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

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

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

However, due to B2B market saturation, customer acquisition costs are rising ; this digital marketing strategy of giving a little and getting a lot no longer works. You’ve completed customer research for your product development and positioning strategy. Obsessing over going viral. email, ads, retargeting, etc.)

Demand 124

Demand B2B Distribution Channel 124

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. Stickiness, Ben and Alistair say, is where people move on too quickly--they don’t make sure they really have a product that has the right features and functionality to meet their customers’ needs.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 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. A social analytics platform for Facebook app developers and publishers that provides detailed demographic and engagement data. Currently has 1.8mm users and adding about 15,000 users/day.

San Francisco 248

San Francisco Venture Capital Analytics Government 248

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. The game has started getting some traction already, and has a good virality index. Brainscape. The answer to the question is neither. Note, I said, validated.

Dilution 114

Dilution Revenue Finance Entrepreneur 114

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 15, 2017

Practically speaking, the burning need was to begin hiring employees so that I could spend more of my day on product development, partnerships and driving sales. We don’t have a budget that has to be spent so I wanted to think outside of online acquisition. Where have you invested energy for a brand presence and why?

Marketing 48

Marketing Design Acquisition Bootstrapping 48

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

Others would go even further and say it is better to launch half a product than a half-assed product. The Four Steps to the Epiphany (highly recommended book by Steve Blank) preaches for customer development before product development, advocating a quick launch with a minimal feature set rather than a full fledged product offering.

Lean 120

Lean Customer Development Audience Viral 120

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

The App Store is a channel for customer acquisition. This is completely analogous to the situation elsewhere on the internet, where launching a new website, product, or service with PR is getting harder and harder. On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral. So what can you do?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Engagement loops: beyond viral Theres a great and growing corpus of writing about viral loops, the step-by-step optimizations you can use to encourage maximum growth of online products by having customers invite each other to join.

Viral 140

Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 140

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

” April, 2012 – Andrew Chen writes Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing , which goes viral (2.4K Now, people begin defining growth hacking as a process, a systematic approach, a “viral loop”, etc. Peep Laja , ConversionXL : “I see growth hacking as traffic acquisition + conversion optimization.”

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

In a previous post , I covered the three main drivers of growth: Paid, Sticky, and Viral. A minimum viable product in this category must answer the question: does my media content or channel command the attention of a valuable audience? Let’s look at a viral growth company, like Facebook. As soon as possible!&#

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2018

Optimize for retention, not just acquisition. To understand acquisition you must understand lifetime value. Virality: # of users that refer your product for you: exponential growth if your K factor is greater than 1. Dropbox: first achieved growth through virality. — Sabra Bander (@SabraB123) March 29, 2018.

Retention 106

Retention Artificial Inteligence Channel Email 106

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

This is a common problem that results from viral-loop optimization. By copying the exact same registration flow as every other successful viral app, many viral apps completely lose their positioning. Heres why I dont think engagement loops are that helpful: unlike viral loops, its not bad if its not self-sustaining.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

When you’re talking with an investor, I’d say in general, he/she has biases towards the customer acquisition methods that has made him/her money before. I know nothing about viral marketing. Or spend virtually no time going after small money (ala Facebook)? Or in between?

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

When you’re talking with an investor, I’d say in general, he/she has biases towards the customer acquisition methods that has made him/her money before. I know nothing about viral marketing. Or spend virtually no time going after small money (ala Facebook)? Or in between?

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

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.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Metrics Churn Rate 167

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. Seedcamp invests in approximately 20 companies annually.

Customer 128

Customer B2C Startup Early Stage 128

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

It has been awesome, flattering, and humbling to see that post went viral and has been seen by so many thousands of people — mainly aspiring entrepreneurs — and has been translated into many languages. 90 Things I’ve Learned From Founding 4 Technology Companies. Traction begets more traction if you are able to jump on it.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 20, 2012

But even as nonpaying users, these earlyvangelists are willing or eager accelerators of your viral growth. We now know this results in wasted engineering effort, time and cash, as customers don’t use, want or need most of the features developed without their input. They understand they have a problem. MVPs for Web/Mobile Are Different.

Customer 119

Customer Advisory Board Engineer Cofounder 119

ConversionXL

DECEMBER 11, 2018

Or look at MailChimp, a startup-turned-$400-million-revenue-machine that is always creating viral campaigns that set them above their competition, like this recent “Did You Mean Mailchimp” one. Product development is iterative—rapid prototyping, fast changes, continual improvement. Designing in real time. Acting quickly.

Campaign 134

Campaign Marketing Design Differentiation 134

Software By Rob

AUGUST 5, 2010

The knowledge that you need 10,000 hours to master a subject, that certain trends become viral after the 412th person adopts it, or that you should make your product remarkable, is not going to help you launch. Nor will it save you a single minute during product development, or sell one more copy of your application.

Founder 78

Founder Startup Software Review Software 78

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Ability to create wireframes , HTML mock-ups , other product artifacts that you use to flesh out ideas and test them. Building a scalable, profitable, customer acquisition engine. As a developer, I feel that design/creative is undervalued in the early stages of product development.

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 16, 2013

Freemium is not customer development Just imagine how much you’ll learn once you have 1,000 real, active users of the system: Everything from behavioral statistics (which features are actually used?) to democratic product development (voting on which features customers would like to see next?). Not using the competition.

Marketing 318

Marketing Viral Campaign Business Model 318