Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. Customer Development , Agile Engineering and the Lean methodology enforced a process of incremental and iterative development. Carpe Diem.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2020

You may have heard that venture capitalists in Silicon Valley no longer read business plans. Don’t let your passion convince you that word-of-mouth and viral marketing will suffice against well-funded competitors and ever more demanding customers. For the rest of us, we need a business plan, as well as a product plan.

Business Plan 423

Business Plan Product Intellectual Property Elevator Pitch 423

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

It’s true that the carrier then gets their huge slice for being the billing and payment engine but the idea is that you as a website more than make up for this in terms of customer conversion. It is a platform to help brands building viral marketing campaigns. Wildfire was one of the darlings of the fbFund incubator program.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 18, 2019

Image is the bedrock part of the “fake it till you make it” culture that animates most of Silicon Valley today. They were linking the app to the viral hashtag #throwbackthursday, which was a natural fit for the brand. In the technology industry, almost more than anywhere else, image is everything.

PR 107

PR Startup Social Media Silicon Valley 107

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. I too would be concerned about false negatives, but perhaps this strategy could be integrated into a broader market research strategy that included user engagement, viral marketing, etc which would all be quantifiable under the Google analytics.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Cracking the Code

DECEMBER 11, 2015

You can read the full story here ) #8 Engine Developing a scalable sales and marketing engine is a key element of success for SaaS companies. It’s very important to explain in detail how this engine is designed and how you can scale while maintaining quality and productivity.

San Francisco 48

San Francisco Churn Rate Silicon Valley Engineer 48

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 27, 2011

The game has started getting some traction already, and has a good virality index. She is a Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur and strategy consultant who writes the blog Sramana Mitra On Strategy , and is the author of the Entrepreneur Journeys book series and Vision India 2020. SOCO Games.

Dilution 114

Dilution Revenue Finance Entrepreneur 114

Women Entrepreneurs Can

SEPTEMBER 6, 2020

You can have a fantastic website, well-designed, and full of great content, but if it is not SEO-worthy, it will not be found on search engines and will not get leads and conversions. John Doerr of Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist’s calls it the “next wave of the web.” Social media-fuelled the rise of the UGC.

Software Review 94

Software Review Social Media New Zealand Silicon Valley 94

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 6, 2019

Running comparative calculations, Arsenault figures that “two senior engineers plus a product manager/marketer for 40 hours per month, times 6 months, would be 720 hours to get to our MVP. is a SaaS tool that companies can use to assess engineers before they hire them. spent $1k on their MVP. Qualified.io spent $20k on their MVP.

Sweat Equity 78

Sweat Equity Software Review Vesting Cofounder 78

Reid Hoffman

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

One of the reasons that Silicon Valley has been so successful at building blitzscaling companies is its “fail fast” mantra, which encourages entrepreneurs to determine whether or not their startup can achieve product-market fit as early in the company’s lifecycle as possible. WHAT LEADS TO PIVOTS? Not all pivots are created equal.

Startup 36

Startup Silicon Valley Business Model Mobile 36

Austin Startup

APRIL 4, 2017

I really enjoyed a recent post I read on First Round Review about vanity metrics, which touches on what I love about my startup vs. others with more funding, more engineers and more mentions on TechCrunch. In 2014, a recruitment platform went viral by emailing a user’s Facebook friends after a sign-up. Vanity metrics aren’t useless.

Metrics 48

Metrics Silicon Valley Angel Investor Technical Review 48

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

Growth Hacking isn’t viral marketing (although viral marketing is part of it). and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. If a startup is pre-product/market fit, growth hackers can make sure virality is embedded at the core of a product. Rinse and repeat.

Viral 167

Viral API Startup Retention 167

crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 15, 2013

Money matters: why women founders struggle in Silicon Valley | The Verge – [link]. I bet you over-engineered your startup – [link]. “Silicon Valley loves to talk big about innovation; it’s just not as good at following through.” Paid Search: Are You Wasting Your Money? – [link].

