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We sit down with the remarkable Danielson Sisters, renowned for revolutionizing the way small businesses approach scaling. Dive deep with us as we explore their unique philosophy of 'Scaling Lean.' The sisters, with their infectious energy and sharp business acumen, share their journey from a modest startup to becoming industry game-changers. They unveil their secrets to efficient growth, managing resources wisely, and maintaining a lean operation while expanding. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur, a business student, or just curious about the intricacies of successful business scaling, this episode offers valuable lessons and practical tips directly from the minds of those who've mastered the art. Tune in to discover how the Danielson Sisters' approach to scaling lean can transform your business and set you on the path to sustainable success. Don't miss this blend of inspiring stories, expert advice, and actionable strategies!Enjoy the show!Ann and Mary Danielson, sister investors with contrasting personalities and lifestyles, have crafted a unique and effective approach to land investing. Mary, the "Life of the Party," is dyslexic, prefers the night, and thrives in chaos, living in Denver and often sipping on Diet Coke in the morning and something stronger at night. In contrast, Ann, a "Super Nerd" who loves books, is an early bird with a structured routine, resides in the Philippines, and starts her day with black coffee, winding down with white wine in the evening. Despite their differences, including childhood experiences with their "Grizzly Adams" father in Wisconsin, they have united their distinct skills and values to create a successful, lean operation. Operating as a "24 hour SuperHuman," they manage their business with limited social media presence, a single email, and a shared phone, effectively doubling their business last year. Their story demonstrates how contrasting personalities can synergistically achieve business success while remaining true to individual lifestyles and values.The Danielson Sisters are looking to network and partner up. They are interested in joint ventures and working with funders, as they are encountering numerous substantial deals. They are particularly keen on collaborators with experience in Tennessee and a fondness for profitable rural projects.◽️◽️◽️◽️◽️◽️⬇️OnlyLandFans Group⬇️https://www.onlylandfans.com/◽️◽️◽️◽️◽️◽️LET'S CONNECT ON SOCIAL:Website: https://www.Kendall-LeJeune.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/kendall_lejeuneTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kendall_lejeune
Our special guest in today's episode of If Not Now Wen is Ash Maurya. Ash is the author of two bestselling books “Running Lean” and “Scaling Lean” and is also the creator of the highly popular one-page business modeling tool “Lean Canvas”. Ash is praised for offering some of the best and most practical advice for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs all over the world. Driven by the search for better and faster ways for building successful products, Ash has developed a continuous innovation framework that synthesizes concepts from Lean Startup, business model design, jobs-to-be-done, and design thinking. A leading business blogger, Ash's posts and advice have been featured in Inc. Magazine, Forbes, and Fortune. He regularly hosts sold out workshops around the world and serves as a mentor to several accelerators including TechStars, MaRS, Capital Factory, and guest lecturers at several universities including MIT, Harvard, and UT Austin. Ash serves on the advisory board of a number of startups and has consulted to new and established companies. Ash is passionate about giving back and sharing his knowledge to serve the entrepreneurial ecosystem and create more successful entrepreneurs. He is such an inspiration, and I know you are going to love this episode and get so many amazing takeaways. We talk about:
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. Tinatin discusses the importance of the scrum values in a team and how well the team is living those values. She highlights the importance of team health checks to identify inefficiencies, which can often result from a lack of collaboration and trust between team members. Tinatin uses the example of the Spotify Squad health check (mentioned several times here on the podcast) that reveals a lack of trust between developers and testers, and offers tips for identifying a lack of trust in a team, such as monitoring levels of comfort among team members, monitoring communication, and observing meetings for signs of discomfort or silence. Featured Book Of The Week: Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Sutherland In Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Sutherland, the author describes how to optimize work through Agile methodology and Scrum principles. In this episode, Tinatin also refers to Scaling Lean and Agile Development by Craig Larman, and Bas Vodde. Bas Vodde has been a previous guest on the podcast. And she also refers to Strategize: Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age by Roman Pichler. [IMAGE HERE] Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches - Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM's that have decades of experience: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome! About Tinatin Tabidze Tinatin Tabidze is a Scrum Master currently working in Stuttgart, Germany. Originally she started out as a project manager. She has experience with multiple scrum and kanban teams, working with scaled agile frameworks. You can link with Tinatin Tabidze on LinkedIn.
Ash Maurya introduces "The Innovator's Gift" to help you find problems worth solving, and navigate the uncertainty of new product ideas.-----You can also read this episode transcript here.Sign up here to get upcoming audio essays emailed to youFollow the MTTM journey on Twitter or LinkedIn!If you haven't already would you do me a favor and take ~40 seconds to rate/review the show on Apple Podcasts ? It really helps. (Scroll to bottom of page for rate/review links.)Links & resources mentionedSend episode feedback on Twitter @askotzko , or via emailAsh Maurya - LEANSTACK, TwitterAsh's books:New: Running LeanScaling LeanRelated episodes#55: How does continuous discovery come together for a new product?#44 Teresa Torres: Habits for clear thinking and better product betsPeople & orgsBob MoestaTom ChiTom Chi talk @ MindValley: Everything is Connected - Here's HowW. Edwards DemingPeter DruckerSteve BlankEric RiesDave McClureSean EllisBooksThey All Laughed: The Fascinating Stories Behind the Great Inventions That Have Changed Our LivesUser Story MappingWhen Coffee and Kale Compete (JTBD) - Alan KlementDemand-Side Sales - Bob MoestaThe ONE ThingThinking in SystemsOther resources mentionedCustomer forces canvasLEAN canvasJobs to Be Done (JTBD)The Milkshake StudyRecency Bias
BIO: Ash Maurya is the author of two bestselling books, “Running Lean” and “Scaling Lean,” and is also the creator of the top-rated one-page business modeling tool “Lean Canvas.” STORY: Ash had this social networking idea that he thought was unique, so he kept it to himself as he built on it. He never tested the market until he launched, and the network was a flop. Ash kept building the network in isolation until seven years later when he realized he was supposed to be building a customer base, not the perfect product. LEARNING: Take at least 90 days to test a new idea before launching it. You need customers for your business to survive. “You can actually sell before you build.”Ash Maurya Guest profilehttps://amzn.to/3wQSHle (Ash Maurya) is the author of two bestselling books, “https://amzn.to/3wQSHle (Running Lean)” and “https://amzn.to/3wQSHle (Scaling Lean),” and is also the creator of the top-rated one-page business modeling tool “https://amzn.to/3wQSHle (Lean Canvas).” Ash is praised for offering some of the best and most practical advice for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs worldwide. Driven by the search for better and faster ways for building successful products, Ash has developed a continuous innovation framework that synthesizes concepts from Lean Startup, business model design, jobs-to-be-done, and design thinking. Ash is also a leading business blogger, and his posts and advice have been featured in Inc. Magazine, Forbes, and Fortune. He regularly hosts sold-out workshops worldwide and serves as a mentor to several accelerators, including TechStars, MaRS, Capital Factory, and guest lecturers at several universities, including MIT, Harvard, and UT Austin. Ash serves on the advisory board of several startups and has consulted with new and established companies. Worst investment everIn 2011, Ash came up with a social networking idea that he believed was so good that he couldn't tell anyone. The friends he told, he swore them into secrecy. They all convinced him that this would be a perfect idea. Ash took all the money he had, got a small team together, and spent a year building the network. He never talked to anyone about his idea during the building period. Nine months into that journey, he heard about Friendster, the first social network launched. Someone had beat him to it. However, Ash was still convinced his idea was unique, so he continued to build on it. Ash finally launched his network and spent another year trying to get everything right, but it didn't work. Then he took a hard pivot and had a lucky break when another company that liked the technology he was using licensed it for a little while. But it was still not Ash's big outcome story. His co-founders lost interest in the network and walked away. Ash kept plugging along and bootstrapped until the five-year mark, building his product. After about seven years, Ash realized that he had been looking at all his ideas from the inside out. He concentrated on building a product for himself instead of creating a customer base first. Lessons learnedWhen building a business, focus more on purpose and meaning. Ask yourself if you're creating what the customers needs. Give yourself 90 days to test the market and demonstrate traction if you have a new idea. If your customers aren't paying attention to your idea, building a product will not make a difference. Andrew's takeawaysTo turn great ideas into great products, the people around you should always be confident that you can implement them. Decide the minimum number of customers you need to stay in business and when. Be as specific as possible. Actionable adviceSet a goal and a deadline or a timeline. Then ask yourself what's the smallest outcome that would deem this project a success. No.1 goal for the next 12 monthsAsh's goal for the next 12 months is to get from 1 million people on his platform to 10 million or at least within the next three years. Parting words “Look...
Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... Product Mastery Now with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: Special Episode From the 2020 Summit This is a special podcast episode, sharing an important discussion from The Everyday Innovator 2020 Summit. Our guest is Ash Maurya. He has been a favorite repeat guest on the podcast and also spoke at our Summit in the Product VP track on the topic of continuous innovation. As this was a Summit presentation, the format of the show notes below are a bit different. BIO: Ash Maurya is the author of two bestselling books, Running Lean and Scaling Lean, and is the creator of the highly popular one-page business modeling tool, “Lean Canvas.” Ash is praised for offering some of the best and most practical advice for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs all over the world. Driven by the search for better and faster ways for building successful products, Ash has developed a systematic methodology for raising the odds of success built upon Lean Startup, Customer Development, and Bootstrapping techniques. Ash is also a leading business blogger and his posts and advice have been featured in Inc. Magazine, Forbes, and Fortune. He regularly hosts sold-out workshops around the world and serves as a mentor to several accelerators including TechStars, MaRS, Capital Factory, and guest lecturers at several universities including MIT, Harvard, and UT Austin. Ash serves on the advisory board of a number of startups and has consulted to new and established companies. INSIGHT: Love the problem, not your solution.
The Jeffs chat with Ash Maurya, best-selling author & founder of Lean Stack. Don't miss these topics of lean scale & innovation, including:What it means for startups to scale leanHow to get teams to understand why innovation is importantUnexpected or unique places that the Lean Canvas has been applied successfullyFind his book "Scaling Lean" hereFollow Us on Facebook, Instagram, or TwitterGet in touch InnovationJunkie.com
Ash Maurya is the author of Running Lean, Scaling Lean, and Creator of Lean Canvas and in today's bonus episode is here to talk about how to build a successful framework for ongoing product success, especially after a launch. There are so many frameworks focused on getting you to market, but what about all the problems that come up after launching? Don't worry, Ash has some ideas for you today. *** This episode is brought to you by: Vidyard: The Top Video Tool for SaaS Marketing and Sales http://vidyard.com/rocketship NetSuite: NetSuite by Oracle is a scalable solution to run all of your key back office operations. Go to netsuite.com/rocketship today. Blinkist: Rocketship.fm is now on Blinkist! Listen to 12 minute episodes with no ads! Get seven days free when you check out Blinkist. Indeed: Indeed is the job site that makes hiring as easy as 1-2-3. Get started with a free $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/rocketship. BetterHelp: Unlimited Professional Counseling via Online Chat, Video or Phone Anytime, Anywhere. Get 10% off when you visit betterhelp.com/rocketship. Fundrise: Fundrise makes investing in private real estate as easy as investing in stocks, bonds, or mutual funds. Go to fundrise.com/rocketship today. Airfocus: The home for products and the people who build them. Airfocus is an easy-to-use and flexible product management platform that combines product strategy superpowers with modularity. Visit airfocus.com/rocketship and try it for free today. WIX: When your agency partners with Wix, you unlock an entire digital ecosystem for creating, managing and growing your business online. Head over to Wix.com/Partners and reimagine what your agency can accomplish. *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to Rocketship, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding entrepreneurship, business, and careers like Creative Elements and Freelance to Founder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Introduction Today I am chatting with Ash Maurya who is building his Leanstack business in harmony with his family in Austin Texas. Ash is the creator of the Lean Canvas Business Model tool and author of Running Lean and Scaling Lean. What I saw in Ash is that he was an entrepreneur who had started and built several startups and had reflected on his experience as an entrepreneur and as a parent. This is what you will hear in this episode, through the lenses of his own tools, the Lean Canvas. Join the Future Proof You tribe: Join the Future Proof You tribe by signing up to the FPY newsletter: https://www.julienmarchand.co/ Continue the conversation on this podcast episode in the Future Proof You Tribe, the Facebook Group. Special offers Learn how to launch or pivot a new product in the face of extreme uncertainty. A free 6-week online program. https://leanstack.com/foundations As part of this free course, if you craft the Lean Canvas for your business, I will give you a helping hand by reviewing it in a 1-1 session, book your session here: https://calendly.com/_julienmarchand/lean-canvas-diagnostic Connect with Ash Maurya: LinkedIn Profile URL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashmaurya/ Inspiring soundtrack: My 10-year old Taiyo is the one in charge of the soundtrack. In his own words, he is a 'musical entrepreneur'. Every week he plays covers and his own compositions for the pleasure of the tourists in Manly, Sydney Australia. Check out his YouTube channel and share it with your kids to inspire them: http://www.TaiyoMarchand.com/Life is good when you #FutureProofYou, your Family and your Business...in that order!
Introduction Today I am chatting with Ash Maurya who is building his Leanstack business in harmony with his family in Austin Texas. Ash is the creator of the Lean Canvas Business Model tool and author of Running Lean and Scaling Lean. What I saw in Ash is that he was an entrepreneur who had started and built several startups and had reflected on his experience as an entrepreneur and as a parent. This is what you will hear in this episode, through the lenses of his own tools, the Lean Canvas. Join the Future Proof You tribe: Join the Future Proof You tribe by signing up to the FPY newsletter: https://www.julienmarchand.co/ Continue the conversation on this podcast episode in the Future Proof You Tribe, the Facebook Group. Special offers Learn how to launch or pivot a new product in the face of extreme uncertainty. A free 6-week online program. https://leanstack.com/foundations As part of this free course, if you craft the Lean Canvas for your business, I will give you a helping hand by reviewing it in a 1-1 session, book your session here: https://calendly.com/_julienmarchand/lean-canvas-diagnostic Connect with Ash Maurya: LinkedIn Profile URL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashmaurya/ Inspiring soundtrack: My 10-year old Taiyo is the one in charge of the soundtrack. In his own words, he is a 'musical entrepreneur'. Every week he plays covers and his own compositions for the pleasure of the tourists in Manly, Sydney Australia. Check out his YouTube channel and share it with your kids to inspire them: http://www.TaiyoMarchand.com/Life is good when you #FutureProofYou, your Family and your Business...in that order!
Heute stelle ich dir einige Bücher vor, die dich und dein Unternehmen nach vorne bringen! 1. New Workspace Playbook - https://amzn.to/3jCMwrA 2. Digital Innovation Playbook - https://amzn.to/3dbElAa 3. Scaling Lean - https://amzn.to/3lit5ou 4. Scaling Up - https://amzn.to/3fpSNEr 5. Die 50 wichtigsten Themen der Digitalisierung - https://amzn.to/32ZyZTb 6. Digital denken, statt Umsatz verschenken - https://amzn.to/30KHL7M
Life’s too short to build something nobody wants. After building products for more than a decade, and throughout that time searching for a better, and faster way for building successful products. Ash Maurya joined and contributed significantly to the diffusion of the Lean Startup movement along with Eric Ries and Steve Blank. His books Running Lean, Scaling Lean, had a huge impact on me alongside the Lean Canvas that is an amazing tool widely used by founders and early-stage startups around the globe. Among many lessons, he has learned as a founder and entrepreneur here are the 3 most important: - Listening to customers is key, but you have to know-how. - Life is too short to build something nobody wants. - Love the Problem, Not Your Solution.
Join Cullen Pope host of the Silicon Beach Radio program and podcast https://eattmag.com/silicon-beach-radio/ Launceston now has a Beach, Launceston Silicon Beach. 10th Sept 2016 saw the birth of Australia's newest Silicon Beach community - in Launceston, Tasmania. We will work with Cowork Launceston and Startup Tasmania to promote Tasmania as one of the best places in the world to run a startup. The state offers super-fast NBN, clean air, healthy lifestyle, mild weather and low-cost housing to name a few of the attractions. Silicon Beach Radio is backed by the support of EATT Magazine podcast. EATT Magazine has recently released a series of interactive videos https://eattmag.com/15-video-how-to-send-us-your-english-lesson-questions-and-answers/ where beginners in English can send English lesson questions and answers online. With a strong focus on Food & AgriTech along with clean energy, the island state is educating the future knowledge workers and entrepreneurs. Primary school children are learning robotics and Illuminate Education (working out of Cowork Launceston) is running entrepreneurship programs for secondary students. Tasmania will make an ideal testing ground for startups wanting to test their ideas prior to launch. We are on course to connect Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat and the other Silicon Beaches around Australia as one network to create a truly powerful startup community - Silicon Beach Australia. Visit Silicon Beach TV channel for more live streams from our trip - it wasn't all work ;) Keep an ear out for Cullen's interview with Athula on SB Radio (will be online soon). Why not take a flight down to Launceston (starting at $49 from Jetstar) and have a few days coworkation at Cowork Launceston? They are on NBN with 100 Mbps down and 40 Mbps up, you’ll love the speed. Mention Silicon Beach for a special discount on coworking. We recommend Airbnb for accommodation and don't forget to check out the Cataract Gorge and take a ride on the chairlift just half an hour walk from the CBD. Thanks to our sponsors TCF Services, Ash Mayura's Scaling Lean and Catherine Moolenschot's Inspire Greatness. Without them, LSB would not have been possible.
