YoungUpstarts

article thumbnail

How To Survive The Loss Of A Main Customer

YoungUpstarts

In the early stages, it isn’t uncommon for businesses to bank their earnings on a handful of customers (or sometimes, just one). This is especially true for startups, which operate on the basis of customer traction to solidify expectations with investors or lending institutions. Losing a major customer will inevitably impact cash flow.

Customer 286
article thumbnail

Seven Reasons Why Customer Reference Programs Fail

YoungUpstarts

by Bill Lee, author of “ The Hidden Wealth of Customers: Realizing the Untapped Value of Your Most Important Asset “ Harnessing the power of references and referrals seems like an obvious win. What could make more sense than to leverage the enthusiasm of happy customers to convince buyers that they need your products and services?

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

5 Lessons Every Entrepreneur Should Know

YoungUpstarts

Hindsight being 20/20, we should have treated these projects like any other customer. Our intention from day one was to have both an executive board and an advisory board. Unfortunately, a formal advisory board was something we never fully formed. Ensure value alignment by actions, not just words.

CTO Hire 100
article thumbnail

The Traction Gap Framework: Four Pillars Of Startup Success

YoungUpstarts

A well-developed product architecture helps a startup to achieve rapid market/product fit by successfully appealing to customers (users). Vitally, startup teams must be absolutely certain that both customer and market validation have been achieved before declaring market/product fit. This is quite the balancing act.

Framework 115
article thumbnail

The Traction Gap Framework: Four Pillars Of Startup Success

YoungUpstarts

A well-developed product architecture helps a startup to achieve rapid market/product fit by successfully appealing to customers (users). Vitally, startup teams must be absolutely certain that both customer and market validation have been achieved before declaring market/product fit. This is quite the balancing act.

Framework 101
article thumbnail

Welcome To The Year Of The Customer

YoungUpstarts

At the same time, enterprises today can leverage the cloud to make faster, more efficient software changes; use social media to connect with customers; deploy predictive analytics to determine what their customers will want and connect and control devices via a central point with the Internet of Things (IoT).

Customer 100
article thumbnail

Making Friends With Millennials: Evolving The Customer Service Story

YoungUpstarts

How they think and feel; their sense of community; and their appetite to share their opinions are all creating new paradigms for how any business, regardless of size, connects with its customers. According to our research, millennials ardently avoid calling customer service. Old school customer service rules haven’t changed.

Customer 100