#44/111: Rework

What is it about?

Jason Fried and David Heinermeier Hansson wrote about their recipe of running 37signals. They explain what differentiates them from a lot of other software companies and why only profit matters.

Key points?

Stay simple: Not just their product is affected by this paradigm, they try to keep their organization simple and even their books. A major problem of later-stage products, like Excel, is that they are so big and bloated.

Be real: You probably know these our values pages of corporate websites. Often, they are utterly long and sadly only a few read them and even less people work by these standards. The simple solution is don’t talk. Act! 

Hire for real work: So you need a PhD in Physics from the best three universities who works 18h a day? Really? At 37signals they don’t care about your educational background. Can you do the job? Yes? Shows us. If you will succeed, you will be hired. Stay simple, don’t hire somebody just because she is too good not to be hired.

Conclusion

I loved this book because I’m not a big friend of high critical mass startups, i.e. “we just need 500mio users to get profitable!”. This book is down to earth, upright and refreshing. As hard as it be, we probably don’t get one million customers, we probably won’t get $250m in founding and there will be no exit with $10bn. Rework is for people who realize this but aren’t discouraged. Recommendation.

#43/111: Micro ISV

What is it about?

Just for the clarity, a Micro ISV is a small software vendor. Bob Walsh writes about the complete process from finding the idea, to founding a company, to actually selling the software.

Key points?

Search for pain points: Ask people in a industry that interested you, how you can help them. In general, you will find a lot of problems that arise but haven’t be solved yet.

Building your product is easier than selling it: Bob Walsh interviewed a lot of people in this book and most people agreed with this statement. If you are a professional, you know how to solve problems in your area but often founders underestimate the part of marketing and sales.

Niche, Niche, Niche: One interesting observation was that most people built products for the mass market. Today, nearly none of them still exists. The others chose a niche and are still running.  Why? If your market is too big, big players becoming your competitors. If you market is small, all your competition is small.

Conclusion

This book was written in 2005 and is a bit outdated. It doesn’t really cover internet marketing besides writing a blog and Google Ads and it’s heavily focused on Windows development. However, the interviews were interesting and stimulating.

#42/111: Mastering Niche Marketing

What is it about?

How do you build a niche product, e.g. an ebook and market it properly? Eric Van Der Hope shows how to find product ideas, create products and sell them.

Key points?

Write your goals down: Before you start, you should think about your goals. What do you want and how can you reach this? You can start at a farer horizon, e.g. 5 years in the future and plan top-down how to reach these goals.

Test your idea: He presents some key features of good niche markets. You need to check if there is few competition. If there’s too much, it’s already too hard to enter, but if there’s none, you should ask yourself why nobody had the idea, yet. The next step is to check the willingness to buy. Do people in this market normally pay money? For example, it’s probably hard to sell to open source developers because they aren’t accustomed to pay for most stuff. The next step is to check if there is any need, you have a hard time to sell if nobody really wants your product. The last step is to check if this is a sustainable market. I.e. is it just a hype or can it bring your steady revenue for the next years?

Know your customer: If you found your niche market, you should try to find out as much as possible about your customers. To write your copy and set your pricing, you should know what their problems are, a little bit demographics, maybe whom they trust, etc.

Conclusion

I think the cover looks extremely scammy, though some chapters are really useful. Especially, I like the niche finding and the very first chapter about setting goals. Sadly, most of the book got some dubious practices.

#41/111: Attention!

What is it about?

Do you know the five easy steps to own a yacht? I don’t neither but maybe I got your attention. Jim F. Kukral writes about generating attention and how to use it to make money.

Key points?

Be different: To get attention today, you have to be different. Try to draw outside the lines. Let’s take job applications, Jim Kukral saw that his future boss used post it notes to organize himself. So, he decided to write 50 post it notes with positive attributes of him and glued them on a big board. His future boss was impressed and hired him.

Sell benefits: What is in for your customers? Do they really need to know that you product get feature XY? Probably, no. They want to know how they can benefit from your product. Save time, increase productivity or higher the comfort. For example, a car offers lots of features from ABS to a air conditioner. The benefits are a more safety and conformable transportation.

Don’t try to be everybody’s darling: Don’t try to avoid every confrontation just because you could shy away some people. A example is again the iPod. A lot of techies complained about missing features. Though, most people don’t care about the features, they want a simple device for listening to music.

Conclusion

This book is actually interesting but lacks a bit of usefulness. He talks about a lot of one hit wonders from the Pet Rock to the Million Dollar Website. Sure, it’s fun to hear about such products but they aren’t a sustainable business.