Tag: Steve Hane

“Entrepreneurship is like playing chess in a hockey rink.” – Steve Hane

Part of strategic planning is to think…well ahead…of potential outcomes.  It doesn’t end there.  Develop scenarios that represent how you would react to those potential outcomes.:  “If this happens, we’ll do that.  If that happens, we’ll so this”.

Even this is not enough.  In the heat of business, customer expectations change in a blink.

When you hit the growth stage, you have to capture market share as quickly as possible, rapidly iterating.  Geoffrey Moore calls this being “inside the tornado”.  Jim Cramer puts even more simply, “sell, sell, sell s,s,s SELL”

Hockey players can react quickly because they spent the time practicing the moves, ahead of game time.  That is how they slow down time.  Even while the mind is trying to analyze the situation, the body says, “I’ve seen this before,” and slaps the winning shot.

 

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“Perfection comes via rapid ‘good enough’ ” – Steve Hane

Don’t release crap.  But also, don’t try to release the perfect product.  It will be too expensive and someone will beat you to the market.  On top of all of it is the fact that there is no way to know how the customer will react until they have a chance try it for themselves.

  1. Do enough market validation work to understand if there is pain in the market and to what extent the customer is willing to pay for relief of that pain.
  2. Then understand the basic customer expectations for the price they are willing to pay.
  3. Release a product with the most basic features that address the pain directly.
  4. Set up a feedback loop directly from the customers.
  5. Implement the feedback and iterate like crazy.

Customers will guide you to what they need and are willing to buy.  And they will reward you well for asking.