Ash Maurya on Rocketship.FM, Richard Cheng on the Drunken PM, Jeff Gothelf on Boss Level, the mutual learning model on Troubleshooting Agile, and Amy Edmondson on Lead From The Heart. I’d love for you to email me with any comments about the show or any suggestions for podcasts I might want to feature. Email podcast@thekguy.com. This episode covers the five podcast episodes I found most interesting and wanted to share links to during the two week period starting May 27, 2019. These podcast episodes may have been released much earlier, but this was the fortnight when I started sharing links to them to my social network followers. ASH MAURYA ON ROCKETSHIP.FM The Rocketship.FM podcast featured Ash Maurya with hosts Michael Sacca and Mike Belsito. They started by talking about the lean canvas. Ash described the lean canvas as a one-page business planning tool that acts as an alternative to spending time writing a large document and exists because, when we start a new business, we know very little about it. The lean canvas was derived from Alex Osterwalder’s business model canvas and optimized for early-stage entrepreneurs. Ash says the lean canvas addresses the innovator’s bias of spending too much time thinking and talking about the solution. It asks questions like: Who are your customers? Who might be the early adopters? Why would they use your solution? How will you get your solution in front of those customers? How will you defend against competition? Where does the money come from? What is the revenue stream? Ash then described writing a follow-up book to Running Lean called Scaling Lean because readers of the first book wanted a better way to satisfy stakeholders looking for financial forecasts. He sees Running Lean as a book for the entrepreneur-to-customer conversation and Scaling Lean as a book for the conversation between the entrepreneur and other stakeholders. The usual way of sizing a market is by estimating revenue from what percentage of a market one thinks one can take, which Ash calls working top-down. Instead, Scaling Lean works bottom-up by modeling the inputs to customer value (such as a pricing model and a lifetime value model) and using this customer value model to produce a revenue estimate. Scaling Lean encourages a staged launch for your business. He compares this with Tesla’s rollout of the Model 3 by testing the riskiest assumptions of the business model by producing the Roadster, Model S, and Model X first. They talked about Fermi estimation and how you can use it to invalidate a model in as little as five minutes. Regarding inputs to such estimates, he says pricing is the most critical, followed by potential lifetime of a customer. He then says you test your estimate against the minimum success criteria, that is, the minimum number (revenue, impact, etc.) for the years invested in the startup to not have been a waste of time. You use this to build your traction model and, with each milestone, you think in terms of achieving ten times what you achieved in the previous milestone. Returning to the Tesla example, the Model S was intended be sold at ten times the quantity of the Roadster and the Model 3 is intended to sell at ten times the quantity of the Model S. Regarding the order in which to address risk, he says to think of the game Jenga (where you try to find where the stack is strongest and move pieces from there) and do the opposite. You want to build the riskiest parts first. He also shared a metaphor for preferring a focus on the customer’s problem over a solution-focus. He describes a solution-focus as building a key and then looking for a door it will open. Problem-focus, by contrast, is like finding a door that needs to be opened and trying to build a key for it. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/interview-ash-maurya-of-lean-canvas-on-scaling-lean/id808014240?i=1000437174185 Website link: https://omny.fm/shows/rocketship-fm/interview-ash-maurya-of-lean-canvas-on-scaling-l-1 RICHARD CHENG ON THE DRUNKEN PM The Drunken PM podcast featured Richard Cheng with host Dave Prior. They talked about product ownership anti-patterns such as a product owner treating the dev team like they’re her vendor or like they report to her. This puts you in a situation where the team is incentivized to keep the PO happy rather than tell her the unvarnished truth all the time. In these situations, the dev teams don’t tell the PO about problems right away and the later the PO finds out, the fewer options she has for addressing them. Instead, Richard says we need a safe environment where the dev team and PO can be open and candid with each other. They talked about whether or not building prototypes is agile and Dave admitted that he is not a big subscriber to Henrik Kniberg’s “skateboard - bicycle - motorcycle - car” model of incremental development and, if he knows he’s going to have a car in the end, he would prefer you build a steering wheel so he can give feedback on it. Richard pointed out that the danger of this line of thinking is that you get a tendency to build vertical layers instead of horizontal slices. Richard doesn’t want a technical person as his product owner since he believes that technical people favor these vertical layers. I take issue with the idea that a “technical person” is automatically assumed to have no “product thinking” skills. I think a better way to put it is to say he doesn’t want someone who lacks the training in lean startup and product management skills in the PO role, regardless of their technical skills. Other than that, I’m in total agreement with Richard here, especially regarding how the same line of thinking that leads to software being delivered in vertical layers also leads to vertically-layered organizational design. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-perfect-product-owner-w-richard-cheng-cst/id1121124593?i=1000436943035 Website link: https://soundcloud.com/drunkenpmradio/richard-cheng-the-perfect-product-owner-april-2019 JEFF GOTHELF ON THE BOSS LEVEL PODCAST The Boss Level podcast featured Jeff Gothelf with host Sami Honkonen. They started with a discussion of humility and the idea of having strong opinions, weakly held. Jeff says we need to admit that the ideas we put forward, even our strategic vision, are just our best guesses. When a leader puts out such a vision, she needs to open up room for her team to discuss and push back on those ideas. Sami added that this change in thinking coincides with a change in terminology to be a better fit for a world of uncertainty where words like roadmap get replaced with words like assumption, belief, bet, and experiment. They then addressed the topic of collaboration. For Jeff, organizing for collaboration means organizing in cross-functional teams and he says that even digital native organizations often get this wrong. He also says that these teams need to be empowered to make their own sprint-level decisions as they are closest to the information and, if they get it wrong, they can correct it in the next sprint. Jeff thinks the motto of every organization today should be to say that they are, in Astro Teller’s words, “enthusiastic skeptics,” excited to figure out the next improvement to their product or service. Sami asked about how organizations can change so that they begin to value continuous learning. Jeff says that we’re fighting a hundred years of manufacturing mindset that says, “The more stuff we make, the more value we deliver to our customers.” In this mindset, people see customer site visits and having engineers talk to customers as somehow less productive. He says that companies resist changing this mindset for two reasons: 1) it feels like it takes authority away from leaders; and 2) incentive structures: we don’t pay people for discovery work or collaboration or agility; we pay them for heroism and for delivery. Jeff says that this is the reason organizations fail to become agile or digitally transform: they buy all the books and training, change language and team structures, build tribes, chapters, guilds, and squads, but they don’t change the performance management system. They still measure people on the old way of working. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/jeff-gothelf-on-sense-and-respond/id1041885043?i=1000437033229 Website link: https://www.bosslevelpodcast.com/jeff-gothelf-on-sense-and-respond/ THE MUTUAL LEARNING MODEL ON TROUBLESHOOTING AGILE The Troubleshooting Agile podcast, with hosts Jeffrey Fredrick and Douglas Squirrel, featured a three-part series on the mutual learning model. The first two episodes covered the first three values of the mutual learning model: informed choice, transparency, and curiosity. The third episode covered accountability and compassion. It started with a definition of accountability from the article “Eight Behaviours for Smarter Teams” and Squirrel told a story about the origin of the word “accountability” from the time of Henry II. Jeffrey described how his relationship of accountability was transformed when he watched a talk by Kent Beck called, “Ease At Work.” Kent talked about accountability as a personal obligation to render an account of his own thoughts and feelings and how this changed Kent’s experience at work. Jeffrey sees this kind of accountability as being important for having a learning culture at work and supporting the previous two values of transparency and curiosity. Jeffrey talked about the connection between accountability and compassion, saying that when people are accountable to one another, it is a lot easier to be compassionate because you start to understand more of what went into their actions and the positions they’re arguing for. Jeffrey then pointed out a place where he finds a lack of compassion for the people in power. They also included a discussion of having compassion for yourself. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/mutual-learning-model-accountability-and-compassion/id1327456890?i=1000437494515 Website link: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/mutual-learning-model-accountability-and-compassion AMY EDMONDSON ON LEAD FROM THE HEART The Lead From The Heart podcast featured Amy Edmondson with host Mark Crowley. Amy defined a “psychologically safe workplace” as one in which people believe they can bring their full self to work, speak up, and have their ideas, questions, and concerns welcomed. She says workplaces with high psychological safety are uncommon and organizations often have pockets of both low and high psychological safety. They talked about Google’s use of Amy’s psychological safety research to figure out what makes for high team performance. Mark made a distinction between psychological safety and physical safety and Amy responded that the two kinds of safety actually have a strong relationship. She cited the airline industry discovering through the investigation of black boxes that the majority of crashes involved somebody recognizing a concern and not being heard. She then clarified a common misconception about psychological safety. She said that when she refers to a workplace as being psychologically safe, she doesn’t mean that those in such a workplace are free from criticism or pushback or always feel good about themselves. She actually means the opposite. Psychologically safe workplaces have a high degree of candor. She contrasted this with college campuses that hold “safe spaces” where you cannot say anything that may remotely hurt someone’s feelings. Mark asked why we hold back on candor. Amy says it is a combination of how we’re socialized and how our brains work. We are highly tuned in to other’s impressions of us, particularly in hierarchical contexts. She says that many managers don’t create the conditions for