YoungUpstarts

JULY 16, 2019

Customers enjoy online shopping; their demands create enormous opportunities for eCommerce company’s growth. Have you developed any vision of a product development strategy? And keep in mind that the best option is to develop at least 5 domain names connected to your brand’s name to find an unoccupied domain.

eCommerce 113

eCommerce Software Developers Software Development Hosting 113

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

As organizations we have become more open and I believe this is great for businesses and their customers. 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.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

Here’s how I learned why they were critical to successful customer development. I was an aggressive, young and a very tactical VP of marketing at Ardent , a supercomputer company – who really hadn’t a clue about the relationship between profound beliefs, customer discovery and strategy. I was a great marketer.

Business Model 345

Business Model Product Development Early Stage Customer Development 345

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 17, 2018

As an example, the reasons we provide to prospective engineers are 1. impactful work (we point to specific features that are being used by 100s of customers) and 3. For example, if you run a tech startup , you will know how hard it is to find good software engineers. Not sales, product development, or fundraising.

Cofounder 164

Cofounder Elevator Pitch Hiring Dividend 164

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 22, 2023

Consumers are becoming increasingly health-conscious and seeking to understand their options for treatments and healthcare products. As a result, businesses in this field should leverage technology to provide interactive, easy-to-understand educational content that can help customers make health-related decisions and maintain healthy habits.

Artificial Inteligence 123

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Entrepreneur Social Media 123

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2018

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Consider licensing your product or intellectual property, and “white labeling.”

Intellectual Property 134

Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 134

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 7, 2020

Every entrepreneur and startup loves you, but too many forget that every potential customer is not like you. If you are a technical entrepreneur, you can count on early adopters to be first in line for your product, and they are quick to provide feedback on quality, and suggest even more features. Usability is often an afterthought.

Kentucky 354

Kentucky Startup China Global 354

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 28, 2022

My wife and I both worked as mechanical engineers, so we wanted a name that paid tribute to our profession. Momentum is a term that is highly related to engineering, as it relates to motion and dynamics. We always strive to be a cut above the rest in our industry and want to consistently uphold and earn our name. ParamountQuote.

Naming 150

Naming Entrepreneur Jordan Merger 150

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2014

Agile is a tremendous advance in reducing time, money and wasted product development effort – and in having products better match customer needs. But businesses are finding that Continuous Deployment not only changes engineering but has ripple effects on the rest of its business model.

Continuous Deployment 331

Continuous Deployment Customer Agile Cloud 331

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? When we build products, we use a methodology. But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." a roadmap for how to get to Product/Market Fit."

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. You can easily take from it whatever makes sense for your business, and leave the rest. I think theyve succeeded.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

During the Cold War with the Soviet Union, science and engineering at both Stanford and U.C. Berkeley were heavily funded to develop Cold War weapon systems. Traction and evidence from customers were what investors were looking for – even in “slow” sectors like healthcare and energy. And there it was.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Venture Chronicles

AUGUST 2, 2013

and more on point is that the best product is a result of what you learn from your customers, not what you think you should be doing. If we did anything egregiously wrong at Get Satisfaction in the 2010-1012 time period it was to under-invest in the product with the assumption that the existing product was good enough.

Product 62

Product CTO Hire Architecture Startup 62

View from Seed

MARCH 24, 2021

” Below are our favorite pieces from the past few years, divided in to a few key categories: fundraising, company building, product development, industry trends, and the life of a VC. For the rest of the partnership, their focus would be to quickly form an opinion about the team and probing on the areas of their hesitation.”

Seed Stage 177

Seed Stage Hiring IPO Analytics 177

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2018

The rest is chronicled in the book, but we find these kinds of innovators and learners throughout the corporate world. Doing less—and sticking to that narrow scope—is key, yet the temptations to prematurely expand to new customer groups, new features, new products and services, and new geographies is very strong.

Metrics 349

Metrics Startup Lean Detroit 349

Up and Running

JUNE 14, 2017

Some believe in the all-in approach to product development: build an advanced app. As part of my initial customer outreach and research phases, I personally (not over a phone call, social media, or a landing page) met with over 600 potential partners (recycling centers and local businesses). What happened to the rest?

Technical Review 96

Technical Review Distribution Redemption Demand 96

Transformify

MARCH 14, 2020

At the same time, the stock markets collapsed, and most businesses already report skyrocketing losses, unmet revenue targets and insufficient stock due to production slow down in China, India and the rest of the world. In the past, very few work from home jobs were created. The same was valid for hiring neurodiverse people in general.

