YoungUpstarts

JULY 16, 2019

The most sought-after hires are computer programmers and interactive media developers. Tech companies need advertising, marketing, public relations, and technical sales professionals. This generated $16 billion in annual revenues in 2015. Developing a popular mobile scheduling app, they raised $1.2 billion in revenue.

Canada 167

Canada Hiring Artificial Inteligence Software Developers 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 16, 2016

But startups require money upfront for product development and later to scale. Luckily in the last quarter of the 20 th century a new source of money called risk capital emerged. At its core Venture Capital is nothing more than a small portion of the Private Equity financial asset class. ——-.

Liquidity Event 120

Liquidity Event Founder Liquidation Preference Venture Capital 120

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 8, 2009

Your friends and advisers tell you that this means you need revenue because in this economy VC’s will only fund businesses with revenue. So if it’s not necessarily revenue that’s preventing an investment, then WTF is traction? Unfortunately your advisers are wrong. VC’s are the same. Neither is the norm.

Technical Review 309

Technical Review Term Sheet Venture Capital Revenue 309

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

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.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. So what’s wrong the product development model?

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

The book has been shepherded and edited by a great Japanese VC at Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital, Takashi Tsutsumi, with help from Masato Iino. I asked Tsutsumi-san to write a guest post for my blog to describe his experience with Customer Development in Japan. Maysee now enjoys hockey stick revenue growth.

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Japan Customer Development Developer Customer 292

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 1, 2020

With COVID, we’re getting into a world with tighter budgets and likely longer sales cycles. How can a product-led sales motion help in the current environment, and how important is a freemium model to drive product-led growth? million developers using our product. Today, we have around 1.5

Early Stage 62

Early Stage Open Source Development Team Review Security 62

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

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.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Growthink Blog

SEPTEMBER 13, 2017

And a boost toward a faster timeline and better probability of a business sale at an exciting price. Company Scenario #2: A company with a solid revenue base - say more than $5 million in sales - but competes in an industry not one of great, current interest to buyers / investors. A boost toward better financial results.

Harvest 48

Harvest IP Software Review Forecast 48

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. In contrast, sales and marketing activities before first customer ship are adhoc, fuzzy, and don’t have measurable, concrete objectives. Freemium models have their own scorekeeping.)

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

OnlyOnce

MAY 13, 2021

Each section is be composed of 15-20 discrete short chapters outlining the key “playbooks” for each functional role in the company – Chief People Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, etc.,

Startup 62

Startup Cofounder Venture Capital Leadership 62

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

This tendency is a two edged sword: by iterating strategy a startup can dramatically improve the size and trajectory of the company, but at times this process can be the bane of venture investors (and why they have prematurely grey hair.) 4) You don’t see any revenue gain past three years.

Customer 195

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 24, 2014

According to the National Venture Capital Association , the amount of money that VC’s invested rose 8% to nearly $30 billion in 2013. To help build new product development and venture teams, my colleague Rob Goldberg, of Stages of Innovation , created an assessment tool called Talent for Growth.

Startup 252

Startup Angel Investor Early Stage LLC 252

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Market Risk vs. Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention. Am I in a company with “invention risk?

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. I vividly remember the sales guy saying, “It’s only some kid in field service. What happened?

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

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 never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter?

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

For instance, if a consultant proposes to help you with public relations, pay them a commission equivalent to the greater of a flat fee per story placed or a percentage of revenue generated from the PR coverage. If a consultant claims they can enhance your marketing efforts, pay them based on their direct impact on your incremental sales.

Equity 40

Equity Silicon Valley Cofounder Technical Review 40

Growthink Blog

MAY 10, 2012

If it's not your plan to get venture capital down the road, then you'll probably stop in Stage 2-receiving enough funding to boost your marketing, sales, and infrastructure to grow organically from there to the point where you are satisfied or ready to sell. Series B is the round that follows series A in early stage financing.

Equity 88

Equity Mezzanine Later Stage Venture Capital 88

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

In times when venture capital is hard to get, investors extract high costs for failure (down-rounds, cram downs , new management teams, shut down the company.) Sales people cost money, and when they’re not bringing in revenue, their wandering in the woods is time consuming, cash-draining and demoralizing.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2010

My company had raised venture capital in April 2001 but we were told that there may never be any more coming. I learned how to better run a product management process. I learned how to integrate customers into our product development process. I learned about revenue recognition.

