Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

I like to talk about the fact that choosing your segment determines how you will reach your customer, what you will to say to them, and what the sales process will look like (since it depends on the buyer’s process). You need to hire the right type of sales people for the type of [.] Very much in addition to the text.

Silicon Valley 144

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 144

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

But then, because there might be entrenched competitors and your concept is radically new, you still need to invest in the customer development process to learn how to get design wins from companies who may be happy with their existing vendors. Personally, I think that customer acquisition, brand, reputation, etc.,

Vertical 147

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 147

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. Tech IPOs were a receding memory, and mergers and acquisitions became the only path to liquidity for startups. Carpe Diem. The New Exits.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 24, 2018

Much of the writing on startups focuses on two elements: finding product-market fit scaling the company once #1 is accomplished For product-market fit, we have a lot of source material to work with from the last decade: Steve Blank’s leadership on Customer Development , and Eric Ries’ on the Lean Startup ?—?along and they will.

Warrant 48

Warrant Bootstrapping Framework Hiring 48

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. You dive deep into a customer development process, working closely with a few customers who feed you requirements and are willing to trial an imperfect product that is evolving quickly. 1) Enterprise Sales.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

We never seek any rights to give Amex preferential treatment at the time of a potential acquisition. There is a possibility that Amex may explore acquisitions within the Amex Ventures portfolio, but those discussions will be on market terms similar to those with other potential acquirers.”. Can the founders communicate well?

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Technical Review Portfolio 60

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

there are almost no mergers or acquisitions in this market segment. It’s much easier to just steal their ideas and hire their employees. on NASDAQ or the NYSE or on ChiNext, China’s equivalent of NASDAQ) compared to the 90% of exits in US via mergers or acquisitions. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 269

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Its the same with acquisitions. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No one wants to buy you till someone else wants to buy you, and then everyone wants to buy you. The key to closing deals is never to stop pursuing alternatives.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

But scaling customer acquisition may take the same amount of dollars as a traditional software startup. ). Previous experience of investing in software companies that hire direct sales organizations and take years to build the product using waterfall development doesn’t translate to expertise in Consumer Internet startups.

Lean 260

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 260

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

there are almost no mergers or acquisitions in this market segment. It’s much easier to just steal their ideas and hire their employees. on NASDAQ or the NYSE or on ChiNext, China’s equivalent of NASDAQ) compared to the 90% of exits in US via mergers or acquisitions. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 161

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

In a subscription business, maybe your attrition starts matching your acquisition, balancing like magic. In an eyeballs business, you just cant seem to acquire or activate that next step-up of customers. Or your cost of customer acquisition just magically floats up to match your customer lifetime value.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

(For more on how this plays into the process of scaling up, see the Customer Creation stage of the customer development model.) Perhaps they’ll be able to hire someone especially skilled in the marketing skills needed to find this positioning. Labels: agile , customer development 15comments: Scott Shapiro said.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

viniciusvacanti.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

It’s actually pretty hard to find a good start-up job if you have no real engineering or user acquisition / product management skills. Hire a Programmer The Hope: You’ll use the programmer to build a prototype that will get you traction and experience. I recommend you start by reading this post on how to hire a programmer.

Cofounder 43

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Ruby 43

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

Lean 250

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 250

The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 15, 2012

Growth is acquisition plus retention. Acquisition and retention tend to be inseparable from the product. You shift from qualitative feedback (customer development) to quantitative feedback (metrics). Cost of acquisition vs. lifetime value. Important Business Question #2: can it theoretically grow?

Startup 55

Startup Business Model Retention Acquisition 55

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

The 11 Harsh Realities Of Being An Entrepreneur - OnStartups , November 1, 2010 There's always talk about the end game in the form of an acquisition, funding announcement, or eventual flame out. Call it facts for hire. It would be a bit like the hired gun in the old west, but more suited for today’s times. What went wrong?

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

MARCH 28, 2009

He was constantly looking at the multiple lines on the ALR-20 display and could see the Soviet radar order of battle: ground to air communications, what radars were around (search, acquisition, tracking, etc.), I made them a pretty good offer – hire me as a training instructor at the salary they were [.] Reply Ben C. ,

Silicon Valley 202

Silicon Valley Thailand RSS Michigan 202

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

The App Store is a channel for customer acquisition. I think its helpful to think about two kinds of competition for distribution: acquisition competition and retention competition. Acqusition competition is how new apps get new customers. So what can you do? Then, if your retention is good enough, you can stay there.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

Yet, the real stories of successful startups are full of activities that can rightly be called institution-building: hiring creative employees, coordinating their activities, and creating a company culture that delivers results. To see proof of this, simply observe the results of the large majorities of corporate acquisitions of startups.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Startup Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Successful pinball companies didn’t hire Hollywood talent. Meanwhile our company was pouring an enormous amount of dollars into building tools and video compression technology, while also hiring a lot of high-priced Hollywood talent like art directors, and script and story editors. I know what’s great and what’s not.

