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Tristan Kromer

@trikro.bsky.social
84 followers 53 following 170 posts

I tweet on innovation at scale. 37 accelerators, 6 govs, 11 unis, 3 non-profits, 24 1B+ corps Newsletter: kromatic.com/news Free tools: kromatic.com/resources

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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
You can ship a working product and learn nothing. The build feels like progress because there's something on the screen. Working software proves you can build it. Not that you should have. kromatic.com/download/the...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Tendayi Viki wrote the foreword to the 2nd edition: "Speed is not the same as insight. The real challenge is learning what matters." He said it better than I managed to. Free to read. kromatic.com/download/the...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Over 66% said they'd pay $20. I checked the margin of error. Then about 200 people hit the point of purchase. Zero bought. A rigorous measurement of a hypothetical is still hypothetical. kromatic.com/download/the...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
I still get emails about the retro I wrote after shutting down my first startup. One reader: "I was about to build the exact same thing." Your idea isn't unique. kromatic.com/download/the...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Dan Toma on the 2nd edition: "…just open it, and you'll know exactly what to do next." It's an index, not an argument. Arrive with a question, find the method, run it. kromatic.com/download/the...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Nir Eyal on the 2nd edition: "In a world where AI makes it easier than ever to build, the real challenge is knowing what's worth building in the first place." Grateful. The book is free. kromatic.com/download/the...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Two questions get you to the right experiment. Exploring or testing? Generative vs evaluative. Customer or solution? Market vs product. Find the quadrant, find the method. kromatic.com/download/the...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Most founders get bad data because they ran the wrong experiment for the question they had. AI can run it 10x faster — it can't tell you which question to ask. kromatic.com/blog/rsb-tea...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
AI can run the experiment. It can't pick which one to run. Building the wrong thing is now cheap and fast. That is not a win. Choosing the question is still the job. kromatic.com/download/the...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Every method in The Real Startup Book now ships with a copy-paste AI prompt. Work through it with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Codex — paste it, add context, let it help design the experiment. kromatic.com/mcp?utm_camp...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
The Real Startup Book is free, built by 51 contributors across 16 countries. Even Claude earned a contributor credit — drew illustrations, ran research, fact-checked drafts, and argued with me. kromatic.com/download/the...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
The Fake Door Test: a button, link, or ad for something that doesn't exist yet, placed in front of an audience. You count clicks. A click is a behavioral signal, an action, not a stated opinion. kromatic.com/download/the...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
My favorite method in the book: Picnic in the Graveyard. Study startups that already died trying something close to your idea. Desk research plus interviews with former founders. Spot the landmines first. kromatic.com/download/the...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
I'm hugely grateful — Nir Eyal, Dr. Tendayi Viki, and Dan Toma had kind words for the new Real Startup Book. Three people whose work shaped how I think about building. kromatic.com/download/the...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Eleven years ago we put every field-tested product/market-fit experiment in one free book. The 2nd edition is live today. What AI changed: the cost of running an experiment. What it did not change: which experiment to run. Read it free: kromatic.com/real-startup-book
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Testing an idea used to cost me a day of hand-coding. Now: 5 min to prompt, 30 to make tea while the agent builds. That's why I rewrote The Real Startup Book — when building is free, building the wrong thing is… kromatic.com/download/the...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
When a prototype is one prompt away, the expensive mistake is building the wrong thing. The Real Startup Book 2nd ed is out — 60+ methods for getting that part right. kromatic.com/download/the...
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Reposted by Tristan Kromer
Jason Cohen @asmartbear.com · 24/06/2026
ICYMI: New article! What does "30% confidence" mean? You'd have to track your scores across every project, measure outcomes, and calibrate. You don't do that. And you ship maybe six big things a year, so even if you did, you wouldn't have the data. It's a number you made up to feel rigorous.
longform.asmartbear.com
Lost confidence
RICE and other confidence-based frameworks are mostly noise. Here’s how to make decisions without pretending to know the unknowable.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
AI productivity can feel like magic and still deliver zero progress.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
If your company told everyone to 'use AI more,' what actually happened? Did people genuinely change how they work, or did you get adoption theatre?
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
"I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes." (Joanna Maciejewska) Hook the chore, not the craft.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
An AI mandate is just a layoff notice with extra steps. People aren't stupid. They notice. And then they route around it. kromatic.com/blog/why-ai-...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Who Should Own the AI Budget—and Why This Is a Terrible Question – WeAreOutcome weareoutcome.co/blog/who-sho...