Social Media 105

Social Media Small Business Design Media 105

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 6, 2019

Running comparative calculations, Arsenault figures that “two senior engineers plus a product manager/marketer for 40 hours per month, times 6 months, would be 720 hours to get to our MVP. is a SaaS tool that companies can use to assess engineers before they hire them. spent $1k on their MVP. Qualified.io spent $20k on their MVP.

Sweat Equity 50

Sweat Equity Software Review Vesting Cofounder 50

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

Google realized that being the way to find the world’s information was a blitzscalable market, thanks to the network effects in its AdWords revenue engine. Dropbox made a great file-sharing product, for instance, but it was their viral marketing campaign that allowed them to cheaply acquire millions of customers.

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Business Model IPO Non-Compete 28

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 11, 2020

Sam is one of the most prolific company builders in Silicon Valley. Eric Ries : You were one of the first people who when the crisis was breaking, I saw your name all over Silicon Valley, in the Y Combinator forums. There's a good enough vaccine to get the virality rate below one.

Silicon Valley 68

Silicon Valley Technical Review Government Revenue 68

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

They had a proprietary browser, their own search engine, their own content, chat rooms, email system, etc. The lesson was learned over 30 years in Silicon Valley: you create ecosystems where third-parties can innovate and thrive and you become the legitimate center of it all and can tax the system later. provides you.

Social Network 318

Social Network Networking Internet Technical Review 318

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, December 7, 2008 The hackers lament One of the thrilling parts of working and writing in Silicon Valley is the incredible variety of people Ive had the chance to meet. And we cant hire new engineers any faster, because you cant be interviewing and debugging and fixing all at the same time!

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 2, 2012

Google App Engine is ready for primetime says Reddit/Hipmunk co-founder – [link]. There Are Plenty Of Failures In Silicon Valley, Thanks – [link]. 7 Social Media Mistakes that Can Keep Your Content from Going Viral - [link]. Managing Your Own Psychology | ben’s blog - [link]. Advertising Age - [link].

Social Media 93

Social Media Small Business Design Media 93

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 3, 2012

This reality has fostered a popular startup approach which dramatically improves the efficiency and speed of these corrections, pioneered by Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author Eric Ries. Engine of growth pivot. Most startups these days use one of three primary growth engines: the viral, sticky, and paid growth models.

Architecture 273

Architecture Silicon Valley Startup Channel 273

The Next Web

MAY 5, 2013

On the other, it just sounds like one of those Silicon Valley buzz words that makes you want to puke every time you hear it (can anyone say “pivot”?). So while startups are trying to both build a car and get the engine started, corporations are trying to make their cars run faster. That said, “growth hacker” is here to stay.

Marketing 165

Marketing Viral SEO Analytics 165

Altgate

JUNE 1, 2009

Joel Spolsky , Founder / CEO at Fog Creek Software (64,598) Seth Godin , Founder of Yoyodyne; creator of "permission marketing" (41,957) Jason Fried , 37signals co-founder Jason Fried (and other 37signals employees) (31,595) Tim O'Reilly , Founder / CEO of O'Reilly Media (10,269) Jason Calacanis , CEO of Mahalo (10,000) [ note: this (..)

Cofounder 59

Cofounder Entrepreneur Technical Review Venture Capital 59

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

This reality has fostered a popular new startup approach which dramatically improves the efficiency and speed of these corrections, pioneered by Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author Eric Ries. Engine of growth pivot. Most startups these days use one of three primary growth engines: the viral, sticky, and paid growth models.

Lean 255

Lean Entrepreneur Architecture Silicon Valley 255

mashable.com

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

One of the things we hear a lot about in Silicon Valley is how cheap and easy it is to launch a startup these days. While all of these factors are true to an extent, the truth of the matter is that the reduced costs of hardware and software are easily offset by the expense of engineers and experienced business people.

Startup 79

Startup Social Media RSS Social Network 79

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

You’ve built detailed analytics tracking into your product and you should be seeing organic and viral growth; and can provide Daily/Weekly/Monthly Active Users, 30d/90d/120d retention. The goal is to iterate on building a repeatable engine for growth that makes the economics work. Silicon Valley. 2M in 18 months.

