Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 8, 2022

If you take investor money, expect a push for hockey-stick growth and a liquidity event, like going public (IPO) or sale (M&A), to get the payback. You can’t have it all, just like your startup can’t be all things to all customers. The control and growth dilemma.

Founder 325

Founder Hockey Stick Cofounder Liquidity Event 325

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. For a startup, having great sales DNA is a wonderful asset.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Up and Running

JANUARY 2, 2013

Impress the investors with what you and your team have accomplished to date (sales, contracts, key hires, product launches, etc.). Customer Acquisition : This is usually one of the most skipped sections of an investor pitch and a full business plan. How will you reach your customers? How much will it cost?

Hockey Stick 164

Hockey Stick Exit Strategy Technical Review Due Diligence 164

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 26, 2013

Traction is evidence that your product or service has started that “hockey- stick” adoption rate which implies a large market, a valid business model, and sustainable growth. A graph that shows a hockey-stick “up and to the right” curve with at least three data points per key indicator is a great visual assist.

Hockey Stick 266

Hockey Stick Early Stage Metrics Acquisition 266

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 10, 2019

If you take investor money, expect a push for hockey-stick growth and a liquidity event, like going public (IPO) or sale (M&A), to get the payback. You can’t have it all, just like your startup can’t be all things to all customers. The control and growth dilemma.

Hockey Stick 243

Hockey Stick Cofounder Liquidity Event Startup 243

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 26, 2014

Every entrepreneur thinks he can relax a bit after his business model is proven, funding is in place, and revenues are scaling as projected up that hockey-stick curve. Initially, all companies sell to customers who are the easiest to reach and most excited about the new product. An expanding customer base demands better support.

Hockey Stick 263

Hockey Stick Guerilla Acquisition Revenue 263

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 3, 2018

Every entrepreneur thinks he can relax a bit after his business model is proven, funding is in place, and revenues are scaling as projected up that hockey-stick curve. Initially, all companies sell to customers who are the easiest to reach and most excited about the new product. An expanding customer base demands better support.

Hockey Stick 130

Hockey Stick Guerilla Acquisition Revenue 130

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2013

I see too many business plans that are really product plans for customers, touting free services and long feature lists. No product, even with a large opportunity, is ready to scale until you can show it working, with multiple customers paying the full price, to validate the business model. Word-of-mouth does not scale.

Hockey Stick 278

Hockey Stick Intellectual Property Startup Non-Compete 278

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 14, 2014

If you take investor money, expect a push for hockey-stick growth and a liquidity event, like going public (IPO) or sale (M&A), to get the payback. You can’t have it all, just like your startup can’t be all things to all customers. The control and growth dilemma.

Hockey Stick 268

Hockey Stick Cofounder Entrepreneur Liquidity Event 268

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 26, 2010

The only concern was that they didn’t know what their cost of customer acquisition was, nor did they which channels would be most effective, or how much they could acquire out of each channel. The good thing is that customer acquisition is a pretty easily testable thing. It’s a very different animal than an enterprise sales strategy.

Acquisition 128

Acquisition Hockey Stick Customer SEM 128

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2017

If you take investor money, expect a push for hockey-stick growth and a liquidity event, like going public (IPO) or sale (M&A), to get the payback. You can’t have it all, just like your startup can’t be all things to all customers. The control and growth dilemma.

Hockey Stick 144

Hockey Stick Cofounder Entrepreneur Liquidity Event 144

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 1, 2015

Every entrepreneur thinks he can relax a bit after his business model is proven, funding is in place, and revenues are scaling as projected up that hockey-stick curve. Initially, all companies sell to customers who are the easiest to reach and most excited about the new product. An expanding customer base demands better support.

Hockey Stick 120

Hockey Stick Guerilla Startup Acquisition 120

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

I see too many business plans that are really product plans for customers, touting free services and long feature lists. No product, even with a large opportunity, is ready to scale until you can show it working, with multiple customers paying the full price, to validate the business model. Word-of-mouth does not scale.

Hockey Stick 120

Hockey Stick Intellectual Property Non-Compete Business Model 120

Gust

NOVEMBER 15, 2012

In my own portfolio I have companies that are generally perceived to be extremely successful with high profile customers and lots of sales…but they just happen to have a liquidation preference ladder of $25 million!

Seed Stage 131

Seed Stage Hockey Stick Cap Table Liquidation Preference 131

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 19, 2013

If you take investor money, expect a push for hockey-stick growth and a liquidity event, like going public (IPO) or sale (M&A), to get the payback. You can’t have it all, just like your startup can’t be all things to all customers. The control and growth dilemma.

Founder 245

Founder Hockey Stick Cofounder Liquidity Event 245

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. Not All Startups Are Alike There’s an urban legend that Eskimos-Aleuts have more words to describe snow than other cultures.

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 11, 2015

I see too many business plans that are really product plans for customers, touting free services and long feature lists. No product, even with a large opportunity, is ready to scale until you can show it working, with multiple customers paying the full price, to validate the business model. Word-of-mouth does not scale.

Hockey Stick 120

Hockey Stick Intellectual Property Non-Compete Business Model 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

In my last post I described what happened when a company prematurely scales sales and marketing before adequately testing its hypotheses in Customer Discovery. The VC’s were very concerned that the revenue the financial plan called for wasn’t being delivered by the sales team. They don’t. All this takes time.” What went wrong?

