Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2019

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. Switch your attention from product development to sales.

Mezzanine 244

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 244

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Following is his advice to early stage entrepreneurs for creating structure in their company. So, I’ll explain my reasoning through the story of ASC, a fictitious company that has a combination of characteristics I’ve seen across a number of early stage companies. It’s too early for that s**t.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? But all things are never equal.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

The companies I spoke to all agreed that the community there was extremely supportive, especially in the critical ulta-early-stage. Then, create an encouraging environment for early-stage companies. Provide early seed capital, and be the ones to make those introductions. And do your customer development.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Another advantage of the early stages is that most dont have to juggle too many competing priorities. If you dont have customers, a product, investors, or a board of directors, you can pretty much stay focused on just one thing at a time. And if you neglect maintenance, you may not have a business left at all.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2017

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. Switch your attention from product development to sales.

Mezzanine 141

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 141

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 3, 2013

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. Switch your attention from product development to sales.

Mezzanine 240

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 240

The Equity Kicker

JANUARY 10, 2020

Nic Brisbourne is Managing Partner at Forward Partners, the UK’s leading early-stage VC, currently supporting the UK’s next generation of AI, e-commerce and marketplace businesses. I think we differ a little from the rest of the industry, though, particularly with our focus on early stage companies.

Partner 68

Partner Early Stage Portfolio Metrics 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

A discounted price is available for early stage entrepreneurs and students. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Tickets are available now and include dinner.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 11, 2015

In a good Founder’s Notebook post on setting priorities in product development Ben Yoskovitz recommends that founders: learn as quickly as you can what your best users are doing in your product. That’s great advice. Sounds obvious, yet few entrepreneurs who talk with us can articulate their core user stories clearly.

Product 60

Product Early Stage Analytics Metrics 60

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 4, 2015

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. Switch your attention from product development to sales.

Mezzanine 120

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 120

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

It provides a basic introduction to analytics as they apply to Lean Startup, including sections on what metrics to use and how to interpret them. For instance, Ben lists out the worst of the “vanity metrics,” a term that describes appealing but meaningless or misleading numbers. Alistair: There are plenty. Consider a restaurant.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

The economics of these process trade-offs are discussed in the Principles of Product Development Flow.) Heres an excerpt: In a previous article, we called Toyota’s product development system the “second Toyota paradox.&# Labels: product development 5comments: new york web development company said.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

The people who are the lifeblood of an early-stage startup are earlyvangelists. These are people who understand the vision of your company even before the product lives up to it, and, most importantly, will buy your product on that basis. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

1x hacker in charge of product/development. 1x hipster working with both product and growth. This is when metrics come into play. See Also: The Top 10 Tools for Tracking Your Web Metrics. See Also: The 7 Key Metrics Every Business Owner Should Monitor. Apr-15: Head of Marketing (growth team).

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

The core of the article is my first attempt to articulate the key metrics (in graph form) that I believe demonstrate customer value. That fostering and encourage entrepreneurs to bring companies and products to market is a great source of innovation, job creation, etc. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics. One way to conceive of our goal in an early-stage venture is to incrementally “fill in the blanks&# for the business model that we think will one day power our startup. June 8, 2009 1:16 AM Colin said.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 10, 2021

Investors, particularly those investing in early-stage startups, want to understand your vision. If you have historical results, you should plan on sharing those too as well as any other key metrics about your business. Beyond the typical sections , here are the most important things that investors want to see in your plan.

Business Plan 138

Business Plan Forecast Balance Sheet Exit Strategy 138

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 1, 2012

Because you get organized around marketing metrics, because your campaigns get optimized, because your landing pages and drip campaigns become stronger, because word of mouth produces sales “for free,” and so forth. Time heals many wounds (but not all) Over the time scale of “years,” you can count on certain treads.

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Customer Revenue Acquisition Cofounder 320

The Equity Kicker

JULY 16, 2015

Team structure in early stage ecommerce and marketplace companies is a function of manpower and skills necessary to build the company and the founder(s)’ skillset(s). The development requirement might be full time, or approaching full time, but the product, design and marketing requirements are part time.

eCommerce 60

eCommerce Burn Rate Early Stage Hiring 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2009

In fact, early stage companies shouldnt be able to get time from anyone else - who else would be crazy enough to try an truly innovative new product? christinelu : if youre building a disruptive innovation.the only people who you want to talk to are early adopters. Brilliant insight.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Japan Continuous Deployment 60

BeyondVC

DECEMBER 10, 2009

Financial models for startups are important from a big picture perspective, but I never like to get mired in the full details as things always change in the early stages. While many SAAS companies may collect cash monthly or quarterly, some collect annual fees by offering discounts by paying upfront.

