abovethecrowd.com

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

Entrepreneurs accurately recognize that the connective tissue of the Internet provides an opportunity to link the players in a particular market, reducing friction in both the buying and selling experience. In addition to great marketplace characteristics, you also need a world-class entrepreneur to make the dream come true.

Aggregator 101

Aggregator Marketing Software Review North America 101

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

One is explaining the world as it used to work: the importance of gatekeepers, the scarcity implied by limited distribution, and the resulting quality bar that the industry is so proud of. Mostly it is the time and expense required to create the means of distribution for that industry. It’s just taking some longer than others.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Mucker Lab

DECEMBER 2, 2015

Most brilliant “Internet of Things” ideas are quicksand for capital unless you have the branding, vertical integration and customer lock-in that Apple achieved. 20 years ago, a majority of “Sand Hill” venture capital went into enterprise-focused startups. The iPod model will separate IoT platforms from fads.

Vertical 60

Vertical Widget Distribution China 60

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Everyone should have a chance to walk the floor looking for deals, technology, distribution, customers, etc. Partnership Opportunities At any show you are attending there has to be tons of opportunity for business to business relationships you hadn’t thought about. Go to trade shows like it matters.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

customers aren’t buying it, the cost of distribution is too high, etc.) The Focus on a Finished Product Rather than a Minimum Feature Set The passion of an entrepreneur coupled with the product development diagram drives you to believe that all you need to do is build the product (in all its full-featured glory) and customers will come.

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Austin Startup

DECEMBER 20, 2020

I used to meet a high profile entrepreneur or investor moving here every month and now it seems it’s one or two a week. Normally, you can literally just show up at Capital Factory and hang out in the kitchen. Everyone is looking to plug-in and with COVID it’s harder than ever.

Austin 110

Austin Texas Cofounder Los Angeles 110

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. This is incisive and powerful and I hope many entrepreneurs or would-be entrepreneurs “get&# this eloquently stated point. There is no certainty about a startup on day-one.

Silicon Valley 212

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 212

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. But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

The Next Web

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Distribution and cashflow pose challenges in China. Jenny Lee, a partner at venture capital firm GGV Capital which has a presence in both the US and China, also observes that in the US, the willingness to pay for an app is pretty high — especially for a utility tool, which is what CooTek’s TouchPal X Keyboard essentially is.

China 122

China Developer Intellectual Property Mobile 122

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

I responded to their RFP by proposing that Ardent build the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center a distributed supercomputing environment with hundreds of Ardent personal supercomputers rather than a monolithic Cray supercomputer. A entrepreneur’s idea of closure. And where are we today…distributed computing.

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 185

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Private equity and venture capital investors are copying our sisters in the hedge fund world: we’re trying to automate more of our job. . Small investment firms often have interns and entrepreneurs in residence passing through, each of which is a security risk. ff Venture Capital hired two full-time engineers to build out Totem.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

After that there’s a discussion of how the product will reach the customer and the potential distribution channel. The distribution discussion leads to some conclusions about competition: who are they and how they differ. The distribution discussion also leads to some assumptions about pricing.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

In times when venture capital is hard to get, investors extract high costs for failure (down-rounds, cram downs , new management teams, shut down the company.) The Customer Development Venture Pitch At this point I often hear entrepreneurs say, “We don’t have the money to scale. How do we raise the big bucks?”

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Some of the conversations went like this: Startup 1 Entrepreneur -“I’m competing against Company x and have been following the Customer Development process and I’ve talked to lots of customers.” Do you know have they distribute their product? Entrepreneur – “We tell potential customers about all our features.”

Silicon Valley 181

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 181

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2009

Worries from the garage One of the worries I hear from entrepreneurs (not just my students) is that Customer Development means getting out of the building and sharing what you are working on. In the end, the CEO couldn’t get his board to give us the cash in exchange for the Japanese distribution rights and some equity.

Silicon Valley 149

Silicon Valley RSS Startup California 149

Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2009

So I got out out of the building to meet and understand our customers and distribution partners. Reply steveblank , on July 9, 2009 at 10:44 am Said: Tim, Some entrepreneurs can do a startup based on recognizing an opportunity and executing. Don’t confuse your passion for your tools with why your customers will buy your product.

Silicon Valley 139

Silicon Valley RSS California Video 139

abovethecrowd.com

APRIL 17, 2013

eBay recently launched an aggressive campaign attacking Amazon’s rate table on a vertical-by-vertical basis ( those percentages can be found here ). When evaluating new marketplace investments, we are naturally biased towards entrepreneurs who understand the strategic rationale behind the argument for a lower rake.

