Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. Its a key lean startup concept.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2022

Switch your attention from product development to sales. Second-stage growth usually requires a formal sales model, an experienced and disciplined sales team, and a well-defined process to meet your new goals and demands. Managing business growth is more than metrics. Optimize the total customer experience.

Mezzanine 368

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 368

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Creators of new products in environments of extreme uncertainty, startups face enormous risks. Insufficient capital, over investment, and low sales are just some of the reasons leading to this sobering statistic. Not doing so would end up in wasteful innovations and features that customers do not want.

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Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

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. Every board meeting, the metrics of success change.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2021

Switch your focus from product development to sales. Explosive growth to an enterprise normally requires a scalable sales model, a well-documented process with incentives, training, and metrics for tracking and management. Isolate marketing from sales for maximum customer focus.

Merger 379

Merger Due Diligence SEC IPO 379

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 7, 2016

As part of a startup business, you’ll know that there is no greater desire to win your first customer or your tenth customer. You’ll do whatever it takes to call a customer your own. It’s a neat analogy: Like customers, pets get stolen, escape, or get lost. See Also: How Should You Handle Unhappy Customers?

Customer 60

Customer Retention Startup Metrics 60

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 9, 2020

Some make big mistakes, such as Webvan expanding too fast with a huge infrastructure, and Pets.com , trying to grow the business with a negative margin, under the mistaken assumption that winning customers is more important than making a profit. Ask every employee to focus on sales. Aggressively enter new markets and sales channels.

Social Media 329

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 329

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."

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

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. The Shape of Traction “First, founders tend to over-estimate how good a product needs to be before you start to see meaningful traction.

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Seed Stage Hiring IPO Analytics 177

Gust

APRIL 27, 2014

This will include the first version of many critical processes that can be split out later, including market opportunity, requirements, product definition, business model, sales process, and organization. Product development process. Customer service and support.

Startup 187

Startup Institutional Investors Angel Investor Bootstrapping 187

YoungUpstarts

JULY 2, 2020

Many companies, in the face of declining sales, are becoming more aggressive in their marketing strategies. Empathize with your customers and understand that pushy sales pitches won’t work – worse, you could come across as uncaring and greedy. Your content still needs to be valuable to your customers.

Marketing 262

Marketing Metrics Channel Differentiation 262

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2019

Switch your attention from product development to sales. Second-stage growth usually requires a formal sales model, an experienced and disciplined sales team, and a well-defined process to meet your new goals and demands. Managing business growth is more than metrics. Optimize the total customer experience.

Mezzanine 244

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 244

Up and Running

MAY 15, 2014

As an entrepreneur raised in the era of analytics, I want to find metrics for everything. During our time working together, I was impressed by my potential partner’s sales abilities and drive to hit the personal goals we’d set. I got customers, found partnerships, and generated revenues. I could hustle.

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Partner Cofounder Equity Metrics 113

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. So if all I need to do is make some customer calls, interview potential employees or help with his fund-raising decks – hallelujah.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Traction and evidence from customers were what investors were looking for – even in “slow” sectors like healthcare and energy. The disadvantage is that its methodology was based on the old waterfall model of product development and not the agile and lean methods that startups use today. And there it was. Berkeley-wide.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 6, 2016

To create this first year in business checklist, I turned to our in-house experts here at Palo Alto Software: Sabrina Parsons, CEO; Noah Parsons, COO; Josh Cochrane, Vice President of Product Development; and Josh Fegles, Academic and Government Channel Sales Director, and founder of gluten-free cookie company Jude’s Foods.

Forecast 60

Forecast Software Review Lean Finance 60

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2020

Define success metrics, and measure progress regularly. Initially, you may be able to do everything in your startup, including product development, marketing, and shipping orders. As you move from development to rollout, a team effort is required, including marketing, sales, funding, and customers.

