Name: Differentiate or Die
ISBN: 9780471028925

What Hacker News says

mindcrimeFeb 2024

So here's the rub: if you've already built an MVP, but have only spoken with 3 prospects to date, you're kinda going about this wrong (IMO). You should probably have spoken to dozens of prospects before writing a single line of code. Probably multiple dozens, actually. You shouldn't be writing any code at all until you already have a pretty good idea that the problem you're trying to solve is real AND that customers have at least some interest in a solution like what you're proposing to create.

There's also no real point in running ads when all you have is an MVP. Ads are for demand generation once you have a really solid handle on the problem, the product, sales channels, etc.

My suggestion would be the following:

1. Stop writing code or doing any development work

2. Cut expenses to the bone by any means necessary so that you're "default alive" no matter what (for the foreseeable future anyway)

3. Get yourself a copy of The Four Steps to the Epiphany[1] by Steve Blank. Read it. Then read it again.

4. Go through the customer development process as outlined by Blank, and start talking to prospects.

5. Don't start writing code again until/unless you sync up to that point where the process has you starting to take an MVP out to show to prospects.

6. Pick up from there and follow the process.

Now an exception would be this: you talk about a mature market. IF there are already plenty of well established, mature, market proven solutions that do more or less the same thing as your proposed solution, then you can skip some of the validation stuff. I mean, you could guarantee that you're at least building "something people want" by just copying one or more of your competitors. BUT... if all you're doing is copying a competitor, you have to ask "why would a customer buy your solution instead of theirs?"

Ideally in that case, you have some vision or idea for a "thing" that distinguishes your solution from the others on the market. In that case, though, you still have to validate that the market players actually see your proposed solution as better than the other solutions OR you need to be "at least as good as the others" but significantly cheaper, or something.

In terms of addressing all of that, a couple of books I'd suggest reading include:

1. The Discipline of Market Leaders[2]

2. Differentiate or Die[3]

3. Zero to One[4]

4. Traction[5]

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Successful-Strate...

[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Market-Leaders-Customers-D...

[3]: https://www.amazon.com/Differentiate-Die-Survival-Killer-Com...

[4]: https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/080...

[5]: https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Cu...

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mindcrimeSep 2022

That would be a long list, given that I read a lot of books and would generally say that most of the books I've read were worth investing time in to some extent. But for what it's worth, here's a subset, cribbed from my previous HN comments:

Something Deeply Hidden - Sean Carroll

The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Math Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets - Graham Farmelo

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth - Paul Hoffman

The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan - Robert Kanigel

Lost in Math - Sabine Hossenfelder

The First Three Minutes - Steven Weinberg

Hyperspace - Michio Kaku

Not Even Wrong - Peter Woit

The Trouble With Physics - Lee Smolin

About Time - Paul Davies

Time Reborn - Lee Smolin

The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene

The Hidden Reality - Brian Greene

The Fabric of the Cosmos - Brian Greene

Quantum Space: Loop Quantum Gravity and the Search for the Structure of Space, Time, and the Universe - Jim Baggott

The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Math Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets - Graham Farmelo

Three Roads To Quantum Gravity - Lee Smolin

Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos - Seth Lloyd

Higgs - The invention and discovery of the 'God Particle' - Jim Baggott

Analogy Making As Perception - Melanie Mitchell

Society of Mind - Marvin Minsky

Engineering General Intelligence, Part 1 - Ben Goertzel

Engineering General Intelligence, Part 2 - Ben Goertzel

The AGI Revolution - Ben Goertzel

Hackers & Painters by our very own Paul "pg" Graham

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - Steven Levy

The Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder

Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier - Katie Hafner & John Markoff

Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology - Steven Levy

Ghost In The Wires - Kevin Mitnick

The Art of Deception - Kevin Mitnick

The Art of Intrusion - Kevin Mitnick

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

It's Not About The Bike - Lance Armstrong

Ultramarathon Man - Dean Karnazes

Charles Proteus Steinmetz: The Electrical Wizard of Schenectady - Robert Bly

Report From Engine Co 82 - Dennis Smith

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind - Al Ries, Jack Trout and Philip Kotler

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! - Al Ries and Jack Trout

Re-Positioning: Marketing in an Era of Competition, Change and Crisis by Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding - Al Ries and Laura Ries

Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition - Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin

Marketing High Technology - William H. Davidow

Marketing Warfare - Al Ries

The Discipline of Market Leaders - Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema

Crossing The Chasm - Geoffrey Moore

How to Measure Anything - Douglas Hubbard

Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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mindcrimeDec 2018

