Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. One that is powered by three drivers, each of which is a part of a major trend: The use of platforms enabled by open source and free software. What are the characteristics of a lean startup?

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

VC Cafe

MAY 1, 2023

App Store Wars: Apple dominated the app store wars, building a walled garden around its App Store and generating significant revenue from app sales and in-app purchases. We are seeing some of this play out in the generative AI space, where the cloud providers are active investors to attract future revenue. Space Race 2.0:

Artificial Inteligence 193

Artificial Inteligence Cloud Generative AI Azure 193

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 26, 2012

As Flickr did for the social web and consumption models, Github uses an open, social design for all sorts collaborative models, like Docracy 's open source contact negotiation tools, GrabCAD for mechanical engineers, or K nowable for physical DIY projects.

Web 149

Web Curation Open Source Demand 149

SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

Dr. Karrer was valedictorian at Loyola Marymount University, attended the University of Southern California as a Tau Beta Pi fellow, one of the top 30 engineers in the nation, and received a M.S. in Computer Science. He is a frequent speaker at industry and academic events. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO?

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 9, 2007

Dr. Karrer was valedictorian at Loyola Marymount University, attended the University of Southern California as a Tau Beta Pi fellow, one of the top 30 engineers in the nation, and received a M.S. in Computer Science. He is a frequent speaker at industry and academic events. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO?

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 13, 2007

Dr. Karrer was valedictorian at Loyola Marymount University, attended the University of Southern California as a Tau Beta Pi fellow, one of the top 30 engineers in the nation, and received a M.S. in Computer Science. He is a frequent speaker at industry and academic events. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO?

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles Internet 150

Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 15, 2020

And >40% of that revenue is coming from in-game purchases. When they can invest the marginal engineering hour in listing a new token that drives revenue vs. saving some costs on settlement, it’s hard to justify. The app could then take a small % of all revenue from “paid” messages. 6) Identity Issuance .

Networking 168

Networking Global OTC Security 168

SoCal CTO

MARCH 1, 2007

Dr. Karrer was valedictorian at Loyola Marymount University, attended the University of Southern California as a Tau Beta Pi fellow, one of the top 30 engineers in the nation, and received a M.S. in Computer Science. He is a frequent speaker at industry and academic events. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO?

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Networking Southern California Los Angeles 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 12, 2007

Dr. Karrer was valedictorian at Loyola Marymount University, attended the University of Southern California as a Tau Beta Pi fellow, one of the top 30 engineers in the nation, and received a M.S. in Computer Science. He is a frequent speaker at industry and academic events. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO?

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

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

SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

Dr. Karrer was valedictorian at Loyola Marymount University, attended the University of Southern California as a Tau Beta Pi fellow, one of the top 30 engineers in the nation, and received a M.S. in Computer Science. He is a frequent speaker at industry and academic events. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO?

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

Ben's Blog

APRIL 27, 2011

An irrepressible leader, Alfred was soon promoted to run all of engineering. When Alfred presented the acquisition to BEA’s board of directors, one prominent board member said: “if you think that this company is going to pay $150M for a company with $150K in revenue, you are out of your f&%!$n’ The New Company.

Acquisition 78

Acquisition Cloud Architecture Revenue 78

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 2, 2013

But the big payoff came when their discussions with medical device customers revealed an entirely new way to think about pricing —potentially tripling their revenue. At Linden Lab, delivered the open-sourced Second Life Viewer 2.0 They estimated their Average Revenue per User (ARPU) would be about $36 per year.

Customer 326

Customer Churn Rate Customer Development Lean 326

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 27, 2010

So then, why are we teaching our students to trust fall without any revenues of their own to catch them? No revenues, no costs. You can tell me all you want about how many patents were filed at Columbia or wherever, or what they do in revenues—the future of the innovation in NYC is not in hard technology.

New York 132

New York CTO Hire Technical Review New York City 132

SoCal CTO

MARCH 22, 2007

Open Source Business Models, speakers for Web 2.0 Dr. Karrer was valedictorian at Loyola Marymount University, attended the University of Southern California as a Tau Beta Pi fellow, one of the top 30 engineers in the nation, and received a M.S. Where I use LinkedIn: * I definitely use LinkedIn for Specific Requests - Ex.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

Privacy engineering rules: We can’t go a week without a new data breach or privacy violation; Marriott, Google, Facebook and more. The 10 year bull market where every company’s revenue chart is up and to the right is over. Watch for startups solving this problem with a focus on observability, reliability, security and automation.

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?)

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Austin Startup

APRIL 25, 2017

Revenue needs to grow 20x, and margins must expand dramatically. I won’t dive into cost structure in this blog post, but let’s think through how Snap could grow revenue 20x. I won’t dive into cost structure in this blog post, but let’s think through how Snap could grow revenue 20x. Global smartphone revenue is about $420B.

Valuation 48

Valuation Technical Review Forecast Social Network 48

Hearpreneur

FEBRUARY 13, 2022

Rather than depending just on SEO, marketers will need to optimize picture sitemaps and employ descriptive filenames for photos that are identified by search engines. Now, open source and low code tools make it easier for developers and product teams to start experimenting and executing AI/ML into their own products and processes.

