Northstars and Guardrails

Recently I spoke at Lemnos Labs. The talk wasn't recorded so to satisfy requests, here's the essence of what I presented: the Why is your Northstar and the MVP are your guardrails. Huh? With special thanks to Simon Sinek, here we go.

Write a one-page "Why" statement for your product. A half page is even better. This isn't a What or a How. It's the Why. The Why comes from the part of the brain that makes decisions based directly on emotional and rational experiences. This is really hard to do because that brain part has no verbal ability. It's why your gut is usually right, but you can't articulate why. As Sinek says: "people buy why you do something, not what you do".

The MVP is the Minimum Viable Product. It's what you will not ship without. Anything more than MVP is a nice to have and is best stored in a playbook for V2. The hardware startup has limited resources and limited time to get the product into production and generate recurring revenue. Be hardcore about your MVP so that you can survive and play again another day. 

The Global Element comes alongside hardware startups to help them think and execute like a large multi-national company. We make hardware easier.