Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 26, 2015

Business agility is defined as the ability to adapt rapidly and cost efficiently. Today’s customers are much more proactive in going online for the latest information, rather than simply reacting to the “push” messages that businesses traditionally use to drive commerce. It all starts with agile leadership.

Agile 120

Agile Technical Review Leadership Social Media 120

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 13, 2013

You’ve decided to hire a development shop to build an MVP , give your product a facelift, or build that mobile app you’ve been wanting to build for years. If this is your first time hiring a dev shop, it can be confusing understanding the difference between competitors. by Stella Fayman, CEO and cofounder of matchist.

Developer 203

Developer Hiring Cofounder Technical Review 203

The Startup Magazine

JANUARY 9, 2024

Develop agility and adaptability Image credit Having agility in decision-making is a vital aspect of achieving business success. For instance, if you operate in the hospitality industry, keeping up with the latest food and drink trends can help attract more customers and lead to growth.

Programming 121

Programming Agile Advertising Lead Generation 121

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 15, 2020

Investors, partners, team members, and customers implicitly value or devalue a startup based on the leader’s physical presence, emotional identity, social skills, intellectual agility, moral values, and past performance in the domain. Modern information management tools. Strategic proficiency. People relationship focus.

Valuation 311

Valuation Technical Review Due Diligence Leadership 311

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 12, 2020

Attracting new customers and nurturing them along through the sales pipeline is what every business tries to do effectively and efficiently. Customers seek information from businesses when and where they want it. Customer relationship management software. Project management tools. Marketing automation software.

Small Business 173

Small Business Agile Software Software Developers 173

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 16, 2009 Combining agile development with customer development Today I read an excellent blog post that I just had to share. Jim Murphy is a long-time agile practitioner in startups. But startups sometimes have trouble applying agile successfully. Enter Jims post.

Agile 111

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

Women Entrepreneurs Can

NOVEMBER 14, 2018

These days, one of the decisions that startup owners make (or at least should think about making) is whether to be an agile company from the very start, to try to adopt it later or to do things the more traditional way. Most people are already familiar with agile principles to some extent, but just in case let’s go over the basics.

Agile 40

Agile Software Review Startup SCRUM 40

SVPG

AUGUST 21, 2013

Starting around 2004 and 2005 I began seeing an increasing number of teams moving to Agile, and of course the first thing they needed was training and often some coaching. I thought - incorrectly it turns out - that this would be a temporary issue, while the Agile community gained experience, especially with commercial product companies.

Agile 61

Agile CTO Hire Software Developers Software Development 61

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

You’re Hired, You’re Fired. My first job in Silicon Valley: I was hired as a lab technician at ESL to support the training department. I was met by a very apologetic manager who said, “We’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the last week. Could I work here if he wanted to hire me?&#

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Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 245

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 27, 2019

My simple answer is that they keep their focus on customers, rather than technology. Thus I was pleased to see the evidence confirming that perspective in a new book, “ The Amazon Management System ,” by Ram Charan and Julia Yang. Jeff Bezos has kept his focus on customers. Practice continuous bar-raising for your talent pool.

Global 308

Global Marketing Technical Review Algorithm 308

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 25, 2023

The expansion of e-commerce should also bring about seeing returns as a strategic lever, similar to how companies used faster delivery to drive customer experience and revenue. However, if you do manage to find success, the rewards can be significant. The current returns process has too many touchpoints where shrinkage can happen.

eCommerce 128

eCommerce Omaha Entrepreneur SEO 128

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

What had previously been a strength – their great management processes – now holds back their ability to respond to new challenges. Once upon a time every great organization was a scrappy startup willing to take risks – new ideas, new methods, new customers, targets, and mission. However, their biggest obstacle is internal.

Government 315

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 315

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 12, 2020

Different ways of working are better suited to different industries and business sizes, so it’s crucial to consider these sorts of things before you begin hiring or go to market. Using SOM is perfect for system designers who’re interested in having customization of the interface, form factor, and other electronic components.

SCRUM 147

SCRUM Software Review Technical Review Differentiation 147

The Next Web

NOVEMBER 17, 2013

In order to find out, I asked a panel of 12 successful founders from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) the following question: What are the pros/cons of hiring an agency to do development work, vs. having all your technical talent in house? Hiring an agency is usually less expensive, and you can utilize them only when there’s a problem.

Hiring 145

Hiring Developer Startup LLC 145

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 29, 2019

A platform is a business model and capability that can be accessed and customized by external users. Create and practice an obsession over customers. Make sure everyone knows it’s their job to maintain empathy and exceed customer expectations. Institute deep metrics measuring all aspects of the customer experience.

Artificial Inteligence 222

Artificial Inteligence Agile Technical Review Demand 222

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 29, 2018

Either way, custom software development is an effective way to build brand awareness and give your business a competitive edge. In order to bring the most value to your business, it’s important you explore ways to enhance your customer experience. Where to Hire Developers for Your Project. Source: Pexels.

Developer 93

Developer Offshore Software Developers Software Development 93

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014

I was driving home from the BIO conference in San Diego last month and had lots of time for a phone call with Dave, an ex student and now a founder who wanted to update me on his Customer Discovery progress. Customer Discovery. He worked hard to deeply understand the customer problems of these two customer segments.

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Cofounder Founder Technical Cofounder Coder 336

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 27, 2020

Everything from customer service, technical support, to back office operations are able to be outsourced as a way to reduce costs, keep up with the evolving consumer expectations, and drive a faster return on investment. Put simply, offshore outsourcing means hiring a company to perform a service from a different part of the world.

