Steve Blank

JANUARY 17, 2023

Three types of organizations – Incubators, Accelerators and Venture Studios – have emerged to reduce the risk of early-stage startup failure by helping teams find product/market fit and raise initial capital. But these look for founders who have a technical or business model insight and a team. Carlos stirred his coffee.

Technical Cofounder 362

Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 362

ConversionXL

APRIL 28, 2020

I got one of those in 2018, mere months after I started at data.world as their first growth marketing and demand generation hire. We had built the world’s largest open-data community but—like so many startups—didn’t have a clear product-market fit. . In that unannounced meeting, Brett Hurt, our CEO and co-founder, laid it out for us.

Demand 101

Demand Revenue SQL B2B 101

YoungUpstarts

JULY 31, 2019

by Anish Sebastian and Juan Pablo Segura, co-founders of Babyscripts. For start-ups in hot markets, the problem also manifests itself in fundraising. Founders need seed capital to get their operations up and running, and to begin generating revenue.

Cofounder 127

Cofounder Burn Rate Technical Cofounder Seed Capital 127

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 1, 2019

In the first post , we drilled down into the often-overlooked notion of “market-engineering” and why it’s so critical. Go-to-Market. In two of these three phases – the first and third – volumes of helpful information and numerous organizations are readily available to help guide and support founders of startups. Go-to-Product.

Cleveland 150

Cleveland Framework Marketing Early Stage 150

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 23, 2022

It does, and we brought world-class marketers to deliver keynotes full of value on growth and experimentation. Of course, we took care of the usual aspects of every offline marketing conference, and CXL Live 2022 brought together 300 returning attendees and first-timers, taking over a rooftop venue in downtown Austin.

B2B 94

B2B Marketing Curation PPC 94

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

Great marketing is required to generate revenue and grow every business, especially new businesses which have no brand recognition nor loyal customer base. I also look for a commensurate portion of the plan describing the specific innovative marketing deliverables, beyond the traditional marketing items.

Marketing 333

Marketing Revenue Matching Viral 333

The Startup Magazine

JULY 21, 2021

Kevin Wu, co-founder and CEO of job search optimization program Pathrise , says “Digital marketer roles are some of the most in-demand positions in the tech industry.” According to a recent McKinsey survey, 83% of CEOs said they depend on digital marketing to be the major driver of growth. And he’s right.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review PPC SEM Marketing 78

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

(co-written with Jamie Finney, Founding Partner at Greater Colorado Venture Fund. More and more startups are pursuing Revenue-Based VCs , but “RBI” doesn’t fit everyone. From RBI, Flexible VCs borrow the ability to reap meaningful returns without demanding founders build for an exit. Flexible VC 101: Equity Meets Revenue Share.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

ConversionXL

JULY 21, 2022

In this post, we’ll explore lessons from brands that use omnichannel marketing to deliver a seamless customer experience. What is omnichannel marketing? If you’ve ever received an email with personalized product recommendations or a retargeting ad on Facebook for a product you left in your cart, that’s omnichannel marketing in action.

Customer 118

Customer Marketing Channel Audience 118

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

As the idea went from innovating on software & systems to launching a company to rolling it out in the field brought on Rahul Gandhi as his co-founder to physically launch the company. What sized team can I afford in order to sell, market & provide service to these customers? How profitable is my product or service?

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. ” Fire, Ready, Aim.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

A new wave of Revenue-Based Investors are emerging who are using creative investing structures with some of the upside of traditional VC, but some of the downside protection of debt. I believe that Revenue-Based Investing (“RBI”) VCs are on the forefront of what will become a major segment of the venture ecosystem.

Revenue 60

Revenue Term Sheet Founder Technical Review 60

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 14, 2013

Ego Metrics: What Measurements Matter? written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing Thursday is guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is Andy Crestodina – Enjoy! The problem is that some of these metrics aren’t meaningful. No cattle.”.

