Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

But in 1904, after his first time seeing a car in Flint, Michigan, he was one of the first to see that the future was going to be in a radically new form of transportation powered by internal combustion engines. Unlike Durant, Musk has engineered his extended tenure and this year got his shareholders to give him a new $2.6

Michigan 268

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

ConversionXL

APRIL 4, 2017

Paid Acquisition. You’re undoubtedly familiar with paid acquisition, as it’s the digital equivalent of traditional advertising. This is generally split into two areas, though they’re often used together to some varying proportion: Search Engine Marketing. When Does Paid Acquisition Work for SaaS Startups?

Channel 118

Channel Marketing Viral SEO 118

Duct Tape Marketing

FEBRUARY 6, 2024

Understanding Research Engine Optimization And Its Impact on SEO with Shama Hyder written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Shama Hyder. 06:56] What is Dark Social? [09:10]

Engineer 65

Engineer SEO ChatGPT Channel 65

Duct Tape Marketing

OCTOBER 6, 2017

Here’s a question – is your PR working? As small business owners or marketers, we all know full well how important it is to put time aside for PR. If you’re an astute CEO you’ll feel it in your water when PR is working. It’s also a way to see that your PR is working. written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing.

PR 48

PR SEO Analytics Campaign 48

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?)

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

SVPG

APRIL 28, 2012

Product communications/PR/social media (what can we say that will make others do the talking about us?). Marketing communications and campaigns – advertising, email, interactive, search-engine, events etc. Product positioning (what is it, why is it different, and why should the world care?). when to use each and to what end).

Product 108

Product Technical Review Marketing Affiliate 108

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

VC’s engineered financial transactions, working with entrepreneurs to brand, hype and take public un profitable companies with grand promises of the future. Tech IPOs were a receding memory, and mergers and acquisitions became the only path to liquidity for startups. Thus began the 5-year dot-com bubble. The New Exits.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Seeing Both Sides

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

The Growth Manager function typically lives at the intersection of marketing and product development, and is focused on customer and user acquisition, activation, retention, and upsell. They work cross-functionally with engineering, design, analytics, product management, operations, and marketing to design and execute growth initiatives.

Management 20

Management Analytics Technical Review Framework 20

Seeing Both Sides

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

The Growth Manager function typically lives at the intersection of marketing and product development, and is focused on customer and user acquisition, activation, retention, and upsell. They work cross-functionally with engineering, design, analytics, product management, operations, and marketing to design and execute growth initiatives.

Management 20

Management Analytics Technical Review Framework 20

ConversionXL

JANUARY 8, 2018

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the biggest levers that a business can use within their acquisition strategy as part of their Growth goals. You’re likely familiar with the different Growth frameworks like AARRR (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue). It all start with Acquisition.

SEO 134

SEO Metrics Analytics Search 134

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2015

“the ecommerce company gained fauxmentum by raising artificially high amounts of venture capital and spent lavishly on customer acquisition despite long payback periods and questionable LTV” __. I’m not saying you shouldn’t grow engineering or do PR. __. faux·men·tum. fōˈmen(t)əm,fəˈmen(t)əm/.

Balance Sheet 150

Balance Sheet eCommerce Venture Capital Acquisition 150

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 18, 2012

VCs talk about customer acquisition and competition as critical parts of the pitch--when 99% of the time the real answers are: a) Well, we'll do some PR, some social, some paid when we figure out what a customer is worth, some BD. Oh, you're going to hire 15 engineers with my $5mm? sounds good.". %^%#@@!!

Hiring 111

Hiring PR Differentiation Acquisition 111

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 9, 2019

But I’ll grant that he taught us a lot and had crazy-good engineers. Bazaarvoice came out of stealth mode roaring, though, and Sam Decker, our founding CMO, did a great job blogging on the launch and my long-time friend, Emily Brady at Brady PR, did a great job garnering the media attention that we had been waiting until the right time for?—?when

Stealth 48

Stealth Cofounder Los Angeles Technical Review 48

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 26, 2010

The newly formed teams then work for the entire weekend, with the help of some experienced mentors from the industry, who volunteer their time to share advice on product, technology, legal, PR and other issues. It’s nice to have protected IP, but that will mostly matter later on in the event of an acquisition.

