New Year Goal: Math Fluency
Math is cool. It’s getting cooler as well. This year I’m giving myself the goal to become fluent in math. What that means is left vague, so that I have options to pursue based on what I enjoy. To start…
Category startup
Retrospectives: Pivots
End of the year is here and our office is shutting down on Thursday. At the end of each year I run a retrospective with my team on our accomplishments and failures for that year. In a startup, it’s easy…
Mental Model Mondays: Auto Catalysis
I quite like this model. Autocatalysis is a model from chemistry, which occurs when a reaction speeds up on its own. Essentially one reaction creates another, which creates another, so on and so forth until at some point it tapers…
Visualizing a Morning
I’m reading Lean Analytics by right now and have found some absolute gems in the book. One of my favorite sections so far is called Empathy, and describes what founders should measure when they are setting up their MVPs. In…
Mental Model Monday: Five Whys
I’m starting a new tradition here, after one of my role models – Fred Wilson. He used to write an MBA Monday section for his blog, AVC, which was great. I’ve decided to write about mental models, heuristics, and biases.…
Acquisition in Africa
Dave McClure has this pirate acronym (AARRR) which he uses to help founders remember five important pillars of growth for startups. They are: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue I’m a big fan of using it and have implemented it at…
MNO Economies
In the rest of the world the majority of startups look at the internet as their primary distribution channel. If you build an app, and someone has internet, that person will get your app if they want it. In Africa, where…