Remove Customer Development Remove Early Stage Remove Hiring Remove Operations
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Entrepreneurship is an Art not a Job

Steve Blank

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. it is an art) and again hired professionals. George Bernard Shaw.

Agile 332
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How VCs Can Accelerate Portfolio Company Returns

David Teten

The objective of the research is to define a blueprint for how investors can help portfolio companies succeed through operational (non-financial) support, including but not limited to facilitating shared services, recruiting, knowledge sharing, and enhancing management skills. Venture capitalists are financiers of a special nature.

Portfolio 144
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Create Structure out of the Gate and You’ll Thank Yourself Later

Feld Thoughts

Following is his advice to early stage entrepreneurs for creating structure in their company. So, I’ll explain my reasoning through the story of ASC, a fictitious company that has a combination of characteristics I’ve seen across a number of early stage companies. Soundbites from potential customers are encouraging.

Burn Rate 152
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Convergent Technologies: War Story 1 – Selling with Sports Scores.

Steve Blank

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

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How Private Equity and Venture Capital Investors Are Eating Their Own Dogfood

David Teten

In venture capital in particular, early-stage companies are often operating in frontier industries, where the rules are unpredictable and conventional analytic frameworks may be misleading. The Pocket Negotiator is very early-stage attempt to aid in the negotiating process itself. . are using AngelMob.co

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Job Titles That Can Sink Your Startup

Steve Blank

I was glad to see him but it was clear over coffee that he was struggling with his first hiring failure. I’ve been running our company, cycling through Customer Discovery and Validation and the board suggested that I was running out of bandwidth and needed some help in closing our initial orders. It was deja vu all over again.

Startup 312
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Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers

Startup Lessons Learned

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? But all things are never equal.

Customer 167