Hiring 98

Hiring Bulgaria Italy Spain 98

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Defective prototype code was as often thrown out (because customers didnt want it) as it was fixed (when customers did). Read the rest of The Startups Rules of Speed - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review.

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.&# And, most importantly, it helps team members develop the courage to stand up for these values in stressful situations. And the rest is history: Google Maps was a huge success. Ship it.&# How will they define quality?

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Your Customers are Not Who You Think For years I thought this “million unit chip sale by accident&# was a “one-off&# funny story. That is until I saw that in startup after startup customers come from places you don’t plan on. Your board nods sagely at your target customer list.

Silicon Valley 143

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 143

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

When I try to unpack what people mean by the question, heres my best take on what they are asking: "Look, Steve Jobs doesnt go out and ask customers what they want. He doesnt put out crappy, buggy products and then ask for feedback. He tells customers what they want, and he gets it right. Maybe they do it at the whiteboard.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Austin Startup

AUGUST 20, 2017

Your original business plan will probably go out the window when you land your first customer. Does the rest of your team measure progress the way you are? Customers are choices made by your startup. You want to see your product or service performing in the hands of real users. Do your investors and board members?

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Software Review Cap Table Securities and Exchange Commission 48

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 6, 2008 When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to rely on split-tests There are three legs to the lean startup concept: agile product development , low-cost (fast to market) platforms , and rapid-iteration customer development. However, that cant be the end of the story.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 14, 2015

Lately, I’ve been hearing from a lot of entrepreneurs experiencing pushback to the concept of minimum viable product. Their teams may disagree about what a product should look like, who the customer is, and which distributors to work with, but one thing they can all agree upon is: “We build high-quality products in this company.

Stealth 60

Stealth Engineer Leadership Design 60

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

So if youre new, consider not paying any attention to the rest of this post, and just diving into the archives, if you havent already. Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) He previously co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

The larger-account division wanted to move the pricing in just the other direction – making the low-end products more expensive, so their large customers would have an increased incentive to upgrade. Many custom reports had been created for this meeting, and the data warehouse team was in the meeting, too.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

I met one recently that is working on a really innovative product, and the stories I heard from their development team made me want to cringe. The product manager was clearly struggling to get results from the rest of the team. Lets start with what the product manager does. Frustration is mounting.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

They have a product that has a moderate number of customers. Its well done, looks professional, and the customers that use it like it a lot. Still, theyre not really hitting it out of the park, because their product isnt growing new users as fast as theyd like, and they arent making any money from the current users.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

One such technique is called Five Whys, which has its origins in the Toyota Production System, and posits that behind every supposedly technical problem is actually a human problem. Read the rest of The Five Whys for Start-Ups. Read the rest of The Five Whys for Start-Ups. Applied to a start-up, heres how it works.

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

If we accept the verdict of customers instead of pundits, I think these claims are easy to dismiss. One is used by engineers to refer to the process of getting code fully integrated into production. Another is used by marketing to refer to what customers see.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

Listen to this episode if you want to hear about a founder who has a product and users and paying customers … and is trying to figure out how to take his company to the next level and grow faster. Jason: So how many of those 20,000 people are paying customers? Edwin: Okay, I have different types of customers.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Thats the conclusion Ive come to after watching tons of online products fail for a complete lack of customers. Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. We finally settled on a $1.99

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

My most recent startup created a marketplace for customers to buy and sell virtual goods for their 3D avatar. Read the rest at The Conversation - Harvard Business Review. My most recent startup created a marketplace for customers to buy and sell virtual goods for their 3D avatar.

San Francisco 119

San Francisco Management Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

Getting features and fixes into hands of users was the greatest priority - a test environment would just get in the way and slow down the validation coming from having code running in production. As the product matured, they were able to ratchet up the quality to prevent regression on features that had been truly embraced by their customers.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131

SVPG

MARCH 5, 2011

One situation that unfortunately happens is when you have a visionary CEO and he has a solid partner running product that is very strong at execution, but the founder eventually leaves and now the company has a problem because nobody is there to provide the vision for the future. They respect and value their designers and engineers.

Product 82

Product CTO Hire Hiring Leadership 82

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 22, 2010

Luckily for the rest of us, he was able to find his path to a green card, and now employs 24 Americans in West Lafayette, Indiana. Read the rest of The New Startup Arms Race at Huffington Post. Luckily for the rest of us, he was able to find his path to a green card, and now employs 24 Americans in West Lafayette, Indiana.

San Francisco 121

San Francisco Indiana Lean Startup 121

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, November 17, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part one Ive written before about some of the advantages startups have when they are very small, like the benefits of having a pathetically small number of customers. Talking to potential customers and competitors customers.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88