YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Below are some basic guidelines for successfully differentiating your business and products: 1. Two people selling the exact same item will have a tougher time commanding decent gross margins than someone selling a differentiated product—even if the only thing different about it is a house brand on an otherwise generic commodity.

Differentiation 160

Differentiation eCommerce Algorithm Social Media 160

Feld Thoughts

JULY 8, 2013

Since 1999, my passion has been studying high performing IT organizations. On this journey, we benchmarked 1,500 IT organization to understand what differentiated the highest performing organizations and allowed them to do what the others only dreamed of.

Phoenix 175

Phoenix Software Review Technical Review Cofounder 175

ConversionXL

APRIL 30, 2019

Differentiate your website (and your company) with your design. The Cheskin Research & Studio Archetype found as far back as 1999 that the six-most important factors in building trust with an ecommerce company are : Brand; Navigation; Fulfillment; Presentation; Up-to-date technology; Security logos.

Design 132

Design eCommerce Search Chile 132

Austin Startup

AUGUST 11, 2017

I founded Volusion in 1999 out of my childhood bedroom, and stayed on as CEO until 2011, when I left for a few years to focus on my family. And I want to clarify this important differentiator. Here’s what we did and I hope that you find inspiration in our process.

CTO Hire 48

CTO Hire Austin Cofounder eCommerce 48

abovethecrowd.com

OCTOBER 17, 2013

A new pricing or packaging model does not by itself represent a meaningful core differentiation, and the rising abundance of “subscription” or “flash sales” companies heightened our concern with regard to barriers to entry. Fundamentally, we share the common concern that many of the new “Ecommerce 2.0” Company: Stitch Fix.

eCommerce 62

eCommerce Technical Review North America San Francisco 62

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2014

And that’s what differentiates founders and early employees. And it’s still less than I was paid at Accenture in 1999. So even after raising a $16 million A-round I still paid myself a paltry salary. In fact, my salary never caught up with my pre startup salary across 2 companies and 8 years. They choose a different path.

Founder 409

Founder Salary Startup Early Stage 409

Growthink Blog

AUGUST 29, 2010

By way of anecdote, from the time Dave Lavinsky and I founded Growthink in 1999 through 2008, more than 95% of our firm’s clients and investors were U.S. Well, let’s leave for now the huge economic fallacy of this thinking and concentrate on the fact that the narrowing of the relative wealth differential between the U.S. advisors (i.e.

Small Business 81

Small Business South Korea South Africa Uruguay 81

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 13, 2010

By 1999 we had grown into the largest independent consulting firm in the world. By 1999 it seemed like everybody was growing, though. I left Andersen Consulting in 1999 at the height of the market. The things that always differentiated Accenture? In other words, in a strong market even turkeys can fly. Ameet was right.

Turkey 302

Turkey Differentiation IP Technical Review 302

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 4, 2010

They see it as a source of differentiation for them as a company because their less financed competitors can’t afford it (and often their careers are wrapped up in the multi-millions of dollars they’ve spent implementing it). In 1999-2000 they weren’t doing enterprise-wide installations at Merrill Lynch, Dell and Cisco.

Vesting 376

Vesting Framework Revenue Technology 376

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2011

When I built my first company starting in 1999 it cost $2.5 The trend of funding anything from the first $25k to funding $50 million at a billion+ valuation is unlikely to last as the skills and style to be effective at all stages are diverse enough to warrant focus. million in infrastructure just to get started and another $2.5

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital Software PHP Open Source 334

Hearpreneur

APRIL 3, 2016

I had actually developed the logo in 1999 and it is now on the back of my entire product line. I built and grew a business with the key differentiator being speed. A few years ago I realized my success was due to people liking working directly with me – not because they thought I was some large entity.

Naming 48

Naming Technical Review PR LLC 48

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 18, 2013

When the products you sell are also available from thousands of other vendors at the same or lower prices, how do you differentiate your business and convince customers to buy from you? However, little variation can keep the suspense (Pine and Gilmore 1999) and continue to surprise. A few words of caution.

Small Business 117

Small Business Netherlands Retention Marketing 117

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 24, 2019

If you are genuinely passionate about it, that will shine through and you will immediately be differentiated from the many sales people that attend these events. In every industry, there is a Shop.org of that industry and you need to marinate in it.

Software Review 48

Software Review Sales Cofounder Analytics 48

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

In 1999, about the same time RIM introduced its first interactive pager, another advanced technology company, TiVo , shipped its first product. Here you need to spend your marketing dollars differentiating your product from the incumbents. Video Recording. In an existing market you’ve picked a space that has customers. Are you cheaper?

