A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

It’s often said that you shouldn’t talk about price during customer development interviews. You need to be a part of that conversation which means a real sales force, sales materials, impressive logos, case studies, and referenceable customers. You will be compared to alternatives and weighed.

Bootstrapping 294

Bootstrapping Technical Review B2C Sales Cycle 294

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. We were charging a really high up-front annual fee to these providers and the end result of that was a pretty long sales cycle. Jeremy Johnson. Our revenue model was wrong.

Cofounder 145

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 145

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. We were charging a really high up-front annual fee to these providers and the end result of that was a pretty long sales cycle. Jeremy Johnson. Our revenue model was wrong.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This is an incredible skill, one that most engineers overlook. For more on how this plays into the process of scaling up, see the Customer Creation stage of the customer development model.) But in the meantime, by iterating on their product with customers, they have a chance to get there on their own.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167