7 Deadly Mistakes That Could Kill Your Next Idea
Green Gorilla Software is celebrating six years this month and eight years since I started my first business, and this has prompted me to come up with 7 things that have helped avoid failure when a new potential client approaches us with a new innovation or product idea. These 7 things have helped me steer
How dare you charge for a spec?
I’ve heard this response more times than I care to remember. I’m in a prospect’s office, typically the Owners with a large bookcase of business classics like Gitomer’s “Sales Bible” and Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” and everything is going well. I never promise anything too early, I’m not a YES man, instead I’m there
Helping you understand and achieve product/market fit
Finding & Measuring Product/Market Fit Figuring out if you have product/market fit is as simple as sending out a survey, but as a basic rule of surveying, getting at least a 100 responses will go a long way towards statistical significance. This isn’t a survey you send out to your first 10 customers (you need
Perhaps it’s time to pivot
Why Not To Buy Lean Startup “Do Not Buy Lean Startup, Do not buy Business Model Generation, Save your money! Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Lean Startup by Eric Ries are a complete waste of money…” Read the article The Lean Startup Myth “The Lean Startup is a legendary book in technology startup circles
The importance of explainer videos and how they can bring your MVP to life
Reasons why you need a explainer video Statistically speaking, stale websites don’t do well. Websites that contain endless pages of block text and images can get boring fast and also rank low in Google search, which means less exposure. This also scares away customers who want to quickly understand a product Read the article Insider tips for
Free Tools!
Google Analytics – Obvious, but important! Google Analytics is jam packed with features so it would be slightly ridiculous for us to leave it out of this email, especially as its free! If you’re not using it, you should. With features like real time overview (see who is on your site RIGHT NOW) and audience
Don’t go chasing waterfalls
Agile Vs. Waterfall Product Engineering Author and entrepreneur Eric Ries unpacks the difference between waterfall and agile product development theories, and outlines when each are best employed. Waterfall – the linear path of product build-out – is best used when the problem and its solutions are well-understood. However, its hazard is that it can also
When you aren’t learning something new each day, it’s time to give up!
10 Common Mistakes Founders Make “Bless our little founder hearts. We’re eternal optimists who have great intentions paired with a propensity to try things that common sense would say is a bad idea. That means we try a lot of things, most of which don’t pan out. But it’s the things that do pan out that keep us motivated…”
What does Walter White have in common with startup founders?
Simple – He’s a hustler. He follows the MVP framework perfectly. He sees an opportunity for a product and starts creating it in a small RV with a huge focus on quality. Once he’s found his product/market fit.. he scales! Eventually he’s in a fancy laboratory with a huge distribution chain, but it all started
The Godfather of MVP, Steve Blank
Customer Development Manifesto A great podcast about customer development principles, For several years now Blank has been a driving force in changing the way people think, practice, create and deliver their products. Read the article The Key to Startup Success Sit back, relax and listen to the godfather himself talk about the key to startup success, going into depth
Starting small with a solid understanding of the customer and half a product is the way to launch
Idea to Paying Customers in 7 Weeks We love Buffer! The Buffer story is the perfect example of a lean startup. For those of us who know Joel Gascoigne personally it’s an amazing story of following the customer development framework, developing a simple MVP, raising funds from your customers, sticking to your beliefs and most importantly focusing on
Having an idea and turning it into a viable business.
