Inside the Box with JDM

Everyone knows 95% of all startups fail, and most people that I talk to think that startups are killed by the marketplace. But startups are rarely murdered. Instead, they commit suicide by building or scaling a product too soon.But there's another option: rapid prototyping.Read more in the show notes →

In part 4 of JDM's series on business models, we look at how you create and deliver your value proposition, and the one key strategy most founders miss.Read more in the show notes → See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

TopicsThis is part 3 of JDM's deep dive into business models, and it's all about value creation and value propositions.What is a value proposition?Why do some value props resonate where others fall flat?How we determine customer wants, needs and fears?How can we respond to those with benefits, features, and experience?How the importance of customer problems can kill value props.Using experience maps to create compelling value props.And more!SponsorInside the Box with JDM is sponsored by The Right Box, a bespoke team of entrepreneurs and innovators who help startup founders find the quickest past to traction — or fail fast trying.LinksOverview of experience mapping from JDM's newsletter.Experience mapping template & overview videoJDM's website — jdm.bioThis podcast has a new home! insidethebox.show See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The customer is at the center of any business model.Who are they?Where are they?What are there wants, needs, & fears?How do we discover them?All this and more in this week's episode of Inside the Box, a podcast about how to find product-market fit faster by changing the way you think about entrepreneurship.This is part 2 in our 6-part deep dive on business models, and it's entirely about customers!Why? No one invests in weak business models, and no successful business is built on one. Duh!Yet most early stage startups and other innovative efforts have generally terrible foundation that go on to plague them in their later stages. Without a crystal clear understanding exactly how your company meets the four basic components of any business model, you are doomed to fail.https://jdm.bio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

No one invests in weak business models, and no successful business is built on one. Duh!Yet most early stage startups and other innovative efforts have generally terrible foundation that go on to plague them in their later stages. Without a crystal clear understanding exactly how your company meets the four basic components of any business model, you are doomed to fail.This is the first in 6-part deep dive on business models.https://jdm.bio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

TopicsWhat makes a question great, and how to be a great questioner.What kinds of questions can you ask, particularly when you want to understand something more deeply than you already do?How to use distinctions, systems, relationships, and perspectives to ask smarter questions.JDM's three favourite questions that you can put to work right now.SponsorsInside the Box with JDM is sponsored by The Right Box, a bespoke team of entrepreneurs and innovators who help startup founders find the quickest past to traction — or fail fast trying.LinksBook recommendation: Stop Asking Questions by Andrew Warner.Sign up for JDM's weekly newsletter. It's one weekly tip or trick to go to market faster and find traction sooner, or fail fast trying.JDM's website: jdm.bioThis podcast has a new home! insidethebox.show See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

TopicsToo often, early in an entrepreneurial or other innovative effort, we resist doing inefficient things. It often goes against our nature. So we create tools & processes to save ourselves effort, and then we spend time & energy refining those tools & processes.The problem is that the nature of doing innovative things is that we don't actually know what we're doing yet! We have an hypothesis, but that's all it is.So we're literally spending time getting efficient at something that we don't know is the right thing to get efficient at.This is the efficiency trap. And design thinking can get us out.SponsorsInside the Box with JDM is sponsored by The Right Box, a bespoke team of entrepreneurs and innovators who help startup founders find the quickest past to traction, or fail fast trying.LinksThe live show on the top ten best ways to test your business model.JDM's website: jdm.bioThis podcast has a new home! insidethebox.show See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

TopicsFor this episode of the pod, we're going to do something a little different. Our own JDM co-hosts the Startup Shop Talk live show on YouTube every Friday at 11am Pacific. On January 21st, they had a fantastic discussion on everything you need to know about pitching your startup to investors, to co-founders, and even to potential customers.We thought our podcast audience might find the discussion interesting, so here's an edited version of the conversation between JDM of The Right Box and his co-host, Dan Casas-Murray of the Lean Innovator.Let's do something a little different.SponsorsInside the Box with JDM is sponsored by The Right Box, a bespoke team of entrepreneurs and innovators who help startup founders find the quickest past to traction, or fail fast trying.LinksOffice Hours with JDMJDM's website: jdm.bioThis podcast has a new home! insidethebox.show See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