Silicon Valley 212

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 212

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck. Even if the first MVP isn’t a hit, you’ll be building the muscle needed for the company such as making key hires.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

September, 2012 – Andrew Chen, who currently does growth at Uber , writes You don’t need a growth hacker , which encourages companies to really consider whether they have product-market fit before hiring a growth hacker. Peep Laja , ConversionXL : “I see growth hacking as traffic acquisition + conversion optimization.”

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

Start small, and then start hiring new talent to expand upon what you’ve started. It was a tough decision, as we spent a lot of work researching, developing offers, and producing our messaging. These days, many agencies start as a lean operation. How to communicate new services to potential buyers.

PR 120

PR B2B Lean Audience 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 7, 2010

The acquisition turned out to be a culture clash of titanic proportions, kind of like the irresistible force meets the immovable object, as the great startup founder ran headlong into the excellent operating guy. The new strategies and acquisitions ended up as slight variations on the ones we were already executing. Distracted.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Cofounder Acquisition Kansas 269

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2013

Its goal is to take the original idea and search for a repeatable and scalable business model - first by finding product/market fit, then by testing all the parts of the business model (pricing, channel, acquisition/activation, partners, costs, etc.). If any of the answers are “Yes,” then hire them a bit later as an early employee.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Advisory Board Customer Development Leadership 335

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2013

We hoped to start acquiring customers mostly through responsible, focused SEO, where we would target a variety of high-value search terms and provide relevant, useful content to users. Lean Start-up Connection: Customer Development. Filed under: Customer Development. Customer Development' Validation.

Lean 295

Lean Agile Customer Development SEO 295

www.women2.org

MARCH 8, 2012

After quitting my job and starting Sorced , I spent a few months validating my business concept by creating the product mockups and doing customer development. Additionally, if you want to hire more engineers, how hard will it be to find people using this language. You might as well hire an outsourced team. Acquisition.

Cofounder 47

Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47

news.ycombinator.com

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

flavor of a question-and-answer, poll-your-friends site with a distant revenue model and no user acquisition strategy. They almost certainly dont know how to do that today, but they have so much more money than us that they could hire a dozen consultants until they found someone who did. From the link: Oh, and what was the company?

Stealth 41

Stealth Technical Review Startup Software Review 41

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

You are here: Home » Hiring » Crazy! Written By Dan Martell on February 2nd, 2012 | Category: Hiring LeanStartup Marketing Metrics Startup Life | 6 Comments. Ability to hire top talent (A+ talent). you can hire for those. www.elance.com and hire from eastern europe. Maple Butter. Search for: Videos.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Each of these four currencies represents a way for a customer to “pay&# for services from a company. A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Why, we just unified acquisition and engagement! I do think the concept allows us to unify acquisition and engagement, and is important for that reason. helping you balance engagement vs acquisition. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

They have many, many man-years of development and customer development in them. So hiring more people and being around more people and getting more things done is not actually one of the reasons. Is there a marketing person at Remember the Milk you can hire and say look, what you did is great. Edwin: The ROI?

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 27, 2011

The idea is to build a hit that would make the founder(s) an appealing and quick talent acquisition (sometimes referred to as an acq-hire). This is lean development without any customer development. Lastly, large companies that seek new talent will likely hire promising individuals through a small exit.

Lean 144

Lean Startup Agile Coder 144

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

" => I have not bothered to put up a landing page, survey to test customer demand, or done any customer development whatsoever. "Where is the best place to find a rockstar developer to bring it to life?" Building a scalable, profitable, customer acquisition engine. In my opinion, yes.

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Inevitably, the excuses begin: I need to hire people to build the product. I don’t know any developers. In later posts I’m going to get into more detail on specific topics like hiring, raising money, what types of ideas have the potential to get big, finding your founders, and the like. recently hired Daniel Clemens as COO.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Engagement loops: beyond viral Theres a great and growing corpus of writing about viral loops, the step-by-step optimizations you can use to encourage maximum growth of online products by having customers invite each other to join.

Viral 140

Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Hire the absolute best and the brightest, true experts in their fields, who in turn can hire the smartest people possible to staff their departments. Here are a few: We know what customers want. We can capitalize on new customers. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150