weareoutcome.co
Who Should Own the AI Budget—and Why This Is a Terrible Question – WeAreOutcome
Artificial intelligence has quickly moved from being an experimental technology to becoming one of the largest budget priorities in most organizations. In many companies today, a significant portion…
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
The cheapest way to debug an AI agent is a Latin phrase. When my chief-of-ops agent stops saying _festina lente_, the persona has washed out. kromatic.com/blog/why-my-...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
If your AI agent has access to notes from past sessions, does it actually check them before responding? Or does it only look when it thinks to ask? kromatic.com/blog/agentic...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Claude hallucinated we worked with the Austrian Federal Forestry Service. No source = no way to catch it. Provenance has to be a first-class object. kromatic.com/blog/agentic...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Claude hallucinated that we'd worked with the Austrian Federal Forestry Service. Nearly ended up in our marketing copy. No source citation = no way to catch it. That's why provenance has to be a first-class object, not an afterthought.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Innovation became a department instead of a discipline at most large companies. AI is heading the same way: a board agenda item owned by the CTO while everyone nods. If your CEO reports on AI separately, it hasn't permeated the company. kromatic.com/blog/stop-putting-ai-on-your-board-agenda
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Harvard + Microsoft studied orgs with hundreds of active AI deployments and near-universal tool adoption. Individual productivity gains were 'trapped inside individual workflows.' The bottleneck isn't the tech. It's org design.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
HBS found AI users were 19 percentage points less likely to get correct answers when working outside AI's capability boundary. The Consumer trap is real.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
How we use AI matters more than whether we use it.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Most of us are using a Ferrari to drive to the mailbox. Six levels of AI adoption, from Bystander to Architect. kromatic.com/blog/ai-adop...
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Early adopters don’t just buy — they teach. Reverse customer development means listening deeply and letting real user behavior shape the product, not assumptions. 👂✨ buff.ly/9mrlKxC #EarlyAdopters #CustomerDevelopment #LeanStartup #BuildMeasureLearn #ProductGrowth #Innovation #StartupMindset
kromatic.com
Reverse Customer Development a.k.a. Thank God for Earlyvangelist
We're fortunate that our earlyvangelist are the ones who're passionate enough to grab us by the collar if necessary and get us moving in the right direction
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
42% of companies abandoned most AI initiatives in 2025. Not because AI doesn't work... because they measured it wrong. AI isn't a strategy. It's a technology. The strategy is compressing your learning cycles.
kromatic.com
What Is an AI Innovation Strategy?
Most enterprise AI programs are failing — not because AI doesn't work, but because companies are treating a technology as a strategy. An AI innovation strategy means applying AI to accelerate your…
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
AI agents have the same institutional memory problem as your innovation team. Every new session starts blank. The rediscovery tax just got automated. Your AI Agents Have Amnesia. Here's the Fix. →
kromatic.com
Your AI Agents Have Amnesia. Here's the Fix.
AI agents forget everything between sessions — and so do most innovation teams. A RAG system over your experiment archive fixes both problems at once.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Network effects aren’t magic — they emerge when real users find real value and bring others along. Build strong fundamentals first, then watch the network grow. buff.ly/v6L8yko #NetworkEffects #CustomerDevelopment #LeanStartup #BuildMeasureLearn #StartupMindset #ProductGrowth #Innovation
kromatic.com
Two Sided Marketplace-Customer Development with Network Effects
Two Sided Marketplace-How does customer development differ with regards to products which require a network effect to be useful? Short answer: No one knows.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
The biggest startup lesson isn’t a trick — it’s consistency: learn fast, iterate faster, and always lead with evidence over ego. 🧠🔄 buff.ly/evjt93x #StartupLessons #LeanStartup #BuildMeasureLearn #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #ContinuousLearning #ProductDevelopment
kromatic.com
Top Takeaway - Startup Lessons Learned for Team Alignment
In April I was able to go to the Startup Lessons Learned for Team Alignment Conference and had my world rocked. I thought I had a minimum viable product.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
AI isn’t just a tool — it’s a partner in innovation. It speeds up learning, accelerates experimentation, and helps you test more ideas faster. Use it to augment judgment, not replace it. buff.ly/P14iZsA #AI #Innovation #BuildMeasureLearn #LeanStartup #FutureOfWork #Experimentation #StartupMindset
kromatic.com
Discover how AI is revolutionizing innovation. Explore its power to ideate, validate, and make data-driven decisions while avoiding pitfalls like bias and mediocrity. Learn actionable insights to harness AI responsibly for breakthrough results in your innovation processes.
AI can improve ideation, validation, and support decision-making in the future. However, current implementations of AI within innovation teams can cause laziness and mediocrity. We are at risk of…
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
AI is a technological tipping point. The real advantage isn’t the tech itself — it’s how innovators apply it to real problems. buff.ly/AJtX3uE #AI #Innovation #TechnologicalTippingPoint #LeanStartup #BuildMeasureLearn #FutureOfWork #StartupMindset
kromatic.com
How a few technological tipping points reshaped society in unforeseen ways, and how innovators saw opportunity in the unknown.