psychological safety because they tend to mimic the behavior of the managers they’ve had in the past and haven’t stopped to connect their own experience of when they’ve done their best work to their management or leadership style so that their employees can do their best work. She says this tendency is a reflex and the problem is that, every now and then, this reflex is given a faulty signal that it works. For example, managing through fear can work in the short term when the task is simple and prescribed, clearly measured, and done individually. But very little of our work today has those attributes: it is complex, collaborative, and requires ingenuity to do it well. Under those conditions, fear doesn’t work. They talked about what you would look for in a candidate for a management position to ensure you get someone who can create a psychologically safe environment. She says that you want to look for people with high emotional intelligence. They should care about other’s opinions and needs but have enough self-awareness to know that their own life doesn’t depend on approval from others. You’re looking instead for passion, curiosity, and drive. Mark brought up a Deloitte study that said that 70% of people choose not to speak up about a problem at work even when they believe that not addressing it will harm the company. Amy says this is not because people rationally weigh the odds but is an unconscious act of spontaneous sense-making and temporal discounting in which we overweight an immediate event and underweight future events. Managers can address this, she says, by being willing to name the challenges faced and by asking questions. Mark asked about what we can learn from the case studies she has written about: the Wells Fargo fraudulent accounts scandal and Volkswagen emissions scandal. Amy asks us to imagine that the goals that the Wells Fargo and Volkswagen executives set for their organizations were not understood to be ridiculous at the outset and may have been intended as stretch goals. She says that when you are eager to set stretch goals, you need to have open ears. Being able to sell eight financial services products per customer is a hypothesis. Being able to create a green diesel that passes emissions tests in the US is a hypothesis. There is nothing wrong with setting these as stretch goals as long as you also encourage the people selling and developing these products to report all of the data that is coming back from the field and you adjust the goals based on this data. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/amy-edmondson-why-psychological-safety-breeds-exceptionally/id1365633369?i=1000431400656 Website link: https://www.blubrry.com/leadfromtheheartpodcast/42334779/amy-edmondson-why-psychological-safety-breeds-exceptionally-high-performing-teams/ FEEDBACK Ask questions, make comments, and let your voice be heard by emailing podcast@thekguy.com. Twitter: https://twitter.com/thekguy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithmmcdonald/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekguypage Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_k_guy/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheKGuy Website:
Ash Maurya is a practitioner and entrepreneur. Author of Running Lean, Scaling Lean and the Lean Canvas, built on top of the Business Model Canvas. Ash is also the founder of LEANSTACK. I took the chance to ask Ash a few questions. I tried to limit those as I had so many things I wanted to ask him. And Ash was kind enough to answer all of them! Key takeaways Entrepreneurs are risk-averse Entrepreneurship is about getting in love with the problem Avoid to fall in the innovator’s bias, or getting in love with the solution Demo-sell-build rather than build-demo-sell There is a key metric to assess the success of a business: Traction! Business models can be categorized according to the actors and interactions involved in three kinds: direct, multisided and marketplace Business models are always evolving Searching for the proper business model means making it profitable Look for the smallest market, that is big enough to make your business sustainable You need to be fast from idea to execution, as a few ideas will turn out to be successful
Today we talk with Ash Maurya, the creator of the Lean Canvas and most recently the author of Scaling Lean. His posts and advice have been featured in Inc., Forbes, and Fortune and we're incredibly excited to share his insights with you on scaling through the lean methodology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I have a very special guest, one of the pioneers of one of the most popular innovation frameworks these days: the lean startup framework. My guest is Ash Maurya, who along with Eric Ries, did some substantial work in this field, laying the foundations of this concept. You'll learn in this episode why this idea is still important today, especially in hardware field after it was born around the last financial crisis. You'll get to hear also what companies are using it, some tactics you can use to make it work for you and also how others use it so you can get inspired. Ash will describe some of the steps, milestones you should hit during the development. In addition he'll highlight some of the latest cutting-edge innovation topics he's been working on which connects with my one of past episodes, episode 18 with Alan Klement when we discussed the Jobs To Be Done framework. Enjoy this episode. Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com Show highlights can be seen below: The trigger behind the creation of the Lean Startup innovation framework [1:56] Some examples of big and small companies that prove Lean Startup principles are universal when applying the right tactics [7:24] Strategies that hardware startups use to go faster than their competitors [10:27] The three stages of Lean Startup, the risks associated with them and recommendations on how to move successfully through each one [16:18] Running Lean, Scaling Lean and the Customer Forces Canvas – when and how to use them [24:25] How a fisherman in South America surprisingly benefited from Lean Startup principles [29:11] If you could go back in time in your 20s, what notes would you give yourself? [34:08] If you had to name a book, which one had the biggest impact on your entrepreneurial career? [34:48] A routine hack for accomplishment-driven makers [36:25] Why sharing stories help us thrive in cultures with different nuances [38:00] What is the best way to reach Ash? [40:28]
Individuals get disrupted, not companies Barry O’Reilly is the Author of Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results and Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale. In this episode, Barry and Brian Ardinger discuss creating a culture of experimentation in enterprises and seeing everything as an assumption. Barry came to the U.S. from Ireland and worked at City Search “putting people on the Internet.” He then joined a mobile games development company, which helped him develop an experimental mindset. After this, he moved to Australia to make next-gen content for E-learning in Southeast Asia. Finally, he joined a consultancy in London called ThoughtWorks, where he helped companies reinvent their portfolio management and learn how to fund and test ideas. In Lean Enterprise, Barry’s first book, he highlights how to create experimentation in enterprises. Amazon does this well because the culture encourages cheap and fast experimentation. They can gather better data, unlearn existing beliefs, and learn new behavior which helps them break through and innovate. In Barry's new book, Unlearn, he says people recognize that they always have to be learning, but it’s tough to learn new things. The limiting factor is the ability to unlearn behavior especially when it’s made the person successful. Barry highlights the most bureaucratic regulated companies and describes how they are making amazing changes. Barry also hosts Exec Camp, where execs leave their businesses for up to eight weeks to launch new companies that are intended to disrupt their existing companies. It’s like an accelerator for senior leaders. They learn and unlearn new things about themselves. For example, the International Airlines Group came to Exec Camp, to launch six new ideas to disrupt the airline industry. They tested ideas with customers and had to unlearn the behavior of pushing ideas on customers. They soon began to see everything as an assumption. We’re conditioned to believe that the way we solve a customer problem is the only way to do it, however, tech changes how we can solve problems. Individuals get disrupted not companies. FOR MORE INFO To find out more, go to Barryoreilly.com on Twitter @BarryOReilly. You can also find his book on Amazon. If you liked this podcast, try Ep 99 Ryan Jacoby with Machine, Ep 43 Ash Maurya, Author of Scaling Lean, and Ep. 20 Lisa Kay Solomon with Design a Better Business GET THE LATEST RESOURCES Get the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HERE For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy
Barry O’Reilly is the Author of Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results and Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale. He and Brian Ardinger discuss creating a culture of experimentation in enterprises and seeing everything as an assumption. Barry came to the U.S. originally from Ireland on a student visa and worked at City Search “putting people on the Internet.” He soon joined a mobile games development company and created a popular game called Wireless Pets. Soon large corporations started calling asking the company to build games. This caused Barry to develop an experimental mindset. Soon Barry moved to Australia to build next-gen content for E-learning in Southeast Asia. Game design and game theory is teaching new skills in safe environment. It allows for rapid experimentation and behavior. Then Barry joined a consultancy in London called ThoughtWorks. They were pioneers in Agile software development where he worked with companies to reinvent portfolio management and how to fund and test ideas. Barry’s first book, Lean Enterprise, highlights how to create experimentation in enterprises. Amazon does this well because they have a culture that makes experimentation cheap and fast. They are able to gather better data and are unlearning existing beliefs and learning new ones that can help them break through and innovate. In his new book, Unlearn, Barry says people recognize that we always have to be learning, but it’s tough to learn new stuff. The limiting factor is the ability to unlearn behavior especially when it’s made you successful. Letting go and moving away from things that limit us, like outdated info. Barry highlights the most bureaucratic regulated companies in his book and describes how these people are making amazing changes. Barry also hosts Exec Camp, where execs leave their businesses for up to 8 weeks to launch new businesses to disrupt their existing companies. It’s like an accelerator for senior leaders. They learn and unlearn new things about themselves. For example, the International Airlines Group came to Exec Camp, to launch six new ideas to disrupt the airline industry. They tested ideas with customers and had to unlearn the behavior of pushing ideas on customers. They soon began to see everything as an assumption. We’re conditioned to believe that the way we solve a customer problem is the only way to do it. Tech changes how to solve problems. Startups are able to start with a blank set of assumptions. Individuals get disrupted not companies. If you are adapting your features and behaviors, you won’t be disrupted. May need to shift your tactics or beliefs. FOR MORE INFO To find out more, go to Barryoreilly.com on Twitter @BarryOReilly. You can also find his book on Amazon. If you liked this podcast, try Ep 99 Ryan Jacoby with Machine, Ep 43 Ash Maurya, Author of Scaling Lean, and Ep. 20 Lisa Kay Solomon with Design a Better Business GET THE LATEST RESOURCES Get the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HERE For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy
Justo Hidalgo co-founded 24symbols 8 years ago, and this 'Spotify for Books' contender is still around and successful. In this week's podcast, we talk about how books really can compete against Angry Birds, the importance of continuing to provide ways for people to easily find and read books, and of balancing your work and home life. In the episode, Justo mentions several great business books in passing so I thought I'd list them here for you. Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown (Amazon / Kobo); Scaling Lean by Ash Maurya (Amazon / Kobo); The Founder's Dilemmas by Noam Wasserman (Amazon / Kobo); Venture Deals by Brad Feld (Amazon / Kobo); New Venture Creation by Geoffrey Timmons (apparently out of print but available from Amazon). Transcript (This is a bit of an experiment - let me know if you like transcripts!) John: [00:00:35] Welcome back to Talking Through My Hat. Today I'm talking with Justo Hidalgo, CEO and co-founder of 24symbols, the subscription service for ebooks. He's also an author, a university professor teaching product strategy and innovation. And I just discovered he's also a radio host. So thanks for talking to me today Justo. Justo: [00:00:53] Yeah. It's a pleasure to be here. John: [00:00:56] Yeah, so 24symbols has been around for over eight years now, which is quite an achievement. How've you distinguished yourself from all the other e-book subscription services that have come and gone in that time? What's kind of unique 24symbols thing? Justo: [00:01:10] Well if I really knew [laughs] I would probably sell the idea. Oh yeah the idea's still the same. You know, it's a subscription service for ebooks as you said and other kinds of cultural and entertainment assets like comic books and audiobooks. I believe that the reason we are still here is that since the start, it was very clear for us that these was a long race. That it was gonna take time and that we needed partners to work with us so very very very early in the state as soon as we could we started talking to partners especially in the customer acquisition stage. You continue having the amount of people that wanted to read and that we were unable to reach just because of our size. John: [00:01:53] Okay. So which sort of partners were you kind of linking up with there? Justo: [00:01:57] Oh but mainly right now is mobile carriers. We started having relationships with them in 2013 I think. These are typically launch and relationships both in terms of getting their relationship to work - you know very well how it is to work with big companies! John: [00:02:11] Yeah. Justo: [00:02:12] Yeah. And then of course they need some time to work. So right now we're for example in Latin America in a few countries, also in Germany, and we are also working with having some others. In some of the cases, some regions didn't work. We tried and it didn't work. In other cases, well the unit economics didn't work. You know in some countries for example, where the price of ebooks is too high but they are very used to very low-cost services. Well that's fine - we'd love to work there but that's very difficult. And also we're also started to diversify, to try to find other areas where books are necessary - for example transportation companies, hospitality companies, you know. Anywhere where someone can spend some time reading, we are trying to be there. John: [00:03:00] OK. Yeah. It's the hard thing about business, it's not building a product. It's finding someone to use it. And I think this strategy of working with people who have lots of customers who they need to find interesting things for, like mobile phone companies and as you say trains and hotels and stuff. I think that's a really interesting way of doing that. Justo: [00:03:20] Yes I mean, what we do is very straightforward. I mean we want, as someone from my team always says, we want to feed people books. You know, people want to eat this that we offer. But the difficulty is that being a generic service, a horizontal service, you need to provide a very good value proposition. We have 24symbols the B2C service that allows you to do whatever you want. But then of course you have to look for other ways to reach the people that may not know that they want to read. And this sounds like a very, you know, commercial or product-ish but it's the truth you know what we found it with more carriers, we're finding it in other verticals that people, you know they find out that you know, instead of playing Angry Birds, they can read some books sometimes. John: [00:04:07] Yeah well that's the thing, isn't it, that we say, you know, that books are now in competition with all forms of entertainment but they always were. And, you know, there's something there that people have always liked, so it's gonna be really great. So it's fantastic to find that you're finding this place for yourselves, this way of reaching customers and stuff through these partnerships. Why did you first create 24symbols? What was the big idea where you thought, I'm going to do this mad insane thing and an e-book business. Justo: [00:04:34] Well I think there are many many reasons. First, personally, I always wanted to build a company, so I come from a family where my parents always ran small businesses, and I kind of grew up seeing their difficulties, the challenges, the hard work. John: [00:04:50] A realistic view of what it might be like. Justo: [00:04:52] Yeah yeah. But at the same time, how my parents built something from scratch providing value to the community. You know they started with a drugstore and they started building driving schools - one and two and then three, before they retired. So, for me, it's part of my memories where I had to take chairs from my house to the driving school because suddenly there are lots of people in their theory classes. And then the opposite when there's some competition coming up and there are some struggles there in the family, but I always kind of looked at my parents to see how hard they work and is like: this is cool. But then I start, you know, I did my Computer Science degree, I started working for companies - always small companies but always like with a salary - and I always had, like, yeah this is good but, you know, I want to try to replicate what my parents did in a new way you know, of course, because I had other abilities, you know, my parents... John: [00:05:50] You've got to work on your own skill set than. Justo: [00:05:52] Exactly. My parents were great salesmen and I'm different but I know Computer Science. So that's kind of my first reason. Then, more specifically, 24symbols - technology. In other companies I worked for technology was basically an end, you know, so I spent many years working in a tech company doing data integration stuff, which has been really valuable for me afterwards in 24symbols. And I really enjoyed it. I got my PhD there. All that stuff. But I had the need to build something that people could use as a final result. Basically, what we were building there was a tool to build solutions. And I wanted to be that solution. And then I would say that the third reason is that thinking about that and related to what I have said this act of of the "Spotify for books" at that time. Everything I really wanted, it merged technology of course because at that time creating a cloud reader subscription service with all the cloud DRM was technologically quite challenging. At at the same time it was books, it was basically giving people books to read, which is something I've enjoyed all of my life. So, you know, these three things plus working with my colleagues at that time, my partners that I had worked with them in the past. You know, one of them was a previous student of mine. With another, we had been like 15 years working together - made a lot of sense. So he was kind of the final push as to say: This makes sense. Then of course from a business perspective it looked like people were talking (and you know that because you were at that time very deep) talking about you know subscription services in publishing. There were many doubts but there was also many good opportunities and we decided to give it a go. John: [00:07:37] So how did you form that initial kind of team, the co-founding team, the people who have, hopefully, the same kind of vision, of passion, that you did? How did you build that group? Justo: [00:07:48] Yeah I think that, typically, most of the decisions we make here while creating a company, and you know that very well, John, is pure serendipity or random. But some of the decisions you make are quite thought out. And in this case I think we kind of gave it a good thought. It was basically the four of us initial partners who came from the same company, that B2B tech company I mentioned. So we typically had, you know, coffee or had lunch together and talked about books. Most of the times were business books, but some of the time it was narrative, and we kind of shared this love for books. So at the beginning we would think, you know, of moonlighting projects of bringing American books, business books, to Spain and getting the rights and translating them and, you know, basically becoming a publisher. John: [00:08:38] Yeah. Justo: [00:08:39] I think it is good for the publishing company that we didn't do it! [Laughs] We would have been a horrible publisher, I believe. But that kind of started to say, maybe we should do something about this. And this idea came in early 2010 about the "Spotify for books". And then I remember very well the presentation of Steve Jobs with the first iPad. And that was the moment where it was like, Wow, this is the future. I mean that was our bet. And then it's when we start thinking, OK, with us four, does that make sense? It kind of makes sense - I mean, we have sales people, all of us were technical people. But you know, one of us very high experience in sales and marketing, the CTO had very deep down experience with with this technology, had experience with product and also had lived in the United States for a while doing product management and sales and marketing, so that we kind of had most of what we needed. And of course we missed the publishing side. So that's why one of our first - we tried to, and we found our one of our first investors to be part of the industry in Spain. John: [00:09:53] So, your co-founding group, as you say, you're all technical people so you're presumably all together writing the product, but then sharing out all those other roles as needed, kind of thing. Justo: [00:10:04] Yeah. So, building the product, like coding, it was our CTO Angel. Then I worked in the product and, you know, the data architecture. And then one or the other worked on the product management and product design but the four of us were able to give insight. It's about, you know, we could have very detailed discussions about, I don't know, I remember one discussion about the cache, you know - the book cache - how the information was going to be kept secure or whatever. And so we were able to - but then each of us had very specific roles, which changed completely as, for example, I was going to be focusing a lot on product but, you know, since we launched at the London Book Fair in 2011, it was clear that because of my English, because of all the things I could do that my other partners couldn't do, I