Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. ” Fire, Ready, Aim.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Of course, their answer is that the second intends to get to market faster, but every engine has limits regardless the fuel applied. Deferred payments start with stretching the payables period but, more importantly, include giving employee equity in lieu of a higher salaries and negotiating vendor deferred payments out of future revenues.

Burn Rate 262

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Salary 262

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Of course, their answer is that the second intends to get to market faster, but every engine has limits regardless the fuel applied. Deferred payments start with stretching the payables period but, more importantly, include giving employee equity in lieu of a higher salaries and negotiating vendor deferred payments out of future revenues.

Burn Rate 120

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 120

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2021

When you see startups like SpaceX and Pinterest grow from a low valuation to a billion dollars in just a few years, it’s easy to assume that if you just keep doing what you are doing, you can get there as well. Switch your focus from product development to sales. Isolate marketing from sales for maximum customer focus.

Merger 379

Merger Due Diligence SEC IPO 379

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2016

Who would not want to joint the unicorns (recent startups with a current valuation of over $1 billion)? Minimum viable products (MVPs) are recommended for validating the market, with iterative enhancement to quickly meet market feedback. Rounding out the team with employees and freelancers.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Groups Social Media 120

The Startup Magazine

AUGUST 15, 2022

In many cases, your advisor will identify key employees and create a business plan to help you find a buyer and negotiate the best price possible. Identifying key employees. In addition, your employees may have insight into how much value they bring to the company. Source: Pixabay. Creating a business plan. Finding a buyer.

Merger 158

Merger Acquisition Due Diligence Valuation 158

David Teten

MAY 1, 2013

Wesabe lost out to Mint.com ; Noah Kagan, employee #5 at Mint, later wrote that the awkward Wesabe name was a key reason. However, they remain key to your email identity, and fundamental to your marketing and even capital-raising. Root Orange has developed a particularly innovative method for exploiting valuable domain names.

Naming 114

Naming Semantic Venture Capital Startup 114

David Teten

JUNE 25, 2012

I’m looking for an entrepreneur to start a company to provide this product, or a development shop which wants to bid on this project. The big vision: one of the reason for the high valuation of Box and Dropbox is that they render the underlying hardware irrelevant; you trust them with their data.

Developer 144

Developer Venture Capital Startup Valuation 144

David Teten

JUNE 25, 2012

I’m looking for an entrepreneur to start a company to provide this product, or a development shop which wants to bid on this project. The big vision: one of the reason for the high valuation of Box and Dropbox is that they render the underlying hardware irrelevant; you trust them with their data.

Developer 114

Developer Venture Capital Startup Valuation 114

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

Seed is about showing initial product market fit. Below are just a few contributors to the rise of pre-seed in the current market: Explosion of Micro funds – In recent years, there’s been a steep increase in the number of micro funds, which are generally below $100M in size.

Valuation 186

Valuation Software Review Generative AI Technical Review 186

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

In exchange, founders agree to transition their company into a new phase that requires them to start catering to investors’ needs in addition to those of its customers and employees. Focus on Product Development First. Venture funding isn’t real validation – market traction and continued profitability and revenues are.

Early Stage 98

Early Stage Venture Capital Bootstrapping Pre-Money Valuation 98

Austin Startup

AUGUST 20, 2017

Are they consistent with your founding team, are they competitive in the market, and will they not create precedents that you’ll regret in the next round of hiring? Startups often hand out shares, options, and warrants for employees and for contractors rendering needed services. Keep the valuations consistent with company progress.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Software Review Cap Table Securities and Exchange Commission 48

Start Up Blog

MARCH 7, 2019

Research & Development and Marketing traditionally lived in different worlds. R&D for innovation purpose happened in secret, in the lab, while Marketing was mostly just advertising. It’s a ‘trick’ any firm big enough to have a marketing budget might want to embrace. The advertising itself?

Dividend 54

Dividend Advertising Valuation Global 54

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 9, 2016

Most begin by doing the product development, marketing and sales alone, but struggle making the transition to hiring and coaching others, defining repeatable processes and focusing on future strategy. When you build a great solution or product, all you can think about is shipping more volume of your product to a larger audience.

