YoungUpstarts

MAY 23, 2018

Many founders or startup teams gravitate toward sales or design. Sometimes, it’s the lack of a proper business plan that really hurts the startup. Often, founders have an entrepreneurial mindset. Startups often don’t make a profit because of routine financial management.

Due Diligence 133

Due Diligence Startup Finance Leadership 133

YoungUpstarts

MAY 6, 2019

Product development. Now that you have a refined product idea and a team that can turn this idea into reality, the product development stage will start. Initial product development usually consists of prototyping and MVP. Prototyping usually means the initial working draft of the product idea.

Startup 113

Startup Technical Cofounder Merger Early Stage 113

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2019

By definition, second-stage ventures generally have 10 to 99 employees and/or $750,000 to $50 million in revenue, and see that as just the beginning. According to one study a while back, only 45% of founders plan to exit after stage one, and my guess is that less than half the remainder survive the next stage in their own company.

Mezzanine 244

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 244

Growthink Blog

SEPTEMBER 13, 2017

And as they do, sometimes even unknowingly that beautiful dream of a business exit and financial windfall recedes depressingly into the sunset. And a boost toward a faster timeline and better probability of a business sale at an exciting price. Many software and healthcare businesses fit this description. Relationships.

Harvest 48

Harvest IP Software Review Forecast 48

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

These founders specify, design, and build a fully featured product using classic product development methods without ever leaving their building. Traditionally, engineering, sales, and marketing have all focused on the immovable launch date. Writing a business plan that doesn’t allow for trial and error.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

Product management tools like Stage-Gate ® emerged to systematically manage Waterfall product development. The product management process assumes that product/market fit is known, and the products can get spec’d and then implemented in a linear fashion. StageGate Process. What Does this Mean?

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

For decades startups were managed by pretending the company would follow a predictable path (revenue plan, scale, etc.) The Revenue Plan – The Third Fatal Assumption. Notice that the traditional product introduction model leads to a product launch and the execution of a revenue plan.

Burn Rate 247

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2014

Develop your business plan. Write down the key elements of your business plan very early, and keep it current as things evolve. Product development process. Billing and revenue collection. It all has to be written down and maintained.

Startup 268

Startup Institutional Investors Angel Investor Bootstrapping 268

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. In contrast, sales and marketing activities before first customer ship are adhoc, fuzzy, and don’t have measurable, concrete objectives. Freemium models have their own scorekeeping.)

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 16, 2010

Calxeda is on track with its business and ARM-based product development plans, moving toward providing first samples of its industry-changing technologies in 2011. Bob Baughman, previously with Polycom and Marvell, as Vice President of Business Development and Sales.

Naming 59

Naming Hiring Technical Review Virginia 59

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2017

By definition, second-stage ventures generally have 10 to 99 employees and/or $750,000 to $50 million in revenue, and see that as just the beginning. According to one study a while back, only 45% of founders plan to exit after stage one, and my guess is that less than half the remainder survive the next stage in their own company.

Mezzanine 141

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 141

Up and Running

JUNE 14, 2017

Some believe in the all-in approach to product development: build an advanced app. The problem was that building out all the features in the premium version would take four to six months and many thousands of dollars in app development that I didn’t have. Demand Validation: How to Find Out If Customers Want to Buy Your Product.

Technical Review 96

Technical Review Distribution Redemption Demand 96

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 3, 2013

By definition, second-stage ventures generally have 10 to 99 employees and/or $750,000 to $50 million in revenue, and see that as just the beginning. According to one study , only 45% of Founders plan to exit after stage one, and my guess is that less than half the remainder survive the next stage in their own company.

Mezzanine 240

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 240

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 31, 2013

Develop your business plan. Write down the key elements of your business plan very early, and keep it current as things evolve. Product development process. Billing and revenue collection. It all has to be written down and maintained.

Institutional Investors 230

Institutional Investors Angel Investor Bootstrapping Database 230

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2011

Develop your business plan. Write down the key elements of your business plan very early, and keep it current as things evolve. Product development process. Billing and revenue collection. It all has to be written down and maintained.

Startup 255

Startup Institutional Investors Angel Investor Bootstrapping 255

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

They’ve learned the best distribution channel to get the product from their company to the customer. They’ve figured out the revenue model (subscription, license, direct sale, etc.) and how to price the product. for new product development that emphasize immediate returns.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2013

See how many you have personally experienced already, or are currently mentioned in your business plan: Crowd-sourcing equity. Sites like KickStarter have for years offered rewards and pre-sales for crowd investments, but real equity won’t be legalized until sometime this year for people other than accredited investors.

Entrepreneur 274

Entrepreneur Accredited Investor Silicon Valley Angel Investor 274

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2010

Develop your business plan. Write down the key elements of your business plan very early, and keep it current as things evolve. Product development process. Billing and revenue collection. It all has to be written down and maintained.

Startup 239

Startup Institutional Investors Angel Investor Bootstrapping 239

Up and Running

JUNE 12, 2014

Each stage has its costs, opportunities, and risks, and individual products differ in how long they remain at any of the life cycle stages. Development. The product development stage is often referred to as “the valley of death.” ” At this stage, costs are accumulating with no corresponding revenue.