was going to be more like PR. John: [00:11:02] Yeah - the public face for the English-speaking world. Justo: [00:11:04] Exactly. And that's that's very funny because out in Spain, it was very clear that one of my partners was the CEO at the time. Everyone knew my partner but nobody knew me. But, you know, outside in the English-speaking world, it was the total opposite. It was like, So you're not the CEO? No, but that doesn't matter! You know, so, and he also talks to me! John: [00:11:27] So you kind of mentioned that you started off with you that little group of you, you were a kind of a book group effectively, and one of the things you did was talk about business books. Is that how you've gone about learning to run a business yourself? Do you go to books, is it kind of web sites and stuff these days? Anything particular that you found useful? Or are you more of a, kind of, throw it up in the air, try it and see what happens? Justo: [00:11:48] You learn from everywhere you can. I mean, I have a very small anecdote about that, you know, then we can talk about books. So, we got accepted by Seedcamp, which is a London-based accelerator that was here in 2012. So one of the incredible things about Seedcamp is that, I think it was a Monday, I said something to them. I said, you know, since we're Spotify for books, I would like to meet someone from Spotify. You know, it would be great. John: [00:12:16] Yeah. Justo: [00:12:17] So, two days, they got me a VP, a vice president of Spotify, talking to him, and the meeting was five minutes - five minutes. It was, like, you know, we're 24symbols blah blah blah blah blah. "Oh yeah?" So he just put the hand on my shoulder and said, "Quit." [Laughing] Sorry, maybe my English is, I speak too fast. Let me explain that again. 24symbols... "Yeah yeah, you're like Spotify but for ebooks. Quit." So this is something like, OK. "So you want to be like Spotify for books, right. What's your background - technical this and that? Yeah OK. So it's great but only take into account one thing: if you are successful, you are not going to be a tech company, you are not going to be a content company, you're going to be a law firm." So, basically Spotify is the best law firm in London, in Europe. OK. So that's going to be your role. You're having a huge understanding of the law. Huge understanding of the relationship with publishers. Yeah that's going to be 24symbols so, you want to go for it, that's it. And for me those five minutes were huge in understanding where I was getting into. We're not a law firm at all but it's true that that, for many years, that's basically what I've done. I've basically learned to negotiate contracts with publishers before we tell other people. So these things are what I learn from. But also of course, you know, I'm more like a product guy so books like the classic "Crossing the chasm" or "The Innovator's Dilemma" or "Made to Stick". But there are also some very recent ones that are really good like Sean Ellis's "Hacking Growth" or Ash Maury's "Scaling Lean", which I don't know how it's going in sales but I think it's much better than his previous one, "Running Lean". And then from a business perspective there's a really good one called "The Founders' Dilemmas" from Noam Wasserman is really good for founders. I'd really recommend it. John: [00:14:20] Yeah, I found that really helpful at the beginning, just to get your head around some of the things that are coming your way. Justo: [00:14:24] Exactly and what it means to be together in a company with your partners. And of course for example Brad Feld's "Venture Deals" is absolutely key in terms of negotiating deals with VCs or business angels. And maybe a lesser known one is called "New Venture Creation" by Geoffrey Timmons. It's from a course at Stanford University - it's a huge book, it's really huge, it's a thousand pages, but full of good information for someone who started a business. So basically, my part of the business plan was written with this book open. Because there are so many good information. John: [00:15:03] So as we think about business and product and stuff, and when you think about it, you look back on eight years and the ways you've grown and changed and stuff. When you think about the next eight years, or eighty years or whatever it is, how do you think about that and where you want to be? And if so, how do you plot that kind of work? John: [00:15:26] Yes, That's a very difficult question! Well, I have no idea! [Laughs] Most of the time, we're trying to continue, I wouldn't say survive exactly but to continue - to thrive and to continue giving them the best product. But it is true that when you see where the industry is going and where the entertainment is going and even what the data for me is. And you know, because of my background, I think a lot about, you know, how this is going to evolve in terms of what kind of entertainment is going to be created. I believe that a service like 24symbols makes sense in the following, you know, five to eight years or whatever. I think a subscription service - the area of consumption instead of ownership - is there. People are consuming more Netflix, more HBO, more Spotify, more Amazon Prime. So we're looking to use that as part of our life. I think in terms of ownership, we're always going to own things and it's because it's an integral part of who we are as a species. So everyone, you know, all of us are still going to have books - I still have a full room of books - but they're going to be the books that are important to us. And it's going to be the same with everything. John: [00:16:40] I think this is interesting. We often hear "book people" talk about how it's really important that people buy books and own books and stuff, and this terrible, terrible modern thing of subscription is awful. When I was growing up, most of the books I read, I got from the library. They weren't my books. I took them for a week, I read them, and I gave them back. If I wanted to read it again I had to go back, find the book and bring it in. And OK, yes, then you'd find your favourite books or favourite authors and then you would buy those and want to own them for the long term. And I think we get a little bit too obsessed with ownership, you know. Borrowing, subscription stuff, is actually, has always been a really good low-barrier way to discover stuff. Justo: [00:17:21] Absolutely. You know, of course I have to agree! John: [00:17:26] Yeah you would, of course. Justo: [00:17:27] But I don't think this is a fight between, you know, print books or having books. There are some books that we're going to want to have because it's part of our life. And actually we might actually buy a better edition because we want to have it there, but because he has a story. And there's some others like, you know, I read it, that's fine. I have some notes, that's fine. You know, 24 symbols or whoever, you keep that. Just in case. But that's that's how I say to think of a more ahead is, you know. How people or why people read I think is the question to try to solve. John: [00:18:00] Yeah I think that's going to be a fascinating one. So when you look at the business, when you look at 24symbols, what is it that you find hardest about being a CEO, about running the business being a founder whatever? You know, some things obviously come naturally and, for you I guess from the sound of it, product is your focus and that's what you like. But what are the things you kind of shy away from but still have to do? Justo: [00:18:22] But still have to do, yes. This is totally personal, I mean, as Justo. I don't like to negotiate. And I know that's that's a horrible thing to say as a CEO. But you know I decided many years ago that I was going to be honest on this. I have to do it and of course, if you have to be hard on a negotiation, you have to be hard. But, man, it's just some people that enjoy negotiating, you know, it's like, No no, we have to negotiate. It's like, no, you know, let's get a deal fast, that's it, you know. And that I have my own issues with that. Then of course you have to learn and I've been successful in some negotiations. But wow, for me that's the hard thing. John: [00:19:10] That's really interesting. When we were talking earlier, actually before we started the show itself, of this thing of running a business and being a parent. I mean I'm in the same kind of shoes as you with kids and I love that you were sharing a quick story about looking after your daughter while you were having to do a presentation. Justo: [00:19:31] Oh yeah. Yes. Yes. The thing is that my wife and I, we both have companies so we both are entrepreneurs. She's more in the health side and I'm more in the book side. We have a daughter, an almost 4 year old daughter, and we have to kind of keep a balance of how we take care of that. Because for us taking care of Olivia is a priority. So it has good things, you know. I can take her to school every single morning, no problem. But there's moments where, you know, it's impossible to manage and so this year, this academic year, there's been two occasions where I had to give a talk to, in both cases, like 150-200 people. And I couldn't find someone to take care of Olivia. So I said that to the organisers and in both cases they said, Just come with her. Like, are you sure? It's like, well let's try it. So you know there were some people taking care of her, playing with her while I was giving my talk. But in both of them she just wanted to be with me, so she would be up with me in the final minutes or whatever. But in the first one, she came to me while I was giving the talk - actually the talk was in English so kind of my brain was totally busy with, you know, in general translating everything I want to say. And she just came to me and said, Daddy! Yeah you want you come here? Yes, but I want to go pee. Just like that. Well, can you what with this other person? No no no no, I want to go with you. So I had to ask the audience can you wait for five minutes? [Laughter] And the audience started to clap and, you know, we go. But I was totally embarrassed because for me, you know, this is serious. There's like, I'm giving a talk. John: [00:21:21] Two halves of your life blending. Justo: [00:21:23] Yeah. But the audience saw it as, you know, this is life. This is life as well and people are starting to understand that this happens. And I wouldn't rush with her. You know, she did what she had to do and then we came back, and people were clapping again and I finished and everything went well. They invited me to give a talk again. John: [00:21:39] So that went very well then. Justo: [00:21:41] That went well. But, yes, this is what you have to do when you have a startup and you want you to continue engaging and commiting to your family. John: [00:21:51] So as you look back over the last 8 years or so of running this business, creating it, building it - what have you learned about yourself from doing that? You know, do you still think of yourself as the same person or have you learned more about who you are or have you changed? Justo: [00:22:08] Yes I think everyone in 8 years changes a lot, you know, regardless of what you do. But it's true that running your business means having to make a lot of decisions, having to do things that you didn't expect that you would do and even enjoying it throughout the process. As I said, I never thought that I could negotiate the things I've been able to negotiate. I came from a career, a professional career, that was basically meant to be an expert in a very specific area. I did my PhD in data integration so I was meant to be that. John: [00:22:44] More specialist kind of thing. Justo: [00:22:47] Very specialist. And so even when I decided