Building businesses from shared learning

Read the collection of articles and perspectives to develop an understanding of how to identify and build startups that scale. The written pieces include the lessons I’ve learned working with different startups and investors as we grew businesses that lasted. Successes and failures all teach something – the challenge we have is to identify why things went right or wrong so that tomorrow is better.

I’m just finished my MBA at INSEAD and am currently working as a change maker at ChangeNOW, fund advisor at LoyalVC and providing consultancy services to startups. I have worked in product and growth teams at Payfirma, Yellow Pepper International, ChangeNOW, DLT Labs and Peotic Technologies.

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Blog Posts

Transitioning to an Agile Process

by Ryan

Before jumping into a cold lake, you ought to have a good reason otherwise you’re going to have trouble convincing people to do it with you. Take the the time to understand the benefits of Agile so you can know when it makes sense, when it does not and, most importantly, how to communicate said benefits.

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Product Management Primer

by Ryan

There are many different functions within a company that require varying degrees of collaboration. Salespeople can often be independent agents selling products to a portfolio of clients while support and operations roles tend to require a bit more connection with the rest of the company. Product management might be the most inherently collaborative as it requires you to get features developed, supported by the entire team and used by customers. It is a role where you have to constantly check-in with the entire company, including and especially customers, to make sure that everyone is on the same page with the overall product direction.

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Counting the ways and whys that blockchain matters

by Ryan

Waves of transformation are happening, and the change is sandpaper dry. Blockchain represents a momentous change in how information is managed, and it will be just as, if not more impactful than cloud computing. The challenge is that understanding it requires consumers to learn about data, a conversation that they’re just getting ready for with all the commotion on how Facebook is sharing it and advertisers are infringing on privacy, and business leaders in different industries to wrap their heads around how their computer systems share data with their partners.

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e-Invoicing

by Ryan

Living up to promises made to customers, PayWithUs built an eInvoicing solution that successfully grew existing customer sales and help generate new customers.

It was ‘how’ they did this that made the project so successful. By engaging customers early on in the design process and beta launch, they were able to include useful and needed feedback into their agile build process for their commercial launch.

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Launching a white label

by Ryan

Management had built a successful referral relationship with a large bank to generate leads on businesses looking to accept credit card payments.

The exclusivity period on the contract with the bank was coming to an end and the business development team was talking with other financial institutions to see about repeating this successful lead generating relationship. A new product offer was imagined and delivered to capture these new referral opportunities.

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