New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Entrepreneur, Patrick Vlaskovits, talks about how to apply lean startup principles to your company to find product-market fit and avoid common mistakes and pitfalls many entrepreneurs fall into. From coming up with startup ideas to evaluating them and marketing them, Patrick brings his wealth of expertise to bear in this great interview.

Many founders hope to one day take their company public on the stock market and have it be worth over $1B+ in market cap. To Dave Hersh, this dream is a reality with Jive Software, a company he founded and lead for 8 years and through 3 different business models.

Dave also happens to be one of my personal mentors and friends. This week we have the honor of interviewing Dave, who runs a brilliant startup blog and often talks about founder's impatience.

I ask Dave many tough and interesting questions this week like:

If you got a Stanford MBA and then worked as an investment banker... what would be your next career move? Michelle Miller decided to write a novel called The Underwriting. But she didn't just write a novel and hope to get traditionally published, she treated her novel as a startup. She raised investment, secured brand sponsorships, created screen savers and playlists, made a video trailer and serialized her novel (a modern Charles Dickens). This week, I interviewed Michelle in the Craftsman Founder Podcast and ask a bunch of questions:

• Tell us about your background
• What is The Underwriting?
• What’s worked and what hasn’t worked well in promoting your novel?
• With your Stanford MBA and then investment banking background, how is writing a novel like doing a startup?
• What can entrepreneurs learn from authors and vise-versa?
• How does an author promote and do marketing for her work today?
• Are you a plotter or a pantser?
• What writing apps do you use?
• Who inspires you?
• Have you considered traditional publishing?
• What attracted you to self-publishing?
• Is fiction a viable investment for venture capitalists?
• Should more fiction authors consider trying to raise venture capital for their novels?
• What do you like best about writing?
• So what’s next for the Underwriting?