to be part of this, even my previous boss, who is someone I truly respect for everything he's done, was like: are you sure? You could be a big-data expert and things like that. You know what it's like. I don't know if I would be able to do that, but I want to try this. And it taught me a lot about, you know, having to manage many things at the same time and all that stuff. And then one thing I learned is, for us as for any company, we've had our ups and downs. And I remember, in 2012 we had a very very strong down and I never thought I would be able to have this, well now this word is resilience, right? It's to continue. We were like 15 months without having payments at all, you have no salary. And we are not rich. We don't come from rich families. So we had to do many different things because we believed and that, and for 15 months it was like I don't know how I'm going to do it. Of course sometimes you think, I'm what, 38 at that time or 36, 37. And I looked at my account and it was like, What am I doing? You know this doesn't make any sense. But you know I like this. I think this makes sense to me and you continue doing it. John: [00:24:06] So what is it that then brings you back every day in the face of those difficulties? It gets very real sometimes doesn't it? Justo: [00:24:14] Yes. John: [00:24:15] What brings you back? Justo: [00:24:18] I think in this case, at least for 24symbols, it's this vision. As I said before, I wanted to build something that could be used by people. And I know this sounds very typical but in my case at least this is true is of course we have our bugs, we have our complaints, but also we have lots of people saying, hey I'm enjoying! I read everyday with you, you know, with your books and this is just amazing. This is just amazing that you are building up a service where hundreds of thousands of people are being able to read and that's what in 2012 and other years it's like, OK one more. There's a challenge there. I remember I had a chance to talk to Ash Maurya the author of "Running Lean" and "Scaling Lean". And we were talking and he kind of agreed with me at that time that we still need to learn more about entrepreneurship like in judo or martial arts. You know, when you do martial arts, this is something you are taught: when you quit. You know, these guys are beating me. Okay so let's quit. You know, that's it. In entrepreneurship, you don't know that, you have no idea. There is no one who can tell you and in our case in 2010 and all the years, we were lucky but we could have not been lucky and we would have been in trouble. So that's I think in terms of knowing or learning more about what it means to build a company or a startup. We still need to learn more about, you know, when to quit, when it's the right moment to say that's it. John: [00:25:51] We gave it our best shot. John: [00:25:52] That's it, you know, next. John: [00:25:56] Well that seems a very topical note on which to say thanks very much Justo for that fascinating conversation and it's been great to hear from you again. Justo: [00:26:03] It's great you always talk to you John. Thanks so much. John: [00:26:07] Thanks to Justo for that fantastic interview. I'm always energized when I talk to him because he's got this real passion for just making books available to people. And it's really great, it's been great over years now to follow 24symbols in the way that they have persisted and survived. There are so many companies that have been touted as the "Spotify for books" and they're still here, they're still doing really well and just getting books in front of people. And the fact that, you know, this consumption model of streaming books, of borrowing books, of just having books for a while is nothing new. You know, as I said in the interview, you know, we've borrowed books from libraries for hundreds of years, decades. And this is just the new iteration of that model. So it is great to see people pushing that forward and developing it. So thanks very much to Justo. Next week we're going to be talking to Emma Donnan who is a ghostwriter. If you've ever wondered what ghostwriters do, how they go about things, how they fit into the world of publishing, tune in next week and hear what Emma has to say. Until then thank you very much.
Today we talk with Ash Maurya, the creator of the Lean Canvas and most recently the author of Scaling Lean. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
When Lean-curious companies get stalled implementing the practice, they’ll often cite organizational complexities, politics, and dependencies as insurmountable obstacles. The methodology can be scaled, though — not just as culture and philosophy, but as tactical process. In this practical presentation offering detailed case studies, Jeff Gothelf (author of Lean UX and the upcoming Sense and Respond) will share several methods for scaling Lean Startup techniques in large organizations. Jeff will cover knowledge management, intra-team dependencies, infrastructure requirements, and several other elements of ensuring successful Lean Startup practices in companies of any size.
Learn how Macy’s, a 150-year-old retail giant, went from testing one Lean team to funding 22 Lean teams in two years. The retailer’s journey is one of eating its own dog food – continuously testing, learning, and using build-measure-learn cycles, customer feedback, and business results to make believers out of even the most skeptical stakeholders and partners. Cindy Peterson and Janel Wellborn will share their top ten learnings that you can apply to scaling Lean in a large enterprise.
Jack Skeels is the CEO and Founder of AgencyAgile. There are many organizations devoted to helping companies transform to agile, but AgencyAgile is the only one that is solely focused on helping Digital Agencies adopt Agile. In this interview Jack shares his thoughts on Agile and what makes it succeed or fail in a Digital Agency context. SHOW NOTES 00:10 Interview Begins 00:40 Background on Jack and Agency Agile 01:24 How Jack ended up helping Digital Agencies adopt Agile 05:10 Trying out different types of Agile 06:10 Taking a job so you can run experiments in how to manage projects 08:12 You can’t make people trust 09:13 Jack’s initial questions for management: How much pain are you in? How much gain do you want? 09:52 What is the hardest part for a Digital Agency adopting Agile? 11:52 Transforming the agency AND their clients. Training is not enough 13:40 Do we need a new flavor of Agile tailored to Digital Agencies? 17:26 Does Agile actually make things work better? Are there actual business benefits? 18:38 How does AgencyAgile “sell” Agile to companies? 21:32 We need to stop disempower team members. They care as much as we do. 24:39 Can we actually get consistent cross-functional teams in an Agency? 25:22 Designing work stream teams of 25 26:07 Transforming the whole agency at once 27:31 Are there clients who are not ready to transform yet? 31:10 Letting go of learned behavior 32:30 What do we need for Agile to work in a Digital Agency? 33:19 Agile will work when it becomes a management initiative NOT a Project Management Initiative 34:53 How you can learn more about the AgencyAgile approach 36:10 Books about Agile that Jack recommends 37:00 Jack response to “We can’t do Agile because we’re fixed bid.” 38:10 Advice from Jack for those who want to adopt Agile in a digital agency 39:07 Where you can learn more about Jack 40:11 Interview Ends Links Mentioned in the Podcast 2017 Digital PM Summit: http://bureauofdigital.com/summits/digital-pm-2017/ Books by Bas Vodde and Craig Larman Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile Development http://amzn.to/2uCR6AV Scaling Lean & Agile Development http://amzn.to/2wXVKWG Contacting Jack: Website: https://www.agencyagile.com Blog: https://www.agencyagile.com/insights/ Medium: https://medium.com/@jackskeels Twitter : https://twitter.com/agencyagile LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackaskeels/ If you are interested in this topic, please stay tuned for more. In preparation for a session I am leading at the 2017 Digital PM Summit (ttp://bureauofdigital.com/summits/digital-pm-2017/), I have been doing lots of interviews about how to make Agile work in a digital environment.
Ash Maurya is founder and speaker, and author of the books Running Lean and Scaling Lean. We discuss his kids’ Montessori education, and how he borrows those same principles for his professional work.
We are joined by Ash Maurya, CEO of LeanStack, creator of #LeanCanvas and author of Running Lean and Scaling Lean. https://app.leanstack.com/
We are joined by Ash Maurya, CEO of LeanStack and author of Running Lean and Scaling Lean. Damien Browne, Founder, CEO of Standard access tells us about his Startup.
Today’s interview is with Ash Maurya, the author of Running Lean and his newest book Scaling Lean. With decades of experiences as an entrepreneur and almost 10 years as a lean coach, Ash talked about the product design mistake that almost all innovators make, and where he tells those innovators to go with their failed product and what to do with it. Ash also gave an outline of how his new book adds to the ongoing innovation conversation by giving practical tips and exercises for designing value metrics, among many other things. Connect with Ash at leanstack.com and find out more about the Inside Outside Innovation Summit at theiosummit.com For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy
In this edition of the Agile India Podcast, Chris and Sean will be discussing an upcoming talk by Jez Humble titled "Why Scaling Agile Doesn't Work" - https://confengine.com/agile-india-2017/proposal/3551/why-scaling-agile-doesnt-work Chris and Sean explore some of the challenges of scaling agile and what can be done about it. Below are some of the various resources discussed during this podcast: Scaling Lean & Agile Development - Craig Larman and Bas Vodde - https://www.amazon.in/Scaling-Lean-Agile-Development-Organizational-ebook/dp/B001PBSDIE?ie=UTF8&keywords=bas%20vodde&qid=1483152241&ref_=sr_1_3&sr=8-3 12 Signs You’re Working in a Feature Factory - https://hackernoon.com/12-signs-youre-working-in-a-feature-factory-44a5b938d6a2 Jez Humble - Principles of Lean Product Management - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH6bnQzJojo Dynamic Reteaming - Heidi Helfand - https://leanpub.com/dynamicreteaming Team of Teams - General Stanley McChrystal - http://www.amazon.in/Team-Teams-Rules-Engagement-Complex/dp/1591847486/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483152096&sr=8-1&keywords=team+of+teams Bridget Kromhout - Containers Will Not Fix Your Broken Culture - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjhIA6QTy5k Nicole Forsgren - Continuous Delivery + DevOps = Awesome - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuYS5NF1Uaw Agile Scaling Frameworks: Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) - http://www.scaledagileframework.com/ LeSS - http://less.works/ Nexus - https://www.scrum.org/Resources/The-Nexus-Guide Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) - http://www.disciplinedagiledelivery.com/ Agile India 2017 will take place 6-12 March in Bengaluru. For more information, please visit 2017.agileindia.org/
Today we talk with Ash Maurya, the creator of the Lean Canvas and most recently the author of Scaling Lean. His posts and advice have been featured in Inc., Forbes, and Fortune and we're incredibly excited to share his insights with you on scaling throug Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ash Maurya talks about how to turn great ideas into great products and avoid building things that don't matter. Because, "life’s too short to build products nobody wants."
