Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 21, 2012

Either way, the “hurdle” for successful, scalable startups is high, and it gets higher every day as customer acquisition challenges continue to increase. While statistics are weak on startup success rates, the worst one I’ve seen suggests that 2 in 1000 venture backed startups will ever achieve $100-million or more in valuation.

Startup 333

Startup Cofounder Customer Development Viral 333

SoCal CTO

MARCH 11, 2013

Investors demand more than that. " In Building Your MVP as a Non-Technical Startup Founder , I mentioned that before you build your Minimum Viable Product (MVP), you need to be really clear on your purpose. The quality of the team, and overall financial health are equally important, as well as how your offering compares to competitors.

Algorithm 264

Algorithm Metrics Viral Venture Capital 264

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 4, 2015

Nor to achieve the greatest “virality” in our digital campaigns. They range from social customer insights, marketing, sales, analytics, demand management, support, and customer experience, to mobile and location based services. The greatest challenge of the social media age isn’t to grow the largest fan or follower base.

Technical Review 100

Technical Review Software Review Customer Social Media 100

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. But its not really viral growth, even when its exponential.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Each new segment you attempt to serve can increase scope , adding to your workload and demanding more of your limited resources. There are two viable growth engines for tech companies: Viral, or “inherently viral” growth: Customers either intentionally or unintentionally recruit new customers by using your product.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 10, 2019

Viral videos, personal anecdotes, and informal surveys would likely be counterproductive. Always gauge progress by business indicators, like customer acquisition cost and customer satisfaction. Demand professional business skills and customer advocacy. Social media is not all about being social, or treating everyone casually.

Social Media 247

Social Media Media Reputation Viral 247

View from Seed

AUGUST 30, 2016

I inquired about why the building was so “hidden,” as this was surprising to me, but the answer made sense: A few months prior, a Facebook user in Europe had flown to Dublin, arrived at the office, and demanded that he be given access to his ex-girlfriend’s account because she had cut him off after the two broke up.

Social Media 185

Social Media B2B North America Media 185

Occam's Razor

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

They are slow to grasp new opportunities to rethink customer relationships, to revolutionize products and services, marketing, advertising, acquisition, and to deliver delight and make people happy. Customer acquisition. Re-think Customer Acquisition, Brand Engagement. Why not rethink acquisition? Celebrate a little.

Acquisition 144

Acquisition Mobile Customer Marketing 144

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

In a previous post , I covered the three main drivers of growth: Paid, Sticky, and Viral. In other words, the minimum viable product is designed to answer the question: does the product generate enough demand and margin to support a growing ecosystem? Let’s look at a viral growth company, like Facebook.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

How do we create end user demand? For web startups, this is when the cost of customer acquisition is less than the lifetime value of that customer. For web startups, this is when the cost of customer acquisition is less than the lifetime value of that customer. Customer Acquisition. Cost Per Acquisition Paid.

Balance Sheet 303

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 303

abovethecrowd.com

JUNE 2, 2021

Paypal famously offered customers $5 to invite a friend, who would then also get $5 as part of a highly successful viral marketing campaign (they actually started at $20, and then reduced it to $10 and then ended at $5). Investment banks simply do not match supply and demand. You guessed it — straight up free money.

IPO 82

IPO Customer Matching Silicon Valley 82

View from Seed

APRIL 23, 2015

As NextView’s David Beisel likes to say, “We live in a demand-constrained world. Additionally, if you’re talking to VCs, it’s implied that you’re thinking big and thinking about a large acquisition or IPO, as well as generating hundreds of millions in revenue. You can find those here. ).

Founder 120

Founder Distribution Viral Seed Stage 120

Duct Tape Marketing

SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

12:29] Where do you stand on your messaging for client acquisition? [15:49] And then they come check us out, and then like, Hey, so we have a pretty good viral product led growth experience as well for us internally. How do you, where do you stand on your messaging, you know, for, you know, for client acquisition?

Marketing 75

Marketing Differentiation B2C PR 75

Sophia Perl of Wisdom

AUGUST 27, 2011

He figured out quickly that there was a demand for printed tutorials. He said they found some sh*ty online print on demand service who could take credit cards and went from there. Consider using Amazon EC2, 99Designs uses it, they get 5.25TB of images uploaded frequently, EC2 helped them scale with customer demand.

EC2 53

EC2 Social Network Distribution Demand 53

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

What are your hypotheses around customer acquisition costs? ——————– Class 4 Jan 25 th Testing Demand Creation. Class Lecture/Out of the Building Assignment: How do you create end user demand? If non-web, build demand creation budget and forecast.

Wiki 315

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 315

Version One Ventures

JULY 27, 2015

This increased value can be in the form of cost reduction (in user acquisition as an example), higher liquidity (in a marketplace), stronger community or deeper relationships (in social networks), etc. We see local network effects at play with instant messaging and private social networks as well as in the on-demand economy.

Networking 60

Networking Community Viral Social Network 60

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

But the bubble mantra of get “big fast” and “first mover advantage” demanded tens of millions more to create a “brand.” Tech IPOs were a receding memory, and mergers and acquisitions became the only path to liquidity for startups. Startup exits in the next three years will include IPO’s as well as acquisitions. The New Exits.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 23, 2021

For example, if you haven’t achieved product-market fit, instrumenting every aspect of customer acquisition is overkill. I’ve seen entrepreneurs make the mistake of focusing all their efforts on customer acquisition when they also needed to fix a leaky funnel or customer churn. Just track metrics that help you improve the product.

Venture Capital 46

Venture Capital Metrics Investment Bankers Framework 46

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2011

Twitter’s significance stems from the fact that it is a real time, open, asymmetric, social, viral referral network that is often location aware and provides both explicit and implicit interests and preferences. Viral – One of the most important value drivers of any social network is the degree to which it makes content go viral.