Metrics 71

Metrics Social Media Widget Chicago 71

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

Every year I teach classrooms full of students who leave class understanding the basics of how to search for product/market fit—and thinking their next goal is to “get funded.”. You (think) you have product-market fit with real customers and real revenue and need money to grow and expand. That’s a mistake.

Cofounder 431

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 431

ConversionXL

JANUARY 18, 2022

It’s one of many ecommerce software platforms on the market but only the fifth most popular by market share. When they’re in the market, they’ll remember you. HubSpot built brand equity through community-building, blog posts, social media marketing , and its HubSpot Academy. Take Shopify. Image source. Image source.

Equity 94

Equity Marketing Social Media Software Review 94

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

Uber , Zenefits , Tanium , Lending Club CEOs of companies with billion dollar market caps have been in the news – and not in a good way. Why do these founders get to stay around? Because the balance of power has dramatically shifted from investors to founders. This seems to be occurring more and more. Board Control.

Founder 269

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 269

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 5, 2023

If you or your team sees you as an idea person, your first task as an entrepreneur should be to find a co-founder who can deliver. Finding a co-founder is rarely a bad thing, since two heads are always better than one in meeting all the startup challenges. Managing marketing metrics and the sales pipeline.

Cofounder 389

Cofounder Startup Term Sheet Acquisition 389

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Why vanity metrics are dangerous In a previous post, I defined two kinds of metrics: vanity metrics and actionable metrics. In this post, Id like to talk about the perils of vanity metrics. My personal favorite vanity metrics is "hits."

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

SoCal CTO

MARCH 1, 2010

Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition | For Entrepreneurs , February 2, 2010 Looks at the critical equation around customer acquisition cost vs. customer lifetime value similar to what I discussed in Startup Metrics but in more depth. This relates to another great post Freemium Founders: Start Charging for Things Today!

Acquisition 150

Acquisition Cofounder Technical Cofounder Cost 150

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

Demand generation tactics address two of the biggest marketing challenges: raising brand awareness and generating leads. It uses marketing to raise brand awareness and get people excited about your products or services. Demand generation marketing isn’t one single strategy or activity. Some marketing tactics (e.g.,

Demand 115

Demand Affiliate Audience Leadership 115

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 22, 2013

But have you ever had the opportunity to pick the brains of founders who created amazingly successful startups and companies like Envato , Backblaze , Simple , or Treehouse ? Few people like talking about their mistakes, but thankfully nine founders took some time to share some of their hard-earned knowledge with you. Find your niche.

Cofounder 164

Cofounder Founder Startup Bootstrapping 164

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 4, 2019

The first post drilled down into the often-overlooked notion of “market-engineering” and why it’s so critical. At Wildcat, we recommend benchmarking your startup against the four core architectural pillars of the Traction Gap Framework: product , revenue , team and systems. Revenue Architecture.

Framework 127

Framework Architecture Cleveland Early Stage 127

View from Seed

MARCH 19, 2015

Founders laud their own “end-to-end” thinking. Engineers and even marketers proudly claim to be “full stack.” I recently caught up with Savoia, who shared how this process works and how seed-stage startups might adopt it to find product-market fit more quickly and more cheaply.

Product 120

Product Technical Review Marketing Lean 120

ConversionXL

JUNE 8, 2017

I will also discuss common traps to avoid, available tools in the market and additional resources you could use to strengthen your skills and improve your success rate. You can check the Web Marketing and Measurement Model by Avinash Kaushik (who is an analytics legend): Image Source. Marketing campaigns. Measure and iterate.

Programming 97

Programming Revenue Analytics Software Review 97

YoungUpstarts

MAY 24, 2019

The first post drilled down into the often-overlooked notion of “market-engineering” and why it’s so critical. At Wildcat, we recommend benchmarking your startup against the four core architectural pillars of the Traction Gap Framework: product , revenue , team and systems. Revenue Architecture.

Framework 113

Framework Architecture Cleveland Early Stage 113

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 20, 2023

Thus I often recommend that entrepreneurs keep their day job until the startup is producing revenue. We all understand the risk of competitors quickly closing in, and market factors changing before we can roll out our solution. Two cofounders, both working part-time are actually better than one founder full-time.