In episode 15 of the Startup Playbook Podcast, I interview Ash Maurya, the man who literally wrote the book on applying lean methodology to startups. Ash is the Founder of LeanStack and WiredReach, author of Running Lean and Scaling Lean and the creator of the Lean Canvas In this episode, Ash Talks about, the value of timeboxing, countering the innovator bias, how to ask the right questions and applying lean methodology to a scaling business. Show notes: Running Lean Scaling Lean LeanStack Credits: Intro music credit to Bensound. To enter social media competition: Twitter Instagram Snapchat: startupplaybook Click here to listen on iTunes Click here to listen on Stitcher The post Ep015 – Ash Maurya (Creator – Lean Canvas) on applying Lean Methodology to scaling businesses appeared first on Startup Playbook.
Future Squared with Steve Glaveski - Helping You Navigate a Brave New World
Hailing from Austin, Texas, Ash Maurya is the founder of Leanstack. Since bootstrapping his last company seven years ago, he has launched five products and one peer-to-web application framework. Throughout this time he has been in search of better, faster ways for building successful products. Ash has more recently been rigorously applying Customer Development and Lean Startup techniques to his products, frequently writing about this on his blog and turning this into the critically acclaimed book, “Running Lean: How to Iterate from Plan A to a plan that works”. Ash is also the creator of the one-page business modelling tool, the Lean Canvas, which is used by startups and corporate innovators across the globe. His new book "Scaling Lean: Master the Key Metrics for Startup Growth, debuted at #2 on the WSJ Business Bestseller list, and explores an invaluable blueprint for modelling startup success and ultimately scale a business by implementing a 10X rollout strategy. Ash is praised for offering some of the best and most practical advice for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs all over the world. Driven by the search for better and faster ways for building successful products, Ash has developed a systematic methodology for raising the odds of success built upon Lean Startup, Customer Development, and Bootstrapping techniques. Ash is also a leading business blogger and his posts and advice have been featured in Inc. Magazine, Forbes, and Fortune. He regularly hosts sold out workshops around the world and serves as a mentor to several accelerators including TechStars, MaRS, Capital Factory, and guest lecturers at several universities including MIT, Harvard, and UT Austin. Ash serves on the advisory board of a number of startups, and has consulted to new and established companies. Aside from creating indispensable resources for innovators and entrepreneurs, Ash is a foodie, a dad, a husband and a yogi. Topics Discussed: - His new book, Scaling Lean, and how it differs from Running Lean - An overview of the Running Lean process - How to 10x your company while staying lean - Using the lean canvas in large organisations - The metrics that matter and why one metric may not always be the best approach - Challenges in getting large organisations to adopt lean and how they might be overcome - Examples of how large companies have effectively implemented lean product development - How to identify and prioritise your biggest customer, market and product risks - What metrics corporate innovators should use instead of NPV and IRR - How much data is enough to draw conclusions - How to start embedding a culture of experimentation in a large, otherwise conservative, organisations - Why regulation is no excuse not to go lean and in fact is more reason to do so - Socratic thinking - How to get into flow Show Notes: Twitter: @ashmaurya Ash's site: ashmaurya.com Ash's business: leanstack.com Ash's books: Running Lean: https://amzn.to/2PSJDnb Scaling Lean: https://amzn.to/2DkiHeD --- I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you’d like to receive a weekly email from me, complete with reflections, books I’ve been reading, words of wisdom and access to blogs, ebooks and more that I’m publishing on a regular basis, just leave your details at www.futuresquared.xyz/subscribe and you’ll receive the very next one. Listen on Apple Podcasts @ goo.gl/sMnEa0 Also available on: Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher and Soundcloud Twitter: www.twitter.com/steveglaveski Instagram: www.instagram.com/@thesteveglaveski Future Squared: www.futuresquared.xyz Steve Glaveski: www.steveglaveski.com Medium: www.medium.com/@steveglaveski
An entrepreneur isn’t an entrepreneur no matter how many businesses they try to build or how many startups they have a hand in. Entrepreneurs are built, too, and it’s a step too often skipped. Today’s guest, Ash Maurya, founder of LeanStack, knows all about entrepreneurship. He also knows from personal experience what happens when you don’t build that skillset first. He’ll also be the first to tell you that the tools available to help you become a better entrepreneur aren’t readily available, especially when it comes to ideas and business plans. Discover: The revolutionary way to ‘pilot’ a book and become a thought leader How to tell when an idea will work and when it won’t Where great business ideas come from The alterative to a business plan that works like LEGOs If you’re interested in a simple, flexible way to build a business, or how to know when you’ve got an idea worth pursuing, you don’t want to miss this episode. KEY POINTS: At 4:00 – How to write a book using the lean startup method, and make yourself a thought leader in the process. At 8:00 – Ash describes how his lean startup method goes a step further than its predecessors, and how it simplifies the process. At 12:30 – Ash explains why the LeanCanvas method is something anyone can do; you don’t have to be a software designer like he is to use it. At 17:00 – There’s lean startups, running lean, and now, Ash has a new book called Scaling Lean. Find out what that means for growing businesses. At 21:00 – Ash explains why his passion lies in lean startups, and how he strives to build entrepreneurs instead of businesses.
Ash Maurya joins 33voices to talk about how to master the key metrics for startup growth.
Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode 077 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: I’m bringing back an incredible guest who I first interviewed way back in episode 10 – one of the first interviews I did. He wrote the step-by-step guide for implementing Lean startup practices, titled Running Lean, created the Lean Canvas tool, and blogs regularly about these topics at www.leanstack.com. His name is Ash Maurya. Now he has a new book about applying Lean Startup principles to go from new product concept to a product that is achieving predictable success with customers. The book is titled Scaling Lean: Mastering the Key Metrics for Startup Growth. And while it is written in the context of startup growth, the concepts apply to any product management effort that involves creating a new product or improving an existing one – from startups to large enterprises. You will learn three aspects of scaling lean: Using metricsPrioritizing wastePractices to achieve success
Listen to the Interview I’m bringing back an incredible guest who I first interviewed way back in episode 10 – one of the first interviews I did. He wrote the step-by-step guide for implementing Lean startup practices, titled Running Lean, created the Lean Canvas tool, and blogs regularly about these topics at www.leanstack.com. His name […]
You’ve probably “gotten outside the building” and talked to customers. You’ve identified problems that need solving, and maybe even built a Minimum Viable Product. But how do you tell whether your idea represents a viable business? In this webcast, Ash Maurya, author of Running Lean and creator of the Lean Canvas, shares techniques for ballparking and measuring the output of a working business model using a handful of key metrics. Watch the webcast here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHXqMjOQ6Gw
Listen to the Interview I'm bringing back an incredible guest who I first interviewed way back in episode 10 – one of the first interviews I did. He wrote the step-by-step guide for implementing Lean startup practices, titled Running Lean, created the Lean Canvas tool, and blogs regularly about these topics at www.leanstack.com. His name […]
Ash has helped hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs worldwide get their businesses started. In this episode we talk about his newest book, Scaling Lean, and how it can help entrepreneurs get started with their businesses.
Joining me for Episode #253 is Ash Maurya, author of the book Running Lean:Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works and his latest, being released this week, called Scaling Lean: Mastering the Key Metrics for Startup Growth. Ash is an entrepreneur and a big part of the "Lean Startup" community. Visit his website at www.LeanStack.com.
Bob and Patrick speak with long-time-friend-of-the-show Ash Maurya: entrepreneur, author, and mentor. His new book is Scaling Lean, out June 14.
Ash Maurya is the author of Running Lean and one of the most popular advocates for the Lean Startup movement. In this podcast I review his new book, Scaling Lean, and describe how I use similar principles in my own work.
Over the past two seasons, I've featured brain hackers, productivity masters, growth hackers, one-page marketer maestros and now….one of the premier experts on startups and lean business. Well, today I'm joined by none other than Ash Maurya, best-selling author of “Running Lean” and his upcoming book “Scaling Lean” due out in mid June. Ash's work has been featured in…well, pretty much anywhere and everywhere in the startup and lean business space. Ash is considered a go-to expert in the area and teaches principles from his books, businesses, and workshops to entrepreneurs all around the world. I'm super-pumped to have the opportunity to talk with Ash today! Grab a notepad and your favorite beverage (unless you're running or driving or something) and join me for the interview. Let's hit it! https://corbinlinks.com/cls035