David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

RBI normally requires founders to pay back their investors with a fixed percentage of revenue until they have finished providing the investor with a fixed return on capital, which they agree upon in advance. For background, see Revenue-Based Investing: A New Option for Founders who Care About Control. Alternative Capital. “

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

Tempted by large sums of money and the perceived validation that comes along with being funded, founders turn to venture capitalists to accelerate their company’s growth. Founders don’t have that luxury — for founders like me, the consequences of failure are more dire. This is why I made the decision to bootstrap HighRadius.

Early Stage 85

Early Stage Venture Capital Bootstrapping Pre-Money Valuation 85

ReadWriteStart

JULY 12, 2023

CEO and co-founder of InvGate Ariel Gesto says the company will continue to expand this year. Gesto decided to scale InvGate after bootstrapping for the past 14 years. Companies can improve their efficiency, productivity, and responsiveness with the aid of these solutions.

United States 121

United States Management Mexico Artificial Inteligence 121

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

No wait, I forgot, actually the question is: What happens when employee #2 makes off with your code and roadmap and marketing data and customer list, moves to Bolivia, and starts selling your stuff world-wide at one-tenth the price? Take the success of ITWatchDogs , the company I helped bootstrap and eventually sell (before Smart Bear).

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Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 6, 2022

Steve is the CEO of Founders Space, one of the world’s leading startup accelerators with over 50 partners in 22 countries. Founders Space was ranked the #1 incubator for overseas startups by Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazines. 18:05] How does the Founder Space operate? [20:21] He's the CEO of founders space.

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San Francisco Technical Review Incubator Silicon Valley 97

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

A description of the problem you’re solving for your customers, and your solution to the problem, which is usually your product or service. If you can fix a problem for someone and do it better, quicker, and/or cheaper than your competitor, you’re off to a good start.” – Gabriel Kuperman, founder and CEO of CuePin.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 1, 2012

This is a choice that every startup founder must make , so I’d like to dig in deeper. To clarify the discussion, let’s use a simpler model: Companies A and B both sell products with recurring monthly revenue, and both brought in $10,000 in revenue last month. Company A has 1,000 customers each paying $10/mo.

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Customer Revenue Acquisition Cofounder 320

viniciusvacanti.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

Home About Contact Me How To Make It as a First-Time Entrepreneur Vinicius Vacanti Guide to Finding a Technical Co-Founder September 7, 2010 | View Comments Steve Job's Technical Co-Founder “I’ve got this HUGE idea. I just need to find a technical co-founder.&# I was in this situation and we barely escaped.

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Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Ruby 43

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 29, 2013

But that’s not to say that every established company developing personal grooming products is operating risk-free. What if your company is concerned that emerging customer pressure and local laws will make disposable razors difficult, if not impossible, to sell in the U.S. Will you be able to think up alternative products?

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Lean Technical Review Startup Software Review 165

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

Listen to this episode if you want to hear about a founder who has a product and users and paying customers … and is trying to figure out how to take his company to the next level and grow faster. Jason: So how many of those 20,000 people are paying customers? Edwin: Okay, I have different types of customers.

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Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

At Hustle Fund, we back both first time founders as well as repeat founders. One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Product second. don’t think about at all. This is obvious.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

At Hustle Fund, we back both first time founders as well as repeat founders. One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Product second. don’t think about at all. This is obvious.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 26, 2012

MJ Charmani, founder of iStart Jax, a business accelerator, and one of the key organizers of the event, introduced today's session with additional reports on last weekend's event. The problem, however, is that he is assuming that an investor would fund the product development. Armex Zero Suit. Investors rarely fund concepts.

Jacksonville 114

Jacksonville Florida PPC Programming 114

Duct Tape Marketing

JUNE 4, 2015

When you find your creative team to design and develop it, part of their market research entails researching your competition and your customers. More and more companies are investing in the user experience, because their customers are expecting it, especially those of the millennial generation. Advantage: Keep your visitors.

Web 28

Web Technical Review Sales Cycle Cofounder 28

The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 17, 2011

You have a profitable bootstrapped business with good, linear growth. You could either take or reject the licensing deal (based on your feelings about the exclusivity clause), and then plan to bootstrap the transition from a consumer-marketing model into an enterprise-sales one. What do you do? Timing is the real issue.

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Bootstrapping Revenue Cost Sales 32

The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 17, 2011

You have a profitable bootstrapped business with good, linear growth. You could either take or reject the licensing deal (based on your feelings about the exclusivity clause), and then plan to bootstrap the transition from a consumer-marketing model into an enterprise-sales one. What do you do? Timing is the real issue.

