Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

It wasn’t so many years ago that starting a new e-commerce business on the Internet was a complex custom development project, usually costing a million dollars or more. Social media facilitates marketing and sales. A programmer can build a new smartphone app for a few thousand dollars.

Cost 405

Cost Entrepreneur Burn Rate Social Media 405

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But my favorite was when the public relations manager said, “we’re here to write press releases and answer the phone in case the press calls.” competitive analyses, channel and customer collateral (white papers, data sheets, product reviews), customer surveys, and market requirements documents. It didn’t take more.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 268

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 6, 2014

Customer] Retention is King (good insights on measurement) – crowdspring.co/1haiyJt. Jessica Livingston: Why Startups Need to Focus on Sales, Not Marketing | WSJ – crowdspring.co/1h6bKMW. Customer Development 101) – crowdspring.co/1pNIOcD. Customer Development 101) – crowdspring.co/1pNIOcD.

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Software Review 94

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

We spent time out in the marketplace talking with customers, looking at their solutions, comparing ourselves with our competition and then squirreling ourselves away in our offices designing our next set of features. Our sales guys were on the front line and heard what they needed to win deals. Tim started to change our processes.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Since this was the marketing department, I was going to be planning to spend some advertising and public relations dollars. I wanted to understand how customers bought our products. I knew we were selling through a multi-level indirect sales channel. Market messages to indirect sales channels are just like that.

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 206

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

But we were meeting to talk about sales and marketing. Hiring Channel Sales. “So Why doesn’t this sound like the right thing to do for channel sales?” They thought about it for a moment and said, “Well we feel like we understand how to build things, but sales is something we thought we’d hire an expert to do.”.

PR 318

PR China Lean Channel 318

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

The only difference between us and the Internet bubble that would follow was that we did branding on the cheap by creating our image with public relations, whilethe dot-bomb era was to do it by spending enormous sums on advertising (those large venture rounds had to get spent somewhere.) Hindsight is wonderful.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

But we were meeting to talk about sales and marketing. Hiring Channel Sales. “So Why doesn’t this sound like the right thing to do for channel sales?” They thought about it for a moment and said, “Well we feel like we understand how to build things, but sales is something we thought we’d hire an expert to do.”.

PR 210

PR China Lean Channel 210

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 27, 2014

It wasn’t so many years ago that starting a new e-commerce business on the Internet was a complex custom development project, usually costing a million dollars or more. Social media facilitates marketing and sales. A programmer can build a new smartphone app for a few thousand dollars.

Entrepreneur 260

Entrepreneur Burn Rate Social Media LLC 260

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 4, 2010

They guess at their business model and then do premature, loud and aggressive Public Relations hype and early company launches and quickly burn through their cash. This is a great strategy if there’s a bubble occuring in your market or you are going to bet it all on flipping your company for a sale. Lieberman 2007.

Silicon Valley 321

Silicon Valley Differentiation United States Customer Development 321

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2012

From sources that the studios at one time claimed would put them out of business: Pay-per view TV, cable and satellite channels, video rentals, DVD sales, online subscriptions and digital downloads. and Public Relations. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Customer Development.

Silicon Valley 336

Silicon Valley Distribution Washington Channel 336

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 268

Duct Tape Marketing

MARCH 1, 2016

A channel for lead generation purposes is simply a broad way to gain access to your prospective audience – so referral generation is a channel, sales is a channel, SEO is a channel, and speaking is a channel – and there are countless ways to master every channel. This is not a sales presentation; it’s an education and value add tool.

Lead Generation 28

Lead Generation Channel Partner Campaign 28

www.rocketwatcher.com

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

For those of us selling to businesses however, particularly where there is a sales team involved and a pipeline to track, the world is quite different and Dave’s metrics don’t cover everything you need to track. For long sales cycles, it is important to measure this to estimate marketing ROI for tactics in the short term.

B2B 42

B2B Metrics Marketing Startup 42