Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 12, 2020

That means they normally only invest in startups with a working product that has already been sold to at least one customer for full price (beta tests, giveaways and best friends don’t count). They are willing to cover marketing, inventory and scaling, but not product development. Make your focus and priorities clear.

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Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 336

Software By Rob

AUGUST 5, 2010

You’re a startup founder, whether actual or aspiring. Business books are a founder’s learning tool. The problem is that the premise of all of them – whether true or false – is irrelevant to you as a startup founder. Find like-minded startup founders and get to know them. Also a student of reading.

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Founder Startup Software Review Software 78

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

I break the answer to that question down into three engines: Viral - this is the business model identified in the presentation as "Get Users." Here, the key metrics are Acquisition and Referral, combined into the now-famous viral coefficient. If the coefficient is > 1.0 , you generally have a viral hit on your hands.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Engagement loops: beyond viral Theres a great and growing corpus of writing about viral loops, the step-by-step optimizations you can use to encourage maximum growth of online products by having customers invite each other to join.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

In a previous post , I covered the three main drivers of growth: Paid, Sticky, and Viral. A minimum viable product in this category must answer the question: does my media content or channel command the attention of a valuable audience? Let’s look at a viral growth company, like Facebook. As soon as possible!&#

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Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

The Next Web

DECEMBER 2, 2013

However, you could still build an Instagram-like product inexpensively, in the $100,000 to $300,000 range over a three-to-six-month period,” says Werdelin. Founder Kevin Systrom launched Instagram with 25,000 beta users on October 6, 2010; two years later, the app continues to see massive growth, recently reporting 150 million active users.

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Cost San Francisco New York City Ruby 168

crowdSPRING Blog

SEPTEMBER 22, 2010

Good short read dispelling productivity myths about employee performance – [link]. Lesser Known Traits of Successful Founders – [link]. Recommendations for usability in product development – [link]. New OK Go Video – White Knuckles (Have these guys mastered full-proof viral videos?) – [link].

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 90

The Next Web

AUGUST 26, 2012

For this reason you should find out as quickly as possible if the product is indeed offering real value to your customers by looking at real data. The metrics that matter the most are returning customers (user retention), turnover per customer and viral growth (k-factor).

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Bankruptcy Technical Review Intellectual Property Due Diligence 121

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

At Hustle Fund, we back both first time founders as well as repeat founders. One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Product second. Marketing first. B2B companies can have great unit economics.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

At Hustle Fund, we back both first time founders as well as repeat founders. One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Product second. Marketing first. B2B companies can have great unit economics.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

It is a platform to help brands building viral marketing campaigns. The investment will be used for product development initiatives. ShoeDazzle has Kim Kardashian as a co-founder / company as a spokesperson as well as Brian Lee who was a co-founder at Legal Zoom. Add this new model to the mix. 13mm in Series B.

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Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

VC Cafe

JULY 15, 2021

As a VC that invests in B2C, I often try to put myself in shoes of a founder looking to grow the audience for their new app to consumers. Build virality into the product – it might be counter intuitive to launch your product as “invite only” – after all, the goal is to grow the audience, not to restrict it.

Mobile 190

Mobile Social Media Distribution PR 190

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. In fact, this company hasn’t shipped any new products in months.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 31, 2014

That means they normally only invest in startups with a working product that has already been sold to at least one customer for full price (beta tests, giveaways and best friends don’t count). They are willing to cover marketing, inventory and scaling, but not product development. Make your focus and priorities clear.

Elevator Pitch 285

Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 285

ConversionXL

APRIL 13, 2017

Jonathan Price wrote on the same Quora thread that he believes growth marketing to differ from regular marketing because it “is technology-centric and it blurs the boundary between marketing and product development.” The use of qualitative research and quantitative data analysis to gain deep insights into user behavior.

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Analytics Engineer SEO Channel 99

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 5, 2018

That means they normally only invest in startups with a working product that has already been sold to at least one customer for full price (beta tests, giveaways and best friends don’t count). They are willing to cover marketing, inventory and scaling, but not product development. Make your focus and priorities clear.

Elevator Pitch 139

Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 139

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 16, 2013

It can work wonderfully of course, but usually it crushes and destroys companies , not only because it costs more than anticipated but because the founders didn’t realize the business model itself caused them to make incorrect decisions. to democratic product development (voting on which features customers would like to see next?).

Marketing 318

Marketing Viral Campaign Business Model 318

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

On Facebook, viral distribution has proved decisive. Those companies who have learned to build apps that optimize the viral loop dominate in every category where they compete. So far, I dont see any apps that have much in the way of viral distribution. We're leading the charge in enabling viral distribution for iPhone apps.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. When we’re optimizing, product development teams encounter similar situations. I mean, here we are, paying them to be there, and they won’t use the product!

