It’s not the be-all, end-all of product success — Don’t get me wrong, I like Product Hunt. I scroll sometimes and check out what’s been posted and give an upvote here and there. But what I don’t like about Product Hunt is this idea that seems to permeate a lot of the startup/indie maker crowd that goes like this: …

Buying into the startup hype when it’s not right for you may not only waste your time, it might kill your business. Do this instead. — I’m going to say something that I think should be obvious, but really needs to be said: every new business is not a startup. The reason this might not be so obvious is that over the last several years, the definition of a startup according to most people has expanded…

Hint: You don’t have to take over the world — As someone who has helped lead a successful funding round for a VC-backed startup, I have a pretty good idea of what it takes to get a venture capital firm to buy into your vision and cut you a check. Yet for my current project, Epilocal, I decided that I…

I’ve been a startup mentor for the last 5 years now. I started as part of my old day-job, working for a large bank in London, where I would advise FinTech companies on how to build products that would appeal to banks either as customers or as partners. Then later…

As the founder of a bootstrapped business, I know what it’s like to put in months of work without a payoff. …

I just spent the last two days straight working on one piece of code about the length of a paragraph. Two whole days! You can imagine the frustration of trying a new line of code, testing it out, getting the same error message, going back to research new ways to…

The most important lessons I’ve learned from bootstrapping my solo-project, Epilocal — I’ve been working on my own solo-project (providing tools for small online publishers), Epilocal, since the Fall. About 6 months ago I took the plunge to leave a steady job and focus full-time on trying to bootstrap it into a viable business. For sure, there are lots of people out…

I have to admit I’ve been on the sidelines about this for sometime. I’ve watched makers and organizations that I really admire put their financial data out there for everyone to see or live-stream their way to building a product. To me a lot of things feel right about this…

How to use it and what to do if you don’t have any customers yet — I don’t think there is anyone in the startup world or the wider business world who will argue with the statement that you should focus on building what your customers want. But how many people know what that really means and how you should actually go about doing it? With…