1st edition of Fit for Purpose: How Modern Businesses Find, Satisfy, and Keep Customers from David J Anderson and Alexei Zheglov was published in Nov 2017. They wrote the first edition in 7 weeks during summer 2017. I had a chance to provide feedback to them as they were writing and editing their chapters. The book basically talks about what a product and service is made up of, how customers measure the product or service and what metrics company managers must apply at different levels to be always fit for customer purpose (the Why's of the customer). If I want to summarise the book in one statement, it would be like: Align your business to how your customers measure your product and service. When I was reading the chapters, four guys came to my mind: Peter Drucker, Jack Trout, Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Clayton Christenson. The book reminded me of Peter Drucker; because he once made a profound observation that has been forgotten by many, his observation goes like this: "B
I have started and worked on several startups in the past 16 years. When I look back, I find the following patterns appearing again and again in every unsuccessful startup that I was involved in. Here is the list of patterns, and they are not in order. I wrote them as they came to my mind: Giving Up Soon: We gave up soon. Sometimes at the start of success we stopped. At one startup we started to make small amount of money after several months, and then we stopped! To be fair, we stopped, because the team collapsed, but anyway we stopped at the moment that money started to come in. Not Putting 100% focus : We did not put 100% effort into it. For some of us it was the secondary job, and for some of us it was the last thing on the daily agenda! Not Hustling : We did not hustle. Some of us took care of our comfort instead of hustling. Not Passionate Enough : Some of us were not passionate about the problem we were trying to solve, or customers we were trying to serve, and th