Review: Steve Blank's How to Fail Less

Source: Steve Blank Teaches Entrepreneurs How To Fail Less


SILICON VALLEY AND ITS UNIQUE CULTURE

• You need to development your own morale/entrprenuership compass: due to information/opinion overload - Take in the knowledge/opinions as a starting point, then figure out your way of doing things.
• SV no longer make products: we encourage risk and accept failure. 
• Failed entrepenuer in SV is: Experience; those who failed didn't shame your family or community, and we are interested to know about their next venture.
• The cost of doing startup is very low 

BEING A FOUNDER IS HARD ESPECIALLY THE FIRST TIME

• Startup is an experience: even though I give you a manual about how other startups fail, most probably you still can't avoid failure for the first time. It's like teaching a children not to touch a hot kettle, but they are more likely to remember the lesson once they touch it. 

ENTREPRENEURS ARE ARTISTS

• You see something other didn't; and you bring your pack towards your vision.
• You still need a process to validate your vision.
• Do customer validation yourselves, so you can't hide behind a supposingly "lousy" salesman; if 10 customers tell you head on that your product sucks, you need to do something about it.

Review: Does reward still works?

• There's a mismatch between what science knows and what business does
• Could reward narrow our focus and limit our possibilities?
• As long as the task involve only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as they would be expected; the higher the pay, the better the performance.
• But once the task called for "even rudimentary cognitive skill," a larger reward "led to poorer performance".
• Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose (buliding block of new ways of doing things) vs Stick and Carrot (the old ideology)
• Microsoft Britannica (professionally paid) vs Wikipedia (do it for fun)
• Google 20% Time and Atlassian Fedex Day