Revenue 230

Revenue Balance Sheet Hockey Stick Burn Rate 230

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

By 1992 Research in Motion (RIM) had been in business for eight years, had 16 employees, sales of about $500,000 a year, and three or four business lines. But RIM decided to hide all of that from their customers. Sales of VHS-based VCRs exploded after Sony and JVC fought a brutal standards battle (Betamax versus VHS) and when the U.S.

Hockey Stick 271

Hockey Stick Customer Development Silicon Valley Networking 271

Ben's Blog

JULY 20, 2011

When I ran Opsware, we had the non-linear quarter problem also known affectionately as the hockey stick. The hockey stick refers to the shape of the revenue graph over the course of a quarter. Our hockey stick was so bad that one quarter, we booked 90% of our new bookings on the last day of the quarter.

Hockey Stick 78

Hockey Stick Management Employee Retention 78

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Now with customers and early revenue, it was out raising its first round of venture money. Not only did their sales curve look like a textbook case of a VC-friendly hockey stick, but their Lessons Learned funding presentation was an eye-opener.). Customer and Agile development to find the business model.

Hockey Stick 276

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 276

thebarefootvc

DECEMBER 16, 2011

Discovery, in contrast to search, took center stage as Pinterest displayed hockey stick growth (and raised VC money near a $200M valuation in late 2011). The viral nature of social media no doubt aided this growth, as did improvements in the online shopping experience. And Beyond….

Technical Review 110

Technical Review India Mobile Hockey Stick 110

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 19, 2016

You get more traffic, more conversions, more money – in an endless hockey stick shaped cycle. Considering position #1 has been shown to get 33% of traffic, you can lose a lot of potential customers. ” The implications are great for the customer experience in general. Of course, it’s not so simple. Conclusion.

SEO 48

SEO Technical Review Algorithm Jacksonville 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Forget about traction and hockey stick growth. Very simply, your cost to acquire a customer needs to be lower than the value of that customer (lifetime value).

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Forget about traction and hockey stick growth. Very simply, your cost to acquire a customer needs to be lower than the value of that customer (lifetime value).

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Small Business Force

FEBRUARY 15, 2013

It seems that "Maker's Mark" has become one of the most sought-after bourbons at bars, restaurants and hotels, to say nothing of straight out retailer sales. Sure, you've got a business plan and it shows the proverbial "hockey stick" of growth. Could you handle all of the ensuing sales situations? You get the picture.

Hockey Stick 37

Hockey Stick Dilution Viral Demand 37

Up and Running

APRIL 28, 2015

This is a quick one sentence overview of your business and the value that you provide to your customers. Use this slide to expand on who your ideal customer is and how many of them there are. Describe how customers use your product and how it addresses the problems that you outlined on slide two. Keep it short and simple.

Forecast 60

Forecast Hockey Stick Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 60

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 21, 2010

Since we often invest before the big “hockey stick” traction that bigger VCs wait for, a lot of times the company is still trying to tweak exactly what service or application will take off in a given market. On the other hand, I recently saw a deal where it was clear that we needed a very business development focused entrepreneur.

Product 68

Product Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Syndicate 68

Up and Running

AUGUST 21, 2014

Every single page you have on your website needs to have a purpose and needs to have a functionality for that customer or that visitor. You need to get to a point in your funnel where you have enough people coming in that you can get to that conversion rate that will get you the sales that you need to drive your business forward.

Metrics 84

Metrics Startup Churn Rate Forecast 84

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

Rather than a traditional VC pitch I suggested that they do something unconventional and tell the story of their journey in Customer Discovery and Validation. The heart of the Cafepress presentation is the “ Lessons Learned from our Customers ” section. You already have the hockey stick and exponential growth.

Venture Capital 209

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 209

ConversionXL

APRIL 10, 2020

Hockey-stick growth requires being ahead of, not in line with, conventional wisdom: The most impactful ideas won’t be found in “best practices.” Despite the changing, complex growth landscape, some things may always work: Arnoux: “Good content marketing, understanding the customer, and reducing friction as much as possible.

Hockey Stick 68

Hockey Stick Analytics Channel Sales Cycle 68

Up and Running

MARCH 11, 2015

If you don’t have any existing customers yet talk about perspective customers. That moves into the customer acquisition strategy. This includes again another acronym I’m going to share, CAC, the cost to acquire a customer, the customer acquisition cost. Are you landing a big sale? Are you saving lives?

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Software Review Due Diligence Exit Strategy 60

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 21, 2010

Having a completed enterprise product without a single sale. Just a few more customers, a little more traction—I get that. There’s no difference between having signed up two customers or ten customers when your market is potentially hundreds or thousands of businesses. It’s annoying and it’s a failure of conviction.

Hockey Stick 97

Hockey Stick Valuation Venture Capital Dilution 97

Duct Tape Marketing

JULY 26, 2017

Though I would say based on the numbers that I see it’s not like a hockey stick growth, but the growth in people’s desire to listen to the content and people’s desire to create terrific podcast content has really never been higher. A lot of sales today is relationship-based. Podcasts is a great way to do that.

Audio 39

Audio Programming Software Review Hosting 39

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2019

Joanna Wiebe: “Writing Mirrors: How to Use the Voice of the Customer to Write High-Converting Copy”. Sales calls and demo recordings can plot communication sequences, hierarchies, and help make copy sticky. Carrie Bolton: “Get Real with Your Customers and Your Executives—How to Really Improve the Customer Experience.

Artificial Inteligence 114

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Metrics SEO 114