Avis was losing $3.2 million a year; and they'd been unprofitable for thirteen straight.
In 1962, they sat at number two in American car rental, well behind Hertz, with no plausible path to catching up. Robert Townsend, the new president, hired Doyle Dane Bernbach and asked them to do
Linked is an excellent article about “positioning”. What it is, why it’s crucial, how to do it.
A very old blog
Linked is a very old article I came across about the early days of the NeXT computer and Lotusprov.
In-depth, one-on-one conversations with founders, CEOs, and makers. The journey, lessons learned, and the struggles. Let's do this!
Another game theory article
One of the most important lean startup techniques is called the minimum viable product. Its power is matched only by the amount of confusion that it causes, because it's actually quite hard to do. It certainly took me many years to make sense of it.
When we build products, we use a methodology. For software, we have many - you can enjoy a nice long list on Wikipedia. But too often when it's time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way. We know some products succeed and others fail, but the reasons are complex and the unpredictable. We're easily convinced by the argument that all we need to do is "build it and they will come." And when they don't come, well, we just try, try, again.
Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off. There may be a handful that just grew by themselves, but usually it takes some sort of push to get them going. A good metaphor would be the cranks that car engines had before they got electric starters. Once the engine was going, it would keep going, but there was a separate and laborious process to get it going.
Salary negotiation advice, mostly for engineers. Running total of raises negotiated due to this essay: $9M+.
I got many comments from people about my postings recently about Lotus Improv. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a pretty accurate description of Improv and its history in the WikiPedia. By the…
It’s no secret that investors don’t like hardware businesses. Despite the eternal frustration of startup founders, investor distaste in physical product businesses is actually entirely logical. It’s…
Useful ways to think about choosing your technology platform!
Scaling is an important topic that I care about. Here’s one person’s guide to making it to 100k. It’s a very complicated topic.
