• ESPN explains how Nike lost Steph Curry to Under Armour (benzinga)
  • Perfect example of not paying attention to details when talking to customers. Apparently, Nike executives misprounced Steph’s name and had Kevin Duran’t name in one of the cookie cutter slides.
  • Now Steph Curry is worth to Under Armour is a whopping $14Billion USD and growing!
  • I’m noticing lot more Under Armour gears whenever I go to any of the kid’s games and NBA games.
  • Lesson, “If you don’t treat your customers and partners right, somebody else will”.
• This Princeton Professor posted his CV of Failures for the world to see (CNBC)
• How game theory can help you do a better job of parenting (aeon.co)

• Tesla Model 3 Released: inside Elon Musk’s dream car (verge)
• Microsoft releases preview of new Azure ‘serverless compute’ service to take on AWS Lambda (ZDNet)
• Richest and Poorest countries in the world (visualcapitalist)
• Postmates launches Amazon Prime Style subscription service, hits 1 million monthly deliveries (TechCrunch)
• Whistle’s “Fitbit for dogs” acquired by Mars Petcare (TechCrunch)
  • Wow, not bad for a quick follower.
• Emotional and psychological risk of investing (marketwatch)

• Amazon Is Capturing Bigger Slice of U.S. Online Holiday Spending (Bloomberg)
• Understanding the node.js eventoop (mixu.net)
• The Log: What every software engineer should know about real time data’s unifying abstraction (LinkedInBlog)
• What Google learned from its quest to build a perfect team (NYT)
• Sports: 10 records the golden state warriors have already broken this year (HuffPost)

 

 

 

 

• Here’s a 99-page shareholder presentation on why Yahoo needs to fire Marissa Mayer (BusinessInsider)
• Why 2015 Was a Breakthrough Year in Artificial Intelligence (Bloomberg)
• All the Product Reviews Money Can Buy (NYT)
  • How the anonymity of internet hurts or benefits online/local retailers?
• Google Ventures Owns Part of Several Unicorns, but the Biggest (And Trickiest) Is Uber (Recode)
•  Costco has one secret that makes it ‘Amazon-proof’ (BusinessInsider)
• What if? Whether to kill baby Hitler might be a political firecracker, but can counterfactuals say anything deeper about the past?(aeon.co)
• Why Wall Street Loves — And Should Fear — Google’s New Supercomputer (vice.com)

• Microsoft’s quantum computer simulator: A glimpse into the future of computers (TechRepublic)
• How search engines make us feel smarter than we really are (boingboing)
• TensorFlow: Google open sources the machine learning library that drives products like Inbox and enables pure research(Dzone).
• The Last 90 VC-Backed Tech IPOs Have Dramatically Underperformed the Market (all in one chart) (ClimateerInvesting)
• What Happens When There Are Fewer Suckers at the Poker Table? (link)
• The world’s tallest building will be one kilometer high (verge)
• Corporate directors – among the highest paid part-time employees in america (bostonglobe)
• Your next business partner should come with a prenup – Scott Kupor (Fortune)

“A business exists to create customers” – Peter Drucker.

As a startup founder you need to work on a business plan only if it is absolutely necessary and helpful to get funding. Rather most investors would want to see traction. Unless you are a proven entrepreneur with multiple successful exits, the days of getting funding with just an idea is over long, long time back. Bootstrap your startup, get traction and then think about spending time to write a business plan when you are forced to do so. Until then, spend all your time getting customers to use your product.

Prominent VC Dave McClure has said recently that “Don’t write business plan, rather build a functional product that people are using” (here). If you don’t believe in his words, here is another proof from more than 40 years. Intel’s Moore jotted down first business plan so small you would think it is a tweet. Check out the image below.