Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

When you first start your company and raise initial venture capital your board probably consists of 1-3 founders and 1-2 VCs. Over time you start to figure out who you customers are and how to sell to them or how to get them to adopt your products if you’re a consumer-oriented startup. how & when to raise capital.

Technical Review 325

Technical Review Early Stage Software Review Los Angeles 325

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I set up an advisory board as a vehicle to get these industry experts engaged with the company and product. Other advisors provided marketing with industry-specific advice in our initial vertical markets (computational fluid dynamics, computational chemistry, finite element analysis, and petroleum engineering).

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

While I was consulting for them, I got a call from a recruiter for a company called SuperMac, which made add-on products for the Macintosh. Now with a new infusion of $8 million dollars of venture capital, SuperMac had been resurrected from the dead and was attempting to restart.

Silicon Valley 146

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 146

VC Cafe

MAY 23, 2023

More and more, established companies are leaning into generative AI by either adding generative AI features to their existing suite of tools or partnering with AI companies (mostly OpenAI or the open source HuggingFace) to launch entirely new products. The company is shutting down its consumer product in early June. The list goes on.

Generative AI 165

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence ChatGPT API 165

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

Seth Rosenberg at Graylock published ‘ Product Led AI’ – pointing to opportunities for founders building AI-first companies. Undoubtedly, there will be detractors who believe many products are simply features on top of foundational models.

Generative AI 78

Generative AI ChatGPT Artificial Inteligence Cofounder 78

thebarefootvc

AUGUST 13, 2013

These vertical solutions would focus on specific pain pain points in the enterprise, such as logistics or customer relationship management. It’s best to be ahead of the market but can be challenging if you are too far ahead of the market as it may take time for partners and customers to see your product’s value.

Advisory Board 70

Advisory Board Cloud Venture Capital Vertical 70

Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 8, 2019

This focus has helped me recruit the best and the brightest in the field, build a world-class operation, and most of all, with all the knowledge in a specific vertical, help build a leading agency for food & beverage manufacturers that are looking to build a direct to consumer channel. Thanks to Mac Fadra, MAXiM Hair Restoration ! #12-

Entrepreneur 117

Entrepreneur Technical Review Vertical Las Vegas 117

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. You take your product vision and get out of your building to turn your hypothesis into facts. would look in each of the verticals.

Vertical 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Simulation to Reduce Invention Risk If you’re in a vertical where “invention risk” is dominant, then you want to do everything you can to manage and reduce those risks. The Customer Development process puts you in continuous contact with customers to test your concept, fail, and iterate way before you actually ship the product.

Vertical 128

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 128

VC Cafe

APRIL 27, 2011

Despite the VC’s obvious disadvantage in the early stages, marketing and differentiation of venture capital funds is limited today. Create events around guests arriving from abroad or experts in a vertical area. So what makes one VC fund be better perceived than others? Can they teach each other something?

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Venture Capital Differentiation Incubator Angel Investor 90

Version One Ventures

APRIL 8, 2014

Thus, it should come as no surprise that we are now seeing Venture Capital being disrupted by these forces as well. In his post The Disruption of Venture Capital , Albert Wenger described VC as “the club you had to be invited into.”. Enter Mattermark: where “Big Data Meets Venture Capital”.

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Venture Capital Vertical Curation SEC 160

Version One Ventures

JULY 11, 2013

Every venture capital firm narrows its investment focus one way or another…perhaps by geography, sector, and/or stage. For example, at version one ventures, we’re focused on early-stage (seed and Series A) opportunities in e-commerce, SaaS, and marketplaces/platforms across North America.

North America 147

North America Vertical Venture Capital Early Stage 147

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 Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work. 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

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

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

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

Ben's Blog

MARCH 1, 2011

In my career, I have never seen a position in any industry with more varying criteria than General Partner at a venture capital firm. When we started Andreessen Horowitz, our vision was to build the kind of venture capital firm that we would have wanted to take money from. One night on my knees, here it comes, the prayer.

Partner 78

Partner Technical Review Venture Capital Cofounder 78

View from Seed

MARCH 29, 2018

We wanted to learn more about the nuanced industry market forces before applying the same hands-on investing model we do with tech startups in other verticals. The venture capital market in this category is fairly concentrated among series A and expansion-stage funds that prefer to invest in companies with substantial revenue.

Vertical 120

Vertical Stealth Portfolio Seed Capital 120

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2011

Drawing on traditions in the Latin American community, Julie and her partner are bringing to market a very specific product to address a very specific pain, and I believe she can build a very successful e-commerce business based on this idea. He is looking for financing for the show. And that is what I advised J.J.

