Remove Boston Remove Management Remove Networking Remove SEM
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Lessons Learned: The three drivers of growth for your business.

Startup Lessons Learned

In this model, you take some fraction of the lifetime value of each customer and plow that back into paid acquisition through SEM, banner ads, PR, affiliates, etc. For eBay, this is caused by the incredible network effects of their business (so-called demand-side increasing returns and supply-side increasing returns). Amazon PostRank

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Lessons Learned: The lean startup

Startup Lessons Learned

Very useful perspective - as a first-time CEO managing a small startup, these ideas are timely and thought-provoking. For example, one angel investor reportedly invested in several hundred social networking ventures employing this philosophy. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Less is more.

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Lessons Learned: Customer Development Engineering

Startup Lessons Learned

Customers found it confusing and it turned out to be at odds with our fundamental value proposition (which really requires an independant IM network). Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Unfortunately, positioning our product as an "IM add-on" was a complete mistake. Talk about waste.

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How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people

Startup Lessons Learned

This was 2004, and we had never even heard of MySpace, let alone had any understanding of social networking. It required hearing customers say it over and over again for us to take a serious look, and eventually to realize that social networking was core to our business. But the early customers all compared it to MySpace.

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Lessons Learned: Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

Startup Lessons Learned

Pick a similar product that they do use, and ask them "who was the first person you know who started using [social networking, mobile phones, plasma TV, instant messaging.]? Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? can I talk to them?" More of the same. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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Lessons Learned: The App Store after the gold rush

Startup Lessons Learned

On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral. For example, if any of the mobile ad networks gets major traction, they may become a dominant way that people discover new apps. Or if your lifetime value is high enough, you can just keep spending on SEM. The observation sounds strange.

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How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone

Startup Lessons Learned

If you sell an online service that solves a defined problem, you can compete in SEO or SEM. And in some markets its decisive, because of well-known network effects (as happened with Microsoft, eBay, and many others). This can even vary by category, as people apply different criteria to games vs. utilities vs. social networking apps.