YoungUpstarts

JULY 17, 2013

I grew the business that I currently lead as CEO from a start-up to more than 60 million dollars in revenue in less than six years. Because of this, fellow entrepreneurs are always asking me the proverbial question that is woven into the media interview of every successful CEO, “So, what’s your secret?”. Get the right team in place.

Georgia 238

Georgia Sales Cycle Atlanta Business Model 238

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 18, 2024

Let's talk about the frustration perhaps that you felt in having a previous business that didn't run without you necessarily to leading you to creating what you do for your life's work now. We want to hear frustration and embarrassment that every entrepreneur goes through. And again, anyway, I had to shut the business down.

Framework 63

Framework Sales Cycle Sales Hiring 63

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

At today's roundtable, we had three niche e-commerce entrepreneurs and two e-commerce infrastructure entrepreneurs. I will describe their businesses briefly, below. With enterprise customers, this would result in tremendous exit barriers, making sales cycles long and involved, which a small startup will find hard to withstand.

India 114

India Silicon Valley Incubator Bootstrapping 114

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 20, 2018

A big downside of the high-touch sales model is that the CAC is out of control, and the sales cycles are extremely long. As you can see in the graph below, high-touch sales is a leading indicator of CAC. A high-touch sales process can balloon customer acquisition costs. Perfect for hyper-niche solutions.

Marketing 289

Marketing Sales Cycle Acquisition Sales 289

Hearpreneur

MAY 8, 2022

We asked entrepreneurs and business owners how they break through the noise with their businesses and here are insightful responses; #1- Putting an ear to the ground. connections and benefit from quicker sales cycles and more opportunities. How do you break through the noise with your business?

Entrepreneur 132

Entrepreneur Audience Social Media Channel 132

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

Last week, in part one of the B2B versus B2C series, I explained there are several reasons as to why entrepreneurs should venture into “B2B” (“Business to Business”) service based companies as opposed to any form of “B2C” (“Business to Consumer”) company, “B2B” product-oriented company or strictly a web-based B2B firm.

B2B 105

B2B Business Model B2C Agile 105

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

And many entrepreneurs thought at that time that they could offer products and services to offline bookstores to compete against Amazon’s growing power. Whenever there’s a complete disruption of the business model, it means that the underlying rules for that vertical have dramatically changed.

Sales Cycle 122

Sales Cycle Business Model Aggregator Vertical 122

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Experienced and serial entrepreneurs in the content management space. Consumer approach to software for business users. Distributed version control model – first in the industry like ours and we are filing patents. Page 4: Business Model. Page 2: What’s unique about Koral. Folksonomy. Free product.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Term Sheet San Diego Viral 274

ReadWriteStart

MAY 4, 2011

Manoj is experiencing a long sales cycle of close to 12 months, but he has already created a sustainable company that has revenues and profits. He is exploring outside financing, but my concern is that unless the growth rate accelerates, this particular business may not fit the venture model.

India 116

India Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Massachusetts 116

NZ Entrepreneur

SEPTEMBER 16, 2020

Some common drivers of sales underperformance include product-market fit challenges, slow/low sales channels, and poor execution. To identify sensitivities here, you need to comprehensively challenge your assumptions about demand, sales cycles, etc. What if the number of sales is much less than expected?

Startup 69

Startup Sales Cycle Down Round Revenue 69

Hippoland

AUGUST 16, 2018

Think about it – if you’re using MailChimp and make let’s say $100 in sales for every send. Often as an entrepreneur, it’s hard to know whether your product is differentiated, because you don’t know what other startups are out there. This is something I personally faced when running my company LaunchBit.

Sales Cycle 54

Sales Cycle Differentiation Early Stage Bootstrapping 54

K9 Ventures

AUGUST 13, 2010

So the departments either didn’t have the capacity to pay or it would be an endless sales-cycle, where we would spend lots of time on the sales, but it still wouldn’t close. In my mind, there are two main facets to Revenue Development: a) Business model iteration, and, b) Pricing iteration.

