Mucker Lab

MAY 28, 2020

These lost startups land higher valuations, have larger teams, outsource more product development and spend more money on customer acquisition than their peers. Before you indulge in marketing, sales and blinged-out offices, find product-market fit. How do you know you have it? Honestly, we don’t know.”?

Startup 78

Startup Cofounder Burn Rate Technical Review 78

ConversionXL

APRIL 13, 2017

Jonathan Price wrote on the same Quora thread that he believes growth marketing to differ from regular marketing because it “is technology-centric and it blurs the boundary between marketing and product development.” A growth team, however, is largely overlapped with product, engineering, and design as well.

Analytics 99

Analytics Engineer SEO Channel 99

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2015

I usually envision a 50-50 ownership split for their efforts, but every engineer believes the technology side deserves the majority share. Outside investors are most interested in scaling a proven business model, not research and development. Most founders bootstrap product development.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Intellectual Property Cofounder Bootstrapping 120

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 17, 2011

Working with Students, Teachers, Schools for Product Development. The problems of product development and customer acquisition are just a few of the barriers that ed-tech startups face. It's about attracting bright engineering talent to the space.

Incubator 116

Incubator Technical Review Silicon Valley Cofounder 116

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. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?)

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

David Cohen

NOVEMBER 15, 2012

Hyatt, founder of Conduit Labs , gave a talk on Tuesday entitled “Off The Record,” about the predictive approach to product development. Shah, founder and CTO of Hubspot , spoke on Monday afternoon about inbound marketing for startups.

Boston 82

Boston Cofounder Software Engineering Acquisition 82

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

Marketing demand creation programs (Search Engine Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Lead Generation, Trade Shows, etc.) are all expensive and potentially fatal distractions if done before you have found product/market fit and a repeatable sales model. Where is the budget for purchasing the type of product you’re selling?

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

ConversionXL

MAY 1, 2017

Past Product: Lackluster Marketing Causes Growth Stalls, Too. These pitfalls are not limited to product development. Often, erosion of customer loyalty has been going on for years but the company has failed to perceive it—until it’s too late. Swimming with Sharks. Growth teams are like those sharks.

Technical Review 127

Technical Review Algorithm Channel Analytics 127

Seeing Both Sides

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

By viewing product development and marketing as integrated functions, not silos, leading tech companies like Facebook and Pinterest are rethinking their approach to driving growth and achieving breakthrough results. For instance, should resources go to user acquisition or to combatting churn? So what makes a good Growth Manager?

Management 20

Management Analytics Technical Review Framework 20

Seeing Both Sides

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

By viewing product development and marketing as integrated functions, not silos, leading tech companies like Facebook and Pinterest are rethinking their approach to driving growth and achieving breakthrough results. For instance, should resources go to user acquisition or to combatting churn? So what makes a good Growth Manager?

Management 20

Management Analytics Technical Review Framework 20

Lightspeed Venture Partners

JANUARY 6, 2011

And congrats to Alex Le, cofounder of a prior investment, Serious Business, whose first game since the Zynga acquisition is CityVille.]. Ed Baker of Friend.ly , a fun way to meet new people, is focused on driving innovation: Encourage more product suggestions from our engineering team.

Stealth 60

Stealth Startup Lean Cofounder 60

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.

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Many founders have to turn to brute force to figure it out, even when they themselves don’t have practitioner product management experience. However, managing product development correctly is incredibly important in the earliest days and can make or break your company. product engagement, retention metrics).

Hiring 120

Hiring Bandwidth Product Early Stage 120

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 16, 2010

Calxeda is on track with its business and ARM-based product development plans, moving toward providing first samples of its industry-changing technologies in 2011. He was previously Senior Vice President, responsible for product lines and manufacturing operations, at SigmaTel through its 2003 IPO and then acquisition by Freescale.

Naming 59

Naming Hiring Technical Review Virginia 59

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

1x hacker in charge of product/development. 1x hipster working with both product and growth. Your customer acquisition cost and lifetime value are the two magical numbers you need to calculate for each one of your campaigns. Cost of Acquisition (CAC): The total cost of acquiring a user through a given channel.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 3, 2009

When they promise to help you with marketing, sales, distribution, integrated product development, etc. But the venture guys don’t make the calls on what the product / business guys do. But even he would feel conflicted when I had to cut the engineering team because he valued our product more than his investment.

Strategic Investors 279

Strategic Investors Venture Capital Due Diligence Early Stage 279

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

techcocktail.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

be the manager and product developer). Developer – Most likely your product requires some engineering. Make sure you have the right developer(s) on board in whatever capacity you need them, whether it’s a part time HTML or Wordpress developer or a full time PHP wiz.

