Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

If you hire 6 sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business for 4-6 months. ” If you’re not profitable you’re purely a cost center to them. Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) =. Operating Costs.

Startup 418

Startup Revenue Technical Review Flash 418

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 19, 2013

The most important way to sell a product for an early-stage business (or frankly any stage) is to have strong referenceable customers. How do you get referenceable customers? Your project is forked without a rollout organization, communications, measurement, integration and without turning sales into referenceable customers.

Technical Review 403

Technical Review Software Review Startup Churn Rate 403

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 12, 2018

Consumer value Once Jamie realized that he could not only sell tens of millions of dollars of home security cameras he also realized that he could get customers to sign up for a monthly subscription to keep the videos in storage in the cloud and review them after the fact. link] What does this all mean for the future?

Security 247

Security Los Angeles Silicon Valley Video 247

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

In all of these new product and cost-focused new trends, a big problem has emerged that all of these movements have not addressed. It should talk about how many customers you think you will acquire and how much you’ll charge for your product. I care about the thought that you’ve given to the customer problem.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 22, 2011

Ones that offer amazing value (low relative margins) at high volumes that makes it nearly impossible for high-cost incumbents to compete. Initially their only customers are people who can get by on the reduced functionality or perhaps don’t have the money to spend on the expensive product. think Amazon’s Storage costs).

Non-Compete 386

Non-Compete Startup Internet Cost 386

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 4, 2011

4 times / 100 means if a customer uses your app frequently (say 10-20 times / day) then they are crashing nearly every day. Customer Acquisition. At the highest level you’ll obviously want to track how many customers your adding every month (and for some businesses that have hit scale this is measured on a daily basis).

Metrics 346

Metrics Startup Acquisition SEM 346

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

Traditional video had very high costs of distribution due to limited time slots of broadcast TV (we only had enough spectrum to support 3-4 channels). Much of network television can cost $100,000 / minute to produce. Producers can cost-effectively test formats and build fans as they go. Much of it already is. Not so fast.

Video 339

Video Technical Review Distribution Aggregator 339

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2012

… phones cost money, phones do not scale. But only from customers. That’s because you are not their customer. The customer are advertising agencies and brands themselves. Unless you become a paying customer you’re just a cost center to them. In some ways it appears factually correct.

New York 311

New York Mobile Technical Review Software Review 311

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

So if your costs are $500,000 per month and you have $350,000 per month in revenue then your net burn (500-350) is equal to $150,000. You are particularly vulnerable if: You have revenue concentration (few customers each providing a large total of percentage of your revenue). Net burn is the amount of money you are losing per month.

Burn Rate 383

Burn Rate Balance Sheet .Net Valuation 383

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

Lately I’ve been having to say things I thought I’d never have to remind people, like, “getting to positive gross margin in several territories is a very low bar to claim success” or “profitable excluding marketing costs” is not actually a real thing. But not doing basic research makes no sense.

Startup 150

Startup Seed Money Software Review DC 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

And because I wanted Ethan to be able to attract a great team, build & iterate a product, test it with initial customers and refine his strategy before having to take the wrappers off of his company. Because I knew that Ethan was on to a powerful idea and one in which he had developed huge competence and domain knowledge in.

Southern California 359

Southern California San Francisco CTO Hire Stealth 359

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 18, 2019

An Insider’s Perspective “Bird Zero” that are custom designed by the company There is a story arc of the electric scooter market that took the world by storm in 2018, was second-guessed late in the year and has quietly re-emerged as a powerful force of growth where few really appreciate the speed and scale of what has happened. Simply put?—?there

South America 250

South America Global New York City Software Review 250

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2015

It wins through better distribution, logistics, inventory management, warehousing, customer support, merchandising, cross-selling and ultimately on price & scale. Most customers won’t drive more than a few miles to a self storage unit making the incumbents essentially local retail businesses. The value prop is pretty clear.

Technical Review 150

Technical Review San Diego Dallas Sacramento 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Board meeting gets scheduled Nobody thinks too much about it until a week or two before Management team has a last-minute scramble to pull materials together Management is super focused on its daily work of … winning customers, signing biz dev, shipping product … so this prep is a last minute “fire drill” and is seen as a slight distraction.

Stock Options 226

Stock Options Metrics Stock Valuation 226

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2014

Whenever I heard why we didn’t feel a sales process at an important customer was going well (or if we lost) I would get involved myself. They are as good at selling you as they are at selling your product to customers. Customer also buy social proof because others are acting as strong references.

Sales 382

Sales Startup Technical Review Matching 382

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2014

I tell people that they need to blog about their industry to drive customers and not blog to their egos to drive their peer group to their blogs. If you are early in a platform (Zynga to Facebook, AngryBirds to iOS, Maker Studios to YouTube) you catch a major marketing wave where acquiring customers and growing revenue is exponential.

Technical Review 384

Technical Review Hockey Stick SEM Channel 384

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 21, 2013

deliver profitable revenue that while on gross margins of 50% vs. software at 85-95% it is still profits to help you cover fixed costs. This might mean helping customers buy traffic, arb’ing deals, helping with RTB pricing or trading, etc. Minimize Any Custom Work That Will Not Feed Back Into Your R&D.

Software Review 321

Software Review Software IP Technical Review 321

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 9, 2010

So I still had to outlay $50-80k for hardware costs. I had been selling large content management systems and storing documents for industrial-scale customers. Many of the biggest customers wanted to be able to physically walk through our data center – how could I give up something so strategic? Processing.

