techcrunch.com

AUGUST 12, 2012

Zachary Bogue And Matt Ocko Launch Data Collective, An Early Stage Fund For Big Data Startups. Data Collective has already made 46 investments from its first fund, which it calls “comparable with other seed and early stage funds” (Ocko and Bogue wouldn’t reveal fund size.). Headphones. CrunchBase.

Early Stage 70

Early Stage San Francisco Los Angeles Southern California 70

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 23, 2021

Relevancy for an early-stage company is the discovery and understanding of the real addressable market for a product or service. Selling too early triggers customer defenses and drives them away. This is not just sales traction, but a proper balance between resources, product, and customers.

Early Stage 379

Early Stage Vertical Sales Global 379

ConversionXL

JANUARY 18, 2022

It partners with sales to close more revenue, informs product teams to deliver better products, and in some cases, co-owns demand generation activities with marketing teams. of their time), marketing teams (84.2%), and sales teams (75.9%). Use product marketing to boost reach and sales. Image Source.

Marketing 110

Marketing Product Audience Equity 110

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2021

billion in early funding. Dozens of outreach programs across the military now offer quick revenue to early-stage companies. Yet, for every newly minted success like Palantir or Anduril , thousands of companies struggle to find follow-on opportunities after receiving early innovation contracts.

Artificial Inteligence 365

Artificial Inteligence Marketing Startup Silicon Valley 365

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 7, 2017

Longer, costlier cycles drain cash on hand while delaying the onset of crucial revenue streams. These five strategies are proven to work for early-stage companies in a variety of industries — including, perhaps, yours. Instead, use an existing user manual template that’s appropriate for your process and vertical.

Cost 100

Cost Developer Small Business Administration Marketing 100

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

Between January 2015 and January 2016, we grew our platform Slidebean from $1K to $20K in monthly recurring revenue. Getting the first tracks of revenue is one of the toughest processes of building a startup. Aug-15: Head of Sales (growth team). Apr-15: Head of Marketing (growth team). Jun-15: Community Manager (growth team).

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 6, 2019

Relevancy for an early-stage company is the discovery and understanding of the real addressable market for a product or service. Selling too early triggers customer defenses and drives them away. This is not just sales traction, but a proper balance between resources, product, and customers.

Startup 242

Startup Early Stage Vertical Sales 242

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities. The board raises a collective eyebrow.

Customer Development 232

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 232

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

In venture capital in particular, early-stage companies are often operating in frontier industries, where the rules are unpredictable and conventional analytic frameworks may be misleading. I previously posted a detailed presentation with sales technology tools useful for B2B sales. Pitchbot.vc 3) Originate investments.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Austin Startup

JUNE 22, 2020

The phrase, “missionaries, not mercenaries,” applies just as equally to early-stage investors as employees. They have a $600k sales backlog that they’ll complete this month, and about 50% or more of that will be recurring revenue. The product is a complex AI service in an industry vertical that is large and growing fast.

Vertical 64

Vertical Early Stage Forecast Revenue 64

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 30, 2013

Relevancy for an early-stage company is the discovery and understanding of the real addressable market for a product or service. Selling too early triggers customer defenses and drives them away. This is not just sales traction, but a proper balance between resources, product, and customers.

Startup 293

Startup Early Stage Vertical Sales 293

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

In it, I got asked a question I often hear: “What if we have a web-based business that doesn’t have revenue or paying customers? And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” They’re putting money into web services/business – most without early revenue.

Customer Development 228

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 228

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 25, 2023

Growing Your Audience (And Your Revenue) With A Book written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing Marketing Podcast with Matt Briel In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast , I interview Matt Briel. Questions I ask Matt Briel: [1:29] Could you tell us about the origin story of Lulu and how did it come to be? [2:25]

Audience 86

Audience Revenue Distribution Differentiation 86

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 28, 2012

Relevancy for an early-stage company is the discovery and understanding of the real addressable market for a product or service. Selling too early triggers customer defenses and drives them away. This is not just sales traction, but a proper balance between resources, product, and customers. A startup must gain traction.

Startup 247

Startup Early Stage Vertical Sales 247

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 17, 2016

Relevancy for an early-stage company is the discovery and understanding of the real addressable market for a product or service. Selling too early triggers customer defenses and drives them away. This is not just sales traction, but a proper balance between resources, product, and customers.

Startup 120

Startup Early Stage Vertical Sales 120

David Teten

JANUARY 21, 2021

This essay is part of a series on alternative VC: I: Revenue-Based Investing: a new option for founders who care about control. II: Who are the major Revenue-Based Investing VCs? III: Why are Revenue-Based VCs investing in so many women and underrepresented founders? IV: Should your new VC fund use Revenue-Based Investing?

