Tag Archives: startup

Business

Full-stack Developer – ESGgo

There is an increasing interest in how companies are managing their environmental, social, and governance (ESG). Since it’s a new topic, many companies struggle to cooperate with the changing demand around the ESG arena.

This is why we are building a new platform that will help companies leverage ESG and not struggle with it. Instead of manual data entry into spreadsheets or using emails over long threads, our platform automates data collection and reporting across all the company departments. It will also have the ability to create reports, dashboards, and benchmark information that will help you identify gaps. On top of it, we will have an AI layer that will provide recommendations for setting goals and improving ESG standing against any reporting framework (e.g. GRI).

If you are passionate about zero to one effort and like to work on important and hard challenges – You should join us. We are hiring engineers/hackers/developers who like to build zero to one products. If you know of a friend that you respect and they fit the description below – Please point them in my direction, ok?

Continue reading →
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Business

Product Management At ESGgo

There is an increasing interest in how companies are managing their environmental, social, and governance (ESG). Since it’s a new topic, many companies struggle to cooperate with the changing demand around the ESG arena.

This is why we are building a new platform that will help companies leverage ESG and not struggle with it. Instead of manual data entry into spreadsheets or using emails over long threads, our platform automates data collection and reporting across all the company departments. It will also have the ability to create reports, dashboards, and benchmark information that will help you identify gaps. On top of it, we will have an AI layer that will provide recommendations for setting goals and improving ESG standing against any reporting framework (e.g. GRI).

If you are passionate about zero to one effort and like to work on important and hard challenges – You should join us. We are hiring engineers and product managers. If you know of a PM that you respect and they fit the description below…

Please point them in my direction, ok?

Continue reading →
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Business, life

You Don’t Need Status Meetings

The most valuable and scarce resource is time.

As a young startup you must do your best to use it as efficient as possible because you have limited time to show traction and become a profitable business.

Now, there is no doubt that you need to focus and try to spend most of your time on real work. However, we all did it in the past, we get into a room of 5-10 people and everyone is telling the group what they did.

It’s such a waste of time! Even if each person is talking for 5-10min you got here 50-100min of boring meeting which is equal to a waste of time.

Why not have this updates in a tool that let everyone in the team to see what all the others are working on? Continue reading →

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Business

Objectives And Key Results

screen-shot-2017-02-03-at-11-48-29-am

At Google (and many other companies) we are working with OKRs. From the company level down to the personal level. OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. It is a method of defining and tracking objectives and their outcomes. Its main goal is to connect company, team and personal objectives to measurable results, making people move together in the right direction.
Let’s see why it might be a methodology you would like to use in your startup.

What?

First, you wish to define what is the goal (or the top 1-3 objectives) you try to accomplished. Continue reading →

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Business

Lean Canvas Basics

The lean canvas is a tool that helps entrepreneur with forming their idea into a macro plan and later (hopefully) a full function service or product.

You can use something like a good pitch deck to do the same. The core in these tools is to help you articulate what are you going to do and how you are going to win with it.

Let’s have a look at the page below. You can click on it to see it on a full page. If you wish to work with such a template – scroll down and print the clean one that we got in the bottom of this post.

lean canvas

The idea here is to think on our idea and to break it down to the different aspects.

We will fill in short bullet points each section. If you have a co-founder or advisor/mentor to consult with, please do so. It will improve the final result. Also, show the result to many people that you respect. Each might give you a point of view you didn’t think about. Continue reading →

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Business

Google Launchpad Accelerator – The 3rd Class

AsiaIn the past ten months, I’ve been busy working with startups in Google’s new program for startups, which we call: “Launchpad Accelerator“.

What?

In this unique program we doing our best to help tech startups build successful business.

How?

We are running this program by working closely with these startups and helping them with the most critical challenges. The analysis and guidance are being done by mentoring sessions. In these sessions we leverage the vast experience of Google’s engineers and other external mentors from top companies and venture capitals in silicon valley. Their value is huge and I’ll update here with specific examples.

When your startup is selected to the program, you get a two weeks at Google Headquarters full of learning and networking opportunities. After that, you have another six months of work with Googlers on your objective and key results. In other words, you get access to Google engineers, resources, and mentors. Which are all aimed to help you do your things better/faster/cheaper and make your startup a success. Continue reading →

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Business

Progressive Web Apps For Startups

Today I gave a talk at our Startup Space in San Francisco to a group of startups from Mexico.

The goal of this talk was to expose young entrepreneurs to the power of the web platform and how they could leverage progressive web apps in order to improve their businesses. The first section is talking about ‘startups best practices’. Since most of them are in their first steps, I figure it would be valuable to them to hear what they can do better.

The second section is telling the story of progressive web app revolution and how it can help them.
The TL;DR is in the picture below. Continue reading →

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Business, webdev

How To Rapid Prototyping?

One of the strength points that startups got over big companies is the ability to run fast and try new things. That’s why it’s important to improve your prototyping abilities.

Rapid prototyping composed from quick iterations of these three steps:

  1. Prototype – Draw, sketch or code something that can be reviewed.
    Convert the description of the solution into mock ups that everyone can see and review. You should take into considerations what is the story that will drive the user interaction. What will be the best experience?
  2. Review – Share the prototype with stakeholders (=users, developers and designers) and evaluate whether it meets their needs and expectations. If you can, let them try it and watch what they are doing. Try to mimic the real world as much as you can. For example, if it’s a mobile web app, let users try it with 3G networks (or even 2G) and see what is working and what is not.
  3. Refine – Based on feedback and data that you collected, identify areas that need to be refined or further defined it in the prototype. Now jump to step #2 and see if the result improved or, like in some cases, they did not.

The key to a successful rapid prototyping is revising quickly based on feedback. You should say ‘no’ to a lot of suggestions and let the data leads you. This approach helps teams experiment with multiple approaches and ideas on their way to a new product. It also reduces the risk by putting everyone on the same page (or in this case, the same image).

What to Prototype?

Use the 20/80 rule.

As a starting point, you can impress your colleagues when you suggesting it… You can start by saying something like: “Let’s work with Pareto distribution“. At this point of the meeting, everyone will look at you with admiration.

But more importantly, it’s helpful – For real.

Focus on the 20% of the key functionality that will be used 80% of the time. You wish to showcase how your product will work and later how it will look like. So ignore all the ‘little’ features that are not part of these core functions.

Continue reading →

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Android, Business

How To Make Money From Your App?

What are the action items that will increase the odds in that battle to improve your monetization?

This is one of the most challenging aspect for every startups. After you build your application (or service) you need to measure all the actions that the users take. This is a learning mechanism that will let you iterate (hopefully quickly) and improve your product. Once you feel that you have a good product market fit and you are out of the alpha (or beta) modes it’s time to put efforts in the ‘Grow’ and ‘Earn’ parts.

Let’s see what are some of the tools that we can use.

develop, grow and earn! Continue reading →

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Business

Startups And Running

running on the beach

Last week, I had an interesting talk with a friend about the common set of skills you need in order to create a successful (big) project. In most cases, the planing phase is important but not the most challenging one. The execution is the real deal.

It’s the ability to push on when things are falling a part. As someone said: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched”. This is why grit is a critical aspect.

We later talked about another passion we shared: long distance running. It wasn’t too hard to see the similarity in characteristics of great entrepreneurs and runners.

From my experience, in both cases, it’s about the people that you meet in this clan and the willingness to help and support each other. In most cases, it’s not a direct competition, but rather a huge challenge to make it to the end. Where each individual define the ‘end’ differently.

Sure enough, someone already did a ted talk on this topic. Continue reading →

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