Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 3, 2012

There are unknowns at every turn, leading product development, attracting customers, managing cash, and dealing with human resources and office politics. Add an advisory board or experienced mentor to reality-check your financial projections, timeframes, and milestones before you publish them.

Advisory Board 240

Advisory Board Forecast Early Stage Product Development 240

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 20, 2011

There are unknowns at every turn, leading product development, attracting customers, managing cash, and dealing with human resources and office politics. Add an advisory board or experienced mentor to reality-check your financial projections, timeframes, and milestones before you publish them.

Advisory Board 232

Advisory Board Startup Forecast Early Stage 232

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 11, 2016

Brian Zuercher is the CEO and co-founder of Seen , a marketing software platform that is helping marketers tell the story of their brand and build relationships with their customers through consumer generated photos and videos. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

Columbus 245

Columbus Entrepreneur Cofounder Ohio 245

Duct Tape Marketing

DECEMBER 15, 2022

[17:21] When you talk about gatherings sometimes people just jump to big trade shows or events – but bringing your customers together for lunch could be a really simple way to gather, right? [20:02] And then one we like to call the sounding board, which is the small five to seven people. And the next one down goes to the site.

Community 81

Community Framework Advisory Board Viral 81

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 12, 2010

There are unknowns at every turn, leading product development, attracting customers, managing cash, and dealing with human resources and office politics. Add an advisory board or experienced mentor to reality-check your financial projections, timeframes, and milestones before you publish them.

Advisory Board 125

Advisory Board Startup Forecast Early Stage 125

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

A thought leader in the area of big data analytics, social media, optimization, machine learning, and data mining, he also served as a Venture Advisor focusing on big-data analytics at Trident Capital , and was on the advisory board of several startups. . Tune in Thursday at 1 pm PT, 4 pm ET on Sirius XM Channel 111.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Fractional CTO Entrepreneur Analytics 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 11, 2016

Brian Zuercher is the CEO and co-founder of Seen , a marketing software platform that is helping marketers tell the story of their brand and build relationships with their customers through consumer generated photos and videos. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

Columbus 120

Columbus Entrepreneur Cofounder Ohio 120

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 10, 2016

At the same time, enterprises today can leverage the cloud to make faster, more efficient software changes; use social media to connect with customers; deploy predictive analytics to determine what their customers will want and connect and control devices via a central point with the Internet of Things (IoT).

Customer 100

Customer Advisory Board Asia Internet 100

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 17, 2016

How they think and feel; their sense of community; and their appetite to share their opinions are all creating new paradigms for how any business, regardless of size, connects with its customers. According to our research, millennials ardently avoid calling customer service. Old school customer service rules haven’t changed.

Customer 100

Customer Singapore Advisory Board Asia 100

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 4, 2013

In other words, once they are convinced that the product works, they assume their price, sales channel, and marketing will bring in the customers. For example, one CEO I know gave away his software product to the first ten customers. Iterate and improve the fit until your test customers are delighted, not just tolerant.

Business Model 235

Business Model Product Advisory Board Angel Investor 235

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 5, 2018

In my experience with technical entrepreneurs, they work hard on creating an innovative and elegant solution, and assume that customers will flock to them (“if we build it, they will come”). The founder had simply not done the work to validate a price and the perfect customer segment. Finalize your channel and marketing strategy.

Product 137

Product Advisory Board Business Model Cofounder 137

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 30, 2012

In other words, once they are convinced that the product works, they assume their price, sales channel, and marketing will bring in the customers. For example, one CEO I know gave away his software product to the first ten customers. Iterate and improve the fit until your test customers are delighted, not just tolerant.

Business Model 248

Business Model Advisory Board Entrepreneur Angel Investor 248

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2013

(However, in some industries such as life sciences, founders may be tenured professors who are not going to give up their faculty positions, so they often become the head of a startup’s scientific advisory board, but aren’t part of the founding team.). Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career/Culture.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Advisory Board Customer Development Leadership 335

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 15, 2011

In other words, once they are convinced that the product works, they assume their price, sales channel, and marketing will bring in the customers. For example, one CEO I know gave away his software product to the first ten customers. Iterate and improve the fit until your test customers are delighted, not just tolerant.

Business Model 234

Business Model Advisory Board Startup Angel Investor 234

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 22, 2016

I like his set of action items, and have added a few of my own for measuring early traction leading to growth: Turn initial customer goals into measurable traction metrics. These need to go beyond the traditional revenue, cost, and volume metrics which may not yet have data, and can mislead you about real customer acceptance.

Metrics 143

Metrics Advisory Board Startup Lean 143

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 13, 2012

Terms like “every customer needs this” and “next generation platform” are far too soft, and should be avoided. This is not the place for a detailed product specification, but an explanation of how and why it works, including a customer-centric quantification of the benefits. Solution and benefits. Focus is the keyword here.

Business Plan 283

Business Plan Sweat Equity Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 283

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 5, 2014

Those interactions vary – from mentorship and product feedback to learning about unmet needs in a market or understanding whether a sales channel is worth pursuing. In some cases, that relationship grows into something more than conversation – like joining an advisory board, investing, partnering, or even joining the team.

New York 114

New York Technical Review Networking Advisory Board 114

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

It was great to watch him embrace the spirit and practice of customer development. He was constantly in front of customers, listening, selling, installing and learning. It seemed like once a week Yuri would come back from a customer meeting brimming with new insights. And that’s where the problem was. A Pivot a Week.

