About Pitching Your Startup and Negotiating Term Sheets[i],   Author: Brian Laung Aoaeh   A heavier than expected workload an a number of fronts has restrained my ability to keep up with the reading that I have to do in order to write a post based on The Startup Owner’s Manual. As a compromise I have decided to post about other equally pertinent topics till I can pick things up on that front.   But, [...]

About Disruption, and Great Entrepreneurs.[i],   Author: Brian Laung Aoaeh   I too am still basking in the euphoria of the Super Eagles win at the 2013 African Cup of Nations. I’m hoping the team’s preparations for the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil leaves them in a position to launch a serious bid for the trophy. Can you imagine what it would be like to have both Ghana’s Black Stars and Nigeria’s Super Eagles [...]

Customer Discovery Phase I: State Your Business Model Hypotheses?[i],[ii]   Author: Brian Laung Aoaeh   I’m picking up where I left off in our discussions of The Startup Owner’s Manual[iii]. We made it as far as chapter 3 before I took a detour to explore other topics.   A caveat to this post is that I can’t possibly do it justice without writing a really long post. So I urge you to check out Steve [...]

Editor’s Note: This work is exclusive for Tekedia. You are permitted to link with a short blurb but never to post the entire content in any website. A PDF version which contains the whole article along with a  Business Model Canvas designed by the author is available here.   Towards A Business Model For Funding African Startups[1] By Brian Laung Aoaeh   Preamble: Please participate in the discussion by leaving comments at the end of the article. [...]

Editor’s Note: Please do not copy this article; just link to it. It is 100% exclusive for Tekedia.   UPDATED: Some Knowledge Hacks for African Startup Founders and Entrepreneurs[i]   My post on knowledge hacks turned out to be very popular. So I decided to update it with information that I should have remembered to include in the original post in the first place. My excuse? Well, that was a minimum viable product. Consider this [...]

Some Knowledge Hacks for African Startup Founders and Entrepreneurs[i]   I know, I know. I have missed a few installments of my column lately. My wife just reminded me of that. I travelled to Singapore on a weeklong due diligence assignment last month. I came back scrambling to catch up with work. Then Sandy hit Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. That has thrown a lot of things of course as the region recovers.   [...]

What is Customer Discovery?[i],[ii]   We are now three chapters deep intoThe Startup Owner’s Manual – a recently published book by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf[iii]. You can catch up by reading Chapter 1, and Chapter 2. You can also read the main precepts of the Customer Development Manifesto here.   Why does it make sense not to invest enormous amounts of energy, time and other resources working on a fully baked business plan when [...]

The Startup Customer Development Manifesto[i],[ii]   We are now two chapters deep intoThe Startup Owner’s Manual – a recently published book by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf[iii]. You can get caught up by reading Chapter 1, in which the authors point out the problems that arise when startup founders approach the task ahead of them as if their startup is merely a small version of a big company, and Chapter 2 in which theyintroduce the [...]

The Startup Customer Development Model[i],[ii]    We will spend the rest of 2012 and a substantial part of 2013 going through The Startup Owner’s Manual – a recently published book by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf[iii]. Last week we discussed Chapter 1, in which the authors point out the problems that arise when startup founders approach the task ahead of them as if their startup is merely a small version of a big company.Chapter 2introduces [...]

The Path To Disaster: A Startup Is Not A Small Version of A Big Company[i],[ii]   In my previous article I promised that we would spend the balance of 2012, and probably a substantial portion of 2013, going through The Startup Owner’s Manual – a recently published book by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf[iii].   Chapter 1 begins with a brief recap of Webvan’s history[iv] – Webvan was a darling of the dotcom era. It [...]