Author Archives: thomasknoll

Users Are People Too

Just ran across my new favorite #loveyourcustomer hack! Back in the video days of Seesmic it was very easy to ‘humanize’ our users. They were real talking faces streaming down our screens all day long. I got to know many of them very well. Literally watching them laugh and cry, some at their lowest moments without [...]
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Three-minute Rule is a Great first step into Customer Development

Most companies I have spoken with–who are reluctant to explore the customer development process–feel that talking to customers is too hard and don’t even know where to begin. The secret (there is no secret) is to just start. It is much easier to have done something, than to think about doing something. In other words, [...]
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Learning

Learning is an active process. We learn by doing. [ via Dale Carnegie ]
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rapid serializiation

I don’t believe in multi-tasking. I feel like the more things we try to do at the same time, the worse of a job we do on all of them. Besides, we really only ever actually do one thing at a time, the other things simply distract us from giving our full attention and intention [...]
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together

Loving is not just looking at each other, it’s looking in the same direction. [ via Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ]
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Start

photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/ansik/ / CC BY 2.0 If I had to concentrate the startup advice I’ve absorbed over the past 2 years, I could limit the list to: Scratch a really painful itch Tell everyone your idea Find the right team Ask more questions I’m gonna let that marinate * for a bit, and then come back and expand on these [...]
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or you will be taught to fly

When you have come to the edge of all light that you know and are about to drop off into the darkness of the unknown, Faith is knowing One of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly. [ by Patrick Overton, author and poet [...]
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email with intention and purpose

Trudging my way through my inbox this morning, I encountered an email newsletter product update announcement that I actually enjoyed reading. The message didn’t even matter. The experience was everything. Sadly, this joy was an unexpected sensation. In theory, there is no dfference in time or cost for good communication over poor communication. One way [...]
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tenacity

“Well, it’s mostly just starting with an idea and then putting in a whole lot of hard work. It’s not really more than that. [ Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno via the99percent.com ]
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Imagination is more important than knowledge

[ via Albert Einstein ]
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