Offshore 165

Offshore Costa Rica Dominican Republic Jamaica 165

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2017

For example, if a chief executive officer manages the daily operation, a chief entrepreneur heads up innovation efforts. And the chief entrepreneur has a staff of chief portfolio manager, chief venture capitalist, and chief risk officer, right? So that gives us two different management structures for these two different portfolios.”

Lean 245

Lean Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 245

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. He just hired Meg Whitman.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, November 6, 2008 Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile I thought Id share an interesting post from someone with a decidedly anti-agile point of view. Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

Every startup has some methodology for product development, launch and life-cycle management. Yet startup companies have traditionally used this model to manage and pace not only engineering but also non-engineering activities. Where Are the Customers? Product Development Diagram 1. Product Development Diagram 1.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 26, 2022

Before product-market fit… just care about speed of iteration according to your customer feedback. So in terms of hiring, get people that can help you build the product faster… anything that minimizes the time between observing a need or a problem, and the execution or the fix for it.” Need for Speed, indeed. Our goals, their goals.

Founder 187

Founder Startup Valuation Pre-Money Valuation 187

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 4, 2010 Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Kent Beck will give the opening keynote at the Startup Lessons Learned conference on April 23. Labels: sllconf Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Kent Beck will give the opening keynote at the Startup Lessons Learned conference on April 23.

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Steve Blank

MARCH 15, 2017

His company had marched through customer discovery, learning about the customer problem, validated solutions and was now scaling sales and marketing. We’d managed to secure another infusion of cash, but it wasn’t going to last long. What I was hearing was a failure of management. All good news. This is a big idea.

Startup 310

Startup PR Public Relations Channel 310

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

If you’re an early employee at a startup, one day you will wake up to find that what you worked on 24/7 for the last year is no longer the most important thing – you’re no longer the most important employee, and process, meetings, paperwork and managers and bosses have shown up. The company was going to hire a VP of Marketing.

Part-Time VPE 333

Part-Time VPE Employee Cofounder Hiring 333

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

I was having breakfast with Radhika, an ex-grad student of mine who wanted to share her Customer Discovery progress for her consumer hardware startup. Who can I hire later? Activities define the unique expertise your company needs to deliver the value proposition, customers, channels, customer relationships and/or revenue. (If

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 20, 2019

Startups tend to put a premium on being “agile,” but that doesn’t always work – and certainly won’t replace the effective collaboration a business needs to grow. Specifically, there are five challenges that emerging business typically put on the backburner between funding rounds: Seed to Series A: Customer Testing.

Technical Cofounder 113

Technical Cofounder Burn Rate Seed Stage Cofounder 113

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 12, 2020

Most startups have been competent in managing their cash burn by determining how they spend and utilizing government subsidies to meet their goals. Companies that have managed to do this have a distinct advantage over those dependent on financing from external sources. Some have resorted to aiming to be self-sufficient.

Bankruptcy 165

Bankruptcy Startup Agile Technical Review 165

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 8, 2021

They want to snowball their customer acquisition, attracting thousands of new people to the brand, and reach diverse new audiences in new locations. You can hire more salespeople and practice social selling. . And the revenue from your existing customers alone may not be enough to cut it. . Visibility . Or is it? .

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Startup Retention Acquisition Agile 127

Duct Tape Marketing

OCTOBER 16, 2023

This executive-level maestro is no ordinary hire; they’re an ace up your sleeve when navigating the cutthroat world of competitive markets. Sit tight as we pull back the curtain on these unsung heroes, showing how hiring one could be game-changing for your business… ready? It’s like wanting champagne on a beer budget.

Agile 65

Agile Technical Review Social Media Salary 65

ReadWriteStart

MAY 30, 2022

As the proud father of a two-year-old boy, I hope one day to teach him how to manage money so he needn’t worry as much about it as I did when I first started earning. . Today, as the proud owner of a startup, you’re probably much better at managing your money. Hire a bunch of new staff? . We have all been there, done that.

Bootstrapping 147

Bootstrapping Startup Equity Silicon Valley 147

Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 29, 2021

It could be more revenue, hiring clients, or launching a new product or service, but every new year is an exciting time because it’s ripe with opportunity. As a result of the pandemic, not everyone has managed to hold onto their work. It's important to keep business agile. 1- Expanding skillset. Photo Credit: Sean Kelly.

Entrepreneur 137

Entrepreneur Social Media Employee Los Angeles 137

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2010

The best technologists often aren’t amazing people managers. They work on their own schedule and are often hard to manage. You still have some leeway to hire above them if need be. They care about the quality of what is build more than they care about end customers. The VP Engineering aspires to manage teams.

Fractional CTO 400

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 400

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 13, 2021

Balance is fundamental to building a healthy community and managing the challenges that come our way. 2- Consider customer feedback/advice. Our relationships with our customers and their trust in our company is our strongest asset. COVID-19 has shown us even more how important customer feedback is to the success of our business.

Offshore 130

Offshore Entrepreneur Jordan Agile 130

The Startup Magazine

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

Establishing essential roles, mastering hiring processes, spotting red flags early and cultivating an attractive company culture are all vital ingredients of success for any company’s continued growth and profitability, particularly for your startup team. Therefore, maintaining order and consistency during the hiring process is crucial.

Startup 112

Startup Retention Agile Hiring 112

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. It is a very different skill than science, engineering, or management. Where Did We Go Wrong?

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Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 332