Burn Rate Cost Hiring Vertical 
Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 2, 2009
In times when venture capital is hard to get, investors extract high costs for failure (down-rounds, cram downs , new management teams, shut down the company.) Sales people cost money, and when they’re not bringing in revenue, their wandering in the woods is time consuming, cash-draining and demoralizing. Who recommends a sale?
Startup Professionals Musings
JULY 24, 2017
The longer you wait to start your own business, the higher the default burn rate, and the less happy you will be to take a financial step down. Relish being the expert within a limited vertical domain. Thus big-company executives tend to under-estimate learning costs in a startup. You must be all of these and more.
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Steve Blank
SEPTEMBER 7, 2009
The Startup Death Spiral: The Cost of Getting Product Launch Wrong By the time of first customer ship, if a startup does not understand its market and customers, failure unfolds in a stylized ritual, almost like a Japanese Noh play. Blame it On Marketing In the next 3-6 months, a new VP of Sales is hired. innovation.
Steve Blank
APRIL 20, 2009
In ten years, from the early 1950′s to the early 1960′s, the valley went through a hiring frenzy as jobs in microwave companies went from 700 to 7,000. An interesting phenomena of the 1920s that illustrates the fragility and cost of vacuum tubes is the “Reflex Receiver&# design methodology. to do that.
Steve Blank
MAY 15, 2009
We hired an interior designer and a great facilities person to manage the process. Reply Jerry Ji , on May 15, 2009 at 4:56 pm Said: When my startup starts hiring, I’ll make “The Four Steps to the Epiphany&# a prerequisite reading for every interviewer. Are his costs in control? Don’t let it happen to you.
BeyondVC
JULY 6, 2006
A clear kiss of death that I have seen more often than not is hiring a VP of Sales too early. Here is the typical scenario – you just signed 3 or 4 customers in a couple of different verticals and you feel that all you need is some bodies on the street to grow your business. Hiring a VP of Sales too early can cost you dearly.
www.chubbybrain.com
SEPTEMBER 28, 2011
created a vastly higher cost structure; I had 80 people mostly on base salaries under $100,000 and was bringing in revenue at the rate of $20 million annually. Contributing to the high cost structure was the new culture of working 9-5 Monday through Friday. Post-Mortem Title : My eHarmony for Hiring Failure.
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