Making sense of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) We feel like this is a great opening piece for greengorilla.software, in this article Henrik Kniberg tells us why an MVP is so important, how to go about building one and provides us with some real world examples. Read the article The Lean Startup Principles The lean startup is
Silicon Canal Energises Birmingham Tech Scene
Last night myself and @samcambridge attended the launch event for Silicon Canal (@Silicon_Canal). It was a great night hosted by @simonjenner & @nickholzherr. Silicon Canal is a volunteer organisation that aims to bring all elements of the tech sector in and around Birmingham together, like they have done in London/Silicon Roundabout and of course Silicon Valley/California, and
Applying the Lean Startup to a boring Marketing Plan
Howdy, it’s been a while since I last posted anything on our blog. We were suffering slightly from the old adage of working on urgent and non important ‘stuff’ until I read a great article from Seth Godin to shock me into action. Behind the scenes I’ve been busy really getting deep into the lean startup
Prime8: The weekly GGA web roundup! 30/11/2015
*peeks out from under duvet* Is it over? Has Black Friday finished? I can’t cope with it. It’s the emails you see. The unrelenting tidal-wave of emails promising world-beating discounts on electrical things. And the TV adverts?… Oh dear God the adverts… make them stop please… WHY ARE PEOPLE HURTING THEMSELVES TO GET PLASTIC THINGS
Prime8: The weekly GGA web roundup! 26/10/2015
This week Prime8 has been in geek nirvana (nerdvana?). What with the release of the new Star Wars trailer and the Back To The Future anniversary media blitz it’s been a great week! Downside is I haven’t actually seen my wife for 3 days so I’m guessing she’s just had enough of me wittering on
Prime8: The weekly GGA web roundup! 19/10/2015
This week The Apprentice showed us there’s still no shortage of silly people who’s main aim in life is to be a total a**e and do ‘business’ alongside a man who looks like a shaved Oscar the Grouch that lives in a sunbed. It also proved that when alcohol and Rugby is involved, the fact
Prime8: The weekly GGA web roundup! 12/10/2015
This week we’ve been learning to do the ‘Tory Powerstand’ George Osbourne and Theresa May unveiled to the world at their conference. It’s great! We feel so powerful and 1%! We’ve powerstood next to famous landmarks, in the bath, on the office roof, next to homeless person and some doctors on their 3rd consecutive 16
Prime8: The weekly GGA web roundup! 05/10/2015
This week The Pope visited the USA and told everyone that two men or two women shouldn’t be allowed to marry because of religion and stuff. To hammer the point home he then had a secret meeting with Kim Davis, the county clerk and notorious bigot who famously refused to serve a marriage license to
Prime8: The weekly GGA web roundup! 25/09/2015
As regular readers will know, we always open a Prime8 with some hilarious (what? It is!) comment on a topical news piece. But we’re struggling to think of anything that happened this week. It’s been so quiet. Nothings happened that we know of. Nope. Nothing… Lol. Here’s this weeks web roundup… Ooh that sneaky cheating
We’ve moved
We’re moving our blog over to Medium full time. Visit us here for future Prime8’s, tech blogs and general geekery.
The Prime8 – the weekly GGA web roundup: 16/02/15
This week Prime8 got himself in big trouble when he invaded the stage at the Grammys to protest against Kanye West’s constant onstage protests at the Grammys. Unfortunately he was 2 days too late and no one was actually there to see it. He made up for it on his way home when he forced
The Prime8: The weekly web roundup 09/02/15
This week Prime8 is looking forward to the release of the film version of housewife favourite smut-a-thon, 50 Shades Of Grey. To celebrate the release he’s decided to write a homage to it called ‘50 Apes Of Green’. He’s adamant that it’ll be a sub-average piece of erotic fiction with a prose only fractionally less
Prime8: The weekly web roundup 2/02/15
How d’ya like them Apples? Apple have just released record results for the last quarter. $74.6 billion to be precise. That’s the equivalent of selling 30,000 iPhone’s AN HOUR! Trying to make sense of the enormity of this? Then let Buzzfeed help you. Lets take 5 to remember… It’s easy to
Prime8: The weekly web roundup 26/01/15
Gearing up for the General Election, we’re setting up our own political party, The Gorilla Coalition, to take on the big boys. It’s about time we had a quality alternative to vote for so please do consider us when heading for the ballot box… What are our policies you ask? Well we’re taking our typical ‘Minimum
Prime8: The weekly web roundup 19/12/14
I know what you’re thinking: ’brave… so brave’. And you’d be right about that. It was totally courageous and no amount of 2-4-1 pizza can change that fact. Next week we’ll be trumping the El Capitan climb by attempting to ascend the side of an iPhone 6S. Here’s this weeks
Prime8: The weekly GGA web roundup 15/12/14
WEATHER BOMB! Pitch: a blatant piece of GGA self-promotion This week we launched our new product, Pitch. It’s a new way of giving companies like you the ability to create your own Android and iOS apps, control the content in them via a simple admin UI, and send Push Notifications out to your audience! It’s