Artificial Inteligence 110

Artificial Inteligence Software Review Technical Review Entrepreneur 110

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses, with increasing revenue and consistent profitability – quarter after quarter. With Netscape’s IPO , there was suddenly a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit. 1970 – 1995: The Golden Age. Thus began the 5-year dot-com bubble.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 31, 2013

Snapchat may be a company with no revenue and an unrealistic valuation, but it is changing the way people think of messaging. Ouya is an open source Android-based gaming platform that is looking to compete with PlayStation and Xbox. Or it could be the next Facebook. Time will tell. IFTTT=If This Then That.

Startup 60

Startup Cofounder San Francisco Software Review 60

Scalable Startup

AUGUST 18, 2013

The So Cal engineering gap? Drupal has a worldwide engine of real software discipline. The world has changed – software development, app dev, and software engineering are taking over the center of the conversation, and Drupal/PHP is taking over the lead. are built on Drupal. Big boy applications. What is Drupal?

Software Developers 22

Software Developers Software Development PHP Silicon Valley 22

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 18, 2012

Now, with open source software components, and low-cost development tools, the same job can be done by one good hacker for a few thousand dollars. Founders now routinely use their home to operate their startup until they are well into the revenue phase. Do basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Marketing (SEM) yourself.

Cost 255

Cost Burn Rate SEM Startup 255

Altgate

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

The presentation was on outsourcing generally, not just software engineering and the audience was very early stage companies (some yet to be founded). But did you know that founder Markus Frind has just 3 employees for his $10MM+ revenue business? Engineering/QA. He basically outsources everything. PR/Marketing.

Software Review 65

Software Review Offshore Startup Boston 65

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2010

Over the last 50 years engineers have moved from building computers out of individual transistors to building with prepackaged logic gates. In the last decade open source software (e.g In the last decade open source software (e.g Then they adopted standard microprocessors (e.g. x86 , ARM.) Windows, Linux ) emerged.

Customer Development 331

Customer Development Business Model Developer Customer 331

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 15, 2011

Now, with open source software components, and low-cost development tools, the same job can be done by one good hacker for a few thousand dollars. Founders now routinely use their home to operate their startup until they are well into the revenue phase. Do basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Marketing (SEM) yourself.

Entrepreneur 235

Entrepreneur Burn Rate SEM Social Network 235

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 20, 2011

Foundups : Michael Trout, from Fukui, Japan, pitched Foundups , which he claims will be a platform for open corporations. He talked about everything from raising funding for pre-seed entrepreneurs to get them to the seed stage, crowd funding, social media marketing and open source. You can't tell what the company does.

Massachusetts 113

Massachusetts Entrepreneur Open Source Silicon Valley 113

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

AUGUST 9, 2011

The site is a way of generating consistent revenue for your online money making efforts. You can still get your site to rank highly in the search engines. WordPress is an open source blogging platform that makes it very easy to create a site and upload content.

Hosting 81

Hosting Naming Matching Software Review 81

Gust

JUNE 10, 2012

Now, with open source software components, and low-cost development tools, the same job can be done by one good hacker for a few thousand dollars. Founders now routinely use their home to operate their startup until they are well into the revenue phase. Facilities and staff. Sales and marketing costs.

Cost 139

Cost Burn Rate SEM Startup 139

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

It appears that LTV should be about 3 x CAC for a viable SaaS or other form of recurring revenue model. Next Generation Business Models Because a number of smart entrepreneurs realized the importance of lowering CAC, they created new business models such as Open Source, SaaS, Freemium, etc.

Acquisition 103

Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103

Mucker Lab

APRIL 6, 2023

It's very hard for PLG to be the only or main motion with infrastructure products because it's not something one engineer will just test and buy. A lot of times as founders–especially technical founders, engineers, product people–believe if we build this awesome feature that solves your pain point, you should come and use it.

Product 78

Product CTO Hire Startup Fractional CTO 78

ConversionXL

JANUARY 24, 2017

As Ronny Kohavi , Distinguished Engineer, General Manager, Analysis and Experimentation at Microsoft, put it: Ronny Kohavi: “Experimentation is getting more recognized as essential to guide product development, when it is applicable (not always, as you can see in Section 6 in this paper ). How do you do that? Check it out here.

Conversion 48

Conversion Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Analytics 48

mashable.com

NOVEMBER 30, 2010

For more than 10 years CSP has impressed clients with highly effective software solutions and teams of multi-talented software engineers. TokyoYuki Question: What about giving an added incentive to potential developers, in exchange for part of up-front fees, a percentage of the revenue generated from the app/program? Saitek Executive.

Software Developers 79

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Software 79

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. It is about when in the life of your company you do the spending. Lets see why. Something else? Who’s the customer?

Lean 257

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 257

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 13, 2010

Now, with open source software components, and low-cost development tools, the same job can be done by one good hacker for a few thousand dollars. Founders now routinely use their home to operate their startup until they are well into the revenue phase. Do basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Marketing (SEM) yourself.

Burn Rate 125

Burn Rate SEM Social Network Angel Investor 125

news.ycombinator.com

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

His friends at General Electric said he was wasting his time on the gas combustion engine because the world was going electric. -- ErrantX 215 days ago | link. The story of the v-8 engine is a bit different. For three years I worked at Bug Labs (open source hardware company). From "Think and Grow Rich".

Stealth 41

Stealth Technical Review Startup Software Review 41

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

The company has just missed its quarterly revenue forecast. Lets take an example, and look at how they might do this: They will be able to tell you that revenue is composed of deals. To compute revenue, you multiply average deal size by number of deals. Bookings is the pre-cursor to Revenue. Obvious, isn’t it?

Metrics 55

Metrics Design Entrepreneur Startup 55