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?

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 19, 2009 Lean hiring tips In preparing for the strategy series panel this week, I have been doing some thinking about costs. And all of that cost was caused by one activity: hiring. Hiring is no different from any other company process. Sounds a little abstract, though, doesnt it?

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

ConversionXL

MAY 1, 2017

One of the greatest threats to long-term success is when companies aren’t vigilant enough about responding to the changes in their market—whether it’s by failing to spot product or channel fatigue, acknowledge new competition, make needed updates to products or marketing adjustments in a timely fashion, or embrace new technology coming online.

Technical Review 127

Technical Review Algorithm Channel Analytics 127

ConversionXL

APRIL 13, 2017

Call it whatever you like, but when businesses are hiring for any of those titles they simply want somebody who can generate lots of quality leads for as little cash as possible.”. The Growth Manager usually reports either to the CEO, the vice president of Product Management, or the vice president of Marketing. How do you scale it?

Analytics 99

Analytics Engineer SEO Channel 99

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 9, 2020

Some startups hire more people to delay automation, or spend money wildly on new tools for the future. Introduce new products and enhancements every month. Aggressively enter new markets and sales channels. If your website isn’t pulling in the growth you need, expand to Amazon and other channels. Marty Zwilling.

Social Media 329

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 329

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 6, 2016

To create this first year in business checklist, I turned to our in-house experts here at Palo Alto Software: Sabrina Parsons, CEO; Noah Parsons, COO; Josh Cochrane, Vice President of Product Development; and Josh Fegles, Academic and Government Channel Sales Director, and founder of gluten-free cookie company Jude’s Foods.

Forecast 60

Forecast Software Review Lean Finance 60

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. The proactive solution is to hire sparingly, and spend the time and effort needed to hire existing experts in all cases. Strategically timid and haphazard marketing.

Advisory Board 125

Advisory Board Startup Forecast Early Stage 125

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.

Technical Review 309

Technical Review Term Sheet Venture Capital Revenue 309

Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 31, 2016

The evolution of the growth function changed this dynamic, mashing together product dev and marketing as integrated functions. About five years ago, we saw the early waves of growth – typically an individual or two (“growth hackers”) who were championing growth within product development.

Software Review 60

Software Review South Africa Hockey Stick Viral 60

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

Selling a product is a tough process, full of “no’s,” whether they come on the phone with a prospect or as a low conversion rate on your landing page. This is what our hiring landscape looked like over the past year: Pre-2015, we hired three founders: 1x hustler in charge of strategic growth hacking.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2017

Learn more about validating your business idea and product concept here. The MVP concept, popularized by Eric Rice of Lean Startup , assumes that before going all in and pouring significant sums into product development, you test the grounds with a “beta” version of your product. Office: web and desktop apps.

Mobile 81

Mobile Application Development Web Software Review 81

The Startup Magazine

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

DataRails , the financial analysis and reporting software startup, has announced the hiring of David Rosenberg as the company’s new VP of customer success. Goori herself came on board in October 2021, when DataRails significantly bolstered its executive team with a string of high-profile hires. CEO Perspective.

Hiring 137

Hiring Software Review Customer 137

ConversionXL

AUGUST 24, 2021

A content marketing manager’s role may focus on overseeing the production and execution of content across social media, the company’s website, email, and other channels. A digital product marketing manager’s role will focus on a tech product, ensuring all channel communications are optimized and aligned with its positioning strategy.

Management 141

Management Marketing Campaign Social Media 141

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

For Neopets, its simply a side-effect of their game-like product design. Either way, you can use any marketing channel thats available to bring in new customers, including word of traditional advertising, SEO, SEM - wherever you can find prospects who are going to find your product addicting.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

www.readwriteweb.com

APRIL 23, 2012

This post is part of our ReadWriteStart channel, which is dedicated to helping savvy entrepreneurs start and grow new businesses with resources, tips, insight and analysis. The channel is sponsored by TriNet. Startup Hiring: The 10% Solution. Need $25,000 for product development? ReadWriteStart. ReadWriteWeb.

Hiring 49

Hiring Startup Semantic Equity 49

Hippoland

OCTOBER 9, 2016

Demonstrate that you can pull the trigger on things quickly — whether it be getting customers, hiring / firing employees, or product development. This is one of my favorite startup presentations of all time by Mike Cassidy on going fast. And convey this in your pitch. Bullet out the key awesome things about your business.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage CTO Hire Email Later Stage 48

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

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 29, 2016

Some startups hire more people to delay automation, or spend money wildly on new tools for the future. Introduce new products and enhancements every month. Aggressively enter new markets and sales channels. If your website isn’t pulling in the growth you need, expand to Amazon and other channels.

