Unlikely Recommendations for Startups and Entrepreneurs

http://moz.com/rand/7-unlikely-recommendations-for-startups-entrepreneurs/

by jonnym1ller • 13 years ago

63 23 13 years ago

James_Duval4• 13 years ago

...I think that article about "1 Weird Tip" has perpetually ruined me.

MayanAstronaut• 13 years ago

And he works for a SEO company! This is a sales pitch to use his tools.

Unfortunately, the above tips will not work if you are bootstrapped too.

dchuk2• 13 years ago

So if he didn't own an SEO company, would this post have been acceptable? Or would you still have accused him of writing a thinly veiled product pitch?

And yes, this stuff would work for a bootstrapped startup. I have a bootstrapped startup (a competitor to Moz actually) and I can vouch for the points he's making.

gk1• 13 years ago

It's linkbait. Try looking at Buzzfeed or Mashable without cringing.

willbill• 13 years ago

I can rich and you can too!

thesausageking• 13 years ago

It's a blog post by an SEO company. Did you think it wouldn't use a link bait title only vaguely related to the article's content ?

dchuk2• 13 years ago

The article actually has good points and content, don't jump on the "SEO is bad" bandwagon unless you can prove that the content is actually bad.

thenomad• 13 years ago

Very interesting article!

His point about MVPs is particularly interesting, IMO - but I'm not entirely sure it's correct.

The point of an MVP is to identify an excellent product/market fit. One of the ways you can tell if you've got one of those is if your crappy, half-finished product still attracts users.

If you're refusing to test at MVP stage, you're in serious danger of applying lipstick to a pig.

Of course, it's worth noting that Rand's company has the money to commit to testing multiple "EVPs" - but for bootstrappers, out of all the advice in this article, I'm not convinced by that point.

(The "build an audience first" advice, by contrast, is proven to work pretty well. Brian Clark at Copyblogger has referred to it as "MVA" - Minimum Viable Audience - strategy.)

mesozoic• 13 years ago

I think his tips are sort of a chain. So if you've done #1 then #2 about EVP works. Since you already have a marketing channel built an exceptional product will be able to grab hold and take off right away.

tsmarsh• 13 years ago

This could have been written by my ex-boss, who hired me as a 'lean consultant', then proceeded to ignore everything I said, and do this instead. We're about to find out which of us was right; I suspect she was.

But getting to an 'Exceptional Viable Product' was tough. Constantly moving release deadlines. No idea who was 'right' in the team when it came to UX. No idea if a feature was valuable or necessary so 'done' was a constantly moving target. We ended up with a beautiful, if not bulky EVP (homerlearning.com).

rhizome4• 13 years ago

Well, the initialism "EVP" says it all: "exceptional" is not measurable, so it's going to come down to the most powerful person asserting their sense of when the VP becomes E.

franzwong• 13 years ago

Can anybody share experience on "Marketing First"?

catilac• 13 years ago

Definitely don't agree on his point about MVPs. I waited too long and built an "EVP" and found out I had no customers.

Beautiful product, no business.

There is a lot of time spent in between "quite small" and "decent" on that graph.

James_Duval4• 13 years ago

Moz have a weird view of how to obtain success, because due to their fame they're guaranteed to succeed every time they put up a post. Take any practical tips they give with a hefty helping of salt.

They are very good at the theory, it's just they don't live on the same planet as everyone else.

znowi• 13 years ago

Damn, I thought it was a Mozilla article for a second and clicked. I quickly realized my mistake - it's a former SEOmoz tricksters in different clothing :)

timme• 13 years ago

- create linkbait articles with arbitrary number of items mentioned in the title

- throw in alternative version of "1 weird tip" wording for good measure

badclient• 13 years ago

The problem with MVPs is that no one clearly know what they are and the folks that came up with it or evangelize it are often full of shit. On one end, lean is pitched being similar to the scientific method. But on the same note, when someone raises the objection about how to get statistically significant data, we are instructed to use our judgement. Well, that is not the scientific method then!

Next, let's move on to the case studies related to lean. Most people who credit lean rarely treat their project as a carefully designed scientific experiment. They do the common things like dry testing for demand, making quick landing pages, talking to their market...a lot. And yet, if you went to the lean folks and said if these things equate to being lean, they would say NO, lean is a lot more.

So what is lean? No one really knows. It's just that when it works out, people are quick to give it credit. But no one wants to see the graveyard of start-ups that give up their ideas everyday because according to their understanding of the lean method, they did not achieve product/market fit. You know this is bullshit because you can take a cursory look at the same product/market they gave up on and see multiple start-ups doing well.

I say all this as a former cheerleader for lean that is mostly disappointed with how poorly it is being taught and clarified.

Unlikely Recommendations for Startups and Entrepreneurs

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