The goal for your the first release of your new product should be to be embarrassed by it. It shouldn’t be perfect, it should be good enough.

“If you’re not embarrassed by your first product release, you’ve released too late.” – Reid Hoffman, Linkedin

That’s not to say I don’t think beautifully designed products are important – they most definitely are – but you won’t know what goes into a beautifully built product until you have some data from your potential customers.

Andrew…

…partly for fear of having them shot off.

When I woke up this morning I was greeted by some exciting news. Melbourne-based startup Trunk.ly had been acquired by Avos, the startup setup by Youtube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen to relaunch Delicious.com.

The Trunk.ly founders Tim Bull and Alex Dong are the definition of the word tenacious.

Trunk.ly is their third (fourth?) pivot in the last two years and is only a year old. Tim and Alex worked hard building a series…

This last weekend I made an investment in myself that paid off.

I’ve been wanting to find new startup collaborators for a while – or even just smart people to work with at Native. So I signed up to Startup Weekend – a competition where you pull together a team to build a startup project and (hopefully) launch something in a weekend.

I wanted to invest in my ability to develop compelling startup concepts and execute on them.

It was an intense weekend. We worked hard from…

Last night I went to my first Skillshare class, the Art of the Cold Call.

I’ve been a cold caller for a while. My first cold calling gig was giving away tickets to a design expo. My next was cold calling motorcycle dealers for Vmoto. Then entrepreneurial speakers for the Hive.

More recently I’ve cold called for entrepreneurs for the used it to find trainers for Sessions in Melbourne and New York.

Cold calling isn’t about harassing people about their mobile phone plan – at least…

I’m a massive fan of rejection. It’s what keeps me moving. If I wasn’t a fan I probably wouldn’t be in the business I am in.

Every day I send an email or make a phone call to someone that is likely to get me a rejection. I make sure that it’s about something big and meaningful – something that is likely to cause rejection but if it doesn’t will lead me onto something bigger, something interesting.

Yesterday I emailed a publisher I know about the potential for a book around…

I found this great post from the founder of Dropbox, Drew Houston, on Hacker News.

Someone had asked him if Dropbox (currently valued at $5b) was his first idea.

“[I] informally came up with and tossed around 6 or 7 ideas at the same time — not so much coding as investigating/talking to potential customers and bouncing them off other friends and entrepreneurs.

this was crucial — ideas don’t really fall out of the sky, they evolve.

there were several times where i’d get really excited…