Austin Startup

AUGUST 7, 2017

Instead of arguing why Dallas might be better than Houston we should be talking about how we can work together to get our share of venture capital dollars more in line with our population size and startup activity by unlocking additional capital sources that have been previously inaccessible to tech.

Texas 97

Texas San Antonio Houston Dallas 97

Haystack

MAY 9, 2019

2/ Capital Efficiency And Returns: While the companies aren’t exactly similar (slightly different models and product mixes), it is worthwhile to note that Dollar Shave raised about $170M, whereas Harry’s is believed to have raised somewhere between $350M-$400M in venture capital. razor market.

Acquisition 121

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Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 8, 2019

This focus has helped me recruit the best and the brightest in the field, build a world-class operation, and most of all, with all the knowledge in a specific vertical, help build a leading agency for food & beverage manufacturers that are looking to build a direct to consumer channel. 12- Officially Incorporated and more. #12-

Entrepreneur 115

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Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

To an entrepreneur, being asked to join a venture firm with an Entrepreneur-in-Residence title means you have been tapped on the shoulder by the VC gods. The CDROM content business in the early 1990’s was one of the many of the long line of venture capital fads. We understood none of this. More detail in future posts.

Silicon Valley 120

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ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2011

This curriculum is based on the various questions entrepreneurs have asked me over these 64 sessions, spanning financing, positioning, customer acquisition, marketing, sales, channel, and various other early stage, startup-related issues. As usual, then, I worked with three entrepreneurs working on specific businesses. Mava Consulting.

Vertical 115

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Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

And since there was no Venture Capital in the 1950′s/’60′s where was the money coming from? In contrast, spark gaps are broad-band radio “noise&# sources – the idea of discrete radio channels was impossible spark gaps because of this. I’ll stop channeling James Burke now. to do that.

Silicon Valley 270

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Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2022

AI applications are already appearing in virtual customer assistants with speech recognition, sentiment analysis, automated/augmented quality assurance and other technologies providing customers with 24/7 self- and assisted-service options across channels. AI in National Security. AI/ML and Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance.

Artificial Inteligence 417

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

Intelligence As I leafed through the Cray sales material, a glossy magazine with the headline Cray Channels jumped out of the pile. Cray Channels was describing my market, applications and customers for me. Hmm… typical booth stuff…key chains, data sheets, pens… Until I got to the material from Cray.

Silicon Valley 147

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Five Easy Pieces – The Marketing Mission After a few months of talking to customers , talking to our channel and working with sales we defined the marketing Mission (our job) was to: Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin. Two paragraphs, Five bullets. It didn’t take more.

Silicon Valley 259

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2011

He was introduced through mutual friends to Highland Capital. At the time consumer internet venture capital was still suffering from the collapse of the Tech Bubble. But it was an attractive time to enter because the successful internet companies were scaling and in need of capital. Tell us more about MetaCafe? (37:00-40:30).

Vertical 265

Vertical Curation Boston Burn Rate 265

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales. Or blame my MarCom department who approved it. Worry about the sales results. What did we learn?

Sales 120

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Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I finally understood how valuable these contests can be for students in cities or countries without a venture capital or entrepreneurial infrastructure. Over scrambled eggs and diet coke, I listened to this seasoned startup veteran describe the excitement of his students who came to the U.S. to compete.

Business Plan 140

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Austin Startup

MARCH 7, 2018

janryan (@janryan) | Twitter Kerry Rupp Kerry is a Capital Factory Mentor and founding partner of True Wealth Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund that invests in women-led companies in the sustainable consumer and consumer health verticals.

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Technical Cofounder Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 48

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

For our tech project (and likely others in our field) the value is in accurately predicting platforms and information channels in the next 6months-1 year. This is more challengine than it appears, and method of insulation is supporting varied input channels. Look forward to your next post a usual!

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

I knew we were selling through a multi-level indirect sales channel. Market messages to indirect sales channels are just like that. As we found out when we interviewed our dealers, our sales department was using extra commission payments – called Spif’s – to incentivize the channel to move our product.) What did I learn so far?

Silicon Valley 185

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Reply steveblank , on May 22, 2009 at 2:39 pm Said: Morteza, The comments about “ignore this post&# were meant that if your sales channel is the web you rarely go to trade shows. You are correct all channels, web or otherwise, need to generate awareness and leads. These two posts were amazing.

Silicon Valley 128

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Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Given the lukewarm feedback we were getting from potential customers and channel buyers we should have dramatically dialed back the hype until the follow-on games could match it. The Customer Validation lesson of, “no formal launch until you have early sales validating the product and sales process&# was also born here.

Silicon Valley 122

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Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 16, 2012

In founding TripAdvisor, Kaufer wanted to take his hard core engineering skills and apply them to vertical search in travel. Fortunately, on the side, the company had built up TripAdvisor.com as a demo site to show the prospective clients what a vertical search engine could do. Big Data meets travel…in 2000. and EBITDA margins are 47%.