Cofounder 429

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 429

Gust

NOVEMBER 25, 2012

This reality has fostered a popular startup approach which dramatically improves the efficiency and speed of these corrections, pioneered by Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author Eric Ries. Engine of growth pivot. Most startups these days use one of three primary growth engines: the viral, sticky, and paid growth models.

Architecture 187

Architecture Silicon Valley Startup Channel 187

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 18, 2011

The applications for uploading and sharing the photos are obviously more viral and visually compelling. Jeff was obsessed with Instagram at that time as nearly every Silicon Valley VC seemed to be (and still is). I know we will be retailer friendly rather than becoming the lost-common-denominator comparison shopping engine.

Term Sheet 303

Term Sheet Mobile Cofounder Early Stage 303

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Eric Ries, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author of The Lean Startup, popularized this strategy for web applications. Producthunt.com is a great resource for viral marketing for the product launch as well as community feedback.”. This is the simplest version of your product minus the frills and frosting.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

If the viral coefficient is 0.9, In fact, we often felt frustrated when new startups with a fraction of our success got terrific write-ups in Silicon Valley-centric venues. Pay attention to your fundamental driver of growth. keep iterating until its 1.1 before you launch.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Lean PR Early Stage 168

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

He , Srikanth Narayan , Ben Werdmuller von Elgg , Jo Vi Ko , Justin Lee , Giovanni Tardini , David de Weerdt , Vineet Thanedar , Ryan Brideau , Jonathan Meiri , Rob Weedn , Krzysztof Kowalczyk , Greg Pilling , Kevin Leland , Parham Michael Ossareh , Dan Loewenherz , Mary Specht , Engin Erdo?an "I am a creative guy with a startup idea."

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 24, 2020

Eric Ries : And I hate to even bring this up, but just to dispense with the conspiracy theories that have been floating around, the fact that this is so well designed, seemingly, to penetrate human cells and to have these adverse consequences, this is not evidence that it was engineered in a lab? Hannu Rajaniemi : That is right.

Founder 60

Founder Technical Review Leadership Software Review 60

mashable.com

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

And for those in the coveted in-crowd, Silicon Valley, San Francisco and the greater tech community become a world of opportunity where you’re only limited by the quality of your idea and the caliber of your friends. The “haves&# possess money, power, influence, or the right friends with those qualities.

Angel Investor 80

Angel Investor San Francisco Startup Social Media 80

Hunter Walker

JULY 29, 2017

As long as they monetize attention and prioritize engagement above all else, as long as their recommendation engines push people further into echo chambers and down conspiracist rabbit holes, nothing is going to change. At the same time, I believe that the engineers and creators of these products are fundamentally good people.

Campaign 82

Campaign Social Media Media Marketing 82

abovethecrowd.com

JUNE 2, 2021

Paypal famously offered customers $5 to invite a friend, who would then also get $5 as part of a highly successful viral marketing campaign (they actually started at $20, and then reduced it to $10 and then ended at $5). Silicon Valley founders and executives routinely say, “well the banker said we have to do this, or we can’t do that.”

IPO 82

IPO Customer Matching Silicon Valley 82

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 27, 2020

51:36) Scientific background on niclosamide, what we know about how it works to stop viral replication. (52:48) in chemical engineering. (39:06) Differences between potential drug treatments that haven't panned out and niclosamide. (40:35) 40:35) The importance of well-controlled clinical data in trials before recommending usage. (43:26)

United States 68

United States Europe Ratchet Technical Review 68

www.readwriteweb.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

The landing page for Bonds viral, social game, Spymaster. As mobile browsers begin to utilise more advanced rendering engines and mobile usage increases as a way to view the real Internet (Im looking at you, iPhone), Flash is becoming resource-intensive and restrictive." Aesthetics play a major part in that decision."

Web 42

Web Design Startup Flash 42

ConversionXL

APRIL 6, 2016

Growth hacking came from Silicon Valley, where people do not trust marketers. It’s really just product engineering + optimization. Increase virality –> decrease eCPA. No great company was ever built on the back of a listicle. Entrepreneurs thought marketers were going to buy them Super Bowl ads.”.

Retention 48

Retention Algorithm Software Review Conversion 48