Web Strategy, Co-Founder HyLo & Spunch - Aaron Post - The life and times of a startup (and everything else).

How do you know?

by aaronpost on October 14, 2009

How do you really know? Sounds like a stupid question but I’m asking. How do you know?

Being involved in a few startups, I recently noticed a trend with everyone involved. The idea that “people want x” or “no one will do x unless we have y”. My question is how do you know?

Now part of this comes from frustration, its a startup, sure I want to make this a success but it amazes me how many times I have caught myself or others on the team in the holding pattern because of some artificial barrier.

The way I see it, you have two choices:

Guess and keep moving forward
Go ask the person who is going to be paying for it

Its not rocket science, at least not yet. Ask, I am always amazed how much further I can get when I just ask the simple question. Now I know a few people reading this are going to mention that you shouldn’t ask the client, only you know best. Which I tend to agree most of the time but there are cases (more often than not) that getting that feedback will change the way you think about the problem. Its the problem we are trying to solve, right?

So the next time assumptions are being made about our clients, products, etc., I am going to stop everything and go ask those who it will affect the most.

Startup tip #8

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How Do You Become Agile? (Derek Neighbors)
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Refresh Phoenix, Thank you.

by Aaron Post on August 30, 2009

Dear Phoenix Refreshers,

Before anything else, thank you. Thank you to everyone who help with Refresh, Thank you to all those who have started something new (meetup group, events and more). This city is a better place because of it.

The conversation was brought up recently about the future of Refresh Phoenix, should it continue or not. I quickly jumped back in the seat wanting to pick it up and run with it again. Good intentions yes, but I really did not think it through, a mistake that I need to correct.

When Dan Ritz, James Britt and myself first spoke of Refresh, we had one goal, “get the conversation started“. While I cannot speak for everyone, I believe that goal was met. Now its time to set some new ones.

My schedule lately is bumpy at best, I’ll be in Tucson this tuesday and traveling a lot more in the coming months. While the interest for Refresh around the country has continued to grow, the time for Refresh in Phoenix may be over with.

Thank you to everyone who helped make Refresh happen. Hope to see you in a coffee shop, meetup, podcampaz, social media club, co-working space, PDW, Geekweek, Tweetup, TiE, AZ Entrepreneur Conference, Ignite Phoenix, other PIF events, etc. you get the picture.

Aaron Post
@aaronpost
@refreshphoenix

BTW: The 10 things I learned from Refresh posted 2 years go, if only I had listened to myself.

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Phoenix Dev House (Derek Neighbors)
Refresh Demo Night (Derek Neighbors)
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{ Comments }

Healthcare Reform Question #1

by Aaron Post on August 27, 2009

How many of you out there either bitching or fighting for health care reform have actually spoken to your doctor about it?

We are looking to our government to fix it but who is our government looking to? Does anyone really think that the experts on the problems with Healthcare all work in Washington? Really?

I challenge you to ask 5 people who work in the medical profession about the healthcare bill. You might be surprised by what you hear, I know I was.