Advisory Board 308

Advisory Board Agile Social Media Metrics 308

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

The excerpts, which appeared first at Inc.com , highlight the Customer Development process, best practices, tips and instructions contained in our book. ———– Whether your venture is a new pizza parlor or the hottest new software product, beware: These nine flawed assumptions are toxic.

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Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

ConversionXL

APRIL 17, 2019

Conversations with prospects or customers can improve practically every metric or user state model you’re aiming for. As Jen Havice noted here on the CXL blog , insights from customer interviews can: Accelerate the customer journey; Increase conversions; Drive more leads, sales, and revenue. Under “What’s Missing?,”

Customer 120

Customer Framework Conversion Search 120

The Startup Magazine

APRIL 21, 2023

Focus on the customer At the end of the day, it’s the customer that drives your business. To think like a CEO, you need to understand your customer’s needs and preferences and make decisions that prioritize their satisfaction.

Leadership 138

Leadership Technology Audience Customer 138

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. One last note on reporting.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 29, 2013

For example, when your company adds ano ther blade to its disposal razors , the product’s technical development, marketing and sales will follow relatively predictable paths. But that’s not to say that every established company developing personal grooming products is operating risk-free. in ten years?

Lean 165

Lean Technical Review Startup Software Review 165

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 1, 2012

To clarify the discussion, let’s use a simpler model: Companies A and B both sell products with recurring monthly revenue, and both brought in $10,000 in revenue last month. Company A has 1,000 customers each paying $10/mo. Company B has 10 customers each paying $1,000/mo. Which is better? Oops, bad question.

Customer 320

Customer Revenue Acquisition Cofounder 320

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. They measure their success on metrics that reflect success in execution, and they reward execution.

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IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

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. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter?

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2017

Switch your attention from product development to sales. Second-stage growth usually requires a formal sales model, an experienced and disciplined sales team, and a well-defined process to meet your new goals and demands. Managing business growth is more than metrics. Optimize the total customer experience.

Mezzanine 141

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 141

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. I vividly remember the sales guy saying, “It’s only some kid in field service. What happened?

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited. No updates, screen comps, or metrics have been publicly shared yet. Heads down on product, they say. Soundbites from potential customers are encouraging. Investors are dismayed that there are no real customers yet.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

ConversionXL

APRIL 13, 2017

Jonathan Price wrote on the same Quora thread that he believes growth marketing to differ from regular marketing because it “is technology-centric and it blurs the boundary between marketing and product development.” Product vs. Growth? But what about between growth and product? What skills does this role entail?

Analytics 99

Analytics Engineer SEO Channel 99

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 8, 2009 Datablindness Most of us are swimming in a sea of data about our products, companies, and teams. That’s because many of our reports feed us vanity metrics: numbers that make us look good but don’t really help make decisions. Too much of this data is non- actionable.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 3, 2013

Switch your attention from product development to sales. Second-stage growth usually requires a formal sales model, an experienced and disciplined sales team, and a well-defined process to meet your new goals and demands. Managing business growth is more than metrics. Optimize the total customer experience.

Mezzanine 240

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 240

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. 1x hacker in charge of product/development. 1x hipster working with both product and growth. Aug-15: Head of Sales (growth team). Lean marketing.

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Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 29, 2016

Some make big mistakes, such as Webvan expanding too fast with a huge infrastructure, and Pets.com , trying to grow the business with a negative margin, under the mistaken assumption that winning customers is more important than making a profit. Ask every employee to focus on sales. Aggressively enter new markets and sales channels.

Social Media 120

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 120

YoungUpstarts

JULY 7, 2017

Does this expense drive customer satisfaction? For example, it’s not surprising that when store shelves are flooded with new products launched in pursuit of incremental market share and sales, supply chain suffers. Does this expense build relationships (instead of transactions) with customers?

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Green Demand Dividend Metrics 133

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

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

In an enterprise sales context, this is called a "repeatable and scalable sales process" - once you know how to do this, your company can graduate from early adopters and make an attempt at the mainstream. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119