Be a Swiss army knife

I'm a designer and self-taught developer (front-end) with no degree in business or marketing, so I decided to educate myself about it.

Over Christmas and new year’s I read a lot about building an audience, pricing strategies, growth hacking and metrics. Reading everything but product design made me take a step back from our app for a moment, go into helicopter mode and think about the long term goal of Dekks.

Running a startup that is data driven and not based on beliefs, it's essential to understand metrics. Of course listening to your gut feeling is important, but making decisions based on personal opinions is risky and cost intensive. Numbers create context and can inform you what to do next.

In all these books from successful people and startups I read the same things over and over again. Running a startup and being successful with it is not about luck nor about making a slick product or a single trick that makes it successful. It’s a combination of all aspects of a business, like what every good business is really about. Good ideas, making decisions based on data, iterating super fast, testing, a great team, great execution, leverage and many more …

So what did I learn?

I realised that I need to be more like a Swiss army knife rather than a sexy Japanese damask sword.

The more I know about marketing, understand business and the power of leverage the better. Only building and shipping a product isn't enough. I guess I knew that already, but now it became more clear to me.

Just wanted to share my thoughts, maybe it's helpful to you. Ping me if you'd like to know the books I'm currently reading.

Happy 2020 ✌🏻