Blog
Advice for Founders, Leaders, Consultants and Data Professionals
Founders
Getting started:
Dear Advisor: I have a start-up idea, what should I do next? (September 2020, March, May -- August 2021)
Dear Advisor: My MVP demos are not converting (November 2020)
Extending Runway:
What are the most common pre-seed and seed-stage pitch deck mistakes? (December 2020, updated March 2022)
Resources for Extending your Runway (July 2020, updated monthly through April 2021 + September 2021)
Post MVP:
Dear Advisor: Can I just survey my customers to help me decide what to build next? (July 2021)
Dear Advisor: What metrics should I be thinking about? (September 2020)
Dear Advisor: Should I pivot? (August 2020)
Becoming data-driven:
Dear Advisor: I’d like to make data-driven decisions. Where do I start? (May, July 2021)
Dear Advisor: Who should be my first data hire? (April 2021)
How to Deliver Business Impact with Data (January 2020, updated May, June, and October 2020, April, November and December 2021, January 2022)
5 Aspects of your Business you Need to Track Today to make any Data-Driven Decisions (October 2019 + September 2021)
Dear Advisor: How do I avoid the biggest data/AI/ML mistakes others make? (June 2020, updated August 2020, September 2020, April 2021, April 2022)
Dear Advisor: What should (not) be your AI roadmap? (or) Why You Don't Need AI in your SaaS MVP (April 2022, updated May 2022)
Why there's no such thing as clean data (June 2021)
Data-driven Product Market Fit:
Dear Advisor: How do I do Product-Led-Growth (PLG) as my Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy for Product market fit (PMF)? (September 2021, May 2022)
Product Market Fit Roadmap in 6 Parts (November 2020)
Data Professionals
Developing data products:
How to Deliver Business Impact with Data (January 2020, updated May, June, and October 2020, April, November and December 2021, January 2022)
The Dark Arts" of Stakeholder Management (November 2021, updated January, February and March 2022)
Career advice:
How to Break into your First Data Role as a Non-Analytics Manager (February 2021)
How to Break into your First Data Role: Tips to Tackling the Cold Start Problem (October 2019, updated May + September 2020)
How to get your Resume to Stand out? (October 2020)
Companies still Hiring during COVID (May 2020, updated monthly through April 2021, April 2022)
10 Questions to Ask Yourself When Considering a Continuing Education Program (April 2020, updated June 2020, September 2020 + April 2021)
ML in Production:
ML model in production is doing worse than locally (January 2021, updated February 2021)
Four "R"s of Machine Learning Software Development (February 2020, updated December 2020)
Iterative Development of Machine Learning Models (January 2020, updated June 2020)
How to Run a Jupyter Notebook in a Virtual Environment (March 2020)
Consultants
What do I Need to Know to Start my own Business? (December 2019, updated June 2020)
Why my strategy calls are NDA-free (August 2021)
5 Steps to get Started -- and Keep Blogging (January 2022)
To incorporate or not? That is the question (February 2022)
Leadership
Hiring:
Dear Advisor: Who should be my first data hire? (April 2021)
Dear Advisor: How can I hire and retain candidates during the "Great Resignation"? (December 2021, April 2022)
Advice and Sample Agenda for your First 1-1 with Direct Report (October 2021)
How to Break into your First Data Role as a Non-Analytics Manager (February 2021)
Dear Advisor: How do I know if my company is compliant with security and privacy regulations? (December 2021, updated February 2022)
Roadmapping 101: Why do you need one – or are asked for one? What is it? How to Create it? How to Iterate? (March 2022)
Project Management
Column: Your Business Has Lots of Ideas on What To Work On. Here’s How To Decide on What’s Next (April 2021)
How I "built, measured, and learned" that long-distance running is for me (March 2021)
How to “build, measure, learn” to see if your startup needs to pivot OR improve its product (March 2021)
Dear Advisor: Should I pivot? (Or what is "build, measure, learn"? (August 2020)
Roadmapping 101: Why do you need one – or are asked for one? What is it? How to Create it? How to Iterate? (March 2022)
How to Prioritize when Everything is High Priority: the Data-Driven Approach (April 2020)
Please see Publications for links to peer-reviewed publications and pre-prints.