Bootstrapping 26

Bootstrapping Revenue Cost Sales 26

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

The Lean Startup is a practical approach for creating and managing a new breed of company that excels in low-cost experimentation, rapid iteration, and true customer insight. It uses principles of agile software development, open source and web 2.0, The trade-off, though, is a more structured presentation format.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Web Advisory Board 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Ash Maurya is the founder of WiredReach , a bootstrapped startup that he has been running for seven years. Recently, he was bitten by the lean startup bug and has started writing about his experiences attempting to apply lean startup and customer development principles. Read on to find out. Things started to slip.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

Software By Rob

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

I was surprised by this, as I thought Seth was going to discuss another option I’ve seen used with great success: customer financing. That’s when you find one or more (future) customers that help fund your product development in exchange for input into the process and free or highly discounted use of the software.

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Equity Software Review RSS Widget 42

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 18, 2010

That process involves rapid hypothesis testing, validated learning about customers , and a disciplined approach to product development. Truth: The Lean Startup methodology applies to all companies that face uncertainty about what customers will want. Myth: Lean Startups are small bootstrapped startups.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 29, 2010

Each part of the program is organized around one phase of the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop and begins with a keynote address from a heavy hitter: Steve Blank on Customer Development, Randy Komisar on "Getting to Plan B" and - a third person, not-yet-announced-but-extremely-cool-trust-me. Is design important to lean startups?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 120

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

Take a look: This full-day Master Class focuses on how to build a startup from the ground up to focus on customers, markets, and speed of iteration. Im working on a future post where Ill share the details of how I used customer development to shape both the content and packaging of this event, so look for that soon.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

No matter how low we make the revenue projections for this new product, it’s extremely unlikely that they are achievable. That’s because the model is based on assumptions about customers that are totally unproven. to acquire an early adopter, how much should it cost to acquire a mainstream customer? But $10.00?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Find Questions, Topics and People Add Question Add Question Team Configuration 500 Startups Guerilla Marketing Organizations Entrepreneurship Startup Founders & Entrepreneurs Startups Startup Incubators and Seed Programs Seedcamp Y Combinator TechStars Lean Startups What is the perfect startup team? Lakshman Prasad • Nov 16, 2010.

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 27, 2011

This partnership speaks to a core philosophy of the program where we encourage entrepreneurs to get as much customer validation as possible before raising too much money, use other people's channels if you can get to them, don't burn too much cash, and all that good fiscal conservative stuff. SOCO Games. Brainscape. Note, I said, validated.

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Dilution Revenue Finance Entrepreneur 114

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 15, 2017

DSPTCH founder Richard Liu saw me talking about the bag online (I love it!) Practically speaking, the burning need was to begin hiring employees so that I could spend more of my day on product development, partnerships and driving sales. I’ve got a backpack problem. In the sense that I buy too many. and reached out.

Marketing 48

Marketing Design Acquisition Bootstrapping 48

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

.” Hackernews list of “Tools of the Trade” for startups - includes over 150 SaaS tools used by startups, and over 150 comments with interesting insights from founders. Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Customer service. Google Custom Search Engine. Customer Relationship Management.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

So for this first post, here’s the best advice I can give you: join an awesome founding team and get your product out the door ASAP. One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. Then, forget everything else, VCs included, and just build.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

I want to know how many customers exist out there who would be likely buyers of the O-Port products, at what price-point, and what does that add up to? David should use his credibility in capacity planning and convince a dozen customers to pay him consulting fees to solve their capacity planning problems. 30 million market?

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

I want to know how many customers exist out there who would be likely buyers of the O-Port products, at what price-point, and what does that add up to? David should use his credibility in capacity planning and convince a dozen customers to pay him consulting fees to solve their capacity planning problems. 30 million market?

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

Tim Keane

SEPTEMBER 18, 2006

In a lot of startups (especially good ones) the founder/CEO/leader is a customer-oriented sales person. After the idea/product/service is built, and the market mapped, the company begins to grow. Because of the virtuous feedback loop right at the center of the company, innovations for customer benefit come more rapidly.

Harvest 60

Harvest LBO Investment Bankers Wisconsin 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 8, 2009 Introducing the Lean Startup Cohort subscription program Over the past few months, I have been engaged in another customer discovery exercise with passionate early adopters of the lean startup methodology. I am now ready to move into the customer validation phase.

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Lean Programming San Francisco Continuous Deployment 102

Scalable Startup

FEBRUARY 1, 2013

So originally the customer was the Department of Defense. It was the first customer for the computer. The argument in favor of consumer businesses is you don’t have these crazy end of quarters like when the IT purchasing manager doesn’t buy the product and the company misses the whole quarter. They are just not going to be.

Software Review 22

Software Review Startup Venture Capital Stock 22