Revenue 72

Revenue Developer Java Customer Development 72

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

As you rightly pointed out, though most of us as entrepreneurs are aware of these concepts, we don't dig deep, drill down and present the numbers / issues / solutions to the board and / or investors. SolidWorks 2: The best VAR management program in the world? I thought your earlier post on CAC / LTV was very handy to depict our positives.

Metrics 55

Metrics Design Entrepreneur Startup 55

Hippoland

AUGUST 16, 2018

Think about it – if you’re using MailChimp and make let’s say $100 in sales for every send. Often as an entrepreneur, it’s hard to know whether your product is differentiated, because you don’t know what other startups are out there. This is something I personally faced when running my company LaunchBit.

Sales Cycle 48

Sales Cycle Differentiation Early Stage Bootstrapping 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

Unit economics are something I’ve found most entrepreneurs (and investors!) 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. Sales cycles matter though. Sales cycle, as a consideration, also works the opposite way.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

Unit economics are something I’ve found most entrepreneurs (and investors!) 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. Sales cycles matter though. Sales cycle, as a consideration, also works the opposite way.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Hands-on startup advice for emerging entrepreneurs. There is an inherent conflict in a consultant’s business model and the needs of a startup. One of the best things about being an entrepreneur is that there are no rules. One of the worst things about being an entrepreneur is that there are no rules. infoChachkie.

Equity 40

Equity Silicon Valley Cofounder Technical Review 40

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

I have counseled innumerable entrepreneurs to change their focus to revenue, and many companies who refuse this advice get themselves into trouble by running out of iterations. What matters is proving the viability of the company’s business model, what investors call “traction.&# April 15, 2009 9:20 PM Shaun said.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

This is probably the single-most important thing to me but as I mention here , it’s probably the number one area that entrepreneurs prepare the least for. 2) What is the business model and the potential unit economics? Certain investors tend to gravitate towards certain business models. Or grew up in the same town.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

This is probably the single-most important thing to me but as I mention here , it’s probably the number one area that entrepreneurs prepare the least for. 2) What is the business model and the potential unit economics? Certain investors tend to gravitate towards certain business models. Or grew up in the same town.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

Tim Keane

APRIL 14, 2008

Can we, in short, develop knowledge that other competitors do not have to reduce our sales cycle and increase results? Can we, in short, develop knowledge that other competitors do not have to reduce our sales cycle and increase results? John Mullins: Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model.

Ireland 60

Ireland Wisconsin Forecast Sales Cycle 60

BeyondVC

NOVEMBER 4, 2004

Adam Bosworth has an interesting post on the evolution of software and why software delivered as a service will be the business model of the future. From an evolutionary perspective, the ASP business model is quite interesting to examine. The ASP model is certainly one way of accomplishing simplicity.

Software 60

Software Bandwidth Sales Cycle Business Model 60

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, developed a methodology for creating businesses that runs in parallel with the traditional product development process. Startups rarely survive by guessing, and can only create products and business models based on facts about their target market. image source.

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

SEPTEMBER 8, 2011

The ten answers that I can guarantee you’re not going to get are of the businesses that those entrepreneurs are currently in. Despite factors such as a cost-effective start-up that should be considered major tailwinds, why do so many of these businesses end up becoming a hobby alongside a full-time job? What Is “B2C&# ?

B2C 91

B2C B2B Business Model Sales Cycle 91

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 10, 2008

In my case (LucidEra -- a SaaS analytics provider focusing on sales, marketing, and financial analytics), weve found that success requires not only building some best practices for analytics into our solution, but also coming up with a repeatable and scalable way to show the customer how to use the analytics and how to interpret the results.

Software Review 48

Software Review North America Europe Metrics 48

The Next Web

MAY 12, 2013

Sales cycles were long and unpredictable. “You don’t need an MBA to realize that this sort of business model wasn’t going to work” “Nothing ever filtered down properly to the operational employees. You don’t need an MBA to realize that this sort of business model wasn’t going to work.”.

Database 126

Database United States Cloud 126

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2011

It helps with sales cycles because customers know that they can switch away if they so choose. It was a concious business decision from the top. This was the moment where Zuckerberg (20 something entrepreneur) schooled Rupert Murdoch. Lesson: You dn’t want your customers to feel locked into using your software.

Software Review 285

Software Review Software St. Louis API 285