We are living through a major revolution in AI technology. It’s not the invention that changes our lives, it’s the way the inventions are adapted to real use cases. AI is going to change our lives…
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Community isn’t a cost — it’s a multiplier. When innovators share insights, challenges, and experiments, the ROI isn’t just dollars — it’s collective learning that accelerates everyone. 🔄✨ buff.ly/Rx2lRCZ #CommunityInnovation #ROI #LeanStartup #BuildMeasureLearn #CollectiveLearning #StartupMindset
kromatic.com
Community innovation helps us intertwine technological advancements with social betterment, where the focus on financial returns is augmented by a type of social ROI – investments that pay off in resilient, empowered communities
Financial ROI and social ROI are complementary, not competitive. Innovation for the community requires participation from the community. Artificial intelligence will soon be considered part of the…
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Innovation training fails when it teaches answers instead of habits. Real innovation comes from doing — experimenting, failing, learning — not just watching slides. buff.ly/NhA3u3O #Innovation #LearningByDoing #LeanStartup #BuildMeasureLearn #ContinuousLearning #StartupMindset
kromatic.com
Skillset and mindset training must be integrated into a complete innovation stack to have any chance of delivering real impact.
Innovation teams have relied on workshops and culture change to drive outcomes. But skill and mindset training alone won’t achieve results. We must drive data flow through the entire organization to…
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
Lean enterprise innovation isn’t a department — it’s how every part of the org learns fast, experiments smart, and makes decisions with real evidence. buff.ly/2c7MV4u #LeanStartup #Innovation #BuildMeasureLearn #EnterpriseInnovation #StartupMindset #ContinuousLearning #SystemsThinking
kromatic.com
Lean Enterprise & Innovation Ecosystems
“Lean Enterprise” is a myth. The best way for an enterprise company to emulate a startup is by nurturing an innovation ecosystem.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
Before you build innovation from scratch, look at what already works in your org. Often, the biggest wins come from amplifying existing strengths, not reinventing them. buff.ly/69eyAYX #Innovation #LeanStartup #BuildMeasureLearn #CorporateInnovation #StartupMindset #Leadership #GrowthThinking
kromatic.com
Why Are You Starting Your Innovation Program from Scratch? – Kromatic Blog
Your innovation program should be the right one for your company, but it doesn’t have to be wholly original. There's a time to create, and a time to borrow.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Quantitative experiments don’t need perfection — just clarity. Before you run one, ask: what decision will this actually change? If you can’t answer that, maybe don’t run it yet. buff.ly/px7cQ7y #Experimentation #LeanStartup #BuildMeasureLearn #DataDriven #StartupMindset #ProductScience
kromatic.com
Rules of Thumb for Quantitative Experiments – Kromatic Blog
A quick-and-dirty reference doc for flawless quantitative experiment design.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
Innovation ecosystems thrive not by abundance, but by strengthening the weakest link. Focus on the bottleneck — that’s where growth actually happens. 🌱 buff.ly/AnrN8cT #InnovationEcosystem #LeanStartup #BuildMeasureLearn #DesignThinking #StartupMindset #SystemsThinking
kromatic.com
Innovation Ecosystem Design Using Liebig’s Law of the Minimum – Kromatic Blog
Grow your innovation ecosystem by applying Liebig’s Law of the Minimum to help you identify your limits and boundary constraints.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
Innovation metrics shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all. What matters in engineering isn’t the same as in marketing or sales — tailor metrics to each department’s role in learning and value creation. buff.ly/54KSrfh #Innovation #Metrics #LeanStartup #StartupMindset #ProductDevelopment #Leadership
kromatic.com
Applying Innovation Metrics and Objectives by Department – Kromatic Blog
To make sure your company’s innovation ecosystem functions at the department level, focus on your innovation KPIs.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
A good product starts with a clear customer persona. Stop building for “everyone” and define the someone you’re actually serving. buff.ly/kHXILLh #CustomerPersona #UX #LeanStartup #ProductDesign
kromatic.com
Customer Profile Template: Cheat Sheet – Kromatic Blog
The customer profile template is a useful tool in answering “Who is my customer?” It does so by acting as a consolidated repository of your assumptions.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
Good prioritization is simple: focus where uncertainty is high and impact is big. Everything else can wait. buff.ly/Pm0iUFp #Prioritization #LeanStartup #ProductStrategy #StartupLife
kromatic.com
Guest Post: 5-Steps to Lean Startup Prioritization That Actually Works
Lean startup prioritization: a good idea that even though on paper makes sense, in real life it’s creating more hustle than it solves.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
You don’t always need large samples to start learning. Even with a small group — if you test intentionally and interpret with care — you can still verify assumptions and move forward. Small-sample checks = early insights. Validate early, build smart. buff.ly/EcLpOSM #LeanStartup #Experimentation
kromatic.com
How Many Customer Interviews are Enough to Verify Your Assumptions
How many customer interviews are required to test unproven assumptions? Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the founder.
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Tristan Kromer @trikro.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
A great investor pitch isn’t big visions — it’s real learnings. Show what you’ve tested, not what you’re guessing. buff.ly/4QxmNSc #LeanStartup #StartupLife #BuildMeasureLearn
kromatic.com
Guest Post: A Lean Startup Pitch to Investors
If you are a Lean Startup practitioner, your Lean Startup mindset should also to some extent carry over when lean startup pitch to investors.
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