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

mashable.com

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

I’m now in my second founder/CEO role, having raised more than $18.5 For example, my company decided early on to hire a UI designer, which has helped tremendously with our product development. Join the conversation by adding Mashables Pete Cashmore to your Circles on Google+ Close Welcome to Mashable!

Startup 79

Startup Social Media RSS Social Network 79

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

“If you can fix a problem for someone and do it better, quicker, and/or cheaper than your competitor, you’re off to a good start.” – Gabriel Kuperman, founder and CEO of CuePin. We created UpKeep to fill this void—a cloud-based solution that was affordable for any size business.” – Ryan Chan, founder of UpKeep.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

This is a common problem that results from viral-loop optimization. By copying the exact same registration flow as every other successful viral app, many viral apps completely lose their positioning. Heres why I dont think engagement loops are that helpful: unlike viral loops, its not bad if its not self-sustaining.

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Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 30, 2016

That means they normally only invest in startups with a working product that has already been sold to at least one customer for full price (beta tests, giveaways and best friends don’t count). They are willing to cover marketing, inventory and scaling, but not product development. Make your focus and priorities clear.

Elevator Pitch 120

Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 120

Version One Ventures

NOVEMBER 22, 2016

You can read co-founder Josh Brewer’s announcement here. As co-founder Frank Chimero explains ”The majority of a design job is orchestrating the team, ensuring visual consistency, updating stakeholders, documenting decisions, interpreting feedback, and delivering the work for implementation. That’s where Abstract comes in.

Design 60

Design Cofounder IP Vertical 60

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

In the Udemy course, Alistair and Ben expand these basics into a description of how to create empathy, stickiness, virality, revenue, and scale. Stickiness, Ben and Alistair say, is where people move on too quickly--they don’t make sure they really have a product that has the right features and functionality to meet their customers’ needs.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

vs. sustainable: Compare this to the renewable strategies, like viral marketing, SEO, widgets, and ads, which can scale into 10s of millions of users but are primarily centered around tough, non-user centric work. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

David Teten

MAY 1, 2013

I was formerly Founder/CEO of a domain name investment bank , and still own about a hundred domain names personally. When deciding on the purchase of an expensive domain, startup teams should first consider whether the money might be better spent on other areas such as product development, customer acquisition, or hiring new talent. .

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Naming Semantic Venture Capital Startup 114

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

It has been awesome, flattering, and humbling to see that post went viral and has been seen by so many thousands of people — mainly aspiring entrepreneurs — and has been translated into many languages. Have amazing co-founders who are better at what they do than you could ever be. I’m a deeply emotional person.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

If its part of a viral loop, its probably trying to get them to invite more friends (on average). I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 21, 2013

The book has been a year in the making, and authors Ben Yoskovitz and Alistair Croll —themselves successful founders with several exits under their belts—spent much of that time speaking with founders, investors, and analysts to understand a really basic, but seldom-asked, question: What's normal?

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Analytics Lean Metrics Churn Rate 167

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

You’ve completed customer research for your product development and positioning strategy. Alternatively, founder of contentlift.io Obsessing over going viral. Creative agency founder Dan Kelsall has helped many of his clients go viral. In most cases, viral posts generated less demand.

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Demand B2B Distribution Channel 124

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

Scott’s first big foray into industry-changing companies came with CarsDirect, an IdeaLab company where he was the initial founder & CEO. Money to be used for hiring and additional product development. Offers virality optimization tools and A/B testing inside Facebook. Competitors: Gowalla. See: TechCrunch.

San Francisco 248

San Francisco Venture Capital Analytics Government 248

mashable.com

MAY 24, 2011

May 23, 2011 by Christina Warren 20 Share on Tumblr email share Share on Tumblr email share The Mobile App Trends Series is supported by Sourcebits , a leading product developer for mobile platforms. Sourcebits offers design and development services for iOS, Android, Mobile and Web platforms. ); // Welcome to Mashable!

Mobile 90

Mobile Web Social Media Software Review 90

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

(This is similar to the problem that viral loop companies have with the engagement loop : by making it too easy to join, they actually give away the positioning that allows for longer-term engagement.) Why was a team this smart, this disciplined, and this committed to waste-free product development creating so much waste?

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 20, 2012

Customer discovery turns founders’ initial hypotheses about their market and customers into facts. Unlike “mainstream” business or consumer-product customers who want to buy a finished, completed, tested product, earlyvangelists are willing to make a leap of faith and buy an early product from a startup.

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Customer Advisory Board Engineer Cofounder 119

The Next Web

OCTOBER 17, 2013

A lot of entrepreneurs talk about optimizing their products so they run faster, look better, go viral – but it’s important to remember that none of this can happen unless you are constantly getting feedback from your most valuable asset: Your customers. Seedcamp invests in approximately 20 companies annually.

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Customer B2C Startup Early Stage 128

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Demand 167

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