Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2015

I usually envision a 50-50 ownership split for their efforts, but every engineer believes the technology side deserves the majority share. Outside investors are most interested in scaling a proven business model, not research and development. Most founders bootstrap product development.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Intellectual Property Cofounder Bootstrapping 120

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 17, 2011

Working with Students, Teachers, Schools for Product Development. The problems of product development and customer acquisition are just a few of the barriers that ed-tech startups face. It's about attracting bright engineering talent to the space.

Incubator 116

Incubator Technical Review Silicon Valley Cofounder 116

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

ConversionXL

MAY 1, 2017

Past Product: Lackluster Marketing Causes Growth Stalls, Too. These pitfalls are not limited to product development. Often, erosion of customer loyalty has been going on for years but the company has failed to perceive it—until it’s too late. Swimming with Sharks. Growth teams are like those sharks.

Technical Review 127

Technical Review Algorithm Channel Analytics 127

Seeing Both Sides

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

By viewing product development and marketing as integrated functions, not silos, leading tech companies like Facebook and Pinterest are rethinking their approach to driving growth and achieving breakthrough results. For instance, should resources go to user acquisition or to combatting churn? So what makes a good Growth Manager?

Management 20

Management Analytics Technical Review Framework 20

Seeing Both Sides

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

By viewing product development and marketing as integrated functions, not silos, leading tech companies like Facebook and Pinterest are rethinking their approach to driving growth and achieving breakthrough results. For instance, should resources go to user acquisition or to combatting churn? So what makes a good Growth Manager?

Management 20

Management Analytics Technical Review Framework 20

Lightspeed Venture Partners

JANUARY 6, 2011

And congrats to Alex Le, cofounder of a prior investment, Serious Business, whose first game since the Zynga acquisition is CityVille.]. Ed Baker of Friend.ly , a fun way to meet new people, is focused on driving innovation: Encourage more product suggestions from our engineering team.

Stealth 60

Stealth Startup Lean Cofounder 60

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Market Risk vs. Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention.

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 16, 2010

Calxeda is on track with its business and ARM-based product development plans, moving toward providing first samples of its industry-changing technologies in 2011. He was previously Senior Vice President, responsible for product lines and manufacturing operations, at SigmaTel through its 2003 IPO and then acquisition by Freescale.

Naming 59

Naming Hiring Technical Review Virginia 59

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

1x hacker in charge of product/development. 1x hipster working with both product and growth. Your customer acquisition cost and lifetime value are the two magical numbers you need to calculate for each one of your campaigns. Cost of Acquisition (CAC): The total cost of acquiring a user through a given channel.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 3, 2009

When they promise to help you with marketing, sales, distribution, integrated product development, etc. But the venture guys don’t make the calls on what the product / business guys do. But even he would feel conflicted when I had to cut the engineering team because he valued our product more than his investment.

Strategic Investors 279

Strategic Investors Venture Capital Due Diligence Early Stage 279

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

techcocktail.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

be the manager and product developer). Developer – Most likely your product requires some engineering. Make sure you have the right developer(s) on board in whatever capacity you need them, whether it’s a part time HTML or Wordpress developer or a full time PHP wiz.

San Francisco 44

San Francisco Startup PHP San Diego 44

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. Top talent drives revenues, business development, great product development.

Hiring 111

Hiring PR Differentiation Acquisition 111

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. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Nothing seems to matter.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Its the same with acquisitions. If an investor knows you have other investors lined up, hell be a lot more eager to close-- and not just because hell worry about losing the deal, but because if other investors are interested, you must be worth investing in. The key to closing deals is never to stop pursuing alternatives.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

ConversionXL

JANUARY 24, 2017

As Ronny Kohavi , Distinguished Engineer, General Manager, Analysis and Experimentation at Microsoft, put it: Ronny Kohavi: “Experimentation is getting more recognized as essential to guide product development, when it is applicable (not always, as you can see in Section 6 in this paper ).

Conversion 48

Conversion Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Analytics 48

VC Adventure

JANUARY 24, 2013

At the risk of overgeneralizing (although to be fair as a VC that’s pretty much my job description) and understanding that there’s plenty of grey area here, I’ve really been noticing recently just how challenging it can be for organizations to move from being product focused to sales and marketing focused.

Sales 102

Sales Product Marketing Acquisition 102

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 9, 2022

Clare Price (03:49): Well, the way that we do it is we've developed six canvases that focus on six core areas of business growth. And that's brand development, brand power, customer acquisition, message clarity, market expansion, sales enablement, so marketing and sales working together and product marketing or product innovation.

