Startups, this is how design works.

Companies like Apple are making design impossible for startups to ignore. Startups like Path, Airbnb, Square, and Massive Health have design at the core of their business, and they’re doing phenomenal work. But what is ‘design’ actually? Is it a logo? A Wordpress theme? An innovative UI?

It’s so much more than that. It’s a state of mind. It’s an approach to a problem. It’s how you’re going to kick your competitor’s ass. This handy guide will help you understand design and provide resources to help you find awesome design talent.

Tip for Startup Founders: It Isn’t 1999

I lived through the infamous Dot-com Bubble. I was at a startup in 1998, that went through the usual ups and downs and up again. Then I founded a design consultancy (for some stability, believe it or not) and advised a number of small and medium-sized startups in Silicon Valley for several years (before eventually joining eBay). Some had solid products with real business models and went on to IPOs or acquisitions (e.g., Uppercase was acquired by Microsoft in 2000). But, a few were remarkably resistant to my efforts to help them think through their business model (I won’t name names). They didn’t seem very concerned about revenue at all, which I found quite surprising (almost as surprised as they felt when their design consultant was pushing them to discuss a revenue model). Lo and behold, those startups did not survive and some collapsed so quickly that I sometimes was left standing in front of their empty building with an unpaid invoice in hand. I certainly learned a number of valuable lessons during those bubble years. I would hope that everyone in the Tech industry these days has learned from the sins of their tech startup fathers, but apparently that isn’t always the case (as evidenced at this year’s LAUNCH Festival).

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Dot-com bubble chart

Killing Your Startup By Listening to Customers - Steve Blank

“The art of entrepreneurship and the science of Customer Development is not just getting out of the building and listening to prospective customers. It’s understanding who to listen to and why.” - Steve Blank 

So true. The value is in the insights and how they shape your business and product strategy, not the literal requests and feedback from the users.

How does your business make money?

Female-Focused Accelerator “Women Innovate Mobile” Announces Its First Participants

Women Innovate Mobile (WIM), the new accelerator aimed to help promote companies started by female entrepreneurs, is ready to debut its first class. Like other incubators, WIM provides mentoring, support, free office space, and seed funding. Participants in the program receive $18,000 to help get their companies get off the ground.

Except unlike the majority of other programs, WIM requires not only that the companies focus on mobile, but also that one of the co-founders must be a woman.

2 entrepreneurs tell how pivoting saved their startups - The Next Web

thenextweb:

One of the events that caught our attention at Internet Week Europe was Survivor Stories, which was real insights from entrepreneurs who had taken what was starting to look like a failed venture and transformed it into something highly successful. We are, of course, talking about pivots. This session sought to answer the question of what are the challenges in going from a startup to a standout company? What are the defining moments in a budding company, and what are the most important takeaways of building a company from the bottom up?

Why Do Startups Fail? An Analysis of 3,200 High-growth Technology Startups

I read a very interesting article on TechCrunch today about why startups fail. They shared data from research that Blackbox conducted for their Startup Genome project, which is trying to uncover what makes Silicon Valley startups succeed vs. fail. You can gain access to the free full report here. I highly recommend that you take the time to read through it. Pretty fascinating data. Read the full post here.