Product 80

Product Intellectual Property Oregon Revenue 80

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 4, 2015

By definition, second-stage ventures generally have 10 to 99 employees and/or $750,000 to $50 million in revenue, and see that as just the beginning. According to one study a while back, only 45% of founders plan to exit after stage one, and my guess is that less than half the remainder survive the next stage in their own company.

Mezzanine 120

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 120

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 12, 2010

In business, one important measure is the value of the company. That’s because a company’s value is a composite of all of the quantitative and qualitative factors that comprise a company: revenues, expenses, risks, growth prospects, quality of the management team, competitive advantages, strength of the intellectual property, and so forth.

Intellectual Property 223

Intellectual Property .Net Valuation Distribution 223

Steve Blank

JANUARY 10, 2011

The VP of an operating division had run into trouble in product development; the product was late and getting later. The revenue plan had the new product baked into the numbers and it was clear that this division General Manager was going to crater his forecast (happens all the time, nothing new here.)

Forecast 264

Forecast Agile Revenue Founder 264

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 20, 2017

Businesses that clearly define their short-term and long-term goals tend to achieve their goals faster and more efficiently than those without any plan. During 2017, my major focus was to increase my amount of outbound sales efforts. I am planning for my staff to increase over 50% from 3 to approximately 7-8.

Forecast 57

Forecast Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur SEO 57

Up and Running

MAY 22, 2013

In a consumer product category such as household cleaning products, the industry success rate is a dismal 15 percent to 20 percent according to a Bloomberg Businessweek interview with former Proctor & Gamble CEO, Alan “A.G.” Half the companies in our survey experience budget overruns in new-product development.

Product 75

Product Marketing Forecast B2B 75

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Most likely, your business plan is loaded with opinions and guesses, sprinkled with a dash of vision and hope. Customer development is a parallel process to product development, which means that you dont have to give up on your dream. Focus is on the business fundamentals that you need to get right.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Austin Startup

AUGUST 20, 2017

Of all your hires, if you have commissioned sales people, those will give you the most problems if they’re not all given an equal chance to make their quotas and achieve their personal earnings goals. Your original business plan will probably go out the window when you land your first customer. You’ve just got to listen.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Software Review Cap Table Securities and Exchange Commission 48

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

Customer Development by Vertical - Click to Enlarge (As a reminder, the Customer Development process says your business plan is just a series of untested hypothesis (unless you’re a domain expert.) You take your product vision and get out of your building to turn your hypothesis into facts. Waterfall, Agile, Lean?

Vertical 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

The key contributors to an out-of-control burn rate is 1) hiring a sales force too early, 2) turning on the demand creation activities too early, 3) developing something other than the minimum feature set for first customer ship. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that. Lets see why.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. Step 1: Start with a lean plan. Instead of sitting down to write a 40-page business plan, start with a one-page pitch. The business model.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Growthink Blog

NOVEMBER 2, 2016

The company’s sales manager shared some remarkable research that showed that while the “conventional wisdom” was that the company’s market space was in free fall and under severe “legacy” pressure, in actual reality the market was experiencing solid, and in some areas, unprecedented growth.

Conversion 48

Conversion Los Angeles Europe Acquisition 48

Up and Running

JULY 24, 2015

Business planning. To start your business, you’ll need a sound business plan. But here at Bplans, we make an effort to provide entrepreneurs with the resources they need to start and run successful businesses. Product development. They can help with development and licensing, too.

Entrepreneur 60

Entrepreneur Small Business Administration SBA Pennsylvania 60

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

It should go without saying that this post is not advice, nor is it recommendation of what you should do, it’s simply my observation of how companies using Customer Development positioned themselves to successfully raise money from venture investors. Is there a profitable business model? What are Early Stage VC’s Really Asking?

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Growthink Blog

MAY 10, 2012

If it's not your plan to get venture capital down the road, then you'll probably stop in Stage 2-receiving enough funding to boost your marketing, sales, and infrastructure to grow organically from there to the point where you are satisfied or ready to sell. Series B is the round that follows series A in early stage financing.

Equity 88

Equity Mezzanine Later Stage Venture Capital 88

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

With an out-of-this-world business plan. When it was spun out as a a separate company, Iridium’s 1990 business plan had assumptions about potential customers, their problems and the product needed to solve that problem. A Business Plan Frozen in Time. This business plan was a static document.

Business Plan 335

Business Plan Customer Business Model Customer Development 335

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

If you have a technical background and you are focused on product development, consider a co-founder with a sales and marketing background that can focus on selling your world class product. Rather, give titles such as VP of Engineering, Product/Technology, Sales, Marketing, Finance, etc. Early Stage.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

Tim Keane

SEPTEMBER 18, 2006

Planning for a Harvest. In a lot of startups (especially good ones) the founder/CEO/leader is a customer-oriented sales person. After the idea/product/service is built, and the market mapped, the company begins to grow. The sales oriented CEO needs to manage this process as intently as the customer facing sales process.

Harvest 60

Harvest LBO Investment Bankers Wisconsin 60