Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2014

“Growth hacking perpetuates this myth that you can magically achieve hockey-stick growth by using short-term “hacks.” “ I have always encouraged teams to think about growth as daily blocking-and-tackling rather than a dark art. I recommend hiring or appointing a growth hacker.”

Technical Review 384

Technical Review Hockey Stick SEM Channel 384

Up and Running

MARCH 14, 2018

Share what’s unique about your product and how it will solve the issue you shared in the previous slide. Be realistic about who you’re building your product for and break out your market into TAM, SAM, and SOM. Be very specific about your products and pricing and emphasize again how your market is anxiously awaiting your arrival.

Hockey Stick 164

Hockey Stick Exit Strategy Technical Review Angel Investor 164

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 18, 2020

Look for a part-time job in a local or family business to provide access to things you will need only occasionally, such as a high-speed printer, video equipment or product assembly tools and storage. With the unlimited access to “how-to” videos and detailed instructions on the Internet, you shouldn’t need to hire experts for most things.

Hockey Stick 423

Hockey Stick Bootstrapping Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 423

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 19, 2020

Ready to scale is when you have a proven product and a proven business model, about to expand to new geographies and markets. A software product is a classic example of a scalable solution, since it costs real money to build the first copy, but unlimited additional copies can be quickly cloned for almost no incremental cost.

Hockey Stick 386

Hockey Stick Intellectual Property Startup Non-Compete 386

Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 31, 2016

As an investor and former founder, I know that scalable growth (and the pretty hockey stick graph) is the holy grail for every startup. Just a decade ago, most software/cloud startups used a traditional model where product and marketing were siloed: product teams created the product and marketing drove people to the website to buy it.

Software Review 60

Software Review South Africa Hockey Stick Viral 60

Up and Running

JANUARY 2, 2013

Your Solution : Share what’s unique about your product and how it will solve the issue you shared in the previous slide. Impress the investors with what you and your team have accomplished to date (sales, contracts, key hires, product launches, etc.). And if you can relate your story to your audience, even better!

Hockey Stick 164

Hockey Stick Exit Strategy Technical Review Due Diligence 164

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review Way back when the money was doled out, the team made a compelling pitch about the large market that was going to adopt their new innovative product or service. Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. Read the rest here.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2013

Ready to scale is when you have a proven product and a proven business model, about to expand to new geographies and markets. A software product is a classic example of a scalable solution, since it costs real money to build the first copy, but unlimited additional copies can be quickly cloned for almost no incremental cost.

Hockey Stick 278

Hockey Stick Intellectual Property Startup Non-Compete 278

Reid Hoffman

DECEMBER 10, 2020

Couchsurfing is a bad product experience. For a long time, when you looked at the graph, it was almost like a classic exponential “hockey stick” curve, where it’s flat for a long time, then hits the bend and takes off. Everyone has couches, and now you can rent them.” I replied, “That sounds really interesting.

Hosting 69

Hosting Hockey Stick IPO Silicon Valley 69

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

Ready to scale is when you have a proven product and a proven business model, about to expand to new geographies and markets. A software product is a classic example of a scalable solution, since it costs real money to build the first copy, but unlimited additional copies can be quickly cloned for almost no incremental cost.

Hockey Stick 120

Hockey Stick Intellectual Property Non-Compete Business Model 120

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 6, 2016

Look for a part-time job in a local or family business to provide access to things you will need only occasionally, such as a high-speed printer, video equipment or product assembly tools and storage. With the unlimited access to “how-to” videos and detailed instructions on the Internet, you shouldn’t need to hire experts for most things.

Bootstrapping 120

Bootstrapping Hockey Stick Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 120

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 11, 2015

Ready to scale is when you have a proven product and a proven business model, about to expand to new geographies and markets. A software product is a classic example of a scalable solution, since it costs real money to build the first copy, but unlimited additional copies can be quickly cloned for almost no incremental cost.

