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How to Transform Your Ideas Into Software Products

Author : Poornima Vijayashanker

Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Page : 352 pages

File Size : 37,86 MB

Release : 2014-11-01

Category :

ISBN : 9781535562317

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Book Description

Create products people will pay for before they're even built. You have an idea in your head. Maybe even more than one! But you're stuck simmering on it because you just don't know if it's the right one to pursue. You're wondering whether people will even use your product, let alone pay for it. The uncertainty is overwhelming, so you do ... nothing. But what if you were confident that your idea would help people? How would you feel if you turned your passion into a living, breathing software product ... and you made money from it? Poornima Vijayashanker has founded 3 startups and personally guided 100+ people who have launched products that make 6 and 7 figures per year. Everyone started with varying levels of technical and business know-how-or none at all-but everyone was passionate about an idea. Now, Poornima travels around the country teaching people how to bring their ideas to life. With the right roadmap in front of you, you can launch a winning software product too. "But I don't know how to code or run a business." The tangled world of startups and software development is intimidating and hard to navigate. To start with, not every entrepreneur knows how to code. Even the ones who do still need other skills to succeed; they need to design a good user experience, figure out how to attract paying customers, and hire and fire technical talent. There are hundreds of tools and services to help build products, and they need to know which ones are useless and which ones will save them time. They'll eventually run out of cash to keep paying rent and developing, and will need to figure out whether to get investors, apply to an accelerator, or bootstrap. Trial and error takes years of research, setbacks, and heartache ... not to mention a lot of money. You could go to design school, teach yourself how to code in the off-hours, and spend thousands of dollars testing marketing campaigns. Or you could... Follow a proven guide for turning your ideas into successful products (and even 6- to 7-figure businesses). This book will teach you how to: - Validate your idea before you spend time and money on it. - Talk to prospective customers without feeling awkward or pushy. - Leave competitors in the dust with good design and positioning. - Save time and heartache by building only the features people will actually use. - Hire talented people to build your product for you. - Get more paying customers with scrappy marketing strategies. - Find money to fund your business. This guide includes time-tested strategies and tools that entrepreneurs love: Over 13 case studies with the inside scoop on companies like Mint.com, AirBnB, and Zappos. The exact systems and tools Poornima and other startup founders have used to build rock-solid products. 7 interviews with successful startup founders and early employees like: - Melody McCloskey, CEO & Co-Founder of StyleSeat - Brittany Forsyth, Head of Human Relations at Shopify - Ben Congleton, CEO & Co-Founder of Olark - Julia Grace, Head of Engineering at Tindie - Thomson Nguyen, CEO & Co-Founder of Framed Data - Alyssa Ravasio, CEO & Co-Founder of Hipcamp - David Cummings, CEO & Co-Founder of Pardot



An Elegant Puzzle

Author : Will Larson

Publisher : Stripe Press

Page : 281 pages

File Size : 39,45 MB

Release : 2019-05-20

Category : Computers

ISBN : 1953953336

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Book Description

A human-centric guide to solving complex problems in engineering management, from sizing teams to handling technical debt. There’s a saying that people don’t leave companies, they leave managers. Management is a key part of any organization, yet the discipline is often self-taught and unstructured. Getting to the good solutions for complex management challenges can make the difference between fulfillment and frustration for teams—and, ultimately, between the success and failure of companies. Will Larson’s An Elegant Puzzle focuses on the particular challenges of engineering management—from sizing teams to handling technical debt to performing succession planning—and provides a path to the good solutions. Drawing from his experience at Digg, Uber, and Stripe, Larson has developed a thoughtful approach to engineering management for leaders of all levels at companies of all sizes. An Elegant Puzzle balances structured principles and human-centric thinking to help any leader create more effective and rewarding organizations for engineers to thrive in.