Cloud 343

Cloud Technical Review Database Semantic 343

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 19, 2011

Social media will be pervasive in the enterprise and is primarily driving by customer interactions. When asked what their objectives are they cite some form of “improving customer communications” by a long margin. The costs of multi-platform development are too expensive.

Web 355

Web AJAX Distribution HTML 355

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

As a CEO you never stop needing to go on sales calls (or to work the phones in telesales or customer support) and ceasing to do this as your company grows because you’re focusing on investors, recruiting, PR or whatever is a mistake. I also make visits to senior level customers of portfolio companies with which I’m involved.

CTO Hire 308

CTO Hire Management Technical Review Part-Time VPE 308

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2009

.&# They know instinctually how customers buy and how to excite them. Because they’re street smart, most great entrepreneurs tend to prefer getting out and talking with real customers rather than sitting in a cubicle all day doing beautiful PowerPoint slides. Help me understand which you prefer.&# I lost zero customers.

Entrepreneur 306

Entrepreneur Burn Rate Cofounder Sales 306

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2015

So that we’re speaking the same language I would define “exclusive” as a period in which your company is prohibited from doing business with certain customers or business partners, which is why many incorrectly assume this is necessarily bad. Why Exclusivity Matters to Your Customers or Business Development Partners.

PR 150

PR Early Stage Software Naming 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 9, 2013

Work on budgets, submit RFPs, answer customers support calls, work the bug-tracking software, and trying to meet the next sprint release schedule. Your 2am coding session is more important than their 2am cocktails on the redeye back from Japan where they have no customers. Cost focused. Sell stuff. That makes no sense.

Software Review 398

Software Review Technical Review China Mexico 398

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2016

They thought factories were a threat to custom assembly of products and ultimately to the agrarian way of life (as more people were moving to urban environments). And of course since machinery costs money and lowers the number of people required to produce a product it pitted labor vs. capital. Cost advantages.

Global 150

Global Mexico China France 150

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

He also nails the reason why venture capital is still necessary to grow large businesses quickly in a world where the costs of running startups have fallen dramatically. It might be for technical reasons or it might be for customer adoption reasons. He talks about making things that people want & going after a big enough market.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2010

One of our core tasks was “market analysis,&# which consistent of: market sizing, market forecasts, competitive analysis and then instructing customers on which direction to take. 40% of costs are labor, 40% are materials and 20% are overheads. 23% of all costs are inefficient. It becomes folklore. It can happen.

Investment Bankers 415

Investment Bankers Mobile Software Review Japan 415

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

He took out an ad in the Yellow Pages (it was the early 80′s, pre Internet), which cost him $1,000 / month for a half-page ad. That gave Google a huge cost advantage. He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 5, 2010

You attend five customer meetings together over a two-week period and after each meeting you replay the results in the office about what it meant. The sales rep that brings back news from the front line that is shared with the office adds to our collective knowledge about customer needs, product design flaws or partnership opportunities.

Distribution 335

Distribution Offshore CTO Hire Bulgaria 335

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2015

We we backed Team Grove’s mission (Kevin sourced the deal and joined the board) and just encouraged the team not to ramp up costs like many contemporary startups because we’re going to play the long game. Yet it can be personal, low-cost and ubiquitous. eliminating herbicides & pesticides. ” Enter Grove.

Technical Review 150

Technical Review Software Review Founder Boston 150

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 3, 2013

When all of that was built we knew the next major step was to figure out how to go national on a cost-effective basis and – of course – how to make this available on your mobile phone. We built “book it now” functionality in LA and then San Francisco. ” Ah, but that’s exactly the point.

Development Team Review 324

Development Team Review Los Angeles San Francisco Mobile 324

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2010

.&# I took it to mean, “making decisions with small amounts of money (pennies) that end up making bad sense for affecting larger amounts of money (pounds, as in Great British Pounds).&# I thought of it as people who cut corners on small costs but paid dearly in terms of lost productivity on expensive staff.

Warrant 333

Warrant Germany France Cost 333

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

Whenever I heard why we didn’t feel a sales process at an important customer was going well (or if we lost) I would get involved myself. They are as good at selling you as they are at selling your product to customers. Customer also buy social proof because others are acting as strong references. They’re in beta).

Sales 316

Sales Technical Review Matching Hiring 316

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

Cloud computing and the open source movements have brought down the costs of starting a company by more than 90%. They need a combination of capital and experience to separate from the rest of the pack – the low cost of starting a business means it is even more vital to become the market leader more quickly. The Exit Problem.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Mobile 347

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2010

That is when no customers wanted to work with Internet startups because we as an industry had burned so many customers. I learned how to integrate customers into our product development process. I learned how to get press coverage when we were no longer “hot.&# I learned how to manage costs effectively.

Venture Capital 285

Venture Capital Hiring Software Review Stock Options 285

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 18, 2009

Customers are harder to sign than you want. You’ve got to accept customer losses as learning experiences and see how you can improve next time. The agreement was that both sets of investors would fund the combined entity, we would reduce overlapped costs and become a healthier company. In the morning I flew home.

Germany 298

Germany Entrepreneur Merger Los Angeles 298

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 17, 2010

We evangelized to customer about the problems of on premise software. - They therefore have large cost bases and have to pass on those costs to you. - But the trade-off in terms of flexibility and costs were enormous. It’s a way to reach your customers. You have a data problem. It’s a channel.

Flash 326

Flash Mobile Application Development Cloud 326

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2010

Research this market by doing market sizing, looking at existing products, talking to customers and deciding how you will make money. If you believe there is a market then build a prototype product that you can show customers, investors and potential employees. Paying customers. Validate that you can make money before starting.

Silicon Valley 308

Silicon Valley Bankruptcy Intellectual Property Reputation 308