Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 20, 2011

There are unknowns at every turn, leading product development, attracting customers, managing cash, and dealing with human resources and office politics. Probably 80% of the startups I know have found human resource issues to be the most treacherous. Stretch” goals in early-stage are not advised. Too slow or too fast to change.

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Advisory Board Startup Forecast Early Stage 232

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 3, 2016

These things outside your control do happen, but based on my years of experience as a startup advisor and angel investor, I still see too many shortcuts leading to failure that are inside the entrepreneur decision realm. No startup can afford to do these serially. Marketing should start before product development.

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Intellectual Property Startup Angel Investor Viral 120

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

It’s time to update Build, Measure, Learn to what we now know is the best way to build Lean startups. Build a product, get it into the real world, measure customers’ reactions and behaviors, learn from this, and use what you’ve learned to build something better. Waterfall Development. Here’s how.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 3, 2012

There are unknowns at every turn, leading product development, attracting customers, managing cash, and dealing with human resources and office politics. Probably 80% of the startups I know have found human resource issues to be the most treacherous. Stretch” goals in early-stage are not advised. Too slow or too fast to change.

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Advisory Board Forecast Early Stage Product Development 240

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 12, 2010

There are unknowns at every turn, leading product development, attracting customers, managing cash, and dealing with human resources and office politics. Probably 80% of the startups I know have found human resource issues to be the most treacherous. Tags: entrepreneur startup worst case survival. Marty Zwilling.

Advisory Board 125

Advisory Board Startup Forecast Early Stage 125

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. So what’s wrong the product development model?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 244

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 9, 2020

A common pain of startups after an exhilarating first surge of early adopters is a long and frustrating plateau of slow growth, where it seems like nothing you do will get your business to profitability. Continually add new marketing and distribution partners. Introduce new products and enhancements every month.

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Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 329

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 1, 2015

These things outside your control do happen, but based on my years of experience as a startup advisor and Angel investor, I still see too many common failure causes that are inside the entrepreneur decision realm. It’s never too early to start marketing, since it usually takes as long to build marketing momentum as it does to build a product.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Viral Distribution 120

VC Cafe

JULY 15, 2021

What are the main channels for app marketing and distribution today? App discovery today: Word of mouth – family and friends remain the #1 channel for new app discovery. billion users for Facebook and Instagram app startups cannot afford NOT to be discovered on social media.

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Mobile Social Media Distribution PR 190

Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 31, 2016

As an investor and former founder, I know that scalable growth (and the pretty hockey stick graph) is the holy grail for every startup. Just a decade ago, most software/cloud startups used a traditional model where product and marketing were siloed: product teams created the product and marketing drove people to the website to buy it.

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Software Review South Africa Hockey Stick Viral 60

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 8, 2009

Traction can simply mean showing that you’re making progress with customers, product development, channel partners, initial revenue as a proof point, attracting well-known angel investors, winning industry awards / recognition. They tell you they’re going to ship product and they do. They hire key staff.

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Technical Review Term Sheet Venture Capital Revenue 309

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2014

Skunk works differed from advanced research groups in that they were more than just product development groups. They had direct interaction with customers and controlled a sales channel which allowed them to negotiate their own deals with customers. Skunk works looked much like a startup. We now know how to do this.

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Channel Customer Development Distribution Restful 292

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 6, 2018

In today’s rough-and-tumble startup scene, “lean” is all the rage, and the ability to cut costs without compromising performance is prized above virtually any other managerial competency. Apply to as many startup competitions as you have bandwidth for; if your idea is as good as you think it is, you’ll be admitted to at least a few.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

In other words, they are facing conditions of extreme uncertainty, just like startups. One is explaining the world as it used to work: the importance of gatekeepers, the scarcity implied by limited distribution, and the resulting quality bar that the industry is so proud of. There are too many products clamoring for attention.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure. This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. It has become an integral part of startup culture. None of mine did.)

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Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 269

crowdSPRING Blog

MAY 17, 2010

This drives our own product development strategy, and we constantly ask for feedback and suggestions to help us understand how we can do better. But critical to consider are whether your product offers enough variation (is there something for (almost) everyone?) Or right here on the good ol’ Internets? Photo: Dave77459.

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Marketing Startup Small Business Viral 84

techcocktail.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Tech Cocktail Connecting, educating and amplifying the startup technology community and having fun doing it since 2006. So, today we’d like to highlight a few main points to consider when building your startup team. Startup’s can be stressful and there may be many times when people want to quit.