Social Network 120

Social Network Demand Valuation Acquisition 120

SoCal CTO

MAY 31, 2008

and how much is enough to build solid traction to drive the right valuation to go for large money? how much product development is enough to get in the market and start getting feedback and what should I focus on in the early stages of the product? Who should I get involved? What is 'good enough'?

Los Angeles 150

Los Angeles Early Stage Valuation Product Development 150

Austin Startup

JANUARY 25, 2020

I had done door to door marketing, neighborhood window replacement appointment setting, street sign-ups, etc. I hated going into bars and engaging with people there in the evenings. I didn’t mind interacting with people during the day, outside, on the streets, anywhere else?—?I After that, we had something much better?—?it

Delaware 62

Delaware SEC New York City New York 62

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

We pitch to potential partners, vendors, publishers, conferences, employees, and even lawyers. Its different from selling a product, because it is not part of our regular business practice, is not something that relates to our core competence, and tends not to happen in a repeatable and scalable way. how big is the market?

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 3, 2012

But once the company has honed in on a strong value proposition and found initial product-market fit, what is the best approach to scaling it? With over $1 billion in revenue, 2000 employees and a market capitalization of over $6 billion, Akamai has become a role model for scalable start-ups. After all, scaling is hard.

Distribution 49

Distribution Lean Massachusetts Cofounder 49

Up and Running

DECEMBER 22, 2015

So, investors look for businesses that will grow fast and sell out to a bigger business, or register their stock for trading on one of the public stock markets, which is when the early investors cash out. And it gets worse—a lot of angels, in a lot of tech business markets, prefer high growth and deficit spending to profits.

Angel Investor 60

Angel Investor IRR Software Review Startup 60

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

A huge untapped market opportunity.?. I firmly believe that in this age where the product development life-cycle is so short and user feedback comes so quickly, you will know within a year whether you are focusing on a worthwhile one thing. Your One Thing falls at the intersection of 3 truths:? Only do your One Thing.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

Transformify

APRIL 12, 2020

Coronavirus pandemic had an unexpected side effect – organizations that were reluctant to adopt home office and remote work had no other choice than asking their employees to work from home. ‘’ No doubt, remote workers need to have equal rights as in-office employees. Classifying Remote Workers.

Bangladesh 98

Bangladesh Philippines Salary Cofounder 98

blog.nahurst.com

JULY 19, 2010

Even if the technical cofounder doesnt prototype something first, they can still contribute more to the business and receive more equity (ex: someone who did marketing for 2 years out of undergrad manages to recruit a top 10th percentile programmer with a successful app in the iPhone app store).

Technical Cofounder 43

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Equity Salary 43

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 20, 2016

enabling you to expand on an already working business model), and if you’re in the extremely early stages of building your company, you still need to develop your product. Product development. When it comes to product development and marketing in the early stages of your tech startup, funding is optional.

Early Stage 60

Early Stage Startup Forecast Channel 60

Software By Rob

AUGUST 18, 2010

The strategy was brilliant: get loads of people using your product and eventually turn them into paying customers. Taking advantage of word-of-mouth marketing requires more users than most of us will attain. at 9:42 am I agree with the point by Reader X that the Free/Premium model is a marketing strategy. 5 Ben K on 08.18.10

Software Review 78

Software Review Software Revenue Cofounder 78

Occam's Razor

APRIL 23, 2012

Helps make marketing better. Every web analytics tool in the market measures single-session conversion rate, so if visitor, your potential customer, does not convert in that single session (i.e, This will have huge implications on your paid search strategy, your valuation of clicks you get from Google and Bing. Blah, blah, blah.

Metrics 152

Metrics Analytics Search Channel 152

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Home Books for Startups Guide Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Tools Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Email Subscription Get Steve Blank via your RSS Feed RSS - Posts RSS - Comments Categories Air Force (12) Ardent (10) Audubon (1) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (39) Business Model versus Business Plan (..)

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Find Questions, Topics and People Add Question Add Question Team Configuration 500 Startups Guerilla Marketing Organizations Entrepreneurship Startup Founders & Entrepreneurs Startups Startup Incubators and Seed Programs Seedcamp Y Combinator TechStars Lean Startups What is the perfect startup team? They are many more examples.

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Whether you’re wondering what site search you should use or what is the best email marketing tool, knowledge is power. Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Inbound Marketing vs Interruption marketing. Email marketing. Market Research. Promotions/Marketing. Social Media Tracking/Marketing.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53