Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

This reminded me of a conversation with one of my direct reports years before my daughter was born. I had hired the VP of marketing from a potential software partner who was responsible to get all this 3 rd party software on our computer. Our conversation went like this: Me: Jim, how are we doing with getting Ansys ported?

Silicon Valley 331

Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 331

ConversionXL

MARCH 14, 2013

There are hundreds of ways to increase the conversion rate of a website; A/B testing, customer surveys and usability studies are all hugely important techniques. How Can Your Competitors Help Increase Your Own Conversion Rate? What Kind of Information Can You Get to Help Conversions? But what about spying? Photo Credit.

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Conversion Cloud eCommerce Search 103

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 17, 2017

Hire people for whom this work is a calling. Truth be told, if you hire people for whom their work is a calling or who are on a mission to do great things, engagement in the work comes naturally. can do wonders for opening the floodgate on a great conversation about that person’s talents, potential and accomplishments.

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Employee Bandwidth Leadership Hiring 145

ConversionXL

JANUARY 16, 2019

Conversational marketing. Drift “conversational marketing” 0.70 Drift and “conversational marketing”. For Drift, founded in 2014, that was easier said than done: Drift didn’t go all-in on “conversational marketing” until 2018. Inbound marketing. The subscription economy. Growth hacking. The phrases have defined brands.

Naming 119

Naming Conversion Flash Cofounder 119

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

The key contributors to an out-of-control burn rate is 1) hiring a sales force too early, 2) turning on the demand creation activities too early, 3) developing something other than the minimum feature set for first customer ship. Reply Amit , on January 22, 2010 at 11:34 am Said: Great article!

Lean 259

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 259

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

You’re Hired, You’re Fired. My first job in Silicon Valley: I was hired as a lab technician at ESL to support the training department. The manager of the training department who hired you wasn’t authorized to do so – and he’s been fired. Could I work here if he wanted to hire me?&#

Agile 263

Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 263

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

The VP of Sales comes to a board meeting, still optimistic, and provides a set of reasonable explanations – “our pipeline looks great, but orders will close next quarter” or “we’ve got lots of traffic to our site, we just need to work on conversion.” Blame it On Marketing In the next 3-6 months, a new VP of Sales is hired. innovation.

Customer Development 232

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 232

The Startup Magazine

JANUARY 4, 2023

Chicago Council on Global Affairs 2010 Emerging Leaders Program Selection. I knew this was not unique to me and was happening to other Latinas per conversations. Diversity MBA Magazine Top 100 Under 50 Executive Leader and Top 100 Women of Influence. National Board Chair for the Hispanic Alliance for Career Enhancement (100k members).

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Founder Chicago Illinois Community 158

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

The Customer is a Genius Then instead of talking about our products he segued the conversation into their products. And soon the conversation were about architectural tradeoffs and then how customers didn’t appreciate the elegant designs and how the world was going to hell in a handbasket because of these commodity microprocessors.

Technology 142

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 142

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 9, 2011

In particular part three talked about what happened if we saw a double dip in 2010-11 or a “lost decade.&#. 2010 was the year of the “super angel&# and 2011 has to date been the year of unbelievably highly priced B,C & D rounds of venture capital. Maybe he’ll reveal our conversation when he announced.

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Stock Technical Review Marketing Greece 305

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

In ten years, from the early 1950′s to the early 1960′s, the valley went through a hiring frenzy as jobs in microwave companies went from 700 to 7,000. The most extreme case (and my personal favorite) was by Armstrong who managed to create a full single conversion superheterodyne receiver all using a single vacuum tube!

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Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 294

crowdSPRING Blog

JULY 21, 2011

Hiring new employees can be tricky– both Mike and Ross have covered this topic extensively in the past. The hiring process can present specific challenges to small businesses and start-ups since oftentimes, they simply don’t have a procedure in place to help them make the best hiring decisions.

Small Business 67

Small Business Chicago Technical Review Hiring 67

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

However, there are some areas you can look to take on internally which can free up who you hire to carry out other important tasks and more technical aspects of SEO work. Yes, enlisting the support of an SEO specialist is still a great idea if you want to continue driving highly valuable organic traffic. One of these actions is the SEO audit.

SEO 85

SEO Technical Review Metrics Analytics 85

Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 31, 2016

Since it was part of the Version One marketplace meetup, we geared the conversation toward marketplace companies , but many points apply to software/SaaS startups as well. Here are some highlights from the conversation. . When is the right time to hire a growth person? Data is the cornerstone of the growth function.

Software Review 60

Software Review South Africa Hockey Stick Viral 60

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

As the conversation began to get down to how much stock and salary we could offer van Dam, we left the barber to finish his work and went to a payphone to call our CEO to confirm the deal. Reply Karma in the Lean Startup Era , on January 28, 2010 at 5:26 pm Said: [.] The response from across the country?

North Carolina 129

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 129

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

It was always a welcome change of pace to leave the brown of the unchanging desert and travel into town and have dinner with them and have a non-technical conversation about books, theater, politics, travel, etc. Her husband would look at me out the corner of his eyes and then we’d segue the conversation to some other topic.

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 206

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, March 25, 2010 Speed up or slow down? Heres an excerpt: The Startups Rules of Speed - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review Every startup that achieves success eventually faces a critical moment — whether to speed up or slow down. This is the speed-up-or-slow-down moment.

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, January 7, 2010 Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Although much of it will sound familiar to readers of this blog, whats new is my first step towards the " new entrepreneurship " that is my goal for 2010. Id be honored to have you join the conversation. Without further ado.