Hockey Stick 120

Hockey Stick Intellectual Property Non-Compete Business Model 120

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. 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. What’s going on?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 21, 2010

At First Round , I often hear the term “product-market” fit. Since we often invest before the big “hockey stick” traction that bigger VCs wait for, a lot of times the company is still trying to tweak exactly what service or application will take off in a given market. Think about what your product and market will demand of you.

Product 68

Product Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Syndicate 68

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

It had taken the company almost twice as long as planned to get their product out the door. Another VC added that engineering should redesign the product to meet the price and performance of current users in an adjacent market. It was going to be the right product – someday – but right now it was not the mainstream.

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Revenue Balance Sheet Hockey Stick Burn Rate 230

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Not only did their sales curve look like a textbook case of a VC-friendly hockey stick, but their Lessons Learned funding presentation was an eye-opener.). They wanted to build an industry not just a product or a company. They hired a world-class team with co-founders and early employees who shared their vision.

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Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 276

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

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. Most important slide: hockey stick Micro-scale results Key questions: who is the customer, and how do you know?

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

Describing your product as “new and “never been done before” instead of “we’re just like those others guys, but better” could cost your company billions. That year the two founders decided to get serious about being a company, and hired a CEO. In a major strategy shift, they decided to sell a product directly to businesses.

Hockey Stick 271

Hockey Stick Customer Development Silicon Valley Networking 271

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 15, 2011

Yet, we know very well that the most thoughtfully constructed cashflow models and hockey stick traffic predictions never come out the way we thought they would, so what's the point of making them at all? Over the last week, I've sat down with a handful of entreprenuers and given the same advice--to construct the fantasy model.

Hockey Stick 111

Hockey Stick PR Framework Engineer 111

K9 Ventures

MARCH 2, 2017

And all of a sudden you realize that you’ve achieved the hallowed “Product-Market Fit.” Most VCs love that stuff they want to see that hockey-stick growth (For the record, I do not. And most importantly you eventually convince someone to become your first customer. And then you get your next customer.

Hockey Stick 48

Hockey Stick Cofounder Founder Early Stage 48

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. They just need to persuade customers why their new product was better than the competition – and they did it brilliantly.

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Up and Running

APRIL 28, 2015

If it makes sense for your business, you’ll want to divide your market into segments that you will address with different types of marketing and perhaps different types of product offerings. Finally, you get to dive into describing your product or service. Now your product or service is coming to the rescue to help solve that problem.

Forecast 60

Forecast Hockey Stick Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 60

ConversionXL

APRIL 10, 2020

Hockey-stick growth requires being ahead of, not in line with, conventional wisdom: The most impactful ideas won’t be found in “best practices.” But picking the business model and building a product for user-driven growth is very difficult to do intentionally.”. Then, we can spend time pushing our thinking toward bold new ideas.

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Hockey Stick Analytics Channel Sales Cycle 68

Up and Running

MARCH 11, 2015

Not only because it’s a product that Bplans and Palo Alto software makes, but because before I joined the company, I used LivePlan to pitch and raise my investment capital. When they fund you, they know that they have to believe that you can also go out and sell the product. Are you saving them time? Are you saving lives?

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Software Review Due Diligence Exit Strategy 60

Up and Running

AUGUST 16, 2017

For example, missing crucial deadlines for finishing the business plan, or drawing hockey stick profit projections can repel potential investors. Lots of ideas seem great until you figure out that the market doesn’t actually want your product. Of course, there are obvious reasons that business plans fail.

Business Plan 127

Business Plan Hockey Stick Cofounder Salary 127

Duct Tape Marketing

JULY 26, 2017

We just have hit some inflection points over the last couple years with content that has really kind of pushed things into the, well, somewhat into the stratosphere as far as around content production and people’s awareness of podcasting seems to be kind of growing at a faster rate right now.

Audio 39

Audio Programming Software Review Hosting 39