Vertical 115

Vertical Web San Francisco Entrepreneur 115

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. The board raises a collective eyebrow.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

They are accustomed to more frictionless buying, easier payments, smarter recommendation engines, sharper display (product images, 3D, HD), short fulfillment time, and excellent customer service. That marketing, however, is dependent on capital, and that capital means Venture Capital.

eCommerce 94

eCommerce Open Source SEM Technical Review 94

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

The first few months of my startups were centered around building the founding team, prototyping the product and raising money. This mantra of talking to customers and iterating the product is the basis of the Lean Startup Methodology that Eric Ries has been evangelizing and I’ve been teaching at U.C. Fundraising isn’t the product.

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 179

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” I gave my boilerplate answer, “I’m a product guy and I tend to invest and look at deals that have measurable revenue metrics. Market Type affects your spending and sales ramp after you reach product/market fit. Don’t launch.

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 23, 2020

Digital health, defined as the use of technologies to drive improvements in the design of medical products and the delivery of health care services, shows no sign of slowing. As the pandemic drags on and patients grow to telehealth services, let’s take a look at three industry verticals which are being driven by startup innovation.

Startup 93

Startup Venture Capital Canada Vertical 93

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

Brendan McManus said: “Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch [link] #startup #advice [.] We are currently in the process of validating our hypotheses about our product, customers, and markets. Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch « Steve Blank (tags: presentations presuation vc startup) [.]

Venture Capital 209

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 209

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 14, 2021

TSM: Describe Taxfyle’s product or service in 10 words or less: Richard: Taxfyle is a Service-with-a-Software company that matches taxpayers with licensed CPAs and Enrolled Agents. We’re aiming to bring that boost in productivity and cost-efficiency both to CPA firms and other professional services firms in other verticals (i.e.

CPA 136

CPA Founder Vertical Cofounder 136

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

Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 17, 2018

And we also look at companies that are creating the best product for a specific vertical – including bio/healthcare and other emerging tech. As competitive as venture capital often seems, we are incredibly humbled by the amount of support and love we have gotten over the years from our community.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley North America San Francisco LP 127

Version One Ventures

JANUARY 2, 2019

Each week we like share our thoughts on a range of topics from vertical markets to general startup advice and our reflections on investing. It’s always exciting to see something in the early days as it moves from the whitepaper phase to live product! Venture Capital. Happy new year! Bio/Healthcare.

Silicon Valley 144

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Distribution Artificial Inteligence 144

Version One Ventures

NOVEMBER 6, 2013

This makes it laboriously difficult to identify rising stars and make comparisons within a specific vertical. At Version One, we have 6 investment themes (and more to come – stay tuned): Vertically integrated commerce. Vertical SaaS. are making it easier to develop hardware products. Online education.

Vertical 153

Vertical B2B B2C Venture Capital 153

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2009

luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building.

Customer Development 124

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 124

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2011

He was introduced through mutual friends to Highland Capital. At the time consumer internet venture capital was still suffering from the collapse of the Tech Bubble. But it was an attractive time to enter because the successful internet companies were scaling and in need of capital. ESPN, Forbes, AOL were customers.

Vertical 265

Vertical Curation Boston Burn Rate 265

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

What a pleasure that I got to spend an hour talking with both Om Malik (whom I’ve always respected his views) and Paul Jozefak , a venture capital partner at Neuhaus Partners in Germany (and formerly the head of Europe for SAP Ventures). Paul discussed his perspective having been at SAP Ventures.

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital Non-Compete Vertical Europe 225

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

An example of a reversible decision could be adding a product feature, a new algorithm in the code, targeting a specific set of customers, etc. An irreversible decision is firing an employee, launching your product, a five-year lease for an expensive new building, etc. These are usually difficult or impossible to reverse.

Silicon Valley 300

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Can you recognize and capitalize on them? Passionate – is the company/product/customers the most important thing in your life? And you’ll still need to have a resilient and agile personality, as new customer and product opportunities will appear and change your work. Tenacious – can you keep going when everyone else gives up?

Cofounder 219

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Haystack

NOVEMBER 12, 2018

By all accounts, the Utah-HQ’d company did everything the right way, was an overnight success 16 years in the making, and only raised venture capital as a growth company after years of bootstrapping. 4/ The Product Is The Message – I’ll end with a few notes on the importance of product in the case of Qualtrics.

Acquisition 105

Acquisition Utah IPO Venture Capital 105

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

This product development diagram had become part of the DNA of Silicon Valley. Were startups failing because of product failures or was there some other failure mode? And even more importantly, was there any way to reduce risk in early stage ventures? It’s very different than the traditional product development model.

Product Development 143

Product Development Developer Silicon Valley Product 143

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

VC Cafe

NOVEMBER 25, 2019

Entertainment is more than newspapers, more than Hollywood, and more than the sum of specific verticals jousting for consumer eyeballs. Startup landscapes, while not perfect, are useful as they provide a way for us to define a space/category and the players of that vertical. Is it only one exciting vertical within the broader umbrella.

Vertical 113

Vertical Artificial Inteligence Distribution IPO 113