Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 13, 2013

That means it solves a real problem for real customers who are ready and able to spend real money. The number of current potential customers is large and growing. Myspace, for example, launched in 2003 and boomed for five years without a revenue model. Design a product or service that you can sell.

Widget 242

Widget Angel Investor Revenue Early Stage 242

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 15, 2017

That means it solves a real problem for real customers who are ready and able to spend real money. The number of current potential customers is large and growing. MySpace, for example, launched in 2003 and boomed for five years without a revenue model. Design a product or service that you can sell.

Widget 137

Widget Angel Investor Revenue Early Stage 137

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2011

But ultimately great people drive the ideas and Highland Capital is proactive in reaching out to entrepreneurs even at early stages. In 2003 one of their first investments was Qiigo, Mike Yavondite’s company. ESPN, Forbes, AOL were customers. So it is a combination of markets and people.

Vertical 265

Vertical Curation Boston Burn Rate 265

Duct Tape Marketing

DECEMBER 28, 2023

Exclusive to new customers—upgrade and grow your business with ActiveCampaign today! And it's the same thing for individuals because at that early stage of a business, when you don't yet have a product, even sometimes when you don't yet have customers, you don't yet have traction and sales, how are you going to judge it?

Framework 71

Framework Cofounder Early Stage IPO 71

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

What the entrepreneurs were really saying is, “I don’t want to take a lower valuation now, while I don’t have customers or a full team. You rarely find full ratchets in early-stage deals any more. I thought we got rid of that s**t in 2003? I’ve done series seed, early-stage deals in 8 days.

Liquidation Preference 354

Liquidation Preference Ratchet Equity Stock 354

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 19, 2023

And it's the same thing for individuals because at that early stage of a business, when you don't yet have a product, even sometimes when you don't yet have, um, customers, you don't yet have traction in sales, how are you gonna judge it? These are the kind of decisions we wanted to help people with at that early stage.

Audio 87

Audio Cofounder Framework Early Stage 87

ConversionXL

JULY 29, 2015

In this article on stock photos , I described a study illustrating that power: “ Bateson, Nettle, & Roberts (2006) provided customers with an unsupervised ‘honesty box’ to pay for their lunch. even selfish humans are more likely to act fairly when in public.” ( Burnham, 2003 , pp. How can you apply this tactic?

Campaign 48

Campaign Reputation Metrics Naming 48

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 29, 2012

By not forcing the publisher to go through a Gaikai portal where they tried to control customers, they engendered trust from the publishers. 33:15 Have you noticed a change from 2003 to now in the “serendipity factor” of Santa Monica? That let people play popular titles, for example, directly in Facebook. I agree with him.

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Southern California Detroit Los Angeles California 279

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 29, 2013

But the information was critical for any early-stage company that hopes to reach that critical point and wants to be prepared when it comes. Let’s go try that out,’ I think that healthy level of testing keeps you lean, it keeps you close to the customer, and that’s one of the things that I think helps us a lot – testing.

Lean 167

Lean Hiring Metrics Conversion 167

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

After failing dismally at making disposable digital cameras in 2003 Pure Digital Technologies reinvented their company in 2007 to make the Flip line of camcorders. Technology changes, culture changes, customer needs change, more agile competitors emerge, etc. Clayton Christensen describes this brilliantly in the Innovators Dilemma.)

Silicon Valley 164

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 164

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. And trust me, if you’re early stage you DO want to meet Bryce. He’s awesome for early-stage entrepreneurs. Meet early. I’ve raised seed rounds and A-D rounds. Not so much.

Developer 366

Developer Silicon Valley PR Las Vegas 366

reidhoffman.org

NOVEMBER 12, 2013

Friendster was at its height, strongly battling MySpace after raising its premium round from Benchmark and Kleiner in the fall of 2003. Friendster raised a big round in 2003; MySpace started gaining traction. This is mostly a mistake slide because customer slides are more appropriate for enterprise pitches.

Entrepreneur 111

Entrepreneur Viral Revenue Networking 111

Austin Startup

MARCH 7, 2021

These are all potential customers and strategic partners for startups. Home to over 80 private- and public-sector tenant customers who directly employ about 12,000 people on the campus, activity from Port SA contributes over $5 billion annually to the regional economy. Twenty four are in Dallas and 22 are in Houston. said Robert F.

Texas 90

Texas San Antonio Houston Fort Worth 90

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

I want to know how many customers exist out there who would be likely buyers of the O-Port products, at what price-point, and what does that add up to? I feel that it is not at all necessary to give this much equity up at this stage of the game. I asked him several times what exactly is his TAM (Total Available Market).

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

I want to know how many customers exist out there who would be likely buyers of the O-Port products, at what price-point, and what does that add up to? I feel that it is not at all necessary to give this much equity up at this stage of the game. I asked him several times what exactly is his TAM (Total Available Market).

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 7, 2007

Posted by: Doug Dosberg | September 10, 2007 9:04 AM should also take a look at kevin merritts post about saying no to some requests from large and attractive customers early on: [link] Posted by: mathew johnson | September 10, 2007 9:14 AM Matt: Interesting article but overall I disagree with such a narrow interpretation of bootstrapping.

Bootstrapping 41

Bootstrapping Offshore Startup EC2 41

The Next Web

MARCH 2, 2014

This is a representation of 2003 – 2013. However, based on my own research into this, you can be guaranteed a few facts: it will go to established companies (profitable, strong customer base, a few years old). It teaches you just how mundane the everyday existence of an early-stage startup is. It scares them to try.

Europe 163

Europe South Korea San Francisco Greece 163

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

I was on an airplane 2-3 times / week meeting potential customers, investors, employees, business partners and the press. Dinners were consumed with customers or in hotels and often past 10pm. Immediately following the closing of the round I flew out to a big real estate conference in France to meet with prospective customers.

Entrepreneur 308

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley San Diego Non-Compete 308

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 7, 2007

Make sure you think through how you will administer the system, handle customer queries, examine user accounts, run reports on user numbers and website traffic, etc. My experience says that if the development team relies on mockups and documents created by customers then the team and the project are in a real trouble.

Web 40

Web AJAX Software Review Development Team Review 40

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. Startups that are aiming to enterprises would do right raising VC to improve their network and therefore have a greater chance to get customers. All what you said is so true.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 22, 2017

I specialize in brand strategy from the early stages through launch, and use my trusted network of groupies – from Web designers to photographers – to support the vision for brands I’m working with. We find that customers love to find out that there is a meaning behind it and that it is a cute play on words!

Naming 48

Naming Entrepreneur LLC Software Review 48

www.readwriteweb.com

FEBRUARY 23, 2010

Advice for Startups Entering the Mobile Sector Inside the Mind of an Early Stage Venture Capitalist Need Startup Office Space? Seek customer / market validation early. This gives you upfront money from a customer. Posted by: christian louboutin | February 20, 2010 6:39 PM Excellent tips! Forget about spelling.

Entrepreneur 69

Entrepreneur Venture Capital San Francisco New Zealand 69

pandodaily.com

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

This time around, there has been an explosion at the early stages, and the very late pre-IPO growth stages. “The real winners here are going to be the seed funds and early stage VCs that can write a $1 million to $2 million check,” says AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant. Now it’s glutted.

Technical Review 93

Technical Review Silicon Valley Incubator Syria 93