“Finally writing makes you smarter. Our working memories are incredibly limited. Writing opens a canvas that can allow you to form more complex thoughts, allowing you to understand harder ideas and solve tougher problems.” – writes Scott H Young author of the Book Ultralearning.
Tomasz Tunguz wrote this piece last year and it is a great place to start 2020 for all of us working on a SAAS product. In multiple forums and columns one key learning has been developing the ability to ask the right questions at various times in your business lifecycle. If the answers surprise you – which most likely it will – you have your work cut out. Consider these 8 questions (of 13) focused on the customer any PMM should be asking –
YouTeam — Dev Teams Marketplace, a YC co. listed the VC’s making Series A investments and companies those garnered them. Seems like Biotech and Pharma are the largest beneficiaries (in terms of number of companies in top 25 – which is what they listed – as well as the $ raised). All data was sourced from Crunchbase.
Look around and you see things you take for granted. Today I will share two articles that I read recently – one on the invention of the Zipper – its initial failure and ultimate world domination – the other listing 19 inventions by Women.
One surprising trend of our times is the openness with which people share strategies and learnings. Through my 366 posts in 2019 that has been one constant source of joy. That’s not all. Whenever I reached out to the writers I almost always found genuine interest to share more.
This is nothing new. And there are variations of this that we all read over the years. It is hard to say No – to friends demanding time, to that extra bit of work you think you should finish before going to bed, to watching that movie that you really are not liking, , eating that muffin that you thought you would like but – well – not that much. You get the drift. And then there are bigger ones – No to refined sugar, No to binge watching TV (and eating junk food while at it) No to a boss who insists you need to work late to prove you are with it.
End of 2018 while enjoying the holidays with family I had this urge that 2019 needs some change. Don’t blame me, it was that time of the year. I thought – “how about sharing what I read and learn every day?” To set the perspective, at the time I was neck deep in Pitch.Link and all previous attempts to write regularly had failed. But strangely I wanted to make this impossible commitment (personal BHAG) to write a post everyday of 2019 sharing my daily learnings.
With all the discussion of ‘What is your exit strategy’ it is refreshing to look at those saas companies who have been at it for over a decade and some going into their 3rd. Why would it be any different than, say, an industrial era company? The funding and exit eco system perhaps. So how come many of the contrarians are in this list of those heading into the 3rd decade?
This is the last post on Startups in 2019 and what a wonderful journey it has been in sharing my learning s everyday for this entire year. So as you brace yourself for the next let me share a post from 2018 by Y Combinator where they listed areas of interest with their own RFS – Request for Startups. Y Combinator is in a unique position to see hundreds of ideas taking shape and the gaps that remain.
HBR published its list of management lessons from 2019. Here is a quick peek:
