Finding your Niche Stage

In “Killer Instinct” Rafael Corrales writes: There are no plus-minus stats to measure a player’s ruthlessness, his desire to beat his opponent so badly he’ll need therapy to recover. [...] Athletic greats squeeze every ounce out of their abilities. That drive and hunger is worth noting, since top athletes are typically not satisfied even when pulling in accolades, championships, and money. Instead of measuring success relative to the general population, or a peer group, the great ones measure success relative to their potential and abilities.

Recapping ideas, papers, and books that had changed my life yesterday reminded me of Saras Sarasvathy’s Effectual Reasoning Model from her 2001 paper “What Makes Entrepreneur’s Entrepreneurial” (There is an annotated version on the Khosla Ventures site at http://www.khoslaventures.com/presentations/What_makes_entrepreneurs_ent... ) What follows are some quotes from “W

This week I have been developing content for a client’s website. We are helping them formulate a message that is intended to explain both their knowledge of their customers’ problems and how they are able to help. Good marketing is really just good content. It focuses on your customers’ problems and how they will benefit from your offering. It is not about your product features.

Both engineering and entrepreneurship alternate exploration and verification cycles to develop a solution that satisfies a customer’s need. Both of these rely on the scientific method of “observation, hypothesis formation, prediction, and experimentation” to develop and validate testable theories, engineering solutions, and profitable products.