I have been thinking a bit about the pros and cons of grinding it out versus transforming a company. By grinding it out I mean pursuing a path on which you are making progress but very slowly. So I am not talking about situations in which a company has not figured out at all what they are doing or is completely failing, but rather a situation in which every bit of growth takes a huge amount of effort. By transforming I mean making a big shift in strategy with the goal of finding a business th...

I have been thinking a bit about the pros and cons of grinding it out versus transforming a company. By grinding it out I mean pursuing a path on which you are making progress but very slowly. So I am not talking about situations in which a company has not figured out at all what they are doing or is completely failing, but rather a situation in which every bit of growth takes a huge amount of effort. By transforming I mean making a big shift in strategy with the goal of finding a business th...

In building a business it’s generally considered a good idea to listen to your customers. The idea is that if your product/site/service is a better fit with customers’ needs you will have more of them. As it turns out though, listening to customers is a lot easier said than done. First, which customers should you listen to? Is it the early adopters or should you try to identify what you believe to be “mainstream” customers? This turns out to be very hard to answer. If you don’t keep the early...

In building a business it’s generally considered a good idea to listen to your customers. The idea is that if your product/site/service is a better fit with customers’ needs you will have more of them. As it turns out though, listening to customers is a lot easier said than done. First, which customers should you listen to? Is it the early adopters or should you try to identify what you believe to be “mainstream” customers? This turns out to be very hard to answer. If you don’t keep the early...