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Do Things that Don’t Scale
In another post, I explained What a Startup Is and Isn’t. The primary point was that startups are designed to scale from the get-go, and that simply starting any new business doesn’t necessarily equate to launching a startup, which has a particularly unique structural DNA. But being designed to scale doesn’t mean that at startup will scale.
Ironically, the job of a startup founder is to do things that don’t scale. Why? Well, simply because those initial tasks are often dry, boring, and fraught with failure and rejection. Yet, they are the very tasks that must be completed to give your startup the “nudge” towards growth.
Customer Acquisition 101
It’s easy to buy into the myth that products sell themselves. Granted, after a certain critical mass of users, your product or platform may experience major spikes in demand and usage. The appearance, however, is that you’ve had this genius product all along and just by dropping it into the marketplace, it somehow magically takes a life of its own. Journalist and public sentiment often use the term “viral” as a short-hand of expressing how a…
