Remove Burn Rate Remove Cofounder Remove Customer Development Remove Founder
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Why Founders Should Know How to Code

Steve Blank

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. My contract developers building the app aren’t very responsive. It takes weeks to make even a simple change.”.

Cofounder 336
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Is the Lean Startup Dead?

Steve Blank

Jeff Katzenberg has a great track record – head of the studio at Paramount, chairman of Disney Studios, co-founder of DreamWorks and now chairman of NewTV. First Movers” didn’t understand customer problems or the product features that solved those problems (what we now call product-market fit). ” Fire, Ready, Aim.

Lean 335
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6 Cost-Cutting Recommendations For New Entrepreneurs

Startup Professionals Musings

It wasn’t so many years ago that starting a new e-commerce business on the Internet was a complex custom development project, usually costing a million dollars or more. These steps alone can reduce your monthly burn rate by at least $10K. A programmer can build a new smartphone app for a few thousand dollars.

Cost 405
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Vision versus Hallucination – Founders and Pivots

Steve Blank

It was great to watch him embrace the spirit and practice of customer development. He was constantly in front of customers, listening, selling, installing and learning. What I saw reminded me of some of the best and worst things I did as a founder. If not your co-founders, someone outside the company.”.

Founder 316
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Entrepreneurs Today Don’t Need A Big Budget To Start

Startup Professionals Musings

It wasn’t so many years ago that starting a new e-commerce business on the Internet was a complex custom development project, usually costing a million dollars or more. These steps alone can reduce your monthly burn rate by at least $10K. A programmer can build a new smartphone app for a few thousand dollars.

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Lessons Learned: Cash is not king

Startup Lessons Learned

The full formula works like this: runway = cash on hand / burn rate # iterations = runway / speed of each iteration Very few successful companies ended up in the same exact business that the founders thought theyd be in (see Founders at Work for dozens of examples). Were talking PayPal -sized variations.

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Lessons Learned: Don't launch

Startup Lessons Learned

Do some Customer Development instead. The product didnt convert well enough, the mainstream customers we were driving werent ready for the concept, and the event fed expectations about how successful the product was going to be that turned out to be hyper-inflated. Founders push for it. Help you raise money.