Founder 316

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 316

OnlyOnce

JULY 9, 2013

Chapter 2: Defining and Testing the Story…Start Out By Admitting You’re Wrong, A Lean Business Plan Template, Problem, Solution, Key Metrics, Unique Value Proposition and Unfair Advantages, Channels, Customer Segments, Cost Structure and Revenue Streams. Chapter 3: Telling the Story to Your Investors…The Business Plan is Dead.

Startup 95

Startup Advisory Board Elevator Pitch Forecast 95

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 20, 2012

In this excerpt, authors Steve Blank and Bob Dorf continue to explain the Customer Discovery Philosophy (see Part One, " Is Your Startup a Valid Vision or Just a Hallucination? "). Customer discovery turns founders’ initial hypotheses about their market and customers into facts. We call these early adopters earlyvangelists.

Customer 119

Customer Advisory Board Business Model Engineer 119

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 13, 2011

Terms like “every customer needs this” and “next generation platform” are far too soft, and should be avoided. This is not the place for a detailed product specification, but an explanation of how and why it works, including a customer-centric quantification of the benefits. Solution and benefits. Focus is the keyword here.

Business Plan 290

Business Plan Sweat Equity Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 290

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 13, 2016

Investors want to hear about customers with money who have a painful problem that you can solve now. Investors are looking for a concise description of your product or service without technical jargon or fuzzy marketing terms with value quantified in customer terms. What is your specific solution and value proposition?

Sweat Equity 120

Sweat Equity Advisory Board Liquidity Event Startup 120

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has worked as a consultant to a number of startups, companies, and venture capital firms. November 25, 2009 9:54 AM Danny Wong said.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Duct Tape Marketing

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

Talked about the, the idea of getting your customers, your prospects in the habit of buying from you or listening to you or following you habit based marketing, download, nudge, wherever you get your podcasts. (00:47): Semrush is your one stop shop for online marketing build, manage and measure campaigns across all channels faster and easier.

Startup 85

Startup Cofounder Early Stage Founder 85

Gust

AUGUST 5, 2012

Terms like “every customer needs this” and “next generation platform” are far too soft, and should be avoided. This is not the place for a detailed product specification, but an explanation of how and why it works, including a customer-centric quantification of the benefits. Solution and benefits. Focus is the keyword here.

Business Plan 182

Business Plan Sweat Equity Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 182

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 5, 2010

In other words, once they are convinced that the product works, they assume their price, sales channel, and marketing will bring in the customers. For example, one CEO I know gave away his software product to the first ten customers. Iterate and improve the fit until your test customers are delighted, not just tolerant.

Business Model 120

Business Model Advisory Board Angel Investor Channel 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

You’ll realize you’re ready to exit the Search step when you have customer validation: You’ve found a sales channel that matches how the customer wants to buy and the costs of using that channel are understood. If he already had an advisory board (formal and/or informal), add CEO’s who have been through this phase.

Startup 120

Startup Lean Venture Capital Advisory Board 120

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 17, 2013

In using such a scattershot approach to social media, these organizations are missing out on major opportunities to engage with potential and current customers, manage their reputations, and more — and they may be alienating social media users in the process. Branding: Be consistent across all channels. speak’ with a unified voice.

Social Media 187

Social Media Media Curation Social Network 187

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 22, 2010

Terms like “every customer needs this” and “next generation platform” are far too soft, and should be avoided. This is not the place for a detailed product specification, but an explanation of how and why it works, including a customer-centric quantification of the benefits. Solution and benefits. Focus is the keyword here.

Business Plan 186

Business Plan Exit Strategy Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 186

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 20, 2019

As a SaaS company, we have had pretty good success in acquiring new customers for our business using various techniques: organic traffic, paid ads, email marketing, etc. This is one of the biggest problems in SaaS – churn is essentially the number of customers you lose every month because they cancel their subscription.

Papua New Guinea 64

Papua New Guinea Hawaii Churn Rate Advisory Board 64

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 30, 2015

That was the message from the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on Sirius XM Channel 111. Entrepreneurs are Everywhere airs Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern on Sirius XM Channel 111. What do you do with an advisory board?” Dave Lerner.

Artificial Inteligence 120

Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur Silicon Valley New York 120

mashable.com

AUGUST 20, 2011

Whether that’s a funny ringtone or an impromptu blast of Rebecca Black’s “Friday,&# coworking can be a great way to network, make friends and have a built-in advisory board of people from many different industries. Plus, a lot of coworking spaces offer classes and seminars on new technology and tools. startupcto

Cofounder 81

Cofounder San Francisco Social Media Startup 81

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Customer service. Google Custom Search Engine. Customer Relationship Management. great web customer acquisition tutorials. customer retention, churn reduction, lifetime value. free/cheap web customer relationship mgmt software. Codeacademy. Steve Blank.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 7, 2020

And we’re going to talk about his new book Fanocracy: Turning Fans Into Customers and Customers Into Fans. They had just started the company, they only had eight employees and no customers yet. They’re going to grow by 200,000 customers this year. I mean, that’s become a channel almost.

Southern California 49

Southern California Social Media Social Network Audio 49

Occam's Razor

JANUARY 20, 2010

Is the customer intent contained in the keywords telling you how to change / improve the page? Some very effective SEO strategies like allowing users to add reviews and comments and extend the scope of the page do not work as well with b2b as it is a differ net type of engagement and experience with your customers.

Analytics 90

Analytics Search SEO Metrics 90

www.rocketwatcher.com

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

One other basic metric I’d add is “Cost per channel&# (web, print, tradeshow, etc…) and tie in how many each channel is generating, so you get a ROI by channel as well. Good post, -Hakan [link] aprildunford Reply 13. Oct, 2010 at 12:09 pm Hi Hakan, Thanks for the comment. Rymatech Reply 13.

B2B 42

B2B Metrics Marketing Startup 42