Intellectual Property 275

Intellectual Property Cofounder Salary Metrics 275

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 2, 2013

Another thing they have in common: I find most high-tech startup founders are software engineers enamored with the idea of waking late, sidling up to a coffeeshop table, pecking away at an IDE, getting into the zone for hours at a stretch, and doing what they love – coding something of their own invention.

Cofounder 312

Cofounder Startup Founder Engineer 312

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 2, 2018

Jonathon Karelse is co-founder and a partner at NorthFind Partners, a Canadian-based, global consultancy that helps businesses transform through the use of data driven analytics, forecasting and planning, and change management strategies. It’s a sure way to hamper their nimbleness in responding to market changes.

Cofounder 0

Cofounder Partner Forecast Founder 0

crowdSPRING Blog

DECEMBER 13, 2018

Chapter 7: How To Translate Your Brand Identity Into Actual Marketing. brand awareness – the ability of customers to identify a brand in a crowded market. Poor design, ineffective marketing, inconsistent messaging, and bad partnerships can all tarnish a brand. Conduct market research and perform a competitor analysis.

Marketing 162

Marketing Charlotte Naming Design 162

Duct Tape Marketing

AUGUST 23, 2023

The Impact of Community written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing Marketing Podcast with Lloyed Lobo In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast , I interview Lloyed Lobo. He is the co-founder of Boast.ai, where he leveraged the Community-Led Growth model to bootstrap the company.

Community 53

Community Kuwait Cofounder Bootstrapping 53

ConversionXL

MARCH 19, 2020

An article on growth and marketing in the middle of a crisis—the current one or any other—can seem tone deaf. This post surveys what people have done in the past—and what marketing leaders are doing now—to make it through tough times and thrive in the post-crisis era. Tim Stewart, trsdigital. But nothing gets better if we stand still.

Marketing 121

Marketing Campaign Non-Compete Lean 121

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 23, 2007

And there are definitely other service providers who provide things like marketing services who are interesting, so its not all service providers, its more like the wealth management types. Why does this hurt, well I was just reading a few blog posts yesterday on finding startup co-founders: Where do you Find Cofounders?

Los Angeles 150

Los Angeles Technical Cofounder Southern California Networking 150

Duct Tape Marketing

FEBRUARY 10, 2022

What a CFO Can Do For Your Agency written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Marketing Podcast with Jason Blumer. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast , I interview Jason Blumer. Jason is a Co-founder of Thriveal, a firm that helps entrepreneurial CPA firms connect, learn and grow.

CPA 72

CPA Technical Review Revenue Forecast 72

SoCal CTO

MARCH 13, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Tuesday, March 13, 2007 8 Ways the Internet has Changed Software Marketing Great post - 8 Ways The Internet Changed Software Marketing - is an interesting take on how different it is these days to market software. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO?

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles Internet 150

Eric Friedman

JUNE 17, 2021

I also love figuring out where a founder is going and what their north star metric could be, both now and in the future. This post is a combination of these two thoughts wrapped up in a recent discussion with a startup founder that I have been thinking about for the past week. Product idea/tangent/focus area.

Metrics 78

Metrics SMS Cofounder Lean 78

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 30, 2011

93% of startups that scale prematurely never break the $100k revenue per month threshold. Blackbox , founded by entrepreneurs Bjoern Lasse Herrmann and Max Marmer, in June released its first Startup Genome Report — a 67-page in depth analysis on what makes Silicon Valley startups successful based on profiling over 650 startups.

Silicon Valley 189

Silicon Valley Software Review Startup Cofounder 189

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

Plus, it bothers me that it gives the impression that, if you’re a female founder and you become the face of your company, you’ll inevitably get taken down—that anything short of unimpeachable success means becoming a target and getting kicked to the curb in a spectacularly disastrous fashion. I don’t think that’s happening this time.

Cofounder 140

Cofounder Venture Capital Community PR 140