Fail Fast"The fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate."

-Thomas J Watson Sr. , Founder of IBM

Perspiration“Failure is instructive.The person who reallythinks learns quite asmuch from his failuresas from his successes.”-John Dewey

“I’ve missed more than 9,000shots in my career. I’ve lostalmost 300 games. 26 timesI’ve been trusted to take thegame winning shot andmissed. I’ve failed over andover and over again in my lifeand that is why I succeed.”-Michael Jordan“Experience is simply

the name we give ourmistakes.”-Oscar Wilde

“It is a mistake to suppose thatmen succeed through success;they much oftener succeedthrough failures. Precept,study, advice, and examplecould never have taught themso well as failure has done.”- Samuel Smiles

“I have not failed. I'vejust found 10,000 waysthat won't work.”-Thomas Alva Edison

“Success consists ofgoing from failure tofailure without loss ofenthusiasm.”-Winston Churchill

Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.- John Keats

“It is on our failures

that we base a new and

different and better

success.”

-Havelock Ellis

99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.

"Every strike brings me closer to the next home run." Babe Ruth

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.: - Wayne

Gretsky

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong

man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The

credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred

by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short

again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings;

but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm,

the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best

knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he

fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with

those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

-FDR

Taken from the Pages of...

•Nat Torkington

• http://nathan.torkington.com/

• Steve Blank

• http://steveblank.com/

•Henry Jenkins

• http://henryjenkins.org

“Sacrifice” - King Julien

QuickTime™ and aGIF decompressorare needed to see this picture.

“This time I’m 40% sure” - Melman

How do we know something to be

true?Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

▪ Department of Defense news briefing, February 12, 2002

FFFS

Fail Fast Fail Small

The Scientific Method

• Find Failure, Please

• Karl Popper, Science as Falsification, 1963

Linda• Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken,

and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.

• Which is more probable?

• A. Linda is a bank teller

• B. Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement.

Minimum Viable Product

MVP’s - sell before they build

Split-test like a Mo-Fo

Scratch that Itch

ReRo a la RoR

User Testing

Community

“interestingness”“Karma Points”

The Crowdiness of Crowds

SerendipityIntroduce Randomness

Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally

discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for

something else entirely.

- Wikipedia.org

BS!

Creative DestructionEvolution & Adaptation

1895

1850

?

From what to what?

?

?

Know Your Verticals•Market Risk or Technology Risk?

•Commodity Economy or Gift Economy?

• Feature or Destination?

Participation

Spreadable Media

Neither sticky nor viral.

Messages are encoded; meanings are decoded.

Pop vs. Mass Culture

…[W]e produce culture when we integrate products and texts into our everyday life. When we hear a song in a music video, it is part of mass culture. When we sing it in the shower, we turn it into popular culture. When it is under the control of its producers, it is mass culture. When it is under the control of its consumers, it is popular culture.

Apocryphal Start-Ups Stories

stat.us

Game Never Ending

Muxway

Plentyoffish.com

an experiment that turned profitable

Dead Simple User Testing

Build to Learn

Test-First Design

extreme example of agile development process

Tools

Google Analytics

Web site Optimizer - Google

MapReduce - Hadoop

User-testing

User Testing

SurveysLook for surprises

Customer Service as Marketing

and feedback

AWSon-demand:disk spaceCPU cycles

message queuesworkforce

Techniques

•DHTML

• Participatory Media

• Facial Tissue

• Spreadable Media

• Energy Drink

Memes Define Markets

What’s the Story?

Sales people don’t sell features. They sell stories.

Believable stories.

The Most Popular Girl

DeputizeThe life you save may be

your own.

Key Performance Indicators

• Uniques

• Repeats

• Positive Mentions

• Releases

• Competitors

• Revenues

• Attrition

• Lookie-Lou’s

• Negative Mentions

• Guesses

• Competitors

• Costs