It’s a paradox, the easy thing to do is to do more work. The hard thing to do is to decide where to place the good enough threshold, and to work enough to meet, but not exceed that threshold.

I had a boss once who, when evaluating a project would either describe the state as “above threshold” or “below threshold”. It was an interesting choice of words, and really described his point of view on things… Continue reading →

Whatever you are working on, being able to quickly, clearly, and effectively communicate it to a potential customer or approval executive can dramatically improve your chances of success.Some people are gifted with a golden tongue, the ability to on the spot pitch an idea in a way that just sounds awesome. But most of us have to work at it. And it’s likely that those people that seem so gifted put in their time perfecting their abilities. While it seems effortless now, none of us saw the years of effort that went into getting there.

So how do you perfect a pitch? Well a good pitch has a couple qualities: Continue reading →

Taking a shot at writing an advertisement for a product before the first line of code is written has tremendous value.  Ad writing requires the team to become crystal clear about the message they are trying to portray, and the action they are trying to cause.  To help you get started, here’s a structure we used extensively at one of my day jobs.  What you want to do is capture who you are writing the ad for, what their problems are and how the unique solutions the product provides to the user.  Finally it closes with why you are the best company to deliver this product.

We typically think of the advertisement as the tool we use to communicate a product’s value to the market once the product is built and ready to ship. And most ads are written after the product is ready to launch, as its important to keep products in front of target customers, and you need to iterate the advertisements to ride market trends, and also keep end customer interest.  Imagine how boring it would be if we were all still watching Michael Jackson’s Pepsi commercial 30 years later…  But writing an ad for you product idea is a great way to solidify your thoughts. Continue reading →