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. Market Size. MakeSpace provides physical storage.

Startup 150

Startup Seed Money DC Software Review 150

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Ive attempted to embed the relevant slides below.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Blog About Log in Register Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition In the many thousands of articles advising entrepreneurs on what they have to focus on to build successful startups, much has been written about three key factors: team, product and market, with particular focus on the importance of product/market fit.

Acquisition 103

Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103

ConversionXL

MARCH 29, 2017

The truth is, they simply had a solid growth marketing process. Yet, marketing teams continue to make decisions based on what has worked in the past, what has worked for other people and what appears to be working for competitors. Can you increase your total number of customers by 30%? Growth Process > Growth Hacks.

Marketing 48

Marketing Distribution Retention eCommerce 48

Austin Startup

MARCH 26, 2019

25 questions that DTC entrepreneurs should ask themselves before scaling customer acquisition So you run a direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand. You just spent a few thousand dollars on advertising and your paid customer acquisition cost (CAC) numbers tested well relative to your best guess for customer lifetime value (LTV).

Technical Review 49

Technical Review Software Review China Acquisition 49

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.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Hearpreneur

JUNE 5, 2020

When I’m managing our sales and marketing strategy, I’m making sure I’m looking at it from our competitor’s perspective. ‘How would I out-maneuver our SEM keywords? An employee who is not visible can lose motivation, which can adversely impact customer interactions. Social media presence?

Leadership 110

Leadership Entrepreneur SEM Employee 110

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2015

YouTube takes too high of a revenue split (45% vs. 30% that Apple and many other distribution companies take – FWIW, YouTube argues this is because their costs are much higher since they host and stream the video). This kind of spend happens all day long inside startup companies and 100% of the spend on attracting customers is a cost.

SEM 150

SEM Los Angeles Silicon Valley Acquisition 150

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 14, 2008 How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people Frequency is more important than talking to the "right" customers, especially early on. Youll know when the person youre talking to is not a potential customer - they just wont understand what youre saying.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

WordStream confirmed that seven days was plenty of trial time, and they didn’t need to waste resources chasing customers down a longer funnel. No changes were made to the customer journey, and it had nothing to do with revenue lift. Yet, this was a successful growth marketing campaign. What is growth marketing?

Framework 102

Framework Marketing Acquisition Retention 102

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. Maybe It’s Me When I got to the SuperMac, our Marketing Communications group told me about our “award-winning&# retail packaging for our graphics boards.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

The chicken-egg issue of getting customers to your platform while you don’t have any money to spare is a puzzle that many companies are unable to figure out at all. Then, in 2015, this is who we added to the team: Jan-15: Head of Customer Success (growth team). Apr-15: Head of Marketing (growth team). Lean marketing.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said. September 11, 2008 2:06 PM Editor said.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Scalable systems are no exception - if your assumptions about how many customers youll have, or how they will behave are just a little bit wrong, you can wind up with a massive amount of wasted code. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

MogileFS - "Distributed (meta) file system. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone How to Usability Test your Site for Free The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the tim. How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.

Open Source 107

Open Source San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 107

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 25, 2009

all the other folks out there that will try to enter the same market) the barriers have been dropping over the last few years. Fantastic post by Christian Gammill - Startup Delta Force… From a competitive perspective (e.g. How’s that for duality.

Business Model 150

Business Model SEM IP Syndicate 150

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

vs. sustainable: Compare this to the renewable strategies, like viral marketing, SEO, widgets, and ads, which can scale into 10s of millions of users but are primarily centered around tough, non-user centric work. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone How to Usability Test your Site for Free The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the tim. How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Labels: agile , listening to customers 3comments: hauteroute said. Wouldn't it make more sense to Learn (customer discovery) then proceed to ideas,code, data, implement and measure? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

When you have an infinitesimal number of customers, it can be embarrassing. But as long as your ego can take it, there are huge advantages to having a small number of customers. Most importantly, you can get to know those few customers in a way that people with zillions of customers cant. You can even meet the friend.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 133

crowdSPRING Blog

DECEMBER 8, 2013

Finally your customers. Lots of ways great and small and the ideas are endless: for companies with a relatively smaller customer base, you might shoot them a card, send them a small gift, or even invite them down to your company party. Hey, even a company-branded Gulfstream may be appropriate for some od you out there! Ah yes, them.

Small Business 85

Small Business Startup Campaign SEM 85

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

In my experience, the majority of changes we made to products have no effect at all on customer behavior. The report is set up to show you what happened to customers who registered in that period (a so-called cohort analysis ). This report is set up to tell you about new customers specifically. First of all, why split-test?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

You delight customers just like before. In an eyeballs business, you just cant seem to acquire or activate that next step-up of customers. Or your cost of customer acquisition just magically floats up to match your customer lifetime value. How to listen to customers, and not just the loud. You listen and learn.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone How to Usability Test your Site for Free The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the tim. How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 6, 2008

Ive been even more impressed by the various Greasemonkey compilers out there, that let you turn a Greasemonkey script into a full-blown Firefox extension, for easy distribution. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone How to Usability Test your Site for Free The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the tim. How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC 68

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 21, 2010

One of the investment themes I’ve been focused on in the past 3 years has been Performance-Based Marketing. When I started investing the US advertising market was $300 billion with only 10% of it ($30 billion) of it being online and measurable. I believe that many social networks confused this idea. Early evidence is good.

Advertising 284

Advertising Las Vegas Affiliate RSS 284

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The opportunity isnt to give into temptation and figure out how to recklessly and expensively market the frontlist. It is to adopt a long and slow and ultimately profitable strategy of marketing your ever-growing backlist. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? But then what?

San Francisco 76

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 76

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone How to Usability Test your Site for Free The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the tim. How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 16, 2008

Read more at How to Usability Test your Site for Free | Noah Kagans Okdork.com Labels: listening to customers 1 comments: HKagan said. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

We just had our app support a few tens of thousands of customers, and it did well. You can turn your entire application infrastructure investment into a pay-as-you-go variable cost, and bring new products to market at speeds an order of magnitude faster than just 10 years ago. How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

You can keep the team focused on customer-centric results, rather than conformance to spec. Usability design is a highly iterative process, and the more customers who are involved (via in-person interview, split-test experiment, etc) the better. There are no customers for that feature, UI issues or no. I strongly disagree.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

www.cscyphers.com

MARCH 8, 2012

It can be hard to sort the wheat from the chaff when you’re talking to a marketing person (‘Ah, you do internet marketing? the marketing to get potential customers to use that weekend website. Or massively distributed data persistence systems and algorithms. Marketing (12). And… what else?”).

Cofounder 40

Cofounder Technical Review Founder Software Review 40

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Sometimes, testing with existing customers is more complicated than with new customers. Existing customers already have an expectation about how your product works, and its important to take this into consideration when adding or changing features. On the other hand, existing customers can be a testing benefit.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Brandanew

OCTOBER 28, 2015

I wrote about the Mystery Show earlier on SEM Rush as being supremely original and exciting. Collaborate with others : Whether it is your customers, experts in the field, influencers, investors, bloggers – develop stories to involve them into the narrative.

Audio 100

Audio Audience Channel SEM 100

crowdSPRING Blog

OCTOBER 27, 2013

Many small business owners are devoting a significant chunk of their capacity to social media marketing, albeit sometimes with limited results. Studies have shown over 60% of small business marketers devote as much as 10 hours per week to SM campaigns and tactics. Outsourcing social media. Search is personalized.

Small Business 92

Small Business Securities and Exchange Commission Social Media Startup 92