September 2013
Beginner
368 pages
5h 56m
English
book
The Agile Startup: Quick and Dirty Lessons Every Entrepreneur Should Know
by Jeff Scheinrock, Matt Richter-Sand
Content preview from The Agile Startup: Quick and Dirty Lessons Every Entrepreneur Should Know
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Wrong Questions → Wrong Answers
To determine feasibility, you have to interview a lot of people. Interviewing, in fact, will take most of your time as you learn about how customers think and what they’d be willing to pay for. The questions you ask in these interviews will inform your entire strategy, making the ability to ask questions one of the most important skills of an early-stage entrepreneur.
The biggest mistake founders make when interviewing is that they ask leading questions, that is, questions that prompt your audience to respond in a certain way. When exploring revenue model, for example, a leading question might be, “Would you rather pay one time up front, or a monthly subscription?” The structure of this question forces the respondent to choose one or the other when it’s possible that they wouldn’t pay anything. Leading questions can constrain your interviewees and bias their responses.
Instead, ask open-ended, unbiased question like, “Is this something that you would pay for?” Try your best to ask open-ended, unbiased questions that result in actionable insights. If you ask the wrong questions, you’ll get the wrong answers.
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.