Remove Leadership Remove Sales Remove Venture Capital Remove Vertical
article thumbnail

Vertical Markets 2: Customer/Market Risk versus Invention Risk.

Steve Blank

Steve,&# he said, “you’re missing the most interesting part of vertical markets. The implications for entrepreneurs is that each of these (market risk versus invention risk,) require radically different financing models, a different type of venture investor, different timing for hiring sales and marketing, etc.

Vertical 147
article thumbnail

Can You Trust Any vc's Under 40?

Steve Blank

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. What Do VC’s Do?

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

SuperMac War Story 9: Sales, Not Awards « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales. He had teamed up with a former product manager at P&G to deliver seminars on just this subject.

Sales 120
article thumbnail

Ardent War Story 5: The Best Marketers Are Engineers

Steve Blank

Other advisors provided marketing with industry-specific advice in our initial vertical markets (computational fluid dynamics, computational chemistry, finite element analysis, and petroleum engineering). In short order they learned how to transition from being customers on the receiving end of a sales pitch to giving one.

Engineer 205
article thumbnail

Out of the Ashes - Something Isn't Quite Right

Steve Blank

I was consulting for the two venture capital firms who between them put $12 million into my last failed startup. (My I began to gain an appreciation of how world-class venture capitalists develop pattern recognition for these common types of problems. My mother kept asking if they were going to make me pay the money back.

article thumbnail

Who are the Major Revenue-Based Investing VCs?

David Teten

I’ve been a traditional equity VC for 8 years, and I’m now researching new business models in venture capital. RBI normally requires founders to pay back their investors with a fixed percentage of revenue until they have finished providing the investor with a fixed return on capital, which they agree upon in advance.

Revenue 60
article thumbnail

The Customer Development Manifesto: The Startup Death Spiral (part.

Steve Blank

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities. The board raises a collective eyebrow.