Consider this your product strategy / product launch / market strategies cheat-sheet:

1. Choose a smallish well defined market and dominate it

2. Solve a known problem within a larger vision

3. Achieve must-have status — no ROI required

4. Straddle the line between enterprise software and consumer software

5. Don’t sell to CIOs

6. Keep refining your pitch until a 24 year-old can say it over the phone in a first conversation and set the hook for a long sale

7. Keep selling more stuff to the same people

Tom demonstrates a simple way to match your products features to the needs of a market to identify strengths and gaps in your product. Helpful for priotization and building competitive advantage.

Tom talks with Chuck Garcia, professional speaker, executive coach, best selling author, talk radio show host, Columbia University Professor, and avid mountain climber. Chuck helps executives transform themselves into better leaders.

Acknowledging who you are with, their history, their struggles and triumphs, is graciousness, and it’s an awesome sales technique. We want to buy from people and products we trust. It’s hard to establish trust if you have no empathy, if you don’t acknowledge your audience. Why should I buy from someone who’s guiding principle is “I care nothing for you”?

Slaying your dragons doesn’t always mean having the courage to do what you love. Sometimes it means having the courage to do what you don’t want to do, but know needs to be done. Dragons are imaginary, but they still take courage to overcome. Less than 1% of all the things I worry about have happened, yet the fear is just as real as if I’d stepped into dragon slobber.

What makes for good design? How do you pursue your education when you hate school? What’s the key to becoming a beloved brand? These are some of the questions we ask Gavin Ivester, Creative Consultant, Strategic Advisor, veteran of Apple Computer and for three + years the Vice President of design at Bang & Olufsen.

Our beloved co-founder Margaret the Pug celebrated her 17th birthday on May 27. 17 for her is like 94 for us, assuming no other dogs are reading this. She’s an inspiration and daily example of grit and perseverance. Check out this short video to see what we mean.

Tom talks with Chris Boyd, head of product for Built Technologies, start-up advisor, mentor, and one of the wisest people we know working in product management. Built Technologies recently announced a series C round worth $88M.

Tom and Chris talk about Chris's transition from project manager to product manager and play a game of "spontaneous product development" to create a product to disrupt the U.S. education market.

Thanks to the good folks at nContracts for joining Tom’s talk about customer interviews. Check out highlights in the video.

Thanks to the good folks at nContracts for joining Tom’s talk about customer interviews. Here are the highlights.