Update: you can now watch this TV interview on the topics covered in this blog post, interviewed by Simon Thomsen of StartupDaily on his regular startup show on Ausbiz.tv (registration required).

Solve customer problems that arise often, every day

We have to help our customers develop new habits — to use our product/service to solve that problem, rather than their old habitual solution. Habits form more effectively with less time between repetitions.

Another variable in that equation is the real or perceived value created. If the real (or perceived) value created is sufficiently high (eg selling a house for $200k more than the traditional means of sale) then…

It’s important to communicate regularly with potential customers, employees, investors and all the other audiences out there, because no matter how hard you work as an individual or as a founding team, these groups ultimately determine whether or not your startup will succeed.

Among all the startup founders I get to meet and work with, it’s rare to find someone who’s already communicating often enough with these audiences.

I think this is because creating content is always going to be an ‘important-but-not-urgent’ task, and when your task list for the day is over-stuffed with ‘important-and-urgent’ or even ‘not-important-but-still-urgent’ tasks, it…

Choosing to become a startup founder is hard. The disincentives are so many — and the rewards so few and unlikely—that many startup founders I know tell me they consider it ‘a calling’ rather than a career choice, to make it seem more like a decision that was made for them, or hard-wired into them; that they were motivated by some higher purpose rather than material or creative rewards.

Looking back on the startup founder part of my career, what strikes me most about those 15 years was how rapidly it flashed past; how little of it I remember in…

It’s #IWD2021 . I’m angry and sad (but mostly angry) about the injustice, inequity and violence Australian women suffer and the roles Australian men play in perpetuating it, whether through action or inaction.

I’ll try to be a better ally. I will try harder not to walk past it and I’ll be more determined to call it out when I see it.

I’ll sign the petition, attend the march and I’ll donate to help organise it.

If, when trying to be an ally, I make mistakes, I will try not to be defensive if someone calls me out on it…

If you’re certain you understand the business, and you are confident your investment in it will succeed, what you’re doing is not venture capital, it’s banking.

Venture capital must have a high degree of risk in order to have a chance of earning the high returns venture capital investors expect from this asset class.

Venture capital doesn’t understand the startups it invests in.

Anytime you think you understand the business and the market in which it operates, consider whether you might be mistaken. That happens; you wouldn’t be the first.

Or, you might be investing too late in the company, or too late in what has previously been an…

As an early-stage tech startup founder you will often have to write your own startup’s marketing copy, and you may find it difficult if the brand’s tag line is the first line of marketing copy you’ve ever written.

Because you spend so much time with your head focused on how to solve the customer problem using technology, when someone asks you what your product or service is, you’re likely to describe it in terms of features and functionality. When trying to write marketing copy, you’ll usually do the same.

It seems logical, and that’s why it’s a mistake.

Marketing (and…

Maybe instead of using the death penalty to deter people from committing crimes for which the death penalty probably isn’t a sufficient deterrent, we should use it to very effectively deter people from committing minor offences.

For example, someone may still risk a death penalty for flying to Singapore with drugs up their bum, if their family is being held hostage by a drug gang. Whereas I don’t think anybody is going to risk the death penalty for not properly sorting their recyclables.

I’m against any form of death penalty, but it also drives me nuts when people don’t put…

Some investors want to stay investors in portfolio startups for the whole life of the company, others are looking for a quicker return on an investment and will be happy to accept a smaller return along with that.

You can get penalised by either kind of an investor if you raise the topic of an exit strategy without being asked.

If in your pitch to a long-term investor you mention an exit strategy, you might not seem ambitious enough or long-term enough to them.

When pitching to a short-term investor they may have their own ideas about what your exit…