Elevator Pitch 102

Elevator Pitch Incubator Technical Review Startup 102

techcocktail.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Developer – Most likely your product requires some engineering. Make sure someone is thinking about overarching plans around PR, marketing and sales and spends time crafting the right messages, understanding audiences and figuring out distribution channels. Software Engineer @ General Electric (Barrington, IL) Sr.

San Francisco 44

San Francisco Startup PHP San Diego 44

socialmatchbox.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

These days sales, marketing and PR people seem to grow on trees. If you post up an ad to an online job board asking for someone to join your very high risk early stage startup company the odds of getting someone who decent are slim to none. client / Washington, DC ($500 Referral Reward) Developer/Partner / Rocket Whale, Inc.

Part-Time VPE 41

Part-Time VPE Sweat Equity DC Washington 41

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 3, 2016

Other firms like Google bring massive resources to design or engineering and as as corporate VC can offer things normal VC firms can’t offer. We can help portfolio companies with announcements, PR strategies, crisis management and so forth. We also run internal events often where we connect entrepreneurs to share knowledge.

Portfolio 150

Portfolio PR Partner Early Stage 150

The Equity Kicker

MAY 22, 2015

Google Ventures: has teams that help portfolio companies with design, engineering, recruiting, marketing and partnerships. Founder Collective: hired a journalist to help their portfolio with PR. Balderton Capital: have a head of PR and content, a data scientist, and a talent and development analyst. And there’s us.

Portfolio 60

Portfolio PR Incubator Early Stage 60

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 28, 2010

Feel like you need some meat on the bones the customer acquisition strategy investors have been asking about? Are you a business co-founder who just suddenly realized that just setting up a company Twitter account isn’t driving as much traffic as you had hoped?

Marketing 106

Marketing Affiliate Venture Capital Cofounder 106

techcrunch.com

MARCH 8, 2012

Yes, you have good working knowledge of accounting, an idea of how to bring in sales leads, run a marketing and PR campaign, recruit people and build a great company culture, but that won’t help you build a product that customers want. Three major acquisitions in as many months in this space confirm it is). Crunchboard.

Technical Cofounder 49

Technical Cofounder Cofounder San Antonio Europe 49

Eric Friedman

JUNE 11, 2019

Here are a few I have seen work: PR Opportunity – for the LargeCo. Signing Bonus – Interestingly, many early stage teams can answer the question “would you pay an extra $10K to the recruiter if they could get an engineer tomorrow?” Typically a startup wants a POC with a LargeCo. and they move at a glacial pace.

Term Sheet 68

Term Sheet Stock Options Early Stage Agile 68

Hunter Walker

MAY 20, 2013

Being one of the first Googlers to join YouTube after the acquisition taught me a lot about what works, and doesn’t work, when you bring a fast growing community property into a larger entity. Especially legal, policy and pr – we wanted them to understand the magic of YouTube. So I guess it all worked out, eh? price tag.

Engineer 87

Engineer PR Leadership Community 87

Duct Tape Marketing

MARCH 25, 2016

Unconventional PR. Search Engine Marketing. Search Engine Optimization. Engineering as Marketing (e.g. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). Once you know your CLV, you can set your maximum Customer Acquisition Cost (i.e. This approach creates a very low customer acquisition cost, which allows them to scale.

Channel 28

Channel Viral Marketing Acquisition 28

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

The App Store is a channel for customer acquisition. This is completely analogous to the situation elsewhere on the internet, where launching a new website, product, or service with PR is getting harder and harder. On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral. My advice: dont launch big.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 18, 2013

Ensure that key words are set up well in advance to allow search engines time to index and find your products and services. People who’ve already shopped at your store may be following you on Facebook or Twitter, but engaging with them isn’t going to drive new customer acquisitions. But you need to be mindful about your approach.

