Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 22, 2011

Otherwise, sales, marketing, and operational costs will kill you. Next comes sales volume by channel. It’s tempting here to simply calculate one percent market share, and assume anyone can do at least that much. Your “burn rate” or net cash flow out is usually the single most important survival parameter to a startup.

Forecast 230

Forecast Burn Rate Startup .Net 230

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

The key contributors to an out-of-control burn rate is 1) hiring a sales force too early, 2) turning on the demand creation activities too early, 3) developing something other than the minimum feature set for first customer ship. And most startup code and features end up on the floor as customers never really wanted them.

Lean 253

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 253

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 25, 2010

Otherwise, sales, marketing, and operational costs will kill you. Next comes sales volume by channel. It’s tempting here to simply calculate one percent market share, and assume anyone can do at least that much. Your “burn rate” or net cash flow out is usually the single most important survival parameter to a startup.

Forecast 151

Forecast Startup Burn Rate .Net 151

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 11, 2017

Based on your market size and penetration expectations, size how many units you will sell, at what price, in every channel. You need 5 percent or more of revenue for marketing, more for new development, and people costs will double as you add benefits, insurance, training, IT and processes. Project unit-volume and price levels.

Burn Rate 144

Burn Rate Forecast Angel Investor Revenue 144

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

A business plan has a set of assumptions (who’s the customer, what’s the price, what’s the channel, what are the product features that matter, etc.) You can almost set your watch to six months or so after first customer ship, when Sales starts missing its “numbers,” the board gets concerned and Marketing tries to “make up a better story.”

Burn Rate 250

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 250

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 17, 2014

ROI per Marketing Channel. It’s crucial to keep a handle of ROI per marketing channel in order to optimize marketing spending. This impacts every decision related to your business, from hiring more staff to expanding product offerings to investing in marketing. – Ben Rubenstein , Yodle.

Metrics 146

Metrics Burn Rate Entrepreneur Forecast 146

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 11, 2018

By saturating one market or sub-market at a time, we started building the best marketing channel there is: word of mouth (WOM). Typically, marketing dollars are spent in two ways: on awareness building (letting people know your product exists) and conversion (getting them to buy it).

Los Angeles 133

Los Angeles Investment Bankers Cofounder Viral 133

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

In contrast, spark gaps are broad-band radio “noise&# sources – the idea of discrete radio channels was impossible spark gaps because of this. I’ll stop channeling James Burke now. But in fact, most startups need to keep their burn rate low more [.] to do that.

Silicon Valley 283

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 283

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 7, 2015

Here are the motivation elements that investors expect to hear: Size and growth potential of the market opportunity. Your customers don’t care if you are targeting a billion-dollar market and growing at double-digit rates, but investors will skip small or shrinking opportunities. First to market” is not sustainable by a startup.

Product 120

Product Intellectual Property Liquidity Event Burn Rate 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

What’s the distribution channel? For biotech startups, it’s when the cost of the R&D required to find and clinically test a drug is less than the market demand for that drug. Regardless of your type of business model you should be tracking cash burn rate, months of cash left, time to cash flow breakeven.

Balance Sheet 303

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 303

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 4, 2015

Project based on your market size how many widgets you will sell in every channel. You need 5 percent or more of revenue for marketing, maybe more for ongoing development, and people costs will double as you add benefits, insurance, training, IT and new processes. Forecast sales-volume expectations. Quantify overhead costs.

Forecast 120

Forecast Entrepreneur Burn Rate Widget 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

Other weeks Yuri would be buffeted by the realities of his burn rate, declining bank account and depressing comments from customers. that couldn’t change before he declares “we’re building the wrong product.”

Founder 320

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 320

Up and Running

DECEMBER 11, 2013

Investors like valuation to relate to actual business numbers, such as sales, gross margin (price less direct costs), and burn rate or fixed costs. Market Size. More often, it’s secret formulas, secret ingredients, trade secrets, and relationships with channels of distribution. It’s simple math. .

Valuation 136

Valuation Oregon Burn Rate Angel Groups 136

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2011

So it is a combination of markets and people. The contextual ad market was attractive. It has become a short form premium destination that is verticalizing content in category channels. They had a very expensive burn rate at the wrong time. In 2003 one of their first investments was Qiigo, Mike Yavondite’s company.

Vertical 265

Vertical Curation Boston Burn Rate 265

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Announce a new product, start its PR campaign, and engage in buzz marketing activities. Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. This is the usual reason given for a marketing launch, but for most early stage startups, its a failure. In the right situation, its a very useful tactic, too.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 7, 2016

Customers / traction: Do they have product / market fit? What customer acquisition channels / what have they tried / not tried / etc] [Is this growing? / Market: What is the market size? [I May or may not ask this depending on if our hypothetical VC firm leads rounds or not] [What is a team’s burn rate?]

Burn Rate 48

Burn Rate IP Cofounder Differentiation 48

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. Note, I said, validated. Safarclick.

Dilution 114

Dilution Revenue Finance Entrepreneur 114

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

Most startups lack a process for discovering their markets, locating their first customers, validating their assumptions, and growing their business. Market Type Integral to the Customer Development model is the notion that Market Type choices affect the way the company will deploy its sales, marketing and financial resources.

Customer Development 248

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 248

Hearpreneur

JULY 7, 2019

Thanks to Chaz Van de Motter, Arizona called Elite Marketing Studios ! #5- This will cause a chain of events of word of marketing talking about the environment of the workplace which will ultimately stimulate more sales. Thanks to Lorrie Thomas Ross, Web Marketing Therapy® ! #12-Building Photo Credit: Scott Smith.

Entrepreneur 93

Entrepreneur Distribution Employee Arizona 93

pandodaily.com

JULY 18, 2012

While a 21-year-old with no mortgage, no girlfriend and a low-burn rate may have nothing to lose, a 40-year old with a career, a mortgage and kids has everything to lose. I am the 46 year old father of a 3 year old and a 5 year old starting a company based on my 25 years in marketing and 17 years in Internet technologies and marketing.

Entrepreneur 45

Entrepreneur San Francisco Silicon Valley Technical Review 45

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2016

It is an heroic accomplishment in a brutal fund-raising market in which only market leaders can bring in that sort of money. Mark dutifully went to partner meetings, back-channel references began, firms started calling existing VCs to “test prices” and we started debating whom our best partner would be. $30 million.

Balance Sheet 150

Balance Sheet Burn Rate Valuation Forecast 150