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San Francisco Startup PHP San Diego 44

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. For Neopets, its simply a side-effect of their game-like product design. Choose one. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?) One last thought.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

The basic idea is to extend agile, which excels in situations where the problem is known but the solution is unknown, into areas of even greater uncertainty, such as your typical startup. 2008 09 06 Eric Ries Haas Columbia Customer Development Engineering View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. Talk about waste.

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Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

Getting the first tracks of revenue is one of the toughest processes of building a startup. One of the most commons problems I see with startups that I’ve come across is the lack of a “growth team.”. Let’s face it, working on the product is awesome—seeing it evolve, figuring out new features, and witnessing them as they come alive.

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Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

bizthoughts.mikelee.org

MARCH 8, 2012

Although most aren’t in a place to be startup cofounders for financial reasons, I now have access to a large talent pool once I can offer a salary. With all the funded startups that are unable to hire, that’s a huge ace up my sleeve. And for the engineers that did want to become startup cofounders – we all did.

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Technical Cofounder Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 40

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 29, 2016

A common pain of startups after an exhilarating first surge of early adopters is a long and frustrating plateau of slow growth, where it seems like nothing you do will get your business to profitability. Continually add new marketing and distribution partners. Introduce new products and enhancements every month.

Social Media 120

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 120

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue?

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

I pointed out to Bob the irony – in a large company “fear of failure” inhibits speed and risk taking while in a startup “fear of failure” drives speed and urgency. Startups have finite time and resources to find product/market fit before they run out of money. for new product development that emphasize immediate returns.

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Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 14, 2015

Image via Flickr by Side Wages Some entrepreneurs forget that they need an innovative business model along with an innovative solution to have a successful startup. That’s why I say “two heads are better than one” in a startup. If we design a great product, investors will find us." Do both in parallel to be timely.

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Technical Review Startup Angel Investor Social Media 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, September 18, 2008 How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone I have had the opportunity to meet a lot of iPhone-related companies lately. There are other models, in other distribution channels. On Facebook, viral distribution has proved decisive. I havent found any yet.

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Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

After turning their attention toward feedback and testing, letting the voice of their customers fuel their content strategy and product development, they took off. Not revisiting your marketing objectives in the growth phase of your product lifecycle is the death knell of many startups.

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Product Marketing Social Media Channel 102

Steve Blank

MARCH 15, 2011

Our new Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. what’s the product? what distribution channel? Channel : Mowing and agricultural equipment dealers. This post is part two. Part one is here. Syllabus here. would buy an autonomous mower.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 12, 2010

Products: You obviously can’t create value without a viable product (or service) to sell. This section of your Venture Value Scorecard should summarize the important advances you have made recently in research and product development.

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Intellectual Property .Net Valuation Distribution 223

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup. Lets see why.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

Execution by Vertical Market As the class progressed, students asked how the activities/functions of a startup; (Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Product Development, etc.) How does product development differ in communications hardware versus enterprise software, etc. Who are the economic buyers?

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Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2022

How do they become present on new social media and communications channels? How to they use the new distribution channels competitors have adopted? How do they make these transitions without alienating and losing their existing customers, distribution channels and partners?

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Framework Distribution Channel Leadership 397

Up and Running

MARCH 1, 2016

So, if I were going to invent something, I’d probably start by creating an affordable jeweler’s workbench, not least because I’d be able to test it, and because I already know all the distribution channels I’d need to hit in order to sell it. FindLaw suggests you analyze your personality before deciding.

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Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Non-Compete Naming 60

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. Analytics spark more questions and discussion than almost any other aspect of the Lean Startup method. It provides a basic introduction to analytics as they apply to Lean Startup, including sections on what metrics to use and how to interpret them.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 4, 2010

Whether your new software is ‘in the cloud,’ an online download, or distributed on a CD through various direct and indirect distribution channels, the process of localization is still a time consuming, manually intensive, and expensive effort. Tags: entrepreneur startup software localization translation business.

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Software Distribution Europe Database 200

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, October 7, 2008 The App Store after the gold rush I wrote earlier about the issue of distribution advantage on the iPhone. The App Store is a channel for customer acquisition. On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral. So what can you do?

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San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

To give you a better idea of what entrepreneurs in this industry are thinking about during each phase of the startup process, I interviewed SaaS entrepreneurs from all over the world, including our own COO Noah Parsons. Noah has been a key figure in the making of LivePlan, our own SaaS product. or even be a U.S. Establishing a U.S.

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Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74