Customers Don't Care How Much

If The Plan Is To See What Happens, A Team Is Guaranteed To Succeed - At Seeing What Happens - But Won't Necessarily Gain Validated Learning - If You Cannot Fail, You Cannot Learn.

Here In Silicon Valley, I Have Taken Part In Hundreds Of Conversations Trying To Convince People To Dive In And Become Entrepreneurs. All Too Often, Innovators With Good, Safe, Jobs Are Unwilling To Put Their Family's Access To Health Care At Risk By Walking Away From Company-backed Medical Insurance.

In A Startup, Both The Problem And Solution Are Unknown.

In My First Start-up, I Had An Initial Advertising Budget Of $5 Per Day Total. That Would Buy Us 100 Clicks Per Day. At $5 Per Day, Marketing People Scoffed And Said That Is Too Small To Matter. But If You Think About It, To An Engineer, 100 Real Humans Everyday Giving Your Product A Try Means You Can Really Start Improving.

The Mistake Isn't Releasing Something Bad. The Mistake Is To Launch It And Get Pr People Involved. You Don't Want People To Start Amping Up Expectations For An Early Version Of Your Product. The Best Entrepreneurship Happens In Low-stakes Environments Where No One Is Paying Attention, Like Mark Zuckerberg's Dorm Room At Harvard.