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How To Survive The Loss Of A Main Customer

YoungUpstarts

by Zain Jaffer, serial entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of Zain Ventures. When the time comes, the following actions can help entrepreneurs get back on their feet: 1. sales to product development), the problems will continue to exist. Running a small business can come with a slew of challenges.

Customer 347
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A real Customer Advisory Board

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 26, 2009 A real Customer Advisory Board A reader recently asked on a previous post about the technique of having customers periodically produce a “state of the company&# progress report. Many companies seek to involve customers directly in the creation of their products.

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Building Great Founding Teams

Steve Blank

There’s been a lot written about the individual characteristics of what makes a great founder , but a lot less about what makes a great founding team and how that’s different from a great founding CEO. In doing so we’ve failed to help founders understand what it takes to build a great founding team. Founders – the idea.

Cofounder 335
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Lessons Learned: About the author

Startup Lessons Learned

He previously co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. While an undergraduate at Yale Unviersity, he co-founded Catalyst Recruiting.

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The lean startup @ Web 2.0 Expo (and a call for help)

Startup Lessons Learned

If youre interested in being part of my "customer advisory board" for this presentation, please get in touch. Eric, if youre looking for any help as a "customer advisory board", Id love to do anything I can to help. Hey Someone else who is extending the agile/lean approach beyond just developing software.

Lean 68
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How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people

Startup Lessons Learned

Most of the people building our product werent themselves target customers. So there was simply no substitute for seeing actual customers with the product, live. Today, when I talk to startup founders, the most common answer I get to the question "do you talk to your customers?" Establish a customer advisory board.

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Pivot, don't jump to a new vision

Startup Lessons Learned

Some startups fail because the founders cant have this conversation - they either blow up when they try, or they fail to change because they are afraid of conflict. Although I wish I could take credit for these pivots, the reality is that they were not caused by my singular insight or that of my other co-founders.