Testing Business Ideas

Author : David J. Bland

Publisher : John Wiley & Sons

Page : 375 pages

File Size : 49,87 MB

Release : 2019-11-06

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 1119551412

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Book Description

A practical guide to effective business model testing 7 out of 10 new products fail to deliver on expectations. Testing Business Ideas aims to reverse that statistic. In the tradition of Alex Osterwalder’s global bestseller Business Model Generation, this practical guide contains a library of hands-on techniques for rapidly testing new business ideas. Testing Business Ideas explains how systematically testing business ideas dramatically reduces the risk and increases the likelihood of success for any new venture or business project. It builds on the internationally popular Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas by integrating Assumptions Mapping and other powerful lean startup-style experiments. Testing Business Ideas uses an engaging 4-color format to: Increase the success of any venture and decrease the risk of wasting time, money, and resources on bad ideas Close the knowledge gap between strategy and experimentation/validation Identify and test your key business assumptions with the Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas A definitive field guide to business model testing, this book features practical tips for making major decisions that are not based on intuition and guesses. Testing Business Ideas shows leaders how to encourage an experimentation mindset within their organization and make experimentation a continuous, repeatable process.



Become an Idea Machine

Author : Claudia Azula Altucher

Publisher :

Page : 0 pages

File Size : 17,89 MB

Release : 2014-12-27

Category : Quality of work life

ISBN : 9781502593009

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Book Description

HOW DO I TRANSFORM MY LIFE? The answer is simple: come up with ten ideas a day. It doesn't matter if they are good or bad the key is to exercise your 'idea muscle', to keep it toned, and in great shape. People say ideas are cheap and execution is everything but that is NOT true. Execution is a consequence, a subset of good, brilliant idea. And good ideas require daily work. Ideas may be easy if we are only coming up with one or two but if you open this book to any of the pages and try to produce more than three, you will feel a burn, scratch your head, and you will be sweating, and working hard. There is a turning point when you reach idea number 6 for the day, you still have four to go, and your mind muscle is getting a workout. By the time you list those last ideas to make it to ten you will see for yourself what "sweating the idea muscle" means. As you practice the daily idea generation you become an idea machine.When we become idea machines we are flooded with lots of bad ideas but also with some that are very good. This happens by the sheer force of the number, because we are coming up with 3,650 ideas per year (at ten a day). When you are inspired by an extraordinary idea, all of your thoughts break their chains, you go beyond limitations and your capacity to act expands in every direction. Forces and abilities you did not know you had come to the surface, and you realize you are capable of doing great things. As you practice with the suggested prompts in this book your ideas will get better, you will be a source of great insight for others, people will find you magnetic, and they will want to hang out with you because you have so much to offer. When you practice every day your life will transform, in no more than 180 days, because it has no other evolutionary choice. Life changes for the better when we become the source of positive, insightful, and helpful ideas. Don't believe a word I say. Instead, challenge yourself to try it for the 180 days and see your life transform, in magical ways, in front of your very eyes.



Why Startups Fail

Author : Tom Eisenmann

Publisher : Currency

Page : 368 pages

File Size : 43,93 MB

Release : 2021-03-30

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 0593137035

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Book Description

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.



Productize

Author : Eisha Armstrong

Publisher : Vecteris

Page : 172 pages

File Size : 22,14 MB

Release : 2021-05-02

Category :

ISBN : 9781736929612

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Book Description

Many professional services businesses want to create more scalable services and solutions but they often lack the tools and capabilities to successfully transition from a customized services model to a scalable solutions and products model. Productize outlines the unique pitfalls that professional services organizations face when they embark on a strategy of creating more scalable, often tech-enabled, products and services and it provides you with the tactics and tools to overcome these pitfalls. It is designed to be a practical playbook for any leader of a professional services business who wants to successfully accelerate growth.Productize draws on the 25+ years of experience that Eisha Armstrong has in successfully creating, launching and growing productized services. Eisha knows what works and what doesn't and she is passionate about making sure organizations learn from each other and avoid reinventing the wheel.Productize includes real-life case studies and stories featuring professional services leaders who have successfully led their organizations to create more scalable services and products. It also includes more than two dozen tools and templates to help your team implement the tactics so you don't have to start from scratch.In this book, you'll learn:1) How to turn shift your culture to embrace a product mindset2) The capabilities you to be successful and whether or not you should acquire them or grow them internally3) How much money to invest in exploring and building more scalable solutions and products4) How to ensure there is a viable market for your product idea5) How to sequence investments in new product development6) How to successfully source and work with developers and data scientists7) How to inexpensively test your ideas before investing in development8) How to win the hearts and minds of your sales team to ensure your new products are commercially successfulBonus: Key point summaries at the end of each chapter to help you lock in what you learnBonus: More than two dozen tools and templates to help your team implement the tactics so you don't have to start from scratch.



