If you’re in Utah, come to the next LaunchUp on April 7th, 2011 at BYU. I’ll be presenting, along with two other entrepreneurs. Prior to the presentations they have legal, tech, design, and other “workshops”. Basically they have high powered business attorneys, investors, designers, programmers, etc., and you can get advice from them for free [...]
Lean Startup Case Study
Follow my adventures as I document the launch of my own lean startup, DeclareMedia.
Back in 2007 I read The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss, and it changed my business and my perspective on life almost overnight. To this day I still consider it the best business book I’ve ever read, with Rework being a close second. One of the recommendations Ferriss went into some depth on [...]
My lean startup DeclareMedia has a problem. Ok, a challenge. Ok, it has several challenges. One of them is getting the word out about what DeclareMedia does. Of course you all know how great it is to have a business that has a viral component, that is, the very use of the product/service spreads the [...]
I’ve been experimenting with running some Facebook ads to promote DeclareMedia’s local business directories. I won’t discuss here whether it’s worth it or not since the data aren’t all in yet, but there are certainly ways to stretch each dollar spent. At the moment, I’m experimenting specifically driving traffic to a national SEO firm directory. [...]
If you’re into affiliate marketing, or would like to be, go check out the post about my side-company DeclareMedia’s new affiliate program. We’re looking for 10-20 people to beta test the system. You’ll make real money, and we’re pretty sure you won’t have to deal with any glitches, but there may be some glitches that [...]
A key component of lean startup theory is that many, if not most, successful businesses do not end up doing what they started out doing, but rather found their way to where they’re at through a process of trial and error, and perhaps dumb luck. The road to success then becomes one of many small [...]
Eric Ries, Steve Blank, or one of the other gurus of lean startup probably has been using different terms for years, and it’s only that I’m so new to this topic that I don’t know what they are, and so I’m naming them as I see fit. There are two types of customer feedback that [...]
On August 3rd my new company, DeclareMedia, launched its first local business directory at UtahWebDesignFirms.com. At least I think that was the first one…anyway, it doesn’t really matter. In the past three months, we’ve launched 2,759 more directories, have 709 listings, and have brought in a grand total of about $2,000 (I just realized it [...]
It turns out I have a lean startup. I wasn’t aware of this a week ago, because I wasn’t aware of the term “lean startup”. But here’s how it happened… A week ago I started assisting a professor with research as part of my preparation to go back to school for a business PhD. The [...]
I’ll explain in one of my next posts why I’ve created this new category on my blog, but first, let’s get the definition of “lean startup” clear. According to Wikipedia, a lean startup, or the lean startup “methodology” “advocates the creation of rapid prototypes designed to test market assumptions, and uses customer feedback to evolve [...]
