Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 12, 2023

Offer free solutions to bring in more customers. Don’t get caught in the myth that you shouldn’t worry about monetization until after you have a large customer base. Social causes are great, but your ability to sustain your value contribution is directly linked to your ability to find paying customers.

Intellectual Property 312

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Investor Viral 312

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 28, 2020

Excellent detailed resources are everywhere, including a classic book, “ The Startup Checklist ,” by serial entrepreneur and founder of the New York Angels, David S. Building a minimum viable product, with customer validation. Just make sure you can fill in all the details. Establishing your brand with interactive social media.

Intellectual Property 404

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Groups Social Media 404

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

by Bill Lee, author of “ The Hidden Wealth of Customers: Realizing the Untapped Value of Your Most Important Asset “ The old paradigm works like this: Your company produces goods and services that help customers get a job done. In return, the customers pay you money.

Customer 168

Customer Social Media Retention Canada 168

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 27, 2019

In fact, it’s all about the “focus” required to get early stage technology products across the deadly chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers. Missions and products that are too broad confuse your team, your customers, and potential investors. Product development chasm. Customer support chasm.

Technical Review 255

Technical Review Dilution Early Stage Product Development 255

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 17, 2020

Offer free solutions to bring in more customers. Don’t get caught in the myth that you shouldn’t worry about monetization until after you have a large customer base. Social causes are great, but your ability to sustain your value contribution is directly linked to your ability to find paying customers.

Intellectual Property 436

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Viral Distribution 436

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

by Bill Lee, author of “ The Hidden Wealth of Customers: Realizing the Untapped Value of Your Most Important Asset “. Talented product developers. No one can truly understand your customers or genuinely share their interests unless she is a customer herself. Are you ready to grow your company? That’s right.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2010

Social proof is defined as “looking for others to guide our decisions&# and is also one of the most important techniques in acquiring customers in your company. Many of you have read or at least know the primary thesis of “ Crossing the Chasm &# the seminal book on marketing your products to mainstream consumers by Geoffrey Moore.

Customer 294

Customer Marketing Technical Review Iowa 294

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 29, 2022

The ready-aim-fire traditional approach works best in more mature markets, where your strategy is to add features and value to competitive products, or address an underserved new segment of the marketplace. These are the environments where you really need extended planning to ensure proper positioning before launching the product.

Marketing 302

Marketing Technical Review Cost Product Development 302

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 11, 2015

by Jeff Sauro, author of “ Customer Analytics For Dummies “. In a global economy that’s becoming more competitive each year, every customer (and customer’s opinion) counts. Every customer interaction counts. Certainly, every dollar spent on keeping customers happy and coming back counts.

Analytics 100

Analytics Customer Acquisition Metrics 100

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 26, 2018

In our experience, structured customer development work is right up there amongst the most valuable things a founder can do in the early days of their startup. Once you have an idea that feels strong, it’s imperative to speak with customers about it. But good customer development is tough to do.

Customer 75

Customer Framework Differentiation Customer Development 75

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? When we build products, we use a methodology. But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." a roadmap for how to get to Product/Market Fit."

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

View from Seed

JULY 5, 2022

Investors, customers, regulators, and all key stakeholders are demanding more transparent corporate sustainability disclosures. RH: Who are your customers? CC: Our customers are companies that are collecting, managing, and tracking their ESG data. . RH: What show are you watching right now/what book are you reading right now?

DC 156

DC Software Review Government Boston 156

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Pattern Recognition One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that you are constantly running a pattern recognition algorithm against a continual collection of customer and market data. Let’s Fire Our Customers Part of the DNA of great entrepreneurs is a bias towards decisive and immediate action. Get it done, now.

Customer 195

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 12, 2022

Investors can also be skittish, and winning new customers is not easy. However, a crisis can also be a golden opportunity to launch a new product or service, as long as the startup at the origin applies specific methods. In the book, the authors explore how frugal innovation can be used to create value in low-resource contexts.

Startup 198

Startup Technical Review Ghana Guerilla 198

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. And its incredibly to-the-point: you can digest this book in a couple of hours. You can imagine how well that worked.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 18, 2013

In fact, it’s all about the “focus” required to get early stage technology products across the deadly chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers. Missions and products that are too broad confuse your team, your customers, and potential investors. Product development chasm. Customer support chasm.

Entrepreneur 252

Entrepreneur Marketing Technical Review Dilution 252

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Unfortunately, positioning our product as an "IM add-on" was a complete mistake.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 10, 2012

In fact, it’s all about the “focus” required to get early stage technology products across the deadly chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers. Missions and products that are too broad confuse your team, your customers, and potential investors. Product development chasm. Customer support chasm.