Social Media 120

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown, and the key to success is building an integrated team that includes product development in the feedback loop with customers. 2008 09 06 Eric Ries Haas Columbia Customer Development Engineering View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Hunter Walker

OCTOBER 25, 2020

For example, Lenny Rachitsky writes a newsletter devoted to technology and product development. But he also runs a paid-subscriber-only Slack group [Friends of Lenny’s Newsletter, partial screenshot below] that has channels for job openings, startup advice, technical talk and so on. Highlighted Homebrew Portfolio Jobs.

North Carolina 112

North Carolina Community Media Video 112

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

A business plan has a set of assumptions (who’s the customer, what’s the price, what’s the channel, what are the product features that matter, etc.) The web site and/or product presentation slides start changing and Marketing and Sales try different customers, different channels, new pricing, etc.

Burn Rate 247

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

OnlyOnce

MARCH 14, 2011

You find that you have to support channel partners as well as direct customers (or vice versa). All this takes away from the time you spend on “the new” as well. • Creating “productive stress” becomes difficult —At the point our business became profitable, life became a lot better. You’ll build custom code for certain clients.

Software Review 67

Software Review Development Team Review Later Stage Technical Review 67

techcocktail.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

be the manager and product developer). As you grow, think about the right timing for bringing on more people with specific roles, but remember – hire slow, fire fast. As Tony Hsieh of Zappos pointed out during his DCWEEK visit, bad hires have accounted for millions of lost dollars through the years.

San Francisco 44

San Francisco Startup PHP San Diego 44

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

bizthoughts.mikelee.org

MARCH 8, 2012

I was able to hire phenomenal software engineers and grow a strong team culture. With all the funded startups that are unable to hire, that’s a huge ace up my sleeve. iPhone & iPad #distribution #ormaybemarketing # 19 hours ago @davemcclure Idea 2: Partner with someone with an established distribution channel, ie.

Technical Cofounder 40

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 40

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 9, 2022

7:15] How do you manage the fact that somebody is hiring you to do marketing, but you can’t really do marketing if you don’t get into every aspect of their business? [10:20] Clare Price (07:24): And that's why one of the things that I'm doing with is developing what I call a ecosystem of right partners.

Marketing 76

Marketing Differentiation Sacramento Small Business 76

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Mass blasts of information are ineffective, because the broadcast channels are suffering from information overload (even in social media). There are too many products clamoring for attention. Test-marketing is now easier than ever before, thanks to leveraged distribution channels like AdWords and Facebook. Is that a lot?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

- simply because I left the large, famous MMO company I was working for to prepare a quiet startup) Personally, I got lucky and started in an area (online games) where I found channels such as MUD-DEV (and early GDCs) for meeting, listening to, and speaking to other people where people were taken how they were found.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

crowdSPRING Blog

SEPTEMBER 21, 2014

This means that you need to be in constant contact with your customers: make it easy for them to contact you , survey them regularly , provide great content for them through your social media channels, and listen closely to what they have to say. But there is more to hiring than the old saw about “hire slow, fire fast.”

Small Business 95

Small Business Startup Leadership Vertical 95

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. Market Type also affects the market size as well as how you launch the product into the market.

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 13, 2019

It’s bad for their reputation, it’s bad for their brand, and they’re also going to make mistakes if they don’t have the right people at the table being listened to when they make marketing decisions, product development decisions. Make room for a new revenue channel. I hire based on resume or experience.

Hiring 39

Hiring Community Audience Bandwidth 39

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

They would make commercials about a new book series, and then run the commercials at times when the TV rates were low (late night, UHF channels, etc) If they got enough orders, they then decided to print the series. Its my understanding that at one point (if not currently) Time-Life books did essentially this for their book series.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

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? It meant pivoting an entire company – and its culture.

Framework 389

Framework Distribution Channel Leadership 389

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 15, 2017

Practically speaking, the burning need was to begin hiring employees so that I could spend more of my day on product development, partnerships and driving sales. RL: At a high level, technology has created many ways to increase our productivity while also providing freedom to run the business from anywhere in the world.

Marketing 48

Marketing Design Acquisition Bootstrapping 48

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Today, Id like to spend some time on two techniques: the problem presentation and learning what channels of information reach customers. In particular, Ive focused on the two channels of communication that were most commonly suggested in the first survey: conferences and books. Lets start with what I learned last time.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

But instead of channeling all my energy towards building new features, I channel roughly 80% of it towards measuring and optimizing existing features. But instead of channeling all my energy towards building new features, I channel roughly 80% of it towards measuring and optimizing existing features.

Continuous Deployment 151

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 21, 2019

Now, startups, mid-level companies, and large corporations turn to VPN providers such as Surfshark to create secure network channels without the complexity of a conventional security infrastructure. They can now save money with VPN products. Hire Remote Contracted Employees.

Cloud 113

Cloud eCommerce Security Advertising 113