Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Evangelism marketing is an advanced form of word of mouth marketing (WOMM), now largely replaced by Facebook and Twitter.

CTO Hire 244

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 244

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

While the last post was titled “ You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When They Offer You a Job “, this post should probably be titled, “You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When You Offer Them a Job.&# These hires were definitely not your standard marketing types.

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Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Gust

APRIL 20, 2014

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Evangelism marketing is an advanced form of word of mouth marketing (WOMM), now largely replaced by Facebook and Twitter.

CTO Hire 171

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 171

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

So, definition: when I talk about a business plan I’m not talking about a 40-page Word document outlining your market approach. That died with waterfall software development. Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small?

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Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Evangelism marketing is an advanced form of word of mouth marketing (WOMM), now largely replaced by Facebook and Twitter.

CTO Hire 227

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 227

Up and Running

MAY 18, 2016

Why David Rose recommends it: “While you weren’t looking, the old school business plan was superseded by something that is critically important, intended for you instead of other people, developed by you instead of other people, and constantly reviewed and updated.”. Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy.

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Startup Venture Capital Angel Investor Lean 80

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ? And when do business planning and execution come into play?

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Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 320

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 9, 2014

Below is a proposal for definitions and relationships for the process of bringing ideas to life, which I call the Inventure Cycle. She partnered with Stanford professor Scott Delp to develop and test a relatively inexpensive, noninvasive, and effective treatment. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Technology.

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Entrepreneur Framework Lean Customer Development 335

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

The excerpts, which appeared first at Inc.com , highlight the Customer Development process, best practices, tips and instructions contained in our book. Founders, presuming they know their customers, assume they know all the features customers need. Start-ups by definition have few, if any, of these.

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Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

And that narrow definition of entrepreneurship doesn’t count all of the managers inside established companies who are effectively engaged in the same process of building an internal startup (see What is a startup? for my more expansive definition). for my more expansive definition). What motivates all these entrepreneurs?

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. This is a customer development problem. So What is Customer Development? The core idea behind customer development is that the assumptions you make about a target market are only guesses. Website Analysis.

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Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

That’s the definition of insanity. Now the company is in crisis mode because the rest of the organization (product development, marketing, etc.) Business Model Design and Customer Development Stack. The alternative to the traditional product introduction process is the Business Model Design and Customer Development Stack.

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Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

The law of large numbers (of customers) says you cant help but make at least some money - your valuation is determined by how well you monetize the tidal wave of growth. Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Since no benchmarks existed, we enlisted our engineering department in a serious software development effort and wrote our own. And we made sure that instead of some artificial numbers, the benchmarks truly measured performance on these four key applications our customers told us were important. You don’t delegate life and death.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

So sticking to my definition of “attributes for success&# it had to be my Top 11 +1 rather than a Top 12. Assistly is a customer support product designed to meet the needs of the current era of multi-channel touch points (think Twitter, email, chat, forum in addition to phone calls). Made ME laugh, anyways.

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San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

We lack a consistent and clear definition of the job. When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. What made them exceptional?

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CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

ConversionXL

MARCH 4, 2020

In most cases, fixing discrepancies requires some work by developers, analytics implementation specialists, or other experts. Before starting a comparison, make sure you understand how each tool works and the definitions for their terminology (session, visit, visitor, user, etc.). credit card, PayPal, Apple Pay, etc.)

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Analytics IP Metrics Conversion 88

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. You dive deep into a customer development process, working closely with a few customers who feed you requirements and are willing to trial an imperfect product that is evolving quickly. 1) Enterprise Sales.

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Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

www.kernelmag.com

MARCH 8, 2012

The Scene Developers Nailing that elusive technical co-founder. Just last week, start-up supremo Naval Ravikant of AngelList wrote how the “oversupply” of founders starting companies is making it harder to hire for the average startup. Derek Sivers: How to hire a programmer to make your ideas happen. The Kernel. Yiannopoulos.

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Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Coder 43

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

If youre looking for resources on getting started, see " Continuous deployment in 5 easy steps ") The goal of continuous deployment is to help development teams drive waste out of their process by simultaneously reducing the batch size and increasing the tempo of their work. How severely is failure punished?

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Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 18, 2010 Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases non-events The following is a case study of one entrepreneurs transition from a traditional development cycle to continuous deployment. Managing weekly releases got a lot harder once I started doing customer development.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

And do your customer development. Really enjoyed your speech, but Boulder's startup community is definitely older than 5 years. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Provide early seed capital, and be the ones to make those introductions.

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San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Continuous Deployment 113

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Now its time to start to think seriously about how to find a repeatable and scalable sales process, how to position and market the product, and how to build a product development team that can turn an early product into a Whole Product. Usually, that will be about finding new segments of customers that the company can profitably serve.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 4, 2019

If you have an email address, your information is definitely on the cloud because providers use the cloud to store such information. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) – This constitutes a business creating custom apps that can be accessed by the entire company when needed. Including guides on hiring an Oracle consultant company.

Cloud 82

Cloud Artificial Inteligence Matching Hosting 82

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

Yet, I think this definition is too important to leave out. davemcclure : amazing concepts on Continuous Development => "Cluster Immune System" @EricRies #LeanStartup @fbFund [link] dalelarson : Because most features take longer to argue and prioritize than to build. Use some customer development to find out.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

Now there was nothing wrong with their analysis: anyone who invents a technology as sophisticated as The Transformers is definitely going to make a lot of money. Turns out, they were incredibly well-credentialed graduate students who had, in fact, developed some interesting new robotics technology. 2comments: King of the Herd said.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

The response so far has been nothing short of overwhelming, and I want to especially thank those of you who participated in the survey and customer validation exercise that helped shape this event. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? For now, Id like to ask a favor.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. And this was a huge product, which took years to develop.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2016

That helped us develop a product. . We found customers who said, “Yeah, this is a real problem,” developed a product, they said, “Yeah, we dig it.” ” We were able to acquire some early customers … (and) used that to raise some money. Do we hire 50 sales people?

Cofounder 120

Cofounder DC Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 120

viniciusvacanti.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

Hire a Programmer The Hope: You’ll use the programmer to build a prototype that will get you traction and experience. You know how to product manage and you’ve hired programmers before. I recommend you start by reading this post on how to hire a programmer. We tried this at Yipit and failed.

Cofounder 43

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Ruby 43

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

Oh, and we had no installed customer base. I had hired the VP of marketing from a potential software partner who was responsible to get all this 3 rd party software on our computer. In reality we hadn’t gotten any closer to our goal than the day we hired him. We had accomplished nothing – zero, zilch, nada.

Silicon Valley 324

Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 324

rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

Ask anybody what a software developer does and they can give you the one-sentence “makes software” answer. This isn’t because technical people are flakier or inherently less entrepreneurial; it’s because by definition they have a narrower set of highly in-demand skills. Your points are solid.

Technical Cofounder 42

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Engineering Fractional CTO 42

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

It was definitely a “Zen moment&# for me in terms of my career. Reply Customer Development Gut Checks « Market By Numbers - Brant Cooper , on April 28, 2009 at 11:38 am Said: [.] From then on when I screwed up, not only did I own up to it, I asked for help. Ownership and Teamwork not turf.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 120

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, February 11, 2009 The free software hiring advantage This is one of those startup tips Im a little reluctant to share, because its been such a powerful source of competitive advantage in the companies Ive worked with. This approach gives you an edge in hiring. Instead, engage with the project.

Software Review 68

Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco 68