Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2014

In the last few years Agile and “Continuous Deployment” has replaced Waterfall and transformed how companies big and small build products. Agile is a tremendous advance in reducing time, money and wasted product development effort – and in having products better match customer needs. They want newer things.

Continuous Deployment 331

Continuous Deployment Customer Agile Cloud 331

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? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal. More on that in a moment.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

Companies horde cash and squeeze the most revenue and margin from the money they use. These Key Performance Indicators and processes are what make a company efficient —but they are also the root cause of its inability to be agile and innovative. Every time another execution process is added, corporate innovation dies a little more.

Private Equity 328

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 328

Agile VC

APRIL 17, 2011

How They Make Money: Majority of Kayak’s revenue actually comes from advertising on their site (55%), not lead generation or referral fees to travel suppliers as you might think (more on this below). Financial Snapshot: 2010 Revenue: $170 million. Revenue growth: 51% YoY (2010), 1% YoY (2009), 131% YoY (2008).

Pre-Money Valuation 113

Pre-Money Valuation Liquidation Preference Dividend Common Stock 113

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

Finally, I’ll write about how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. Without the revenue to match its expenses, the company is in now danger of running out of money.

Customer Development 231

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 231

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

In general, when a startup is young with relatively simple operations, Finance is an easier function to outsource as the work requires less company-specific knowledge, agility, and database access (you’re closing the books monthly, not monitoring marketing campaigns or product experiments weekly). When to make your first analytics hire.

Analytics 149

Analytics Hiring SQL Forecast 149

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

And your revenue plan is something more than a hallucination. But for startups, business plans fail to match the chaotic reality they encounter in the real world. And that instead of firing executives to match a plan, it was the plan itself that needed to rapidly iterate. Business Plan vs. Business Model + Customer Development.

Business Model 266

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 266

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. And it was going to mention the two words that SuperMac marketing needed to live and breathe: revenue and profit. They understood the mission intent was our corporate revenue and profit goals. If so, which one?

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 267

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

For decades startups were managed by pretending the company would follow a predictable path (revenue plan, scale, etc.) The Revenue Plan – The Third Fatal Assumption. Notice that the traditional product introduction model leads to a product launch and the execution of a revenue plan. Albert Einstein. Ritualized Crises.

Burn Rate 250

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 250

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And worse, even if someone does manage to start something new, our management structure has so many financial, legal and HR hurdles that every initiative needs to match our existing business financial metrics, processes and procedures. More agile competitors are starting to eat into our business. What Drives Innovation?

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Up and Running

DECEMBER 28, 2020

If your bottom line has been hurt by lost clients and revenue, then you need to double down on an outreach approach. Robust and successful outreach strategies in the pandemic look thoughtful, realistic, agile, and empathetic. In fact, we know that bringing in new customers is more critical than ever, given the tough business landscape.

Sales 97

Sales Agile Restful .Net 97

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

Tossing their agile development process and at times their entire business model in the air, the company would go into fire-drill mode and engineering would start working on whatever his latest insight was. He should make sure that there aren’t other parts of the business model (revenue model, pricing, partners, channel, etc.)

Founder 320

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 320

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

Until 1995 startups going public typically had a track record of revenue and profits. Suddenly there was a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit. New, agile and adroit venture firms with new business models have emerged to deal with the reality that 1) web 2.0 Netscape’s 1995 IPO changed the rules.

Venture Capital 302

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 302

ConversionXL

JANUARY 24, 2017

With agile development cycles and uncertain monetization models, they live and die by data and experimentation. For maximum business growth + substantial revenue/session increases, you have to compel your highest intent and top converting traffic to visit way more often. Image Source. How do you do that?

Conversion 48

Conversion Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Analytics 48

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2009

At the same time, they can gauge how well industry data and the actual sales match the company’s revenue and market-share expectations. Customer information dissemination is a cornerstone of Lean and agile companies. Just remember that most market research firms are excellent at predicting the past.

Metrics 241

Metrics Customer Customer Development Lean 241

Duct Tape Marketing

OCTOBER 16, 2023

Their wide-ranging expertise means they can pivot effortlessly between crafting go-to-market strategies and driving revenue growth – all while nurturing high-performing teams within your organization. Key Takeaway: Don’t sweat over driving revenue growth – a fractional CMO is your secret weapon. The secret sauce?

Agile 64

Agile Technical Review Social Media Salary 64

Agile VC

FEBRUARY 7, 2012

Golazo is a slang word in Spanish used to describe truly special goals scored in a soccer match. A company that in time can generate $100M+ in revenue and have an enterprise value measured in the hundreds of millions or more (what some VCs refer to as a “venture scale” outcome). Filed under Uncategorized.

South Korea 124

South Korea Seed Stage Silicon Valley Syndicate 124

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 7, 2021

Depending on its complexity, new product development can last for years, accruing research, prototyping, and production costs without bringing in revenue. Strategy expert, Gary Fox , defines growth marketing as: “An agile and adaptive marketing methodology that focuses on how to get, grow and keep customers.”.

Product 142

Product Marketing Software Review Social Media 142

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2018

Corporate Agility. Transparency correlates to agility (Does your CEO know how many tests you ran last month?). match the brand ethos, congruent with the website. mobile is ~50% of revenue, shorter form works better. Flip your funnel – only 5% of revenue comes from optimisation but 92% of revenue from retention.

Retention 106

Retention Artificial Inteligence Channel Email 106

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 14, 2021

Does your messaging at each touchpoint match customer intent? To give context, compare market share changes with objective measures such as changes in total industry spending and company revenue, and strategic changes. Bean had been experiencing a long period of zero revenue growth. Are your campaigns driving conversions?

