Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 29, 2013

This post was written by Sarah Milstein, co-host of The Lean Startup Conference. Most commonly, that’s uncertainty about whether you can build the product at all (what MBAs call “technical risk”) or whether anybody will use or buy it (“market risk”). Often, in very young organizations, those people are simply the founders.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

Listen to this episode if you want to hear about a founder who has a product and users and paying customers … and is trying to figure out how to take his company to the next level and grow faster. So when you’re thinking about marketing positioning to me, that side of it is the interesting side of it. Edwin: May I.

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Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

A description of the problem you’re solving for your customers, and your solution to the problem, which is usually your product or service. A description of your target market or the different market segments you’re targeting. In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way. We know some products succeed and others fail, but the reasons are complex and the unpredictable.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Announce a new product, start its PR campaign, and engage in buzz marketing activities. Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. Product launch) In todays world, there is no reason you have to do these two things at the same time. If not, do not launch there.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

He previously co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). While an undergraduate at Yale Unviersity, he co-founded Catalyst Recruiting. October 13, 2008 6:47 PM Luke G said. Eric, love the blog.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Launch with a PR blitz, including mentions in major mainstream publications. Build the product in stealth mode to build buzz for the eventual launch. Without conscious process design, product development teams turn lines of code written into momentum in a certain direction. Even a great architecture becomes inflexible.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth. In this model, you take some fraction of the lifetime value of each customer and plow that back into paid acquisition through SEM, banner ads, PR, affiliates, etc.

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Seeing Both Sides

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

. (this post was originally published in Harvard Business Review and is co-authored with Nadav Benbarak of Okta.). By viewing product development and marketing as integrated functions, not silos, leading tech companies like Facebook and Pinterest are rethinking their approach to driving growth and achieving breakthrough results.

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Seeing Both Sides

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

. (this post was originally published in Harvard Business Review and is co-authored with Nadav Benbarak of Okta.). By viewing product development and marketing as integrated functions, not silos, leading tech companies like Facebook and Pinterest are rethinking their approach to driving growth and achieving breakthrough results.

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infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

For instance, if a consultant proposes to help you with public relations, pay them a commission equivalent to the greater of a flat fee per story placed or a percentage of revenue generated from the PR coverage. If a consultant claims they can enhance your marketing efforts, pay them based on their direct impact on your incremental sales.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Many optimizers are in favor of split-testing, too: direct marketers, landing page and SEO experts -- heck even the Google Website Optimizer team. In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. Hell no, “fire that customer!

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

The full formula works like this: runway = cash on hand / burn rate # iterations = runway / speed of each iteration Very few successful companies ended up in the same exact business that the founders thought theyd be in (see Founders at Work for dozens of examples). Getting started with split-testing and the one-line split-test.

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techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

So for this first post, here’s the best advice I can give you: join an awesome founding team and get your product out the door ASAP. One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. Then, forget everything else, VCs included, and just build.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Engineers are offenders in this category too, but so is any gender-segregated activity, like an all-female PR or marketing team. One last suggestion, which is a technique I learned from my IMVU co-founder Will Harvey. One last suggestion, which is a technique I learned from my IMVU co-founder Will Harvey.

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betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

A huge untapped market opportunity.?. I firmly believe that in this age where the product development life-cycle is so short and user feedback comes so quickly, you will know within a year whether you are focusing on a worthwhile one thing. Have amazing co-founders who are better at what they do than you could ever be.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

Whats striking about these stories, if you get past the PR hype, are two very important themes: These prodigies were self-taught, and had a fundamental fascination with technology from a very young age. Then you set up a web app to co-ordinate volunteers who can wipe a hard drive and install Ubuntu. Third, you market it far and wide.

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steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Home Books for Startups Guide Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Tools Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Email Subscription Get Steve Blank via your RSS Feed RSS - Posts RSS - Comments Categories Air Force (12) Ardent (10) Audubon (1) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (39) Business Model versus Business Plan (..)

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Even worse, entrepreneurs are faced with a constant barrage of vanity metrics from competitors and other companies engaged in PR. By only releasing vanity metrics , companies co-opt the press into helping them mislead others. The PR firm helpfully left out that context.) Vanity metrics are generally bigger. The solution?

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, February 12, 2009 What is a market? (a To wit: achieving product/market fit , getting customer validation , making something people want , things that matter , and of course the many excellent books on the topic, of which Ill mention just two of the best, Crossing the Chasm and The Innovators Dilemma.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2010

The higher the vanity ratio, the more effective the PR. Paul quotes one of his founders like this: “Thats the actual beauty in the off-the-record-ness: you hear just how screwed up most of these successful startups were on the way up.&# Failures, pivots , and crappy minimum viable products are generally elided.

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www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

You have heard, I am sure, that venture capitalists only invest in very large market opportunities - $500 million to $1 billion. But there are others - many others - who are looking for smaller opportunities, playing in the sweet spot of $50-$100 million market opportunities. Is that a $20 million market? $30 30 million market?

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www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

You have heard, I am sure, that venture capitalists only invest in very large market opportunities - $500 million to $1 billion. But there are others - many others - who are looking for smaller opportunities, playing in the sweet spot of $50-$100 million market opportunities. Is that a $20 million market? $30 30 million market?

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 17, 2010

► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Take a look and let me know what you think.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Thanks to those of you who were willing to fill out the survey, I learned my net promoter score (about 25) as well as some clear other segmentation insights: about 80% of you are founders of or work at a startup, you read many of the same other blogs, and many of you would like to engage with Lessons Learned in formats and venues beyond this blog.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

This "success theater" is occasionally useful for PR or getting through a tough board meeting. This "success theater" is occasionally useful for PR or getting through a tough board meeting. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? But how do we know which metrics to look at?

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

For months, we made constant product and policy changes, trying to end the controversy without simply undoing our original decision and abandoning the mainstream market. As a founder of a company, there is nothing more painful than to see your most loyal and devoted customers suffering. Then the reality of our problem hit us.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

This is completely analogous to the situation elsewhere on the internet, where launching a new website, product, or service with PR is getting harder and harder. On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral. Dont do PR upfront, dont put out a press release. My advice: dont launch big.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

I liked the flattering Venture Hacks commentary so much Ill just quote it: Many founders believe that early stage startups are endeavors of execution. The customer is known, the product is known, and all we have to do is act. What happened when we got early press (circa 2004) in violation of our own no-PR rule.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

In fact, I remember sending him and his obscure-to-me co-founder (aka Reid Hoffman ) a bug report early-on, instead of taking them up on their offer of an in-person meeting. I managed to be envious of dozens of other companies, founders, and colleagues who seemed to be having tremendous success but later turned out to be a mirage.

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www.kalzumeus.com

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) blogs on software development, marketing, and general business topics. Maybe not you, specifically, but you know that chap in marketing who is great with people but thinks MSWord is complicated? Patrick is the founder of Kalzumeus Software. Kalzumeus Software. Greatest Hits. Standing Invitation.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

What can you do to your product and marketing message to increase engagement? From a strictly "promotional marketing" point of view, they probably run those campaigns more than is optimal (theres always fatigue that diminishes the ROI on promotions the more you use them). Synthetic notifications.

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