Startup Secrets Sandbox
Startup Secrets Sandbox

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Glossary for learning

From time to time I use terms or even invent them to provoke people to learn!
This will be a place that I try to make it easy for readers to look them up, consider why I’ve used or invented them, comment on them, improve them or just reject them for plain old English!

Coopetition

Coopetition is a business strategy that involves collaborating or partnering with competitors in areas where they can potentially benefit from each other, while still maintaining competition in other areas. It's a blend of the words 'cooperation' and 'competition'. This strategy is often used to expand markets, share resources, and increase innovation. In the startup world, coopetition can come into play when looking for partners to provide leverage in your
Customer-Centric Business Model
⁠
, in
Go to Market
⁠
for distribution for and even in designing your
Whole Product
⁠
strategy.

Improvation

Improvation means taking ideas that were not new but deserved refining and reapplication. For example Apple is a great example of an Improvator. Here are just two cases of their improvation.
Xerox’s GUI and Mouse which they brought to the Lisa and then the Mac.
Touch technology, which they refined and introduced as multi touch for the iPhone, making it game changing for smart phones.
Both these and many other examples prove It's not always about inventing something completely new, but can instead be about improving and combining or even just reapplying or repackaging existing ideas in a way that adds enough value to compel customers to buy.

Story-selling

One of the most powerful things you can do is tell stories that connect with your audience, emotionally. Correctly shared, with facts not fiction, these can be the best soft selling means for people to connect with you, and self identify why they want to work with you, invest in you, or do business with you.
Think before you sell, consider finding a way to educate your audience instead.Story tell in a way that enables you to be bought not sold.
If you’re selling a product this may seem counterintuitive, but it’s just complementary with the tradition way of selling FAB, (Features, Advantages, Benefits) because the story provides the proof of their benefit.
Powerful, emotional, factual stories can share your FAB far more effectively and memorably than your data sheet ever will! That is also why customer references are so important because they are the stories that provide proof of your customer use of your product, validating it works!
This is the essence of story-selling.

Whole Problem

This is an important concept for startups to help map and roadmap solutions, products and business build.
A "Whole Problem" is a comprehensive understanding of the pain points and issues your target customers face. This includes the root cause, all related challenges and dependencies.
“A problem well stated is a problem half-solved."
- John Dewey
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