startups

If you’re building a social network, community, SaaS or anything similar to that, these are the only things that really matter: Growth Engagement Monetization And not necessarily in that order. My friend, Nir Eyal, refers to startups that have these things as GEMs (get it?). Whenever he invests in startups, he looks for products that have at least two of those, and a plan for the third. So, I created this quick Venn diagram illustrating why Growth, Engagement, and Monetization are so important:...

Watch the talks from Habit Summit for free » startupletters: With the thousands of apps and startups appearing every day, it is difficult to predict if a product will flop completely or become the next Snapchat. The one thing that successful products tend to do really well is creating habits. After some time you use them without even consciously deciding... Did you miss the Habit Summit this week? No worries, the talks are already online and available for free....

Two days ago my good friend Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover published Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. And what a fascinating read! Let me start out by giving you a little piece of context. I have been following Nir's work for the past two years, and for the better part of that time I have been helping him managing his now massively popular blog. I have also attended multiple of his talks, and have even given a talk on the topic myself this previous summer....

Pocket has long been one of my essential apps, both on my phone and on my Mac. Everything I want to read I add to Pocket. Whenever I have a few moments to read and get inspired (like when I'm walking somewhere, on a bus/train/plane or waiting for someone) I turn to my Pocket app. This way I always have something interesting to read, while at the same time not interrupting my workflow when I first see an interesting link....

I recently signed up for Help Me Write, which is a platform to help writers and bloggers to prioritize their writing. Of course I had to create a profile: This is basically Lean Blogging, minimizing waste by only writing what people actually want to read. It works like this: - Log into Help Me Write with your Twitter account - Go to my profile and vote on my ideas for future blog posts to help me decide what to write next...

Except from where he says statistics (rather than examples), I agree with the message this video is trying to convey. Although I'm still at University myself, at least I know why. For me, getting to know inspiring people and learn from them is much more important than cramming for "meaningless" tests and exams, hoping for straight As. I've had some truly amazing professors during my years as a student, but the people that have taught me the most is my peers....