Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue?

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

What are they, how do they differ and what can startup do to take advantage of them? Paths to Liquidity: a quick history of the four waves of startup investing. Lean Startups/Back to Basics (2000-2010): No IPO’s, limited VC cash, lack of confidence and funding fuels “lean startup” era with limited M&A and even less IPO activity.

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View from Seed

MARCH 8, 2016

He and his firm are widely applauded for their work with high-growth startups, particularly those with a consumer focus. Unfortunately, too many startups come to us way too late. If you’re building a product that can grow virally—a social network, for example—brand is almost certainly less important at launch than product.

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Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

Getting the first tracks of revenue is one of the toughest processes of building a startup. One of the most commons problems I see with startups that I’ve come across is the lack of a “growth team.”. Lean marketing. Cost of Acquisition (CAC): The total cost of acquiring a user through a given channel.

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Duct Tape Marketing

SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

12:29] Where do you stand on your messaging for client acquisition? [15:49] So I've been bene type for about a year, and one of the reasons why I joined Typeform was, was that early on, a lot of times startups don't think about that until they Sure. ” Do you ever fight the urge to say we have to be different again? [12:29]

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crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 6, 2016

A startup’s success is driven in large part by a startup’s ability to drive customer acquisition growth. Not every company has figured out the path to customer acquisition growth, however. And for an overview of startup marketing, you should read this Kissmetrics post: The Ultimate Guide to Startup Marketing.

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The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Vision for B2C, virality-driven community. At this point I’m leaning toward the first deal, but not by a huge amount since there’s some risk to completing the round in both cases. The former means your friends won’t hear about your company until the acquisition. Highly experienced, top-tier angels.

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ConversionXL

MARCH 31, 2021

The more shares a piece of content gets, the higher the chance of it ‘going viral. You can rig the game and play with these metrics if you want, by creating viral content or one that’s super searched for…but has nothing to do with your business. A share also suggests your reader agrees with or finds your content though-provoking.

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SEO Metrics Social Media Audience 163

The Equity Kicker

MAY 15, 2012

I read some great stuff today on topics like why aren’t VCs lean and scrappy , and why Pinterest took so long to go viral , but the pick of the bunch by far were some of the answers to What are some decisions taken by the “Growth team” at Facebook that helped Facebook reach 500 million users? But maybe I should.

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The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Vision for B2C, virality-driven community. At this point I’m leaning toward the first deal, but not by a huge amount since there’s some risk to completing the round in both cases. The former means your friends won’t hear about your company until the acquisition. Highly experienced, top-tier angels.

Term Sheet 20

Term Sheet Dilution Participating Preferred B2C 20

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

I recently got to test a couple of new search products from startups: Bekko and Griplin. Launching a lean product doesn’t mean you should lose the ‘wow’ effect, so prioritize accordingly. Be smart about every dollar you spend but take calculated risks and don’t underestimate the cost of user acquisition.

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Lean Customer Development Audience Viral 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Having just retired from a career as an entrepreneur I had started thinking about why startups were different from large companies. And Jennifer is now my co-instructor in the Stanford Lean LaunchPad class.). Over the last two decades Shawn has seen hundreds of startups use the Lean Methodology. The MVP Tree.

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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. On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral. So what can you do? Its like knowing the future.

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San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 14, 2009 Business ecology and the four customer currencies Lately, I’ve been rethinking the concept of “business model&# for startups, in favor of something I call “business ecology.&# A successful startup strives for this latter case. As soon as possible!&#

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Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 21, 2013

Lean Analytics is the latest addition to the Lean Series. If you're working on the Sticky Engine of Growth , you're focused on very different metrics from those that you care about in the Viral Engine of Growth. More people means adding users, ideally through virality or word of mouth, but also through paid advertising.

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Analytics Lean Metrics Churn Rate 167

Ben's Blog

MAY 15, 2020

And if step one or two of the growth model start hitting a lot of friction, then of course it’s just going to get harder and harder, because each group of users is going to produce fewer and fewer users from an acquisition standpoint. Same thing for engagement, as well. Brian : There’s a couple things about this, though.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

When I work with startups on improving engagement, I really try to emphasize the importance of their most powerful lever: positioning. This is a common problem that results from viral-loop optimization. By copying the exact same registration flow as every other successful viral app, many viral apps completely lose their positioning.

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Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

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. This is essentially a version of the viral loop.

