I think a lot can be learned from Post Mortems, but I’ve found in practice they can be inefficient ways to move forward.
The purpose of a Post Mortem is to analyze a situation in order to improve underlying processes or knowledge. It’s one of those meta-meetings about work. However, I think a perfectly acceptable outcome of a Post Mortem is that a team does nothing.
Let me explain.
One tactic for social media apps to gain funding without launching is to fully utilize Testflight and its waitlist functionality.
I love React Native. The architecture and flow of information makes a lot of sense for me, and I think my code looks minimalistic and thus is easy to read. It seemed straightforward to me to use React Native when I was building the first version of Vsho; we’d ideally launch to both iOS and Android within 1-2 years after starting with iOS, and we were running a very lean engineering team. However, React Native was ultimately the wrong decision for Vsho. Here’s what I got wrong.
Marketing grows a business by providing value to customers. Without customers, there is no revenue. Marketing is about understanding a customer and their needs, segmenting customers, and creating a compelling value proposition for the correct segments. Additionally, good marketing will address the go-to-market strategy, whether it be direct to consumer, partnerships with retailers, through a salesforce, viral word-of-mouth, or other channels.
I started at HBS this past week, and when mentioning to a fellow classmate of mine that I had deferred admission from two years ago and started a company in the interim, he asked me why I still came. I responded: Well, why wouldn’t you want to take the opportunity to carve the best version of yourself, if you could?