Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 25, 2017

Every time I challenge a business plan with little or no budget for marketing, I get the answer that they will be using “viral” marketing, which costs nothing. First of all, Seth Godin pointed out a long time ago that viral marketing does not equal word-of-mouth. Develop viral content. Seed viral activity.

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ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

In this article, you’ll learn what growth hacking in marketing is and what it’s not. The goal of growth hacking as marketing is rapid growth, using strategies and tactics that leverage (and even exploit) technology, platforms, and behavior to reach an end goal. Why do people think growth hacking in marketing is controversial?

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

Great marketing is required to generate revenue and grow every business, especially new businesses which have no brand recognition nor loyal customer base. I also look for a commensurate portion of the plan describing the specific innovative marketing deliverables, beyond the traditional marketing items.

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Marketing Revenue Matching Viral 333

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 11, 2010

Ask a technical founder about his startup, and he'll proudly describe his stunning software — simple, compelling, useful, fun. Four uncomfortable seconds later, a smile breaks across the founder's face. We're putting a 'Retweet' button inside the product to encourage viral growth.".

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Software Review Technical Review Viral Software Developers 261

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2018

My friend Michael Broukhim, founder & co-CEO of FabFitFun and I recently had a catch-up meeting for 3-miles on the Santa Monica “Bird Trail” No company has ever elicited so many questions by friends, colleagues, entrepreneurs, fellow VCs and journalists as has Bird, the company that pioneered the electronic scooter as a service market.

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San Francisco Valuation Technical Review Los Angeles 256

The Startup Magazine

MAY 26, 2024

Bucher, founder of venture capital firm Day One Ventures, was recently accepted into the Milken Institute’s membership program, with her official induction taking place at the prestigious global conference. Stepping Up to the Plate The portfolio companies of Day One Ventures are largely helmed by minority or women founders.

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Los Angeles Global Founder Venture Capital 78

ConversionXL

APRIL 4, 2017

How you decide to invest in marketing channels can make or break your business. Rather, marketers get trapped in the fervent anxiety of needing to be everywhere at once. An Overview of Common Digital Marketing Channels. Marketers spend a ton of money on search ads, and as you can assume, Google owns a large part of the market.

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Channel Marketing Viral SEO 118

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 12, 2023

examines and analyses this entrepreneurial revolution to reveal critical lessons every Gen-Y entrepreneur and marketer must learn. But the insights I see from her book and elsewhere are equally applicable to startup founders of all ages, and businesses of all ages. Respond rapidly to market shifts. Focus on your core competency.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 26, 2019

Founders almost never have a real strategy. They don’t know how to analyze a market or competition, so they make it up instead learning how to do it. Founders explain failures with things like “our two main competitors did [thing] to us” or “customers didn’t understand [our point of view].” All startups are screwed up.

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Restful Founder Revenue Acquisition 202

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 19, 2020

Instead, they need to validate a customer problem and real market need first. These founders all seem to be pushing their technology, rather than highlighting their solution to a painful need. Smart entrepreneurs build market-driven solutions, per the following principles: Size the opportunity and customer interest first.

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Technology Marketing Sales Cycle Social Media 317

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 27, 2021

I’ve also known startups who have worked for months on the infrastructure of their business – front office, manufacturing, product design, marketing, personnel, and sales – then started work on a web site in parallel with their “grand opening.” Viral marketing needs a website. The website can be a source of revenue.

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Web Viral Naming Internet 349

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 21, 2020

examines and analyses this entrepreneurial revolution to reveal critical lessons every Gen-Y entrepreneur and marketer must learn. But the insights I see from her book and elsewhere are equally applicable to startup founders of all ages, and businesses of all ages. Respond rapidly to market shifts. Focus on your core competency.

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Viral Revenue Distribution Cloud 430

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 4, 2016

The good news is that everyone expects entrepreneurs to make mistakes, since founders explore uncharted territory. In fact, investors recognize that founders usually learn more from mistakes than from success, so a well-explained startup failure can improve their odds of funding the next time around.

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Intellectual Property Startup Forecast Angel Investor 120

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 3, 2020

by Daniel Quindemil, Founder of I AM Builders. Using a variety of proven marketing strategies, contractors can explode their construction businesses and reach more potential clients than ever before. Viral Marketing. Leverage Referral Marketing. Everyone is always looking for the next big thing. Go execute!

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Sales Marketing Social Media Viral 165

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 27, 2016

Some business successes can be attributed to luck, timing, or available funding, but in this case most agree that Gary was simply a marketing genius and he created his own market through creative advertising, emotional appeal and exclusivity. Similarly, mentioning viral marketing without specifics won’t assure fundability.

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Technical Review Intellectual Property Due Diligence Angel Investor 134

Hunter Walker

FEBRUARY 20, 2024

What Happens When TikTok Is Your Marketing Department [David Segal/New York Times] – Was it organic? Here the focus is on Pink Stuff, a British cleaning paste, which was #CleanTok mainstreamed to a quadrupling of revenue ($125m annually) and distribution to 55 countries. Was it spon con? Was it both? That sucks for everyone.

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Founder Vesting Vesting Cap Table Founder 59

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

Investors and founders alike have been obsessed about “growth at all costs,” just as a virus colony grows without care to its effect on its host cells or whether the colony’s growth ends up destroying the host body completely, taking the colony down with it in a viral version of Lord of the Flies. The problem is “growth at all costs.”

