One of my early Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) in the founding of CloudHealth Technologies was to test the value proposition of cloud cost optimization. I needed to validate two critical assumptions to my product idea: (1) I could drive a
Product Management
About product management
The Importance of Cycle Time in Build-Measure-Learn Loops
The Lean Startup movement popularized the concept of Build-Measure-Learn (BML) as a means to reduce the risk of the creation of new products and businesses. The concept is simple: build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), measure the product’s effectiveness
What I Learned Starting a Company
October is the two year anniversary of the acquisition of my company, CloudHealth Technologies, by VMware. CloudHealth as a private company was definitely a labor of love for me, starting with the irrational decision to leave my job with two
My 1st Lesson In Incremental Delivery
Early in my career I worked on a new service called Venues at an MIT Media Labs spinout called FireFly. The service was an early version of a social network like MySpace that was focused on engaging consumers in chat,
Iterating In the Presence of Customers
I re-listened to Reid Hoffman’s Masters of Scale episode 4 (Imperfect Is Perfect) on the walk from the office to North Station last night. This episode highlights the criticality of putting your product in front of customers early and
Opportunity In Adversity
Several years ago I invited a key champion at an early customer to go to lunch with me. This person was an IT director who always provided me good feedback on the early product I was building. While my company