Equity 78

Equity Revenue Cofounder Colorado 78

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2011

This curriculum is based on the various questions entrepreneurs have asked me over these 64 sessions, spanning financing, positioning, customer acquisition, marketing, sales, channel, and various other early stage, startup-related issues. As usual, then, I worked with three entrepreneurs working on specific businesses.

Vertical 115

Vertical Web San Francisco Entrepreneur 115

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 131

Duct Tape Marketing

FEBRUARY 22, 2017

Think back to a sales situation with a friend of a friend, one where you started with a huge trust advantage: how much smoother and faster was the process? Even if you’re at a very early stage, if you’re reading this, it’s safe to say that research tasks are below your pay grade, and conducting them will leave you time for little else.

Curation 42

Curation Lead Generation Technical Review Email 42

Genuine VC

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

Once you’ve figured out whether you want to find a very early stage startup or a late stage one (the topic of my first post in this series ), the real hard work begins. On the early side, it's repeat founders coming together again or early runaway traction in an early beta that generates buzz.

Startup 148

Startup Portfolio Later Stage Hiring 148

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

I previously posted a detailed presentation with sales technology tools useful for B2B sales. Data companies focused on early-stage startups include Aingel , fundsUP , Preseries , PredictLeads , and Sploda. The Pocket Negotiator is very early-stage attempt to aid in the negotiating process itself.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

The key contributors to an out-of-control burn rate is 1) hiring a sales force too early, 2) turning on the demand creation activities too early, 3) developing something other than the minimum feature set for first customer ship. And I can even imagine cases where it might burn more cash than a traditional startup. Lets see why.

Lean 260

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 260

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? Your goal was to preserve your cash while you turned these guesses into facts and searched for a repeatable and scalable sales model.

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

If it was a very big mistake, I blamed the VP of Sales. “This marketing campaign didn’t work? It was a brilliant strategy but Sales screwed it up.&# (My own lame defense here for this behavior is that sales and marketing are always cats and dogs in startups. Ownership and Teamwork not turf.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Yet we used the product development model not only to manage product development, but as a road map for finding customers and to time our marketing launch and sales revenue plan. Marketing starts to build a sales demo, writes sales materials (presentations, data sheets), and hires a PR agency. Marketing is at its peak.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 269

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 24, 2019

I’ve also, of course, been spending a lot of time talking about this with our rapidly growing sales team at data.world. that the leaders in your sales prospects attend and read, you won’t know if you are passionate about that industry. Opportunity cost is very real for any stage company, but it is critical for an early-stage one.

Software Review 48

Software Review Sales Cofounder Analytics 48

Hippoland

JANUARY 23, 2018

For founding teams we did not already know, they all had a product built and all had early customers. The companies we were investing in at the pre-seed level were doing as low as $1k revenue per month (non repeatable) though we also invested in many companies with much higher revenue too. The market had definitely shifted.

Early Stage 48

Early Stage Convertible Security Seed Stage SEC 48

Hippoland

JANUARY 23, 2018

For founding teams we did not already know, they all had a product built and all had early customers. The companies we were investing in at the pre-seed level were doing as low as $1k revenue per month (non repeatable) though we also invested in many companies with much higher revenue too. The market had definitely shifted.

Early Stage 48

Early Stage Convertible Security Seed Stage SEC 48

BeyondVC

APRIL 14, 2005

I can’t tell you how many early stage companies I talk to tout their great list of partners. In my mind, if you and your partner are not generating revenue for each other than it isn’t a real partnership but rather just a Barney press release. In theory, it is very simple but requires a ton of hard work.

Partner 60

Partner Early Stage Vertical Sales 60

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

Things Change In 1956 Hewlett Packard (HP) was a 17-year old company with $20 million in test equipment sales with 900 employees. I’ll show you the memo in a second. But first some background.) It was still a year away from its IPO. Its latest product was an oscilloscope, the HP 150a.

Silicon Valley 186

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 186

Reid Hoffman

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

It might cater to new customers, it might solve a different need, or it might involve a different revenue model. This pivot fundamentally changes your required organizational competencies, from Sales and Marketing to Engineering, Operations, and Support. Our bounty system became a key part of their revenue model.

Startup 36

Startup Silicon Valley Business Model Mobile 36

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

It became clear to me that the mission of marketing in most companies has to be to support sales. While this may seem obvious to anyone not in sales and marketing, trust me, in a technology company this is a conceptual breakthrough. But without sales there is no revenue, and without revenue there is no company.

Silicon Valley 132

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 132

techcrunch.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

Respondents deemed between 12%-16% of companies generating revenues to be essentially “worthless” and deemed 20%-26% of their pre-revenue investments to be “worthless.” Been there Done that This is very depressing for all future founders, or even currently early stage founders. Add to this that 72.7% Translation?

Venture Capital 62

Venture Capital Technical Review Sweat Equity Valuation 62