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Technical Review Viral Metrics Salary 120

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2021

Yet there are big challenges to hyperlocal, at least for consumer-focused hyperlocal startups, according to Sean Barkulis, Founder of UPlanMe, whose initial consumer-focused business model was an early casualty, writing in Street Fight : Every site requires real curated local content to engage users. Getting these users costs money.

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Finder Startup Curation Seattle 361

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 20, 2023

Instead, they need to validate a customer problem and real market need first. These founders all seem to be pushing their technology, rather than highlighting their solution to a painful need. Smart entrepreneurs build market-driven solutions, per the following principles: Size the opportunity and customer interest first.

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Customer Sales Cycle Social Media Viral 276

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. Apr-15: Head of Marketing (growth team). Lean marketing. 1x hacker in charge of product/development.

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Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Hearpreneur

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

Airbnb founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia had difficulty securing funding, so they launched a mini project to build some funds and catch investors' attention. Using this capital , the founders launched and enjoyed exponential growth in their first year, with 10K users and thousands of listings. Photo Credit: Jack Underwood.

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Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 7, 2023

They are willing to cover marketing, inventory and scaling, but not product development. An example might be 50 percent for marketing, 30 percent for inventory and 20 percent for staffing. An example might be 50 percent for marketing, 30 percent for inventory and 20 percent for staffing. Make your focus and priorities clear.

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Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 228

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 17, 2013

It’s not uncommon for me to see a startup business plan “mission” to be the “premier brand” for their product, yet their marketing budget in the financials is trivial. This combination will almost certainly get your plan tossed by potential investors, who understand all too well the need and cost for marketing in today’s environment.

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Marketing Viral SEM Startup 265

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 16, 2014

It’s not uncommon for me to see a startup business plan “mission” to be the “premier brand” for their product, yet their marketing budget in the financials is trivial. This combination will almost certainly get your plan tossed by potential investors, who understand all too well the need and cost for marketing in today’s environment.

Marketing 257

Marketing SEM Viral Social Media 257

Haystack

FEBRUARY 1, 2019

For Spotify’s core business, which charges consumer subscriptions for the ability to have unlimited mobile access to an enormous music library, music as the audio source converts high engagement minutes into recurring revenue via subscriptions. market by launching in connection with Facebook viral invites? Remember Stitcher?

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Acquisition Media Audio Technical Review 134

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

But truthfully both Dana and I are more aligned with the lean startup principles and believe you only go FAT when you’ve really proved out your product / market fit. The “private sale” market phenomenon was started in France by Vente-Privee (literally means “private sale”) and was replicated in Germany by BrandsforFriends.

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Partner New York City Cofounder Syndicate 240

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.

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Customer Development Web Developer Customer 228

Duct Tape Marketing

MAY 18, 2023

How To Maximize The Power Of Newsletters written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing Marketing Podcast with Russell Henneberry In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast , I interview Russell Heneberry. He’s the Founder of theCLIKK, an email newsletter about digital marketing. Like this show?

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ChatGPT Advertising Email Viral 90

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 12, 2020

They are willing to cover marketing, inventory and scaling, but not product development. An example might be 50 percent for marketing, 30 percent for inventory and 20 percent for staffing. An example might be 50 percent for marketing, 30 percent for inventory and 20 percent for staffing. Make your focus and priorities clear.

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Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 336

crowdSPRING Blog

OCTOBER 19, 2012

These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Social Media Lessons for Small Business | Duct Tape Marketing - [link]. Avoid the 50/50 co-founder model – here’s why – [link]. Then Act | crowdSPRING Blog - [link].

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 93

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 25, 2007

Part of the discussion around this is the talk about the founder who only got $83M (as compared to $3xxM for the other founders) who bailed out early and choose to go back to school. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO? Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouh.

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Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

Up and Running

JULY 10, 2017

The decision will affect and shape your brand, your marketing, and your business. I talked to Adam Hempenstall, founder and CEO at BetterProposals , who has been using freemium for three years for his SaaS product: “Honestly, I think it was a mistake. It’s mostly popular with B2C markets. Choose wisely. Youtube ads. $1

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Startup Non-Compete Viral Software Review 110

The Next Web

DECEMBER 12, 2013

A marketplace is not often a natural hangout, and relies on a barrage of emails, offers and marketing campaigns to get you to remember to go back to check out the site or app. “In Growth hacking” or the mentality of “try every viral trick, every channel as quickly as possible in order to get ahead in the land grab” is a hot topic.

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Mobile Silicon Valley Viral Technical Review 136

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. But its not really viral growth, even when its exponential.

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San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 15, 2019

I’ve also known startups who have worked for months on the infrastructure of their business – front office, manufacturing, product design, marketing, personnel, and sales – then started work on a web site in parallel with their “grand opening.” Viral marketing needs a website. The website can be a source of revenue.

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Viral Web Naming Internet 191

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 7, 2010

It’s not uncommon for me to see a startup business plan “mission” to be the “premier brand” for their product, yet their marketing budget in the financials is trivial. This combination will almost certainly get your plan tossed by potential investors, who understand all too well the need and cost for marketing in today’s environment.

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Marketing SEM Startup Viral 235

Gust

MARCH 9, 2014

It’s not uncommon for me to see a startup business plan “mission” to be the “premier brand” for their product, yet their marketing budget in the financials is trivial. This combination will almost certainly get your plan tossed by potential investors, who understand all too well the need and cost for marketing in today’s environment.

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Marketing SEM Viral Social Media 146