I'm a Seth Godin fan, and usually recommend several of his books to people who are interested in marketing. But outside of his material, my list of marketing books would include:

1. Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries, Jack Trout and Philip Kotler

2. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! by Al Ries and Jack Trout

3. Re-Positioning: Marketing in an Era of Competition, Change and Crisis by Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin

4. The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al Ries and Laura Ries

5. Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition by Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin

6. Marketing High Technology by William H. Davidow

7. Marketing Warfare by Al Ries

8. The Discipline of Market Leaders by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema

9. Crossing The Chasm by Geoffrey Moore

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mindcrimeSep 2018

Pinning down just one would be nearly impossible, but I can tell you a small group that I consider indispensable.

The Four Steps to the Epiphany - Steve Blank. This is a MUST read. If you read nothing else, make it this book. Note that there is a 2nd Edition, which changes the title to "The Startup Owner's Manual". There is a lot of overlap in the content, but enough difference to justify reading both, IMO. I would start with the older one.

The Discipline of Market Leaders - Fred Wiersema, Michael Treacy - another crucially important book IMO. Does a great job of explaining how there are many different vectors along which you can compete, and explains how choosing which vector you're going to compete on is fundamental to defining your business and market.

The Art of the Start - Guy Kawasaki. Lots of good basics on startups

Differentiate or Die - Jack Trout, Steve Rivkin. - Title says it all.

It's Not The Big That Eat The Small, It's The Fast That Eat The Slow - Jason Jennings

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing - Jack Trout and Al Ries

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind - Al Ries, Jack Trout, Philip Kotler

Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey Moore

Mastering The Complex Sale - Jeff Thull - lays out an approach to selling that I believe is one of the best out there for enterprise / B2B. May not be as relevant for B2C or other approaches.

Exceptional Selling - Jeff Thull - more on Thull's selling approach.

The Prime Solution - Jeff Thull - and yet more still on Thull's selling approach.

The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail - Clayton Christensen

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future - Peter Thiel, Blake Masters

How To Measure Anything - Douglas Hubbard. - Maybe one of the most important books I've ever read. The ideas in this book can apply in many domains, related to startups or otherwise. I can't recommend this one highly enough.

Repositioning: Marketing in an Era of Competition, Change and Crisis - Jack Trout, Steve Rivkin

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant - W. Chan Kim, Renée A. Mauborgne

Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company’s Future - Patricia Seybold

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mindcrimeDec 2017

I find it hilarious that people offer up "Shelve the idea" as the most obvious response when AWS (or Microsoft or Google or Oracle or Twitter or Facebook or Yahoo or $OTHER_BIG_CO) launch something like their project. Why would you do that? Do you expect AWS to achieve 100% market dominance and leave literally 0 customers who might prefer your thing? Can you not see any way to segment the market and identify a segment where you can make your product a better fit? Or how about not trying to compete on product attributes at all, but rather compete on another basis like customer intimacy or service, etc? Or even compete simply by having a better sales process?

I'd say take a little time out, read The Discipline of Market Leaders, Mastering The Complex Sale, and Differentiate or Die and think about ways you can compete with them. IF your analyzes leaves you with the conclusion that the best thing to do is to drop your idea, then fine. But don't just randomly decide to drop it because AWS is going to be competing with you.

Also, just a random thought that I recently had, given that I'm in the exact same boat (trying to compete with stuff AWS is doing).. read up on the old "Embrace and Extend" idea. I think there may be a kernel of something there, in terms of using that to compete against larger players. It's a half-formed / half-baked thought right now, but it might be worth chewing on a bit.

If you're interested in continuing this discussion outside of HN, feel free to drop me an email. prhodes@fogbeam.com

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mindcrimeOct 2017

The few product ideas we came up with following the above process we dropped, often because we discovered that that space is ultra crowded or commooditized.

GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons once said something like (paraphrased slightly) "never be scared to enter a crowded market. Just be better than everybody else". Something to think about.

Beyond that, consider that your product is not the only dimension on which you compete. That is, there are other ways to compete besides having the best product. As we all know, the best product doesn't always win.

I'd recommend reading The Discipline of Market Leaders by Fred Wiersema and Michael Treacy, as well as Mastering The Complex Sale, The Prime Solution and Exceptional Selling, all by Jeff Thull. These books deal a lot with how to compete and sell and differentiate yourself... even when selling a seemingly low-value commodity like sand. Another valuable book is Differentiate or Die by Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin.

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