Europe 101

Europe Social Network Technical Review IPO 101

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Entrepreneur-in-Residence After SuperMac I had been approached by one of our venture investors to be an entrepreneur in residence (EIR), a Silicon Valley phrase which says one thing but means another. Depending on the size of the venture firm they may have one to three EIR’s who stay an average of a year or so.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Top management was trying to coordinate all of the operating details (sales, manufacturing, distribution and marketing,) across all the divisions and the company almost went bankrupt that year when poor planning led to excess inventory (with unsold cars piling up at dealers and the company running out of cash.) I find both intriguing.

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

Austin Startup

AUGUST 7, 2017

By connecting Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and the rest of the state into a Texas S tartup Megatropolis we can unlock billions of dollars in capital and unleash thousands of diverse entrepreneurs. The time has come for the Texas startup community to band together to change the world once again.

Texas 97

Texas San Antonio Houston Dallas 97

abovethecrowd.com

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Unfortunately, either information asymmetry or physical distances and the resulting distribution costs can both cut against the economic advantages that would otherwise arise for all. In many cases, a deeper focus on a particular category or vertical allows these marketplaces to distinguish themselves from broader marketplaces like eBay.

Internet 88

Internet Matching Vertical Hosting 88

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

Local venture investors and/or companies offer cash prizes for the winners. In exchange, these VCs/companies get early looks at new deal flow and offer aspiring entrepreneurs feedback and advice on their business plan. to compete. And even if they did – customers don’t ask to see your business plan.

Business Plan 140

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Go spend some time outside the building talking to potential distribution partners. His point was that it was in the VC’s interest in having entrepreneurs swing for the fences. However the VC’s are managing a portfolio while you, the entrepreneur are managing one company – yours.

Silicon Valley 207

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 207

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2015

and concentrated on a single part of the supply chain – importing, distribution, wholesale, retail. These growing national companies were challenged to figure out how to organize an organization of increased complexity that resulted from their large size, and geographic scale as well as their horizontal and vertical integration.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Venture Capital United States Technical Review 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2009

Ampex’s first customer was Bing Crosby who wanted to record his radio programs for rebroadcast (and had exclusive distribution rights.) Aligning their interests with their limited investors and the entrepreneurs they were investing in. A wave of silicon innovation was about to meet a pile of risk capital.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley SBIC San Francisco RSS 125

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 13, 2020

We’d like to thank KeyBank and G2 for providing some of the data used in the report - * It’s an amazing time to be a cloud entrepreneur in Europe. Cloud Entrepreneurs: Embracing the “Silicon Valley State of Mind" Accel has been a big believer in cloud since the early days of this secular shift. Big milestones for the old continent!

Europe 71

Europe Cloud Silicon Valley 71

Austin Startup

MARCH 7, 2018

Austin Diversity Evangelists Mellie Price Director of Diversity Capital Factory Managing Director, Health CoLab Dell Medical School Mellie Price is a successful entrepreneur, angel investor, venture capitalist, and now university commercialization disruption at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas.

Technical Cofounder 48

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 48

Start Up Blog

JANUARY 28, 2015

The challenge for entrepreneurs will be to create places to teach non-techies of its value, show them how to wrestle control of it and provide platforms to commercialise it. We are also seeing lots of backwards and forwards vertical integration. Distribution and data is where the power lies, it’s no longer in making things.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Startup Australia Artificial Inteligence 48

Start Up Blog

JANUARY 5, 2015

The challenge for entrepreneurs will be to create places to teach non-techies of its value, show them how to wrestle control of it and provide platforms to commercialise it. We are also seeing lots of backwards and forwards vertical integration. Distribution and data is where the power lies, it’s no longer in making things.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Startup Australia Artificial Inteligence 48

VC Cafe

JUNE 30, 2022

To get a sense of the breadth of opportunities that can be attractive for gaming (content and infrastructure) entrepreneurs and metaverse startups, just take a look at the A16Z list below. I love landscapes as they help organise the categories needed to define the vertical. Jonathan Lai, General Partner, A16Z Gaming fund.

Cloud 200

Cloud Venture Capital Cofounder Non-Compete 200

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Github - Free public repositories, collaborator management, issue tracking, wikis, downloads, code review, graphs Pivotal Tracker – Agile project management tool that enables real time collaboration.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110