Viral 307

Viral Las Vegas Tunisia Syndicate 307

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

After a few acquisitions they offered many of the services you think about as foundations to social networks today. It did not have the same success as Google’s acquisition and MySpace sold Photobucket 2 years later to a relatively unknown Seattle-based startup called Ontela for a reportedly $60 million.

Social Network 318

Social Network Networking Internet Technical Review 318

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 21, 2013

If you're working on the Sticky Engine of Growth , you're focused on very different metrics from those that you care about in the Viral Engine of Growth. More people means adding users, ideally through virality or word of mouth, but also through paid advertising.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Metrics Churn Rate 167

The Next Web

JANUARY 26, 2014

Rely on cheaper forms of marketing : Blogging, email, viral tactics etc. If your target market is difficult to reach, instead of tackling it head on, go after an adjacent market in order to stimulate demand. Most startups however, don’t have the kind of money required to do that. So what do startups do? Then there are growth hacks.

Thailand 167

Thailand Social Network PPC Singapore 167

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Tim Friedman, Founder, PE Stack , said, “If I could offer one piece of advice to today’s managers, it would be to take the time to understand the demands of the modern institutional LP. The self-assessment methodology, pioneered by Village Capital, is called VIRAL, for “Venture Investment Readiness and Awareness Levels.” .

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. But, if they are not, it’s very hard to use paid acquisition to generate that type of traffic for under $5. This is a fantastic customer acquisition situation.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. But, if they are not, it’s very hard to use paid acquisition to generate that type of traffic for under $5. This is a fantastic customer acquisition situation.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

In the Udemy course, Alistair and Ben expand these basics into a description of how to create empathy, stickiness, virality, revenue, and scale. It''s a good measurement because it captures both satisfaction and virality. LSC: What''s an example of one metric, other than revenue, that you might look at for a non-tech product?

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 17, 2011

Creativity in our business lives – The average tech startup these days spends time talking with colleagues & investors about a multitude of things: customer acquisition, viral adoption, raising capital, hiring / firing employees, product features, technology trends, marketing / branding, and on and on.

Technical Review 356

Technical Review Framework Audience Media 356

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

Rumored to have turned down acquisition offers from Yahoo and Facebook. Offers virality optimization tools and A/B testing inside Facebook. A demand side advertising platform which allows advertisers to bid on individual ad impressions in real time, based on the site and who would see it. Foursquare. -A Competitors: Gowalla.

San Francisco 248

San Francisco Venture Capital Analytics Government 248

The Next Web

OCTOBER 17, 2013

A lot of entrepreneurs talk about optimizing their products so they run faster, look better, go viral – but it’s important to remember that none of this can happen unless you are constantly getting feedback from your most valuable asset: Your customers. Launching a two-sided marketplace: How to kickstart supply and demand.

Customer 128

Customer B2C Startup Early Stage 128

Diego Basch

JUNE 21, 2012

A quantum leap in virality technology.” Because they will keep 20% equity each at the time of the acquisition, that means $6M each before taxes and vesting. This has an added advantage: GooBook employees know how acquisitions work at GooBook, and can help short-circuit the process. Shareholders demand it!

Silicon Valley 78

Silicon Valley Las Vegas San Francisco Vesting 78

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 10, 2008

Only after reaching $1M in CMRR should you consider hiring European sales and services execs behind customer demand. Be prepared to cross the desert - SaaS requires R&D and sales expense up front for a multi-year stream of revenue, so it demands enough investment capital to fund 4+ years of runway. Cashflow is the other key metric.

Software Review 48

Software Review North America Europe Metrics 48

Ben's Blog

MAY 15, 2020

” And then all the way to the demands question, of how many people are in that activity. And if step one or two of the growth model start hitting a lot of friction, then of course it’s just going to get harder and harder, because each group of users is going to produce fewer and fewer users from an acquisition standpoint.

Founder 36

Founder Conversion Technical Review Cash Position 36

ConversionXL

JANUARY 13, 2021

But if you didn’t demand any cadence, there’s no way I’d say, “Twice a week sounds good.” One post went viral because—unbeknownst to us—it gave exquisitely timed reassurance to an anxious influencer, who then shared it. Even academics—the most immune to deadlines—have to wrap up articles and books in time to earn tenure.

Search 127

Search Restful SEO China 127

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 20, 2012

But even as nonpaying users, these earlyvangelists are willing or eager accelerators of your viral growth. They place a greater emphasis on customer acquisition, activation and referrals. In Web/mobile apps, where multi-sided markets (separate users and payers) are often found, earlyvangelists can be users or payers.

Customer 119

Customer Advisory Board Engineer Cofounder 119

ConversionXL

JULY 21, 2020

In the “tweet heard around the world,” Oreo was able to quickly create a piece of content in real time that went viral and won numerous awards during the Super Bowl a few years ago. Building materials dealers and developers couldn’t meet the demand for new homes. No problem.

Customer 92

Customer Audience Campaign Social Media 92

Cracking the Code

FEBRUARY 4, 2008

Among others, I would quote the Bladelogic IPO, the acquisition of Postini by Google for $625m, the two largest SaaS deals in history signed by Cornerstone OnDemand (160k and 350k seats), Eloqua almost doubling its revenues and LinkedIn adding more than 10m users. Popular Media: the key to viral marketing. Stay local. One Datacenter.

Software Review 48

Software Review South Korea IPO Portfolio 48

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 16, 2010

You cannot use freemium strategies without this type of user experience (and freemium is the first fundamental change to the cost of customer acquisition). But they also now demand the types of user interfaces they experience online with Google, Facebook and Twitter. Nor should you think of the UI as a pretty layer on old software.

Software 127

Software Startup Architecture Bootstrapping 127