Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 8, 2011

Today one of our portfolio companies BigDoor announced the acquisition of San Francisco-based OneTrueFan , a community and web check-in company. Recently the market demand has been outpacing their ability to keep up, so they turned to OneTrueFan as a means of accelerating their product development and overall growth.

San Francisco 115

San Francisco Acquisition Cofounder IPO 115

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

In a subscription business, maybe your attrition starts matching your acquisition, balancing like magic. Or your cost of customer acquisition just magically floats up to match your customer lifetime value. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Nothing seems to matter.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

Scott left the company, which eventually IPO’d and became Internet Brands. Rumored to have turned down acquisition offers from Yahoo and Facebook. Money to be used for hiring and additional product development. Currently has 1.8mm users and adding about 15,000 users/day. Competitors: Gowalla. Total Raised: $21.4mm.

San Francisco 248

San Francisco Venture Capital Analytics Government 248

Seeing Both Sides

NOVEMBER 26, 2012

Whether you are raising a $250K seed round or navigating a $100M IPO, the capital markets - in all of its various forms - are a fundamental constituent in the business-building journey. Developing expertise in raising capital is more than a necessary evil, it's a competitive weapon.

Balance Sheet 42

Balance Sheet Entrepreneur Dilution Portfolio 42

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 29, 2018

But rather than spending marketing dollars on expensive, bottom-of-funnel ad buys—or on content that attempts to explain the value of a product—a product-led strategy lets consumers create their own “Aha!” Consumer psychology also suggests why product-led strategies may enjoy more success : Endowment effect. Free-trial models.

Customer 119

Customer Conversion Acquisition B2B 119

K9 Ventures

OCTOBER 10, 2017

Unless every aspect of product development is covered by founders who are only receiving equity, there are other parts of building a product that will require hiring highly qualified people. Seed is the new Series A. (~$2M used get for building product, establishing product-market fit and early revenue).

Seed Stage 82

Seed Stage Finance Later Stage Equity 82

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

Take a look at The App Store after the gold rush - FierceDeveloper : According to a recent BusinessWeek feature , the flood of new games, productivity tools and related iPhone software is making it difficult for the vast majority of apps to crack the consumer consciousness. The App Store is a channel for customer acquisition.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

Even for companies that essentially have only one product, the value the company creates is located not in the product itself but with the people and their organization who built it. 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

infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Such positions include: PR, Sales, Product Development, Lead Generation, Strategic Planning, Fund Raising, etc. Any function within your startup that involves iterative learning, passion and/or close proximity to your customers should not be outsourced.

Equity 40

Equity Silicon Valley Cofounder Technical Review 40

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The metrics and levers of engagement, presentation on Engagement Loops for Facebook Developer Garage SF Ill be presenting a talk at the Facebook Developer Garage SF Wednesday evening. Why, we just unified acquisition and engagement! You can learn more about the event here.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

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. We cultivated a passionate community that nurtured a skilled set of developers. They get focused solely on growth.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

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. What do they get out of it?

Viral 140

Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Without conscious process design, product development teams turn lines of code written into momentum in a certain direction. This is why agility is such a prized quality in product development. As far as I know, there are no products that are immune from the technology life cycle adoption curve.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

Seeing Both Sides

JANUARY 13, 2015

People: founder-run and trying to recruit amazing technical talent (the product development team is a huge priority at this stage) and integrate a few senior managers to help prepare the company for scale - which leads to cultural clashes and communication challenges. Do we have an IPO management team in place? 50-100 million.

Mezzanine 20

Mezzanine IPO Finance Business Model 20

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. s helpful to find an developer tool that allows you to write html/css and renders the view in real time, so you donâ??t Firebase : Are all your developers front-end engineers? s easier to use/develop with. Mobile Tools: If you are a web developer, you donâ??t Codeacademy.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53