San Francisco 44

San Francisco Startup PHP San Diego 44

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Even though some aspects of the product were eventually vindicated as good ones, the underlying architecture suffered from hard-to-change assumptions. After years of engineering effort, changing these assumptions was incredibly hard. This is why agility is such a prized quality in product development.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 18, 2012

VCs talk about customer acquisition and competition as critical parts of the pitch--when 99% of the time the real answers are: a) Well, we'll do some PR, some social, some paid when we figure out what a customer is worth, some BD. Top talent drives revenues, business development, great product development.

Hiring 111

Hiring PR Differentiation Acquisition 111

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

In a subscription business, maybe your attrition starts matching your acquisition, balancing like magic. Or your cost of customer acquisition just magically floats up to match your customer lifetime value. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Nothing seems to matter.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Its the same with acquisitions. If an investor knows you have other investors lined up, hell be a lot more eager to close-- and not just because hell worry about losing the deal, but because if other investors are interested, you must be worth investing in. The key to closing deals is never to stop pursuing alternatives.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

ConversionXL

JANUARY 24, 2017

As Ronny Kohavi , Distinguished Engineer, General Manager, Analysis and Experimentation at Microsoft, put it: Ronny Kohavi: “Experimentation is getting more recognized as essential to guide product development, when it is applicable (not always, as you can see in Section 6 in this paper ).

Conversion 48

Conversion Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Analytics 48

VC Adventure

JANUARY 24, 2013

At the risk of overgeneralizing (although to be fair as a VC that’s pretty much my job description) and understanding that there’s plenty of grey area here, I’ve really been noticing recently just how challenging it can be for organizations to move from being product focused to sales and marketing focused.

Sales 102

Sales Product Marketing Acquisition 102

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 20, 2012

In existing companies, the goal of traditional product management and marketing is to develop a market-requirements document (MRD) for engineering that contains the sum of all possible customer feature requests, prioritized in a collaborative effort among Product Management, Marketing, Sales and Engineering.

Customer 119

Customer Advisory Board Engineer Cofounder 119

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 9, 2022

Clare Price (03:49): Well, the way that we do it is we've developed six canvases that focus on six core areas of business growth. And that's brand development, brand power, customer acquisition, message clarity, market expansion, sales enablement, so marketing and sales working together and product marketing or product innovation.

Marketing 76

Marketing Differentiation Sacramento Small Business 76

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. Jason: Yeah.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

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. Product second. Marketing first.

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. Product second. Marketing first.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

APRIL 3, 2013

It wasn’t going to help you get a $1B acquisition for a photo-sharing app. Not product management. Not product development. But for the remaining 99% of successful hacker-entrepreneurs who are not Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, an engineering degree is helpful (sometimes :) ). It taught you how to sell. .

Incubator 89

Incubator Startup Cofounder Sales 89

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. Similarly, a two-sided marketplace cares about different things from a traditional e-commerce product. to 3% a month.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Metrics Churn Rate 167

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 27, 2011

And a few words about Persistent Systems, an outsourced software product development (OPD) company that is navigating its next phase of evolution are also warranted. Jeff also described a compelling in-game offer-based customer acquisition model that is proving quite effective for him. Brainscape. Note, I said, validated.

Dilution 114

Dilution Revenue Finance Entrepreneur 114

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Overall, this is part of a tendency to see Lean Startup as simply an evolution of Agile, and to mistakenly think that it thus “belongs” in Engineering, or that it’s only useful for new product endeavors. That’s when the sales and marketing functions adopt Lean Startup for customer acquisition.

Lean 167

Lean Startup Agile Leadership 167

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

Rumored to have turned down acquisition offers from Yahoo and Facebook. Money to be used for hiring and additional product development. Spread through word-of-mouth as the company has no sales team, all engineers. -A location based service which incorporates social and gaming elements. Competitors: Gowalla.

San Francisco 248

San Francisco Venture Capital Analytics Government 248

Hunter Walker

MAY 20, 2013

Being one of the first Googlers to join YouTube after the acquisition taught me a lot about what works, and doesn’t work, when you bring a fast growing community property into a larger entity. Avoid Locality Bias in Product Development. When Google purchased YouTube there was lots of skepticism and outright derision.

Engineer 87

Engineer PR Leadership Community 87

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

If you haven’t figured out the ecosystem, growth is useless – whether it is a acquisition-only viral loop, like Tagged, or an advertising blitz like countless dot-bombs. And others require an early product prototype. The level of engineering quality will vary. And others require an early product prototype.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

VC Adventure

JANUARY 24, 2013

At the risk of overgeneralizing (although to be fair as a VC that’s pretty much my job description) and understanding that there’s plenty of grey area here, I’ve really been noticing recently just how challenging it can be for organizations to move from being product focused to sales and marketing focused.

Sales 48

Sales Product Marketing Acquisition 48