Quotes About Startups

startup teams require three structural attributes: scarce but secure resources, independent authority to develop their business, and a personal stake in the outcome.

Entrepreneurship is a kind of management. No, you didn't read that wrong.

Compare two startups. The first company sets out with a clear baseline metric, a hypothesis about what will improve that metric, and a set of experiments designed to test that hypothesis. The second team sits around debating what would improve the product, implements several of those changes at once, and celebrates if there is any positive increase in any of the numbers. Which startup is more likely to be doing effective work and achieving lasting results?

Pivotal Labs.

thing to build—the thing customers want and will pay for—as quickly as possible.

Startups also have a true north, a destination in mind: creating a thriving and world-changing business. I call that a startup's vision. To achieve that vision, startups employ a strategy, which includes a business model, a product road map, a point of view about partners and competitors, and ideas about who the customer will be. The product is the end result of this strategy (see the chart on this page).

The Four Steps to the Epiphany

Innovation accounting. To improve entrepreneurial outcomes and hold innovators accountable, we need to focus on the boring stuff: how to measure progress, how to set up milestones, and how to prioritize work. This requires a new kind of accounting designed for startups—and the people who hold them accountable.

The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution

This is true startup productivity: systematically figuring out the right things to build.

methodology Customer Development,

It's also important that the word innovation be understood broadly. Startups use many kinds of innovation: novel scientific discoveries, repurposing an existing technology for a new use, devising a new business model that unlocks value that was hidden, or simply bringing a product or service to a new location or a previously underserved set of customers. In all these cases, innovation is at the heart of the company's success.

Most tools from general management are not designed to flourish in the harsh soil of extreme uncertainty in which startups thrive. The future is unpredictable, customers face a growing array of alternatives, and the pace of change is ever increasing. Yet most startups—in garages and enterprises alike—still are managed by using standard forecasts, product milestones, and detailed business plans.

Startups are different: too much budget is as harmful as too little—as countless dot-com failures can attest—and startups are extremely sensitive to midcourse budgetary changes.

startups are both easier and more demanding to run than traditional divisions: they require much less capital overall, but that capital must be absolutely secure from tampering.

Did they hire superstar entrepreneurs from outside the company? No, they assembled a team from within Intuit. Did they face constant meddling from senior management, which is the bane of innovation teams in many companies? No, their executive sponsors created an "island of freedom" where they could experiment as necessary. Did they have a huge team, a large budget, and lots of marketing dollars? Nope, they started with a team of five.

Startup Lessons Learned,

The tremendous success of general management over the last century has provided unprecedented material abundance, but those management principles are ill suited to handle the chaos and uncertainty that startups must face.

Half of those products are generating revenue today, and the rest are awaiting initial orders, all thanks to the power of working in small batches.

Entrepreneurship is management

The problem for startups and large companies alike is that employees often follow the products they develop as they move from phase to phase. A common practice is for the inventor of a new product or feature to manage the subsequent resources, team, or division that ultimately commercializes it. As a result, strong creative managers wind up getting stuck working on the growth and optimization of products rather than creating new ones.

Alphabet Energy

EL MÉTODO STARTUP

Unfortunately, standard accounting is not helpful in evaluating entrepreneurs. Startups are too unpredictable for forecasts and milestones to be accurate.