TopicsProduct-market fit isn't one thing. It's best to think of it as a spectrum that matches the lifecycle of the startup, and guides founders on what to do next.In this episode, JDM talks about the four steps of product-market fit:Customer-problem fit: there is a sufficient volume of customers who are experiencing a particular pain acutely enough to make it worth building a business to solve it.Problem-solution fit: we have a group of potential customers who passionately want us to solve their problem in a particular way.Product-market fit: we have compelling evidence that the high-level mechanics of the business model are working.Business model fit: when the product is sufficiently repeatable so as to be scalable.SponsorsInside the Box with JDM is sponsored by The Right Box, a bespoke team of entrepreneurs and innovators who help startup founders find the quickest past to traction, or fail fast trying.LinksCompanion article on product-market fit: https://rightbox.co/content/the-best-way-to-think-about-product-market-fit.Link to the "mom test" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi6Yh-amM7s.JDM's website: jdm.bioThis podcast has a new home! insidethebox.show See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

TopicsThe business model canvas is a fantastic tool for innovators and entrepreneurs, but books, online courses, incubators, and even accelerators all commit a fundamental mistake when it comes to making proper use of it. They all treat the business model canvas as a documentation tool, but that completely misses the point.In this episode, JDM talks about why the business model canvas is a fantastic tool, but only if you use it correctly: not as a task, but as a process.SponsorsInside the Box with JDM is sponsored by The Right Box, a bespoke team of entrepreneurs and innovators who help startup founders find the quickest past to traction, or fail fast trying.LinksJDM's website: jdm.bioThis podcast has a new home! insidethebox.show See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

TopicsFor our first episode of 2022, with all the promise that a new year brings, we almost have to talk about ideation. But, most of the time, when we talk about ideation, we're talking about brand new companies. But! What if you're an established company looking to innovate? What if you want to hedge your bets against threats in the market? What if you want to unlock growth and scale where it seems elusive?In other words, how does ideation work in an established firm?In this episode of Inside the Box, JDM talks through a four-step process for finding the most valuable market opportunities for your company.SponsorsInside the Box with JDM is sponsored by The Right Box, a bespoke team of entrepreneurs and innovators who help startup founders find the quickest past to traction, or fail fast trying.LinksCompanion article: https://rightbox.co/content/how-to-find-new-market-opportunities.JDM's website: jdm.bioThis podcast has a new home! insidethebox.show See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

There have been quite a few articles written over the past few years that are down on MVPs — the so-called minimum viable products that are central to the idea of the Lean Startup. These articles argue that focusing on what's minimally viable leads to the creation of products that are sub-par, that customers don't want, and that ultimately fail in the marketplace. Why is that so in vogue these days? Why are so many people so down on the MVP that's served so many startups so well?On this episode of the podcast, JDM talks vents a little bit on why these efforts to re-invent and rebrand MVPs not only miss the point of the MVP but are also tragically misguided.About the PodcastInside the Box is a podcast about the metacognition of innovation and entrepreneurship, where we talk about the tools and techniques used to create amazing products and launch high-growth startups. Most importantly, we talk about the mindset successful innovators use to avoid getting in their own way.You can subscribe to Inside the Box on your podcast app of choice — and please leave us a rating or review. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We've all heard, and maybe even said, “there's no such thing as a bad idea”. And the point is that when we're ideating, it's helpful to suppress our internal critic so we don't accidentally filter out good stuff — and, sometimes, bad ideas inspire good ideas through discussion.So it's not that JDM disagrees with that. He certainly doesn't! But he doesn't seem to think it goes quite far enough. It's not that there's no such thing as a bad idea, JDM says, but that, in fact, there's actually no such thing as a good idea.On this episode of the podcast, JDM talks about why your startup or other innovation idea sucks — and, more importantly, why that's actually pretty fantastic.About the PodcastInside the Box is a podcast about the metacognition of innovation and entrepreneurship, where we talk about the tools and techniques used to create amazing products and launch high-growth startups. Most importantly, we talk about the mindset successful innovators use to avoid getting in their own way.You can subscribe to Inside the Box on your podcast app of choice — and please leave us a rating or review. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is the first episode of a brand new podcast from The Right Box, a bespoke consulting group who helps innovative teams make the kinds of decisions that don't make themselves. This is going to be a simple episode, where host JDM talks about why we're doing this podcast, and why telling someone to “think outside the box” is not only the most unhelpful advice you could provide, but it's also the wrong way to think about creativity and innovation.ABOUT THE PODCASTInside the Box is a podcast about the metacognition of innovation and entrepreneurship, where we talk about the tools and techniques used to create amazing products and launch high-growth startups. Most importantly, we talk about the mindset successful innovators use to avoid getting in their own way.You can subscribe to Inside the Box on your podcast app of choice — and please leave us a rating or review. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.