The Innovation Mode

Author : George Krasadakis

Publisher : Springer Nature

Page : 316 pages

File Size : 44,45 MB

Release : 2020-07-29

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 3030451399

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Book Description

This book presents unique insights and advice on defining and managing the innovation transformation journey. Using novel ideas, examples and best practices, it empowers management executives at all levels to drive cultural, technological and organizational changes toward innovation. Covering modern innovation techniques, tools, programs and strategies, it focuses on the role of the latest technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence to discover, handle and manage ideas), methodologies (including Agile Engineering and Rapid Prototyping) and combinations of these (like hackathons or gamification). At the same time, it highlights the importance of culture and provides suggestions on how to build it. In the era of AI and the unprecedented pace of technology evolution, companies need to become truly innovative in order to survive. The transformation toward an innovation-led company is difficult – it requires a strong leadership and culture, advanced technologies and well-designed programs. The book is based on the author’s long-term experience and novel ideas, and reflects two decades of startup, consulting and corporate leadership experience. It is intended for business, technology, and innovation leaders.



The Idea Factory

Author : Jon Gertner

Publisher : Penguin

Page : 434 pages

File Size : 39,25 MB

Release : 2012-03-15

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 1101561084

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Book Description

The definitive history of America’s greatest incubator of innovation and the birthplace of some of the 20th century’s most influential technologies “Filled with colorful characters and inspiring lessons . . . The Idea Factory explores one of the most critical issues of our time: What causes innovation?” —Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review “Compelling . . . Gertner's book offers fascinating evidence for those seeking to understand how a society should best invest its research resources.” —The Wall Street Journal From its beginnings in the 1920s until its demise in the 1980s, Bell Labs-officially, the research and development wing of AT&T-was the biggest, and arguably the best, laboratory for new ideas in the world. From the transistor to the laser, from digital communications to cellular telephony, it's hard to find an aspect of modern life that hasn't been touched by Bell Labs. In The Idea Factory, Jon Gertner traces the origins of some of the twentieth century's most important inventions and delivers a riveting and heretofore untold chapter of American history. At its heart this is a story about the life and work of a small group of brilliant and eccentric men-Mervin Kelly, Bill Shockley, Claude Shannon, John Pierce, and Bill Baker-who spent their careers at Bell Labs. Today, when the drive to invent has become a mantra, Bell Labs offers us a way to enrich our understanding of the challenges and solutions to technological innovation. Here, after all, was where the foundational ideas on the management of innovation were born.



EMPOWERED

Author : Marty Cagan

Publisher : John Wiley & Sons

Page : 435 pages

File Size : 48,95 MB

Release : 2020-12-03

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 1119691257

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Book Description

"Great teams are comprised of ordinary people that are empowered and inspired. They are empowered to solve hard problems in ways their customers love yet work for their business. They are inspired with ideas and techniques for quickly evaluating those ideas to discover solutions that work: they are valuable, usable, feasible and viable. This book is about the idea and reality of "achieving extraordinary results from ordinary people". Empowered is the companion to Inspired. It addresses the other half of the problem of building tech products?how to get the absolute best work from your product teams. However, the book's message applies much more broadly than just to product teams. Inspired was aimed at product managers. Empowered is aimed at all levels of technology-powered organizations: founders and CEO's, leaders of product, technology and design, and the countless product managers, product designers and engineers that comprise the teams. This book will not just inspire companies to empower their employees but will teach them how. This book will help readers achieve the benefits of truly empowered teams"--



Project to Product

Author : Mik Kersten

Publisher : IT Revolution

Page : 237 pages

File Size : 33,89 MB

Release : 2018-11-20

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 1942788401

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Book Description

As tech giants and startups disrupt every market, those who master large-scale software delivery will define the economic landscape of the 21st century, just as the masters of mass production defined the landscape in the 20th. Unfortunately, business and technology leaders are woefully ill-equipped to solve the problems posed by digital transformation. At the current rate of disruption, half of S&P 500 companies will be replaced in the next ten years. A new approach is needed. In Project to Product, Value Stream Network pioneer and technology business leader Dr. Mik Kersten introduces the Flow Framework—a new way of seeing, measuring, and managing software delivery. The Flow Framework will enable your company’s evolution from project-oriented dinosaur to product-centric innovator that thrives in the Age of Software. If you’re driving your organization’s transformation at any level, this is the book for you.