San Francisco 119

San Francisco Management Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Most of the time, the experiments you run will have a zero percent conversion rate - meaning no customers were harmed during the making of this experiment. I would aim to get no more than 1o0 clicks per day - over the course of a week or two, youll get pretty good conversion data. Measure conversion rates.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Up and Running

JUNE 27, 2018

Too often, business owners are tempted to hire the crème de la crème right at the outset. The value of hiring slow: Hiring high-caliber staff early in the game may take its toll on your time, money, and other resources. The good news here is, you don’t necessarily have to hire in-house marketers. Did your strategies work?

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Marketing Social Media Campaign Sales Cycle 109

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 27, 2012

Studios have caught on, and are often in charge of promoting hashtags like #jerseyshore that help keep the conversation together. When major awards shows pop up, or wildly popular episodes like Jersey Shore and The Bachelor come on, you can expect a flurry of Tweets to ensue. But the Oscars spanked Jersey Shore with 3.8 Recruiting.

Social Media 202

Social Media Media Small Business Reputation 202

www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

October 3rd, 2010 the Chubby Team 48 Comments. If I tell someone I’m the mayor of a spot, I’m in an instant conversation: “What makes you the mayor?” Post-Mortem Title : My eHarmony for Hiring Failure. – made compromises in early hiring decisions – choose expediency over talent/competency. Investors Companies.

Software Review 79

Software Review Startup Technical Review Vesting 79

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, June 2, 2010 The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business Review) I continue my series for Harvard Business Review with the Lean Startup technique called Five Whys. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Five Whys has its origins in the Toyota Production System.

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 2, 2011

you) has to recognize when debate, conversation, and analysis can’t take you any farther. It was during those phone conversations that I truly learned what listening to the customer really meant. Let “Mother” do the hiring. Bad hires are not only disruptive to businesses — they’re also expensive. Listen to your mother.

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Cofounder Vermont Ohio Brazil 154

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 27, 2011

Wait until you’ve cooled down and can send a measured, carefully worded e-mail or, heck, go have a face-to-face conversation with the person. Research, research, research when you’re about to make an important decision, whether you’re taking on a big customer, making a new hire, or forming a partnership. Don’t invest in fantasies.

Cofounder 124

Cofounder Ohio Florida Technical Review 124

Austin Startup

AUGUST 10, 2017

Take a look at some of the emails between us from 2010: We were attending NYU from 2008–2012. PPS, you should expect to see a lot more writing from both Tushar and I, as well as our recently hired and soon-to-be-announced research associate. PPPS, we’re also hiring a blockchain engineer. We were infatuated with tech.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Austin 48

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Theoretically, that’s why I hired them. It was an educational mission to tell the story of who our customers were (and by inference who all the graphics board customers were) and why the current reviews of these graphics boards weren’t adequately measuring what was important to this large market. You don’t delegate life and death.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 126

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers. Thanks a million.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Occam's Razor

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

In blue is how much time we spent in 2010 and in blue the time spent in 2014. was the dramatic shift between 2010 to 2014 to mobile content consumption. Transactions, Revenue and Ecommerce Conversion Rate. Mobile has much lower conversions and conversion rate than tablets or desktop. So what else is going on?

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Analytics Metrics Mobile DC 141

blog.chrisomeara.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Chris OMeara Main | Probing Code Quality » 01/31/2010 Startup CTO: Could It Work? Common sense says youd do your best to hire or otherwise permanently engage that lead developer. You could have the same problem hiring for other leadership roles too like Director Of Software Development or Master Bottle Washer.

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Fractional CTO CTO Hire Startup Cofounder 40

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

If you look at the top 3 online retailers by conversion rate, none of these are award-winning designs : [link] [link] [link] However, they convert ~25% of visitors to customers. Initially your job is to understand each of the parts of your business model before you hire someone to do it. That’s 10x what many websites convert.

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Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

blog.captainrecruiter.com

MARCH 8, 2012

Sunday, August 15, 2010. Eventually I was able to scrape up a few bucks and hired Sarah to build me a website prototype. Eventually Ill hire a software geek of my own, but right now Im doing just fine without one. Reply Delete Peter Aug 15, 2010 04:53 PM Absolutely correct. skip to main | skip to sidebar. Real Advice.

Cofounder 40

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Software Engineering 40

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 21, 2020

Our goal is to eliminate the friction between individuals by ensuring that people are empathetic, good listeners and speak the truth in a diplomatic manner, leading to clear and appropriate conversations. I’ve lived in the Middle East with the grandiose idea of serving the Syrian refugees when the bombs hit in 2010!

Leadership 167

Leadership Founder Technical Review Entrepreneur 167

crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 2, 2011

5 things that suck (about hiring new employees) and 10 things companies can do about it – [link]. 5 things that suck (about hiring new employees) and 10 things companies can do about it – [link]. helping Twitter-enable Charlie Sheen for a direct-to-fan conversation – [link]. – [link]. Are Agencies Doomed?

Social Media 95

Social Media Small Business Design Media 95

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

It is written in a conversational tone, doesnt take itself too seriously, and avoids extraneous fluff. It is written in a conversational tone, doesnt take itself too seriously, and avoids extraneous fluff. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, I think theyve succeeded. I think theyve succeeded.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

ConversionXL

JULY 15, 2014

After unsuccessfully running the program themselves for a while, they hired an outsourced program manager to manage the program and used an affiliate network to find new affiliates & manage the technology part of the program. CJ Affiliate by Conversant. Affiliate Census : screenshot of Affiliate Summit’s 2010 AffStat Report.

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Affiliate Programming Marketing Software Review 111

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Some startups fail because the founders cant have this conversation - they either blow up when they try, or they fail to change because they are afraid of conflict. Ajay January 24, 2010 6:15 AM Matthew Ogston said. February 9, 2010 3:16 PM Anonymoussaid. April 12, 2010 7:45 AM @hankzy said. Both are lethal outcomes.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167