Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

For a little while, the team can resort to the last defense of entrepreneurs in trouble: the promised hockey-stick. One thing that is often overlooked about the hockey-stick growth shape: its most distinctive characteristic is the long, flat part. Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. These founders have not managed, to borrow a phrase from Steve Blank , to create a scalable and repeatable sales process. Get product into customers’ hands. More on that in a moment.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

A first order filter is whether the founders are aiming for a scalable startup. The question was: what did the founders want to do? The question was: what did the founders want to do? Will Harvey , Eric Ries and the other founders were unequivocal – “Screw the buy-out, we’re here to build a company. Go For Broke.

Hockey Stick 276

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 276

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

They told the CEO (who was the technical founder) that the sales team should focus on “other markets.” The founder was doing his best to try to explain that his vision today was the same as when he pitched the company to the VC’s and when they funded the company. Because that’s not what the founders had built. What went wrong?

Revenue 230

Revenue Balance Sheet Hockey Stick Burn Rate 230

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

That year the two founders decided to get serious about being a company, and hired a CEO. In today’s language of Customer Development , RIM positioned the Blackberry as a segment of an existing market – pager users who needed two-way communication. Filed under: Customer Development , Market Types.

Hockey Stick 271

Hockey Stick Customer Development Silicon Valley Networking 271

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

Most important slide: hockey stick Micro-scale results Key questions: who is the customer, and how do you know? who is the customer? Most important slide: about the founders In a pitch meeting, try to spend as much time as possible talking about the key questions for your pitch. what is the potential market size?

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

It was amazing to see the two founders, Fred Durham and Maheesh Jain, build a $100 million company from coffee cups and T-shirts. But Cafepress’s most memorable moment was when the founders used a “Lessons Learned” VC pitch to raise their second round of funding and got an 8-digit term sheet that same afternoon.

Venture Capital 209

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 209