Prime8: The weekly GGA web roundup 9/12/14
This week we’ve felt a familiar rush of childlike glee come over us here at GGA. The new Star Wars movie trailer has made us go all giddy with excitement. As has the new The Hobbit trailer. As has the news of a new ZX Spectrum launch! I know what you’re all thinking… “what a
Prime8: The weekly GGA web roundup 01/12/14
Prime8 is 50 (editions) old! Wheel out the comfy slippers and ‘Greatest Hits of The Eagles’ and lets party! Word must have got around because we’ve seen footage on the news this week of people in shopping frenzies going absolutely mental in Tesco and Asda, obviously trying to get Prime8 that perfect birthday gift. But what do you
Prime8 – The weekly GGA web roundup 24/11/14
Prime8 is 50 next week, so we thought it’s time we grew up a bit. Firstly we’ve decided to stop blaming all our failings and bad thoughts on an imaginary monkey. Then we’ve decided to stop mocking Facebook users at every given opportunity. Finally, we are going to stop being so caustically sarcastic. You’ll find
Prime8: The weekly GGA web roundup 17/11/14
This week, scientists made history by piloting a space probe to land on an actual comet. In space. That’s one hell of an achievement. My to-do list for this week consists of ‘clear out inbox’, ‘marinade chicken’ and ‘write thisPrime8’. Game, set and match space-boffins! Here’s this weeks roundup… Rosetta stoned So this probe, called
Prime8: The weekly GGA web roundup 3/11/14
This week Prime8 has decided to smash up all our office furniture and set fire to it all in the name of Bonfire night. He’s also taken to communicating only in the style of set-off fireworks, but that’s a different story. So here’s this weeks thankfully-Guy-Fawkes-free web roundup. Please stand well back and do not pick up
Prime8 – the weekly GGA web roundup 27/10/14
So it’s that time of year again when we here at GGA like to dress up like Michael Jackson in Thriller, go out, knock on strangers doors and tell them we’ll trash their property unless they give us free stuff. Also, it’s Halloween, so we thought we’d do a bit of a tribute to that with
Prime8 – the weekly GGA web roundup 20/10/14
In the current climate of political turmoil, economic misery, Ebola, terrorism, Nigel Farage’s face and just Simon Cowell, it’s easy to get a little depressed with the world. Not to worry though! Prime8 is here to raise your spirits and remind you that actually, everything is indeed awesome! This week also saw a British woman get
Prime8 – the weekly GGA web roundup 13/10/14
Prime8 is suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder at the moment. The change in the weather has made him act even more grumpy than usual. He keeps turning the heating on full and then deliberately opening all the office windows. if anyone complains about being cold he yells ‘put a jumper on!’ and throws a banana
Prime8 – the weekly GGA web roundup! 6/10/14
This week we’ve seen Donald Trump get brilliantly Twitter trolled (see below), more ‘News Of The World’ execs admit to phone-hacking, David Cameron stand up in public and lie through his teeth, and Jeremy Clarkson get stoned in Argentina (take that as you want to). In bigger news, GGA’s Paul T has a new dining
Prime8: The weekly GGA web roundup 29/09/14
Prime8 has been bending phones this week. He’s sat on them, stamped them on the floor, put them in vices and gone all ‘Uri Geller’ on them. He’s also expanded his experiments by throwing rocks at our monitors to prove they will smash. He’s costing us a small fortune and we’re not even sure why
Welcome to Prime8 – the weekly GGA web roundup! 22/09/2104
Prime8 has reached the big ‘4 0’ this week. He’d like to celebrate with a party but he’s to upset that his referendum to become independent from GGA has resulted in a ‘NO’ vote. There’s really no pleasing him. Feast your eyeballs on this weeks web roundup… How Twitter did the Scottish Referendum As a
How to run a software company remotely
A few weeks ago, we at Green Gorilla Apps ran a one-week trial for working remotely. We’ve been in the same office since we started in 2012, so it was a big conceptual leap to go from daily face-to-face contact to working from home. Fellow Gorilla Paul has already written a post on the results
Prime8: The weekly GGA web roundup – 15/09/14
Hola! Prime8 is back from his holidays in Mexico and is feeling all revitalized and ready to get cracking on rounding up the web for you (if he can stop admiring his tan in the mirror that is). Let’s get going… Everything you need to know about the Apple presentation in 90 secs Tuesday’s Apple
Prime8 – the weekly GGA web roundup 18/08/2014
Well this week has been a big, sucky one when it comes to losing beloved Hollywood royalty. First we lost Robin Williams, one of the funniest men alive. Sure, he overdid the mawkish (mork-ish?) sentimentality in some of his films, but he was a true comedic giant. Then goes the Bogie-taming, Silver Screen Queen and all
Part 3: The story of SilkThread – Charting the creation of a new tech product from both a developer and client point of view. The app is in build – what next?