Hockey Stick 275

Hockey Stick Customer Development Silicon Valley Networking 275

David Teten

JANUARY 13, 2015

That point of differentiation is a plus not a minus, because it means that he has access to networks you don’t. When I was running an Israel-based company in 1999-2001, my location was a significant barrier. A potential investor may be interested in your industry, but be based in a different city.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Advisory Board Greece Cofounder 60

alexpoole.info

AUGUST 14, 2012

5; in Lund, 1999 ). Lund, 1997, 1998, 1999 ). Most disappointing however, is that in more than one hundred years of legibility research, researchers have failed to form a concrete body of theoretical knowledge on the part that serifs may play in legibility ( Lund, 1999 ). Dowding 1957, p.5; Typographical features.

Technical Review 85

Technical Review Software Review Design Web 85

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

Handspring in a Existing Market As an example, imagine it’s October 1999 and you are Donna Dubinsky the CEO of a feisty new startup, Handspring, entering the billion dollar Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) market. Other companies in the 1999 PDA market were Palm, the original innovator, as well Microsoft and Hewlett Packard.

Customer Development 212

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 212

Hearpreneur

JUNE 9, 2018

I feel fortunate that, since 1999, KeepCool has been able to be a conduit for the growing number of people who are making such conscious choices. And it’s been innovations such as the Kangaroo that have helped differentiate us from our competitors, who generally offer only a few basic bag designs. . We truly are making a difference.

Turkey 49

Turkey France Differentiation Design 49

SVPG

SEPTEMBER 30, 2016

But back in 1999, a then very young Netflix based in Los Gatos with less than 20 employees, was on the edge of going bust. This solution clearly differentiated for the sales team, and also ensured quality search results, whether paid or organic. The combination is amazing. NETFLIX – Kate Arnold.

Product 60

Product Technical Review Software Review Engineer 60

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

When I was raising money for my first company we had closed a seed round in 1999 and were working on our A round. We had many term sheets (it was 1999 and we had a pulse) and we were deciding which one to take. It was December 1999. It was December 1999. Let me start with a story. They accepted my argument.

Technical Review 301

Technical Review Term Sheet Due Diligence Venture Capital 301

ConversionXL

JANUARY 16, 2019

Picking a term with a well-understood foil (“outbound marketing”) makes it easier to understand and differentiate. While the term was new, many of the ideas aligned with “ permission marketing ,” which Seth Godin brought into marketers’ consciousness in 1999 and contrasted with “interruption marketing.” An eponymous book (e.g.

Naming 119

Naming Conversion Flash Cofounder 119

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2012

I raised money as an entrepreneur, like you, in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2005 for two different companies. Well if the “why buy anything” is testing whether you’re even compatible with a VC, the “why buy me” has got to be extreme differentiation. I’ve raised seed rounds and A-D rounds. why buy me?

Developer 366

Developer Silicon Valley PR Las Vegas 366

Duct Tape Marketing

OCTOBER 27, 2022

Recent episode, The power of just one big marketing idea and How to get it really brings home this idea that instead of chasing the idea of the week, really lock in on one big idea to differentiate your business that can make all the difference in the world. Think of it as a mantra in 1998, in a second shareholder letter, or 1999 Yeah. (20:43):

Seattle 62

Seattle Silicon Valley Conversion Naming 62

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 21, 2016

As additional categories were added (such as video and gifts), the horizontal tab system scaled quite well and created a nice opportunity for differentiating product categories through color.” (via via LukeW). Here’s a look at how Amazon used tabbed navigation in the earlier days… Image Source.

Architecture 48

Architecture Canada AJAX Matching 48

abovethecrowd.com

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

In 1999, Jack Ma created Alibaba , a Chinese-based B2B marketplace for connecting small and medium enterprise with potential export opportunities. Over its twenty-plus year lifetime, just over one trillion dollars in goods have traded hands across eBay’s servers.

Internet 88

Internet Matching Vertical Hosting 88

abovethecrowd.com

JUNE 2, 2021

If they have worked in business for 20 years, you have an 700-1 experience differential right out of the gate. It is important to note that using the one-day gains of “hot IPOs” to either attract new customers or wildly please the ones you already have is not a new concept. Both the members of Party B and Party C work on 30-40 IPOs per year.

IPO 82

IPO Customer Matching Silicon Valley 82

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2015

I spoke with a guy who is doing deals all over the world and told me he is differentiating from other capital by his firm’s “technical skills.” It seemed like a message in a bottle opened from a shipwreck in 1999. For a fee, of course. I’ve met people straight out of their MBA program doing this.

Detroit 150

Detroit Government Syndicate Syndication 150