Part-Time VPE 54

Part-Time VPE Software Review Costa Rica Technical Review 54

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Steve I have to tell you some bad news, I just showed our potential channel partners and customers a few completed pieces of the games we had. Tell them how great it’s going to be and see how many pre-orders we can get.” A month later the VP of Marketing appeared in my office again. They think the games stink.”

Silicon Valley 207

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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). Test-marketing is now easier than ever before, thanks to leveraged distribution channels like AdWords and Facebook. There are too many products clamoring for attention.

San Francisco 113

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Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. The person who can quickly re-channel that excitement to a different idea (one based on fact, not faith) will have much more success. There is no certainty about a startup on day-one.

Silicon Valley 212

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 212

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

press and use it to generate end user demand and then drive that demand into our sales channel. Reply SuperMac War Story 6: Building The Killer Team – Mission, Intent and Values « Steve Blank , on April 9, 2009 at 5:02 am Said: [.] The Potrero benchmark strategy was one component of this creating end user demand through PR.)

Silicon Valley 124

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

The product development model is so focused on building and shipping the product that it ignores the entire process of testing your basic hypothesis about your business model (customers, channel, pricing, etc.) before you ship. Not testing these hypotheses upfront is a fundamental and, in many cases, fatal error most startups make.

Customer Development 238

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

Marketing is Heard From Engineering was discussing how sophisticated the graphics portion of our computer should be, debating cost and time-to-market tradeoffs of arcane details such as double-buffering, 24 versus 32-bits of color, alpha channels, etc.

Silicon Valley 271

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David Teten

NOVEMBER 30, 2020

Pre-seed startups (all vertical) are welcome to register to world’s largest pre-seed startup accelerator, the Founder Institute Final Admissions Deadline: October 04. Phoenix Capital , a tie-up between OurCrowd and Abdullah Al Naboodah’s business development unit. INVESTMENT ORGANIZATIONS FOCUSED ON THE ISRAEL-MENA AXIS. Apply here.

UAE 60

UAE United Arab Emirates Technology 60

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

In other cases, they may come from your channel partners or elsewhere. This is useful for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which is to help you navigate the right channels in your vertical and open doors to potential customers. The more disruptive an idea, the harder it is the evaluate at an early stage.

Advisory Board 48

Advisory Board Sweat Equity Marketing Vertical 48

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

Since we had gotten out of the software business when we came out of Chapter 11 , and our sales channel didn’t know what to do with software, we licensed ReelTime to Adobe. But you probably never heard of ReelTime. You may know it by its final name.

Video 164

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Cracking the Code

DECEMBER 2, 2006

The time they spend with customers is usually limited to transactional core products sales, generating lower margins – The resource allocation is not always matching the opportunity (geography, customer segment, vertical.) – The rules of engagement for technical resources (solution or product specialists) are not clear.

Software Review 48

Software Review Technical Review Europe Software 48

Hunter Walker

APRIL 18, 2013

Here’s why: Verticalized content needs context not just collections. It would be a niche business but one I think you could scale by getting folks to subscribe to multiple channels. But don’t take venture capital. Just build it.

Video 98

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Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

And they have channeled all this into whatever activity they could find outside of their home – sports, business, or …entrepreneurship. But a small percentage, whose brain chemistry and wiring is set for resilience, come out of this with a compulsive, relentless and tenacious drive to succeed.

Founder 297

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

After that there’s a discussion of how the product will reach the customer and the potential distribution channel. The startup develops its first positioning statement and uses this to explain the company and its benefits to venture capitalists. Building the sales channel and supporting the marketing can burn a lot of cash.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

With that implicit assumption, startups hire a VP of Sales with a great rolodex and call on established mainstream companies while marketing creates a brand and buzz to create demand and drive it into the sales channel (web, direct salesforce, etc.) End result? If they had done this, there would have been zero dollars in sales.

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Rule 1: In an existing market Customer Development means not only understanding potential customers, but your competitors in detail – their product features, their sales channels, their demand creation strategy, their business model, etc.

Silicon Valley 181

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Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2009

I remember after a month or two of talking to 14-22 year old male gamers (our potential target market,) I realized that for the first time in my career I had no emotional connection to my customers or channel partners. I was about 90 days into the company when I began to realize there was something very different about this business.

Silicon Valley 139

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

The absolute number depends on your channel and industry. In Customer Validation it is when you have enough early sales to declare that you have discovered a repeatable and scalable sales process. For example, if you are selling enterprise software, getting 3-5 early customers may be enough in Customer Validation.

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

We were going to do that by turning marketing into a machine to generate end user demand, drive the that demand into our sales channels, and educate our sales channels.

Silicon Valley 126

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BeyondVC

JULY 19, 2005

Robert Scoble has asked the VCs to respond to an eWeek article titled Is.Net Failing to Draw Venture Capital Loyalty? There is not much for me to add to this article as we all know that the only loyalty VCs have is to their Limited Partners to generate long-term capital gains.

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.Net Java Limited Partner Venture Capital 60