article thumbnail

Why SWOT Analysis Belongs in Your Business Plan

Up and Running

It was also in a SWOT session that we realized we needed to make our product downloadable on the web (back in 1998, when we were among the first). In another session, we realized, as a group, that our key differentiator was the know-how and how-to built into our software. .

article thumbnail

Why Pioneers Have Arrows In Their Backs

Steve Blank

The irony is that in a retrospective paper ten years later (1998), [ 2 ] the authors backed off from their claims. Using this idea to differentiate themselves as the hot new Silicon Valley VCs, some of his former business school students made this phrase their rallying cry. Product Pioneer. First to sell the product.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

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

article thumbnail

How to Get World Class Experts to Support Your Company

David Teten

Prabhdeep Singh: We were founded in 1998 to serve top professionals — then it was investors — who weren’t really learning from the dry, one-dimensional, one-size-fits-all industry reports and conferences available to them. GLG Share is really a membership more than a product, and we want to serve our members however we can.

New York 114
article thumbnail

Bad Boys and the Fab Five: Business Lessons from Basketball History

Up and Running

You also may remember that the main narrative of the ’90s was that Michael Jordan, arguably the NBA’s greatest player ever, took the Chicago Bulls to six championship titles between 1991 and 1998. It also presents an opportunity to differentiate your product or service in a competitive market.

article thumbnail

Hubris Versus Humility: The $15 billion Difference

Steve Blank

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. Soon, RIM was focusing on making products for people on the move, using wireless communication and digital data. Underneath the hood RIM’s product was a technical tour de force.

article thumbnail

Marketing 101: Branding your offering in a competitive environment

crowdSPRING Blog

In 1998, Google was the new kid in an established (if not quite mature) market for Internet search, and by 2004, it was by far the leading Internet search engine, handling almost 85% of the search requests on the web. Ate the points of differentiation compelling? Differentiate in a compelling way. Establish a frame of reference.

Marketing 115
article thumbnail

Fake it Til You (Have To) Make it

Austin Startup

Get Your Hands Dirty Early on to Prove Product/Market Fit Originally Published at The American Genius Creating and running a tech startup is no mean feet. You’re looking at weeks of work just to create your infrastructural table stakes (the bare minimum) and that’s before you start working on the stuff differentiates you.

SQL 48