PR 212

PR Social Network Web Development Incubator 212

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

I use a more restrictive definition: A growth team is a product tech team that’s focused on acquisition instead of core product features. It other words, it’s a team of designers and engineers. We had a designer, a front-end engineer, and a data scientist. Two engineers keeps the whole team moving without downtime.

Conversion 133

Conversion Technical Review Channel Engineer 133

Duct Tape Marketing

OCTOBER 17, 2018

Are they doing search engine advertising? And then the third thing about the customer is to focus more on customer retention and growth and not so much on new customer acquisition. You can tell without ever talking to someone, do they have a marketing automation program? Are they doing anything on social media.

Marketing 56

Marketing Social Media Analytics Software 56

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

Many MBAs took marketing courses but have never been on the front line of A/B testing, email campaigns or PR initiatives. It pays for all of our great engineers. It fuels our bonus payments, our quarterly earnings, our growth rate, our value at acquisition time. Sales is the lifeblood of every organization.

NPV 337

NPV Chicago Balance Sheet Database 337

Seeing Both Sides

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

Conventional wisdom suggests that the most important metrics for a startup - such as unit economics, cost of acquisition, lifetime value, churn rates - typically get better with time. Here are a few other key metrics that are hard to scale: Customer acquisition. For example, PR doesn’t scale.

Metrics 20

Metrics Churn Rate Acquisition SEM 20

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

It’s lazy thinking (and expensive engineering) to try to build for both at the same time. It has a growth engine. There are two viable growth engines for tech companies: Viral, or “inherently viral” growth: Customers either intentionally or unintentionally recruit new customers by using your product. Final Thoughts.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Duct Tape Marketing

OCTOBER 17, 2011

I know this point of view won’t sit well with some PR practitioners, but here’s how I now see the major lead generation activities. So, if you still view SEO as the art of search engine manipulation or social media as a tactic still struggling to produce ROI, think again. In a way social media has become the ultimate referral vehicle.

Lead Generation 67

Lead Generation SEO Social Media Public Relations 67

crowdSPRING Blog

AUGUST 9, 2016

They have degrees in all kinds of subject areas – electrical engineering, English literature, political science. You write to open up engagement opportunities for lead acquisition, conversion, and brand awareness. There was one MBA, two undergraduate degrees and a community college certificate.

Marketing 48

Marketing Social Media Advertising Channel 48

Duct Tape Marketing

MAY 19, 2011

The Referral Engine – Teaching Your Business to Market Itself – by John Jantsch. David Meerman Scott David is the author of 7 books, Real-Time Marketing & PR , is his newest addition to the collection. . Business owners and marketers don’t necessarily need.

Small Business 53

Small Business Marketing Social Media Cofounder 53

Scalable Startup

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

Via Stanford, Berkeley, Facebook, Google, recruiting Harvard and MIT undergrads, their wonderful PR machine, advertising free meals, free car washes, free dry cleaning, free day care. That’s OK if you plan for it, “engineer” for it. 150,000 salary right out of college. Unlimited vacation.

Silicon Valley 22

Silicon Valley San Francisco Angel Investor Hawaii 22

Duct Tape Marketing

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

Experimentation is the engine that drives innovation. Number one, because originally right, the founding of the company was, it's always like square in the search engine marketing at the yeah. John Jantsch (09:08): They're not reading search engine land, the barber. We are responsible for bringing in new user acquisition, right.

SEO 85

SEO Channel Campaign Audience 85

VC Cafe

MARCH 15, 2016

Building on my experience of being part of a team that did exactly that for Dropbox in Europe, I will attempt to demystify the process and hopefully give a starting point, from which any founder can start building a distribution engine that creates happy customers. The way you define the stages will be dictated by your product.

Sales 60

Sales Marketing Sales Cycle B2C 60

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

PR and publicity drive attention…to drive sales. June 2014 – Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown write Startup Growth Engines: Case Studies of How Today’s Most Successful Startups Unlock Extraordinary Growth , which defines growth strategies as growth engines. Ads drive awareness…to drive sales. …Really?

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48