Sunwapta Blog

Sunwapta Blog2020-06-10T21:41:48-06:00
25Oct 2011

Product Value – Long and Short Term

By |October 25th, 2011|

If you are building a product (or service) that is intended to help companies and people over the longer-term you have a dilemma on how to get them to long-term.

People have short-term attention spans and may not have the staying power to see things through if they don't start seeing benefits over the short-term. If they abandon your product before they see the value, you have a problem.

You might try to lock them into a longer term contract. The problem is that while you have the money, they still might stop using your product or at least have lost interest. If […]

24Oct 2011

Start Your Engine of Growth

By |October 24th, 2011|

Start Your Engine of Growth - Man on Starting Line

We are in the midst of launching our new Manifast product. In fact we are committing to launching our MVP in November 2011. This has gotten me to thinking about marketing, sales and most importantly our revenue model. Do we have our engine of growth defined?

In “The Lean Startup” Eric Ries talks about three engines of growth for startups:

  • The Sticky Engine of Growth (customer retention (churn) is key)
  • The Viral […]
18Oct 2011

Getting Past Fear – Launching our MVP in November

By |October 18th, 2011|

Ok, I admit it. I was caught in a trap… actually a few; partly of my own making.

After reading “Lean Startup” (see review) and rethinking what I’ve learned from Seth Godin over the years the message is loud and clear. Build and ship, measure and learn, adapt and ship. This needs to happen sooner than later.

The fear comes from putting a product out there that is conceptually good on paper, but not yet feature complete nor as perfect as I would like. After all you only get one shot at a first impression, right?

But after reading Lean Startup […]

17Oct 2011

Lean Startup 2 – Growing and Staying Lean

By |October 17th, 2011|

I’ve finished reading “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries that I discussed on my last post.

Part 3 of the book talks about:

  • Batch – Continuing to work in small batches. Avoid the large batch “death spiral” and other lessons applied from Lean manufacturing.
  • Grow – The three primary engines of growth and the importance to pick one and focus on it until success (and eventual market saturation) or you prove it won’t work (pivot). Essentially the reason is that the expertise is vastly different for each and it is hard enough to measure and grow one at a time.
  • […]

5Oct 2011

The Lean Startup – Measure, Learn and Adapt

By |October 5th, 2011|

I am about two thirds of the way finished reading "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries. I was already coming to some of the same conclusions as part of my thinking and reading on entrepreneurship; his book helped me solidify things and fleshed in more of the details of implementation.

Essentially, starting a business (especially a high tech one) is a crapshoot. You come up with a brilliant idea. Then you make a business plan or strategy that incorporates some large (leaps of faith) and small assumptions about your product, your customers, the market uptake, revenue and profits. When you are […]

28Sep 2011

Customer Testimonials

By |September 28th, 2011|

I was recently asked to write a testimonial by the owner of a dance studio. I think people like to know what others think of a business or service and I am really happy with the studio so here is what I wrote.

"I have been taking Canadian Step Dancing classes at Dance Through Life since it opened and prior to that with Paula at another location. I didn’t have any prior dance experience when I started so it was a bit of a shocker to get those feet moving correctly. From personal experience I know not everyone is born with coordination […]

27Sep 2011

Only 24 Hours in a Day? Really?

By |September 27th, 2011|

Are there really only 24 hours in a day?

I am an eternal optimist when comes to thinking I can do anything; as much as I want. My brain tries come up with ways to get more time in a day. Maybe I can sleep a little less. Maybe if I work harder I can get everything done. Yet there is a price to pay. A trade-off for every choice you make. And there is always something more.

Still, there are only 24 hours in a day.

Work. Relationships. Health. Recreation. Hobbies. Self-improvement. You need to be balanced or you will eventually pay the toll […]

8Sep 2011

Fueling the Myth

By |September 8th, 2011|

Computers are still harder to use than they should be.

I overheard a conversation between two young university students the other day:

Person 1: “I don’t know why people bother using Macs, they cost a lot more.”

Person 2: “They are easier to use and they don’t get viruses because they are more secure.”

My Recent Experiences (Part 1)

I recently shot and edited a dance video (see my last post for the link). I ran into to some issues that would have derailed a non-technical person.

The HD camcorders we were using had memory cards. Rather than use the USB […]

31Aug 2011

Zumba – Do the Pause Entry

By |August 31st, 2011|

My wife recently decided to get some of her Zumba friends together and enter the Zumba "Do the Pause Contest".  I ended up (long story) being part of the camera crew, director and video editor. There is enough involved in this process for a blog entry or two.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the resulting entry. (Note: Sadly, you need to log into Facebook to view the video.)

 

15Aug 2011

Kanban – The Power of Focus

By |August 15th, 2011|

I recently read "Kanban – Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Company" by David Anderson.

Power of Focus

The most important takeaway is the power of focus.

I don't think the author quite stated it that way. He basically presented numerous examples and statistical evidence to show that limiting work in progress lead to a more effective and predictable outcome for software teams; especially those working on maintenance or lots of little projects for different systems.

It seems the more work you have on your plate that you are trying to simultaneously juggle the less efficient people and teams are.

Kanban essentially proves what other […]