency – usually based on the industry we are working in. The bottom line is revenue, but it’s easier to talk downstream about the units we bill in that aggregate into that revenue.  To read about the various types of currency, click here: https://www.bootstrappers.mn/post/what-s-your-currency

Chip posted his reading list awhile back. Mine is more a compilation of works I’ve used in researching my next book. But if there are any founders out there looking for inspiration then hopefully someone finds it useful! Rather than post a big long list of books though, I’ll just go ahead and in true nerd fashion make it into a GitHub repo at https://github.com/krypted/TheHistoryOfComputingPodcast/blob/master/Books.md. Since it’s somewhat long (currently around 230 books), I’ll just list the top 5 here: To read the rest of the article, see: https://www.bootstrappers.mn/post/charles-reading-list

We often to refer to huge new customers as whales. In sales this usually means a customer that is 10 times the average sale. Working with big customers isn’t just about the money though; we usually think of the value of having that logo on our list of customers and as a means to legitimize our products and efforts. Sometimes we start with a big name. Other times we grow into it. Larger customers are a natural point of growth for small and medium-sized businesses and it’s thrilling to get a chance to work with them. Suddenly, it seems like we’ve really gotten there. Like our other customers will feel…

Transparency doesn’t come naturally in a startup. We start a company thinking we need to shield employees from all the things that steal their attention from their job. Most countries consider it taboo to talk about finances (like salaries) amongst employees. We think the people we worked hard to recruit will be flight risks if they know how things are going. We don’t think to post certain aspects about how the company is doing because we have so much going on. Transparency takes work. But having an organization where people understand the inner workings of the business is worth it. How? To read more, see: https://www.bootstrappers.mn/post/the-value-of-transparency