Category: Lean and Product

Executive Summary – Lessons Learned from Ebookmakr’s Failure:

1. Love the problem more than your solution.
2. Don’t push too far your dreams of China in your hand.
3. Use prototyping tools such as Marvel when running user interviews. (More here: Four Lessons Learned From Making Customer Value Your Priority.)
4. Be careful with the selection process for user interviews: You might end up picking those that will support your vision – it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy trap.
5. Beware of false positives in user interviews.
6. Never start writing a single line of code before an appropriate number of customers signed up. (For clarification: Customers are paying users.)
7. Never spend money on developing a prototype when you’re not working full-time on growing the user-base and increasing customer value.
8. Be patient and give your product the time it needs.
9. Always make branded t-shirts and wear them later regularly to preserve the recollection of the disaster. (See below.)