Marketing 76

Marketing Differentiation Sacramento Small Business 76

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. But, if they are not, it’s very hard to use paid acquisition to generate that type of traffic for under $5. Product second. Marketing first.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. But, if they are not, it’s very hard to use paid acquisition to generate that type of traffic for under $5. Product second. Marketing first.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2015

And take what it learns and regularly update the corporate engineering, strategy, VC groups and business unit heads, on technology and market shifts. In Stage 2, the corporation adds venture capital and/or mergers-and-acquisition teams to provide these functions. Stage 3: Productizing the Solution to Corporate Problems.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Incubator Acquisition Business Model 120

Hippoland

APRIL 3, 2013

It wasn’t going to help you get a $1B acquisition for a photo-sharing app. Not product management. Not product development. But for the remaining 99% of successful hacker-entrepreneurs who are not Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, an engineering degree is helpful (sometimes :) ). It taught you how to sell. .

Incubator 89

Incubator Startup Cofounder Sales 89

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 27, 2011

And a few words about Persistent Systems, an outsourced software product development (OPD) company that is navigating its next phase of evolution are also warranted. Jeff also described a compelling in-game offer-based customer acquisition model that is proving quite effective for him. Brainscape. Note, I said, validated.

Dilution 114

Dilution Revenue Finance Entrepreneur 114

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Overall, this is part of a tendency to see Lean Startup as simply an evolution of Agile, and to mistakenly think that it thus “belongs” in Engineering, or that it’s only useful for new product endeavors. That’s when the sales and marketing functions adopt Lean Startup for customer acquisition.

Lean 167

Lean Startup Agile Leadership 167

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

Rumored to have turned down acquisition offers from Yahoo and Facebook. Money to be used for hiring and additional product development. Spread through word-of-mouth as the company has no sales team, all engineers. -A location based service which incorporates social and gaming elements. Competitors: Gowalla.

San Francisco 248

San Francisco Venture Capital Analytics Government 248

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. Avoid Locality Bias in Product Development. When Google purchased YouTube there was lots of skepticism and outright derision.

Engineer 87

Engineer PR Leadership Community 87

VC Adventure

JANUARY 24, 2013

At the risk of overgeneralizing (although to be fair as a VC that’s pretty much my job description) and understanding that there’s plenty of grey area here, I’ve really been noticing recently just how challenging it can be for organizations to move from being product focused to sales and marketing focused.

Sales 48

Sales Product Marketing Acquisition 48

Hippoland

APRIL 3, 2013

It wasn’t going to help you get a $1B acquisition for a photo-sharing app. Not product management. Not product development. But for the remaining 99% of successful hacker-entrepreneurs who are not Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, an engineering degree is helpful (sometimes :) ). It taught you how to sell. .

Incubator 48

Incubator Startup Cofounder Sales 48

ConversionXL

AUGUST 30, 2018

It slows product development. When Google embarked on a massive and unprecedented redesign of its core products , designers found that collaboration with engineers forced them to choose a shared vocabulary. Include notes from your internal team that explain how insights are influencing product development.

Design 111

Design Framework Product Development Technical Review 111

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

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

September 2013 – Ryan Holiday publishes Growth Hacker Marketing and urges people to build growth into the product itself so that it’s a self-sustaining, scalable growth machine. An Epic List of 100 Growth Hacks for Startups by Search Engine Journal. Because growth should be built into the product itself for maximum ROI.

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 1, 2017

The one side, I think it’s a really interesting point you bring up, which is does it immediately lean toward to creating new products and services? They have 23 different blogs focused on different flavors of solder and they basically create the trust with their engineering customers to answer every question that they may have.

Cost 37

Cost Marketing Audience Media 37

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. Having that data will let you pick an acquisition strategy that is appropriate for your app. So what can you do?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

Marketing demand creation programs (Search Engine Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Lead Generation, Trade Shows, etc.) are all expensive and potentially fatal distractions if done before you have found product/market fit and a repeatable sales model. Where is the budget for purchasing the type of product you’re selling?

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Small Business Force

OCTOBER 8, 2017

With this vehicle you maintain the same sales team and coverage, selling into the same customers and same markets with new product(s) with the objective of new revenue from existing customers in current markets. Either, organically, through internal product development, or strategically, through acquisition or partnering.

Revenue 25

Revenue Early Stage Small Business Partner 25

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. My company and product involve HW/SW/RF/embedded system integration, and I am NO kind of engineer. There’s no guarantee your future technical co-founder will be there.

Cofounder 43

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Ruby 43