Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

One of them used to be a lead developer at [insert hot consumer tech company here]. Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited. Three months in, the burn is now at $70k/month. At month six, one of the early hires leaves, a developer who turns out wasn’t a good fit.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

That died with waterfall software development. Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small? Too aggressive about the rate of customer adoption? You might then slow down your burn rate or raise more money.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

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.” Having failed to deliver the promised revenue, the VP of Sales in a startup who does not make the “numbers” becomes an ex-VP of Sales.

Burn Rate 247

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

If you are following Customer Development , the answer is easy. Board meetings are about measuring progress measured against the hypotheses in Customer Discovery and Validation. Dave McClure’s AARRR Model is one illustration of the web sales pipeline. Customer Acquisition. Financials. Contribution Margin.

Balance Sheet 298

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 298

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

In my last post I described what happened when a company prematurely scales sales and marketing before adequately testing its hypotheses in Customer Discovery. The VC’s were very concerned that the revenue the financial plan called for wasn’t being delivered by the sales team. They don’t. All this takes time.” What went wrong?

Revenue 230

Revenue Balance Sheet Hockey Stick Burn Rate 230

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 27, 2014

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. Social media facilitates marketing and sales.

Entrepreneur 260

Entrepreneur Burn Rate Social Media LLC 260

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

This happened to us at SuperMac when our sales skyrocketed. They develop traditions and privileges in other ways. Paul Henderson , on May 15, 2009 at 10:37 pm Said: A boot-strapping startup I once worked with was actually doing some real customer development and making real money from real customers for their early, ugly product.

Silicon Valley 205

Silicon Valley RSS Lean Agile 205

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

In particular, a marketing launch can help you do three things (courtesy, as is most of my marketing advice, of The Four Steps to the Epiphany ): Drive customers into your sales pipeline. Do some Customer Development instead. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

The Startup Toolkit

JUNE 27, 2012

Similarly, I think that working nights & weekends is an awesome way to start doing customer development and answering the big questions about your business. That’s because, historically, the default mistake was to do the opposite & over-commit too soon.

Burn Rate 35

Burn Rate PR Campaign Hiring 35