Startup 254

Startup Technical Review Dilution Early Stage 254

YoungUpstarts

JULY 22, 2020

That means in order to maintain a connection, marketers have to get to know their customers all over again. But the traditional approach of spending many months conducting surveys to craft perfect, data-centric customer personas and buying journeys just isn’t going to cut it in these fast-changing times. Why Minimum Viable Personas.

SCRUM 162

SCRUM Agile Customer Framework 162

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. They are gaining valuable customer data.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

Everyone in the business world has heard of the book by Geoffrey A. In fact, it’s all about the “focus” required to get early stage technology products across the deadly chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers. Missions and products that are too broad confuse your team, your customers, and potential investors.

Marketing 238

Marketing Entrepreneur Technical Review Dilution 238

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 26, 2019

The ready-aim-fire traditional approach works best in more mature markets, where your strategy is to add features and value to competitive products, or address an underserved new segment of the marketplace. These are the environments where you really need extended planning to ensure proper positioning before launching the product.

Technical Review 233

Technical Review Startup Cost Product Development 233

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Through rapid experimentation, short product development cycles, and rigorous measurements of the right metrics, they can ascertain what customers really want. Such direct experiences allows one to test critical “leap-of-faith” assumptions about what customers like and dislike.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Customer/Market Risk Versus Invention Risk One day I was having lunch with a VC sharing what I learned from my students. Our firm has a portfolio of companies across a broad range of markets and the way we look at it is pretty simple – the deals fall into two types: those with customer/market risk and those with invention risk.”

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

This product development diagram had become part of the DNA of Silicon Valley. a customer before you try and build a business. That’s in stark contrast to the traditional Product Development Model where it’s expected a customer is already there and waiting and it’s simply a matter of [.]

Product Development 143

Product Development Developer Silicon Valley Product 143

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 16, 2009 Combining agile development with customer development Today I read an excellent blog post that I just had to share. In most agile development systems, there is a notion of the "product backlog" a prioritized list of what software is most valuable to be developed next.

Agile 111

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Their book Lead and Disrupt describes how others can learn how to do so. Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? What the winners start with is the realization that in a world of continuous disruption, they have only a few years to develop new capabilities or be pushed over the brink.

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 1, 2013

Product development is stuck at that 90% mark, a key person leaves, and customers are talking but not buying. In his book Reality Check , Guy Kawasaki summarizes some of the key issues. The team buys its own propaganda, and fully expects customers to be leaping tall buildings to get to your product.

Founder 250

Founder Startup Software Developers Software Development 250

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 27, 2010

Everyone in the business world has heard of the book by Geoffrey A. In fact, it’s all about the “focus” required to get early stage technology products across the deadly chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers. Missions and products that are too broad confuse your team, your customers, and potential investors.

Startup 227

Startup Technical Review Dilution Early Stage 227

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 22, 2023

Consumers are becoming increasingly health-conscious and seeking to understand their options for treatments and healthcare products. As a result, businesses in this field should leverage technology to provide interactive, easy-to-understand educational content that can help customers make health-related decisions and maintain healthy habits.

Artificial Inteligence 124

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Entrepreneur Social Media 124

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 24, 2012

Product development is stuck at that 90% mark, a key person leaves, and customers are talking but not buying. In his book Reality Check , Guy Kawasaki summarizes some of the key issues. The team buys its own propaganda, and fully expects customers to be leaping tall buildings to get to your product.

Software Developers 229

Software Developers Software Development Business Model Product Development 229

YoungUpstarts

MAY 3, 2017

From product development to market research, many startups are one-person operations in their early days. Too often, you’ll find new business owners spending hours answering emails, returning phone calls, scheduling appointments, and booking travel. Whether they follow through on that knowledge, however, is a different story.

Technical Review 113

Technical Review Management Arizona Software Review 113

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 2, 2022

According to the classic book by serial entrepreneur and former race car driver Tom Panaggio, “ The Risk Advantage: Embracing the Entrepreneur's Unexpected Edge ,” smart business owners embrace two essential risks to every opportunity – decision and change. My conclusion either way is that they have no market, or haven’t looked.

Burn Rate 382

Burn Rate Angel Investor Operations Demand 382

The Startup Magazine

APRIL 11, 2019

Nowadays many other companies other than software and product development companies follow scrum methodology to achieve success in their projects. Few authors have published books which provide a structured framework of scrum to implement in non-software projects. This helps to overcome minor corrections in production.

SCRUM 92

SCRUM Software Review Technical Review Framework 92

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. The other side of this coin can be equally disastrous; the change of direction based on every customer or investor comment.

Advisory Board 240

Advisory Board Forecast Early Stage Product Development 240

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 31, 2021

In reality, the picture is a bit larger than this, as outlined in the classic book “ Leading with GRIT ,” by Laurie Sudbrink, a well-known business leadership coach and speaker. Usually these people think they are doing a great job, and are totally oblivious to their unhappy customers or cash drain.

Leadership 410

Leadership Employee Metrics Restful 410