Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 1, 2015

Every entrepreneur thinks he can relax a bit after his business model is proven, funding is in place, and revenues are scaling as projected up that hockey-stick curve. Unfortunately, the market is changing so fast these days that any upward climb can level off quickly, as the core business growth begins to stall.

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Hockey Stick Guerilla Startup Acquisition 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Not only did their sales curve look like a textbook case of a VC-friendly hockey stick, but their Lessons Learned funding presentation was an eye-opener.). They used Customer and Agile development to search for a scalable and repeatable business model to become a large company. Take No Prisoners.

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Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 284

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

What matters is proving the viability of the company’s business model, what investors call “traction.&# Of course this is not at all true of many profitable small businesses, but they are not what I mean by startups.) And what of the product development team? Every board meeting, the metrics of success change.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

Forget about traction and hockey stick growth. In other words, if you can get 1000 people to come to your website consistently for under $5, then this business model works for you. Unit economics are something I’ve found most entrepreneurs (and investors!) don’t think about at all.

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Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

Forget about traction and hockey stick growth. In other words, if you can get 1000 people to come to your website consistently for under $5, then this business model works for you. Unit economics are something I’ve found most entrepreneurs (and investors!) don’t think about at all.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Professor VC

AUGUST 26, 2011

The objections range from "its hard", "nobody believes them" to "all hockey sticks look alike". To that last one, there is certainly some truth as the standard time vs. revenue chart in most business plans looks like this: Im not teaching Entrepreneurial Finance this semester for the first time since Fall 2007.

Silicon Valley 35

Silicon Valley San Jose Hockey Stick Venture Capital 35

Up and Running

MARCH 11, 2015

” Our featured speaker was Caroline Cummings, the VP of Business Development at Palo Alto Software. I was able to work with him, and he did some due diligence on my financials, because we had a similar business model, and I was able to show this is a comparable for our exit strategy.

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Technical Review Software Review Due Diligence Exit Strategy 60

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2019

Do not talk about disruptive business models; the ones who disrupt don’t talk about it. They are too busy disrupting. The reality is that it’s hockey stick growth—you have to spend tons of money before you see any results (and then the results are exponential). Validation. Page Speed Kills.

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Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Metrics SEO 114