For the past 6 months Labyrinth have been working with app experts Green Gorilla Apps (GGA) to plan, design and build an industry-defining web application called SilkThread. Instead of the usual post-project case study, both Labyrinth and GGA have decided to write a joint ‘warts-and-all’ journal blog about the highs and lows of developing a
Prime8 – the weekly GGA web roundup 11/08/2014
Two things happened this week that, by themselves, would be perfectly fine. Non-eventful. Not worth discussing. However, because they happened in parallel with each other they have caused a big problem. That’s right, it’s the perfect storm of the start of Great British Bake-Off and the GGA team working from home. I’ll explain… The start of
The results of the GGA remote working experiment 1 week on
Last week I did a blog about how we decided, as a team, to trial remote working. This is a quick evaluation of how it went… In a word… success! As I mentioned last time, we had a strong belief that with the tools we already used to communicate and run projects we were already
How we built 8-bit weather in half a day
Two weeks ago to this day, we at Green Gorilla Apps finished our weekly sprint early. We held an emergency meeting at a local pub to determine the next steps. The consensus was that we should set ourselves a challenge of building a simple app that could later be turned into a product in the
Prime8 – the weekly GGA web roundup 4/8/2014
This week we’ve been pondering the big question of the moment. Not how to solve the Gaza/Israel crisis or what’s to be done about Russia’s bully-boy antics, but the really important debate: is it OK to wear sunglasses indoors? We decided that yes it is OK to wear sunglasses indoors if that’s what you want
The GGA ‘remote working’ experiment – Thoughts from a 5-man team that is trialling working collaboratively from their homes
Last week we had our monthly team strategy meeting. We have one of these every month (well duh!) and they are designed to be a transparent and honest overview of the companies successes, wins, losses, challenges and financial situation. This one was slightly different to the ones that came before it though. This time we finished
Prime8 – the weekly GGA web roundup 28/7/2014
Watching the Commonwealth Games opening this week, I was taken aback by how it was a glorious celebration of all things Scottish. Brilliant display it was… and then along come Rod Stewart (born in Essex, thinks he’s Scottish) and Nicole Scherzinger (once went to an Aberdeen Angus Steakhouse for a bit). To be fair to
The story of SilkThread Part 2: The secret to a happy app development project? Plan, specify, discuss. Then do it all again!
Note to the reader: This is a joint blog between GGA and our client, Labyrinth Solutions Ltd, creators of a new product called SilkThread ™. It charts the creation of this new application from a developer’s AND client’s points of view. SilkThread ™ is a compliance-based web application which helps transport operators and hauliers comply with
Prime8 – the weekly GGA web roundup 21/7/14
This week Prime8 has been having his very own cabinet reshuffle. Realising that surrounding himself with rich, middle-aged monkeys didn’t appeal to a very wide demographic, he has now sacked them all and took on a broader, more diverse variety of animals as friends to, you know, look more ‘accessible’. This was not a cynical move