Metrics 157

Metrics Marketing Campaign Audience 157

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

A Progress Graph on the right visually shows how far you’ve come (in whatever units of goodness you’re tracking – revenue, units, users, etc.) They will realize that you have built a startup that’s agile, resilient and customer-centric. Raising Money Using Customer Development « Steve Blank [.]

Customer Development 266

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 266

Agile VC

JANUARY 12, 2012

When a startup doesn’t match the stage where a particular investor focuses, founders may get a response along the lines of “This is interesting to us, but come back once you get from X phase to Y phase” That could be from seed stage to a larger Series A financing need, or to progress from pre-product to post-revenue.

Seed Stage 100

Seed Stage Silicon Valley Syndicate Syndication 100

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. However, its not very useful to mix and match features from different models. Their economics blends elements of the free, advertising-supported, "eyeballs" business with more traditional e-commerce and subscription businesses.

San Francisco 148

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

blog.simeonov.com

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

I have been thinking a lot recently about how to apply agile development principles to investing and key aspects of startup development such as team building. Both stem from the agile principle of delaying decisions until the last responsible moment. The first post is about agile startup fundraising.

Founder 44

Founder Vesting Agile Startup 44

Ben's Blog

MAY 15, 2020

The previous model was that each week they would set you up in a professional networking context with someone else in the industry, and they would get your profile and what your goals are and match you with somebody really interesting. ” At least at Reforge, a lot of our revenue comes from company education budgets.

Founder 36

Founder Conversion Technical Review Cash Position 36

Up and Running

AUGUST 19, 2014

For example, one of the angels I pitched to cared deeply about our competitive landscape, whereas another wasn’t too concerned about the competitive landscape, he was more interested in our financial assumptions and my team’s ability to implement in an agile fashion. Angels vs. venture capitalists. ” - Gena H., Angel from Eugene, OR.

Angel Investor 161

Angel Investor Technical Review Due Diligence Startup 161

YoungUpstarts

MAY 23, 2018

Watching demand spike along with your revenues can lead to major temptations to expand your startup, but don’t jump just yet. If you’re looking for your own mentor, a good place to start online is the free-to-use micromentor.com , as it specializes in matching business mentors with those in need of advice. Manage Your Costs Closely.

Management 191

Management Startup B2C Forecast 191

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 13, 2017

Today, AWS is on pace for a $14 billion revenue year – just for one relatively new segment of Amazon’s business. Startups must be agile and adapt their value proposition several times until they get it right. Relying on psychological research, these businesses adapt marketing strategies to maximize revenues and profits.

Small Business 53

Small Business Startup Global Design 53

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

We were focused on revenue, but we didnt understand that revenue is not important for its own sake in an early stage company. Because the people performing the task had the vision that most exactly matched users' subconscious needs. Maybe, but the thought never even entered our minds. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

Occam's Razor

FEBRUARY 7, 2022

You can sign up here – I donate all revenues to charity. Another frequent online experimentation strategy is to use matched-market tests to figure out diminishing return curves for the online-offline media-mix in our marketing plans. Revenue increased. Robust & Remarkable Experimentation – so much more than LPO!

Analytics 101

Analytics Programming Global Campaign 101

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

In thinking about the bigger goal of digital transformation, 46% say they have been able to identify and create new product and revenue streams, and 45% of organizations are now using data and analytics to develop new business models. Do the people who visit your site match your target audience ? Analytics will answer these questions.

Analytics 106

Analytics Metrics Channel Campaign 106

Occam's Razor

JULY 22, 2013

Then there is Agile for engineering. Because the consideration stage matches your marketing, which in turn matches the metric. I barely have me and my cousin bringing in $500k per month in revenue." But most of the frameworks available to us solve for divisional silos. And really the list is too long.

Framework 163

Framework Marketing Metrics Audience 163

crowdSPRING Blog

DECEMBER 13, 2018

But if you want to accelerate growth and improve your revenues and profits, you need to up your game. If you have an existing company, you evaluated your core identity in the discovery phase and now have a chance to evolve that identity to better match your current/future vision, mission, and values. Unique visitors? Total visits?

Marketing 162

Marketing Charlotte Naming Design 162

ConversionXL

JULY 17, 2015

” and my CEO is saying, “Yeah, we’re agile. We talked about pre-calculating sample size, if I know how many transactions, but if my KPI is RPV, revenue per visitor, does anything change? A lot of times I use that, just to have a gut feel regarding if I book the revenue, the revenue is still there.

Video 48

Video Mobile Conversion Audience 48

css-tricks.com

JANUARY 2, 2013

Even if it doesnt match your own style perfectly, consistency is the most important thing. I want to add the following: The content should be revisited and improved to match the quality of the new website. And all too often in an agile approach, tweaks are made for business and dev requirements. Need a guide? Try SMACSS.

Web 96

Web Software Review Technical Review Caching 96

The Next Web

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

The traditional e-commerce site must change to match the times. According to a study by Emerson Network Power released during the Uptime Institute Symposium, downtime of one minute costs businesses $5,600 in lost revenue on average. Agility: The ability to adapt to new workloads, regardless of platform.

Hosting 122

Hosting Database Matching Cloud 122

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 26, 2016

When you consider that 88% of people leave their jobs for a position with a matching or lower salary you come to understand that the reasons for changing companies is rarely financial. Despite being a bootstrapped company with little revenue, we over-invested in a central New York City office at a rate of 15% rent to revenue.

Software Review 100

Software Review New York City Salary Employee 100