Venture Capital 285

Venture Capital Hiring Software Review Stock Options 285

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products. The Recommended Sales Forecasting Method.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

Execution by Vertical Market As the class progressed, students asked how the activities/functions of a startup; (Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Product Development, etc.) For example, How does sales differ from one market to another? Sales – What Channel to reach the customer? Liquidity – How?

Vertical 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. We faced this same problem in entrepreneurship and venture capital, but we are getting past it. What is the right revenue model? In other words, what is the minimum viable product ? Is that a lot?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

It should go without saying that this post is not advice, nor is it recommendation of what you should do, it’s simply my observation of how companies using Customer Development positioned themselves to successfully raise money from venture investors. Is there a profitable business model? Can it scale?”

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Up and Running

JULY 24, 2015

Product development. If you need a little help with your product development and getting it on store shelves, you can check out Edison Nation. They can help with development and licensing, too. Entrepreneurship Through the Lens of Venture Capital. Edison Nation. Patent and Trademark Office.

Entrepreneur 60

Entrepreneur Small Business Administration SBA Pennsylvania 60

Growthink Blog

NOVEMBER 2, 2016

The company’s sales manager shared some remarkable research that showed that while the “conventional wisdom” was that the company’s market space was in free fall and under severe “legacy” pressure, in actual reality the market was experiencing solid, and in some areas, unprecedented growth.

Conversion 48

Conversion Los Angeles Europe Acquisition 48

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

Aligning the Startup Team Strategy with the Capitalization Strategy. The single most important factor to raising capital for any tech startup is the management team. This is true for early stage funding as well as venture capital funding. Below are some tips for aligning the startup team with the capitalization strategy.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan realized that the traditional centralized management structures (like General Motors had in 1920) were poor fits for the management of GM’s already diverse product lines. 2) Provide corporate management with near real-time divisional sales reports and budgets that indicated when they deviated from plan.

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

These are areas that may be gaps in the portfolio of large companies, and are perfect for M&A deals in three to five years after building enough validation and $10-$20 million in revenue. By definition, the capital investment needs to be relatively low such that the investors and the entrepreneurs all make a healthy return on investment.

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

These are areas that may be gaps in the portfolio of large companies, and are perfect for M&A deals in three to five years after building enough validation and $10-$20 million in revenue. By definition, the capital investment needs to be relatively low such that the investors and the entrepreneurs all make a healthy return on investment.

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

You have your general management meeting and in your general management meeting you talk about product development, about marketing and about finance. So again, none of this is me trying to say what you should do for product development, in fact, or what you should write in code in fact. Edwin: I know. Edwin: Yes.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Tim Keane

JUNE 13, 2006

(Of course, it goes without saying that no one would bottom-up an expense budget then fill in revenue to make it “come out,” right?). Growth involves, in many businesses, more customer service, product development, support, marketing and so forth – in addition to more R&D. That’s longer a budget; it’s a math exercise.

Wisconsin 60

Wisconsin Entrepreneur Startup Angel Investor 60

Tim Keane

APRIL 24, 2006

Last night, Bob Zieserl, Venture Capitalist, and general partner at Stratus Ventures, was the keynote speaker at the Marquette University Business Plan Competition. "Over the last twenty years, 11,000 companies have had Venture Capital investments. The product development cycle was excellent.

Wisconsin 60

Wisconsin Angel Investor Bootstrapping Venture Capital 60

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 26, 2014

Every startup needs access to capital, whether for funding product development, for initial rollout efforts, acquiring inventory, or paying that first employee. These are people who should believe in you, without waiting to see if your idea works, or waiting until you have real customers, revenue, and hard assets.

Entrepreneur 254

Entrepreneur Finance Equity Early Stage 254

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 6, 2013

Every startup needs access to capital, whether for funding product development, for initial rollout efforts, acquiring inventory, or paying that first employee. These are people who should believe in you, without waiting to see if your idea works, or waiting until you have real customers, revenue, and hard assets.

Finance 243

Finance Startup Equity Early Stage 243

BeyondVC

JANUARY 2, 2006

All too often we are enamored with how cool or sexy a technology is, invest lots of dollars to create that killer product, and sometimes forget that it is all about the people. None of these numbers are scientific but they certainly help you ballpark market compensation.

Management 60

Management Equity Forecast Salary 60