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WTF is Traction? A 6-Step Relationship Guide to VC

Both Sides of the Table

Traction can simply mean showing that you’re making progress with customers, product development, channel partners, initial revenue as a proof point, attracting well-known angel investors, winning industry awards / recognition. They tell you they’re going to ship product and they do. They hire key staff.

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Minimum Viable Team

This is going to be BIG.

Who should you hire? In a way, you can think of BD as “sales when you don’t know what the product is yet.” It’s basically working with potential outside partners to reach your business goals--which could be revenue, distribution, financing, product development, awareness, etc. How are you ever going to get it done?

PR 132
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Create Structure out of the Gate and You’ll Thank Yourself Later

Feld Thoughts

They close on the $750k, hire a buddy or two, buy some Macs, and get to work. ASC starts building product, but as they get into the thick of it, the team realizes executing on their vision is going to be extremely hard. Eventually early product demos start happening but they’re rough and the product looks very alpha.

Burn Rate 152
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Practical Strategies For Starting A Business

Duct Tape Marketing

Steve Hoffman (06:08): If you don't get the right people on board, you know, hire them really hard to succeed, marketing, getting your name out. But if you are going to have somebody who's developing a product, developing a new technology, designing, or going out into marketing and figuring out new ways to market, you really need a thinker.

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The Leading Cause of Startup Death – Part 1: The Product.

Steve Blank

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.

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Lessons Learned: A hierarchy of pitches

Startup Lessons Learned

Most important slide: lessons learned Working product Key questions: what does the product do? Most important slide: live demo Prototype product Key questions: what will it take to ship a working product? whats the launch plan? whos on the marketing team? how do you know anyone would want it?

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Lessons Learned: The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time

Startup Lessons Learned

This gets me into trouble, because it conjures up for some the idea that product development is simply a rote mechanical exercise of linear optimization. You just constantly test little micro-changes and follow a hill-climbing algorithm to build your product.