TOP 5 INSIGHT & INSPIRATION

• Respond to customers, not just solve problems?
  The post makes a point about not being obsessed with solving a problem a resolving negative customer issues, but instead recommends being sensitive to positive customer feedback to find the "must-have" use cases. Sean Ellis on Startup Marketing.
• Innovation: Social media behaviour ported to email
  If you love browsing Facebook, but loathe dealing with email, try Fluent - Sarah Mitroff on VentureBeat Fluent is a great example of a potential innovation for two reasons. First, it changes the way you work with a critical resource (email), and second, it fits your everyday life (we all know and use social streams in Facebook, Twitter etc.). While this may turn out to be only be skin deep, the components are there. If it also delivers an emotion (see this week's book exceprt, below) and works for a wide range of users, they may have a winner.
• The questions all founders must ask themselves - Marcus Tallhamn
  Marcus created a set of 'value alignment questions' for his current startup, which he shares with the readers on GigaOm. This is a good checklist to go through, both for yourself, and for the people that you work with, especially if co-founders. Remember: if there's question that feels hard, awkward or uncomfortable, make sure to discuss that and answer honestly.
• Technology Waves and Valuations: Are We in a Social Networking Bubble? – Mike Maples
  Technology waves are an interpretation of how technology innovation advances in waves consisting of an infrastructure phase, platform phase and application phase. This is how technology innovation creates value - but it is not the same thing as valuation, which follows a different logic and different shape. You don't have to buy the idea of HyperNet/HyperWeb, presented there, also, but I strongly recommended you familiarize yourself with it.
  
  Quote-lift: "There is a lot of evidence that we are in the Acceleration Phase of the social networking wave. Examples are an oversupply of startups, an oversupply of capital, faster investment cycles for venture funds, larger fund sizes for venture firms, the increased desire of public investors to buy into shares of private companies, and celebrities from Hollywood who have decided that they want to start tech companies and/or invest in them."
• Schlep Blindness - Paul Graham
  'Schlep' is a Yiddish-derived word for a tedious, unpleasant task or journey. Paul Graham says that we are so used to the limitations schleps impose on us, and so cognitively unwilling to see them, that we miss out on the opportunities to solve really big problems. He also suggests a flip in perspective that helps you see schleps: instead of asking "what problem should I solve?" ask the question "what problem do I wish someone else would solve for me?".

5 more articles to inspire

TOP 5 PRACTICAL ADVICE

• 6 Tips for Continuous Process Improvement - Ben Yoskovitz
  All startups have management processes. Continuous process improvement takes less time and effort than you think if you commit to it. Read this in 3 minutes and you'll have saved the same amount of time already today in efficiency.
• Startups Use Four Catalysts to Win Funding – Benjamin L. Hallen
  "Casual dating", "Timing around proof points", "Assessing interest" and "Crafting alternatives" are all four enabling strategies that startups can use to increase their chances of getting funding, according to professor Hallen from the London Business School. Highly recommended strategies to follow if fundraising now or in the future.
• Web Second, Mobile First - Mark Suster
  Suster's long blog posts are unmissable. Here he continues the thread started by Fred Wilson on 'mobile first, web second' and makes a good case for contextualizing the experience. Mobile can indeed be first in some cases, but web must very often follow as a close second for a product. Includes a few very good ideas.
• Scars
  (Jason Cohen on asmartbear.com) Baggage you take with your from earlier ventures, failures and successes is experience, but it can also be baggage. Here is quick advice on rationalization and taking advice.

5 more practical tips and how-tos

From the Startup Thinking Blog

• Positioning: It's in the Mind

  The following excerpt comes from the third section of the book, discussing the strategy, positioning and marketing of your startup or your product.

  What are you doing better than anyone else? What is your differentiation? When marketing a startup, these two things may be further from each other than you’d expect.

  My experience in marketing started with a dip in the deep end as an intern with Trout & Partners. Jack Trout’s core marketing ideas are differentiation, positioning and marketing warfare. Fleshed out in at least a dozen books since the early 80s, these are marketing principles that are essential for a startup entrepreneur to understand. The talk about having a USP is the oft-used shorthand for the combined idea of a positionable differentiation, but it makes sense to look at the concepts separately.

• Defining the Problem
  To define a problem to solve we must build on the human understanding described and structured in the previous part. This part describes the key questions for selecting the right problem to solve. 'What We Now Want is a Huge Problem'
• Preface – Human Centric Startup
  Human Centric Startup is a book about starting, developing and managing product-driven tech startups that create real value for real people. In the book I aim to show the reader how to better understand people and their motivations in relation to products and how that understanding can be translated into value and delivered by your product. A product that delivers real value is one that is likelier to be adopted, used and spread by its users and customers. For this reason, human centricity is at heart a risk management strategy. By understanding people, you are able to make better decisions about how you can deliver value to people and thus increase your likelihood of success.

TOP 5 PEOPLE & CASE STUDIES

• Pivot needed after riding a hype
  Chill’s take on social video: Everyone is an expert - Janko Roettgers at GigaOm Innovation on a trend instead of a need is dangerous. Chill was supposed to the "turntable.fm for video" - the most obvious idea-extension you can have based on the above - but they too have had to pivot at the same time that the "mother idea" is running into trouble.
• Why Turntable.fm should pivot again
  It’s Time for Another Turntable.fm Pivot - Erin Griffith at Pando Daily Turntable.fm's success last year was the lovechild of social spreading and free music streaming. It didn't last - the company hasn't been able to make it stick and the traffic is dropping off a cliff. While music may be social, the listening experience is often solitary, and preferred to be so by many.
• 7 Lessons On Startup Funding From a Research Scientist – Ty Danco
  Startups are not alone in looking for funding. Research scientists are often in a very similar situation, though often they will need to apply for funding – and get it – much more often during their career than a startup founder. It's worth learning from their experience.
• Why I Bought My Next Startup (Instead of Building It) - Rob Walling
  Rob Walling recently re-started up, and instead of doing it from scratch, he acquired HitTail. Read here why he did that - because all the points he raises are applicable to making an early stage startup attractive.

5 more case studies