Hong Le

As human beings, we have a strong tedency to get defensive. Don’t. Instead of getting defensive, listen, truly listen, and try to understand the perspective being offered. Then take ownership of those shortfalls and try to make improvements in the ares of critique you have received.

1. Be humble. It is an honor to be in a leadership position. Your team is counting on you to make the right decisions.
2. Don’t act like you know everything. You don’t. The team knows that. Ask smart questions.
3. Listen. Ask for advice and heed it.
4. Treat people with respect. Regardless of rank, everyone is a human being and plays an important role in the team. Treat them that way. Take care of your people and they will take care of you.
5. Take ownership of failures and mistakes.
6. Pass credit for success up and down the chain.
7. Work hard. As the leader, you should be working harder than anyone else on the team. No job is beneath you.
8. Have integrity. Do what you say; say what you do. Don’t lie up or down the chain of command.
9. Be balanced. Extreme actions and opinions are usually not good.
10. Be decisive. When it is time to make a decision, make one.
11. Build relationships. That is your main goal as a leader. A team is a group of people who have relationships and trust one another. Otherwise, it is just a disconnected, incoherent cluster of people.
12. Lastly, get the job done. That is the purpose of a leader – to lead a team in accomplishing a mission. If you don’t accomplish the mission, you fail as a leader. Performance counts.

Ref: Leadership Strategy and Tactics, Jocko Willink

1. Customer would be interested enough to sign up. (Registration)
2. We would be able to verify them as registered users. (Activation)
3. Customers who were engaged in site features and functions. (Retention)
4. Engaged customers would tell their friends about the service and recruit. (Referral)

Ref: The Lean Startup

Instead of looking at cumulative totals or gross numbers such as total revenue and total number of customers, one looks at the performance of each group of customers that comes into contact with the product independently. Each group is called a cohort.

Each conversion rate shows the percentage of customer who registered in that month who subsequently went in to take the indicated action.

Ex. All the customers who joined in Feb, about 60 percent of them logged into the product at least one time.

Ref: The Lean Startup

Customers don’t care how much time something takes to build. They care only if it serves their needs.

Ref: The Lean Startup

Genchi Genbutsu is the Japanese principle of going to and directly observing a location and its conditions in order to understand and solve any problems faster and more effectively. The phrase literally translated means “go and see for yourself” and is a part of the Toyota Way philosophy.

Competitors who?

Forget your competitors, just focus on your customers.

Ref: Jack Ma

Startups use many kinds of innovation: novel scientific discoveries, repurposing an existing technology for a new use, devising a new business model that unlocks value that was hidden, or simply bring product or service to a new location or previously underserved set of customers. In all these cases, innovation is the heart of the company’s success.

Ref: The Lean Startup

A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.

Ref: The Lean Startup