Churn Rate 112

Churn Rate Burn Rate Startup Metrics 112

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. What are Early Stage VC’s Really Asking? The Traditional VC Pitch Entrepreneurs who pursue the traditional product development model don’t have customer data to answer these questions.

Customer Development 264

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264

abovethecrowd.com

OCTOBER 1, 2013

Over 13 years ago, in March of 2000, I wrote a blog post titled “ The Most Powerful Internet Metric of All. ” The key thesis was this: if an Internet company could obsess about only one metric, it should be conversion. As such, it is time to pound the table again – conversion is by far the most powerful Internet metric of all.

Metrics 93

Metrics Conversion Internet Acquisition 93

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

This is important, especially if you are a very early stage company. If youre used to pitching your company in a startup hub, like here in Silicon Valley, you may suffer from a debilitating disease: the inability to describe your product to normal people. It also gives you insight into their language.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Another great way to test your idea is to create a minimum viable product, or MVP. This is the simplest version of your product minus the frills and frosting. It’s a particularly popular strategy in the world of product development and is used to quickly and quantitatively test a product or a product feature.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

Let’s see what else you can do using an MVP: Identify risks at an early stage at a relatively low cost. Optimize product development and marketing process. Understand how to monetize a product based on actual user needs. Let’s take a look at minimal viable products, developed by popular companies.

San Francisco 106

San Francisco Audience SMS Demand 106

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 17, 2010

Three premier early-stage venture investors have joined forces to sponsor the event: Baseline , Floodgate , and First Round Capital. Three premier early-stage venture investors have joined forces to sponsor the event: Baseline , Floodgate , and First Round Capital. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

San Francisco 107

San Francisco Romania Cleveland South Africa 107

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

I liked the flattering Venture Hacks commentary so much Ill just quote it: Many founders believe that early stage startups are endeavors of execution. The customer is known, the product is known, and all we have to do is act. He believes that many early stage startups are labors of learning.

Lean 74

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 74

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, March 13, 2009 Dont launch Heres a common question I get from startups, especially in the early stages: when should we launch? This is the usual reason given for a marketing launch, but for most early stage startups, its a failure. Know what the success metrics are for the launch.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 12, 2009

However, this financial bar has had the effect of excluding one segment of potential customers that Id really like to see there - early stage entrepreneurs who have all the intelligence and vision of their later stage counterparts, but simply cannot afford the cash flow to attend.

Lean 60

Lean Programming San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Most startups don’t have the luxury of hiring an experienced PM early in their journey. Many founders have to turn to brute force to figure it out, even when they themselves don’t have practitioner product management experience. product engagement, retention metrics). In many cases it can be framed as learnings (e.g.

Hiring 120

Hiring Bandwidth Product Early Stage 120

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 20, 2009

As a consequence, this new startup is relentlessly metrics-driven. For short stories - I think it is always good to introduce some practical problem (you might have heard from entrepreneur at early stage) and how the lean startup method helped solved that. It is a company built to learn.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 68

BeyondVC

JANUARY 2, 2006

All too often we are enamored with how cool or sexy a technology is, invest lots of dollars to create that killer product, and sometimes forget that it is all about the people. In terms of bonuses, I am not a huge fan of cash bonuses for companies losing money, especially in the early stages of development.

Management 60

Management Equity Forecast Salary 60

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

What all these teachers had in common were two things: they were technology early adopters that were willing to take a chance on a new software product, and they all had similar problems organizing their classes and students. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 60

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 5, 2019

Teams were savvy enough to know that fully formed, completed descriptions of users are an impossibility at the early stages of design. Because they used the magic term ‘personas,‘ development teams were discouraged from developing their own, not realising that a market segment might contain multiple personas.

Software Review 115

Software Review Design Agile Analytics 115

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

We were focused on revenue, but we didnt understand that revenue is not important for its own sake in an early stage company. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94