Viral 140

Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 140

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 9, 2013

Guest post by Ben Yoskovitz, the co-author of Lean Analytics , a new book on how to use analytics successfully in your business. Unfortunately, due in part to the popularity of Lean Startup and the concepts it promotes, the pivot has been bastardized to the point where it doesn’t mean much to people anymore. Hopefully not.

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Lean Analytics Metrics Viral 284

The Startup Toolkit

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

The top cause of startup death is trying to grow before the foundation is solid. The lean startup book’s engines of growth is a great starting point for picking good metrics: Growing virally? Focus on cost of acquisition versus lifetime value. They will advise you to increase these 2 numbers.

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Metrics Retention Viral .Net 46

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 14, 2017

and also being involved in other startups I have seen a number of pivots, some of them worked well and others in hindsight probably needed some more thought, but all have been a learning experience! You have lots of sign ups, you’ve smashed your acquisition targets and the first slide of your pitch deck looks great! Technology pivot.

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Technical Review Architecture Revenue Channel 157

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

2010 – Sean Ellis, who currently runs Qualaroo , coins the term “growth hacking” in his article, Find a Growth Hacker for Your Startup. ” April, 2012 – Andrew Chen writes Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing , which goes viral (2.4K Andrew Chen , Uber : “Startups don’t need growth hackers – at first.

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Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

crowdSPRING Blog

OCTOBER 14, 2010

These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Lean Startup 101 for Developers – [link]. Startup Sales – Why Hiring Seasoned Sales Reps May Not Work – [link]. image credit: papalars. – [link].

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 90

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

See Bessemer Venture Partners’ A comprehensive guide to security for startups. Data companies focused on early-stage startups include Aingel , fundsUP , Preseries , PredictLeads , and Sploda. For more on gathering data and using it to assess companies, see How to Assess Startups Using Machine Learning. 2) Market .

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Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

Not all startups need outside investment to grow. What most founders don’t realize is: Every stage of a startup requires a different set of metrics and milestones and founder skills. And thanks to Ann Miura-Ko of Floodgate (my first Lean LaunchPad co-instructor) for her suggestions. The Startup Investment Landscape.

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Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 429

Software By Rob

AUGUST 5, 2010

Join nearly 6,000 startup entrepreneurs by subscribing to my RSS feed. You’re a startup founder, whether actual or aspiring. The problem is that the premise of all of them – whether true or false – is irrelevant to you as a startup founder. You’re a constant learner; a student of life.

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Founder Startup Software Review Software 78

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

I’ll give you an example with my own startup LaunchBit and how our understanding of the problem and the customer became more refined over time: V1: Helping online marketers get customers profitably. I know nothing about viral marketing. Or spend virtually no time going after small money (ala Facebook)? Or in between?

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

I’ll give you an example with my own startup LaunchBit and how our understanding of the problem and the customer became more refined over time: V1: Helping online marketers get customers profitably. I know nothing about viral marketing. Or spend virtually no time going after small money (ala Facebook)? Or in between?

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

It has been awesome, flattering, and humbling to see that post went viral and has been seen by so many thousands of people — mainly aspiring entrepreneurs — and has been translated into many languages. There’s no time to dicker around at a startup. Startups are hard work. Make deliberate decisions. Fire fast.?.

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Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

grasshopperherder.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2011

Q: “What will be your best channel for customer acquisition?&# We’re testing a viral loop, direct sales, and affiliate marketing.&# That’s why it’s a startup. If you can’t describe how we’d work together, maybe you should join my startup and I’ll be the CEO.

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Cofounder NDA Founder Sweat Equity 47

ConversionXL

APRIL 6, 2016

Fix churn before acquisition – it will flatline growth. This entire model is very close to the Lean Startup model. Personalizing when the first land for better acquisition. If you have poor retention, nothing else matters, especially acquisition. Increase virality –> decrease eCPA.

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Retention Algorithm Software Review Conversion 48

Software By Rob

SEPTEMBER 22, 2009

Join nearly 6,000 startup entrepreneurs by subscribing to my RSS feed. Startups like Hot or Not , Plenty of Fish , Facebook apps where people throw sheep, and Twitter apps where people throws @shp. Startups where no one really understands why they became so popular; they just caught on. “That’s ridiculous!&#

Marketing 50

Marketing Software Review Technical Review Startup 50

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2020

He worked at an education startup here in Silicon Valley. One of my jobs in the past was consulting measures and acquisitions. And in fact, The Lean Startup is very much that. That's a very, very strong call to action to put at the end of an article, and I knew that would dramatically increase the virality.

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