This is going to be BIG.

JULY 25, 2022

First off, many founders don't really feel the need to have external accountability. Not only that, founders get a lot of warnings from other founders about “losing control” and to be careful about ceding too much power to investors. I find that the best meetings with my founders include other investors.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 The three drivers of growth for your business model. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?) He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

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San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 26, 2012

150 people came together, and 17 businesses were formed. MJ Charmani, founder of iStart Jax, a business accelerator, and one of the key organizers of the event, introduced today's session with additional reports on last weekend's event. Even seed investors generally fund businesses that are already rolling.

Jacksonville 114

Jacksonville Florida PPC Programming 114

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 31, 2014

That means they normally only invest in startups with a working product that has already been sold to at least one customer for full price (beta tests, giveaways and best friends don’t count). They are willing to cover marketing, inventory and scaling, but not product development. Make your focus and priorities clear.

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Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 285

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And when we do make bets, they’re small bets on incremental products or acquisitions that simply add to the bottom line.”. Bob looked wistful, “Our founders built a company known for taking risks and moving fast. More agile competitors are starting to eat into our business. Often failure is the norm not the exception.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 5, 2018

That means they normally only invest in startups with a working product that has already been sold to at least one customer for full price (beta tests, giveaways and best friends don’t count). They are willing to cover marketing, inventory and scaling, but not product development. Make your focus and priorities clear.

Elevator Pitch 139

Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 139

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

At Hustle Fund, we back both first time founders as well as repeat founders. One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Product second. Marketing first.

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Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

At Hustle Fund, we back both first time founders as well as repeat founders. One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Product second. Marketing first.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

What matters is proving the viability of the company’s business model, what investors call “traction.&# It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. And what of the product development team?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

What makes an individual a great startup founder (versus an employee) has been something I had been thinking about since I retired. A Day in the Life of A Founder For those of you who’ve never started a company, let me assure you that it never happens like the pleasant articles you read in business magazines or in case studies.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 30, 2016

That means they normally only invest in startups with a working product that has already been sold to at least one customer for full price (beta tests, giveaways and best friends don’t count). They are willing to cover marketing, inventory and scaling, but not product development. Make your focus and priorities clear.

Elevator Pitch 120

Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 120

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

LSC: Tell us about the customer development you did for your book: Alistair: We''ve been thrilled at how Lean Analytics seemed to resonate with founders. As operators of an accelerator—and founders in our own right—Ben and I had constantly struggled with what the “right” numbers are for a business.

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YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 15, 2017

One of my clients discovered that his most demanding customers were consistently the ones who ended up recruiting many new customers and helping with product development. Or the differences could be minute and provide you the opportunity to develop these “on-the-cusp” members into full-fledged superusers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

She has a separate team, with its own culture and office, and a mandate straight from top management to innovate without regard to the company’s historic products, channels, or supply chain. For example, say that your business model calls for a 4% conversion rate – as ours did initially at IMVU.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 1, 2017

Fascinating, something that obviously applies to the mammoth Netflix and Amazons of the world, but I think that this is an approach that actually might apply to just about any business going today and how to get them think completely differently about everything that they do in marketing. Social media, it’s just channels.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 14, 2015

Image via Flickr by Side Wages Some entrepreneurs forget that they need an innovative business model along with an innovative solution to have a successful startup. Inventors alone, or business gurus alone, generally fail. It really takes a complementary pair of founders to improve the odds.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

Execution by Vertical Market As the class progressed, students asked how the activities/functions of a startup; (Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Product Development, etc.) Is marketing different if you’re in the cleantech business versus medical devices? Innovation – Business Model?

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ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 27, 2011

This partnership speaks to a core philosophy of the program where we encourage entrepreneurs to get as much customer validation as possible before raising too much money, use other people's channels if you can get to them, don't burn too much cash, and all that good fiscal conservative stuff. You can register for the next roundtable here.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

Rashmi Sinha, co-founder and CEO of SlideShare , describes an early version of the analytics package that’s part of the Pro accounts the company announced today. If your company is using minimum viable product , you’ve probably said the same thing yourself. Early this year, SlideShare launched custom channels.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

There is an inherent conflict in a consultant’s business model and the needs of a startup. Such positions include: PR, Sales, Product Development, Lead Generation, Strategic Planning, Fund Raising, etc. Yet, it does nothing to help you execute your business model. John is a CPA and holds an M.B.A.

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Equity Silicon Valley Cofounder Technical Review 40

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

The one-page pitch format is also more suitable for SaaS businesses that are constantly testing new ideas. Your pitch is going to cover your strategy (what you’re going to do), your tactics (how you’re going to do it), your business model (how you will make money), and your schedule (who is doing what and when).

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Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2013

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.

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Hearpreneur

JANUARY 12, 2018

High-end sunglass distributors have built a multi-billion dollar business model on one very simple life truth: you will lose your sunglasses. With the Wholesale and Pop-Up processes streamlined, this sales channel is ready for growth and only requires a capital investment in order to advance our scaling efforts.

Greece 49

Greece Iowa Nicaragua Chicago 49

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 14, 2009 Business ecology and the four customer currencies Lately, I’ve been rethinking the concept of “business model&# for startups, in favor of something I call “business ecology.&# Constructing a working business model is a form of ecosystem design.

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Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

Welcome back to Smart Bear Live … the show were Jason speaks with entrepreneurs looking to improve their businesses. Listen to this episode if you want to hear about a founder who has a product and users and paying customers … and is trying to figure out how to take his company to the next level and grow faster.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Again, its critical to focus your marketing launch on those publications, venues, and channels that your potential partners are paying attention to. You have to know your business model. Most startups launch before theyve figured out what business theyre in. Founders push for it. Most startups arent so fortunate.

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Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 20, 2016

When I was seeking a co-founder for my startup, each time I’d dive deep into a discussion about commitment with potential partners, they’d bring up venture capitalists and fundraising. An early question among potential co-founders during these discussions was always “have you raised money yet?” Product development.

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Early Stage Startup Forecast Channel 60

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

what are the most crucial steps to be taken by a new tech startup when outsourcing major part of the tech to IT firms or outsourcing “product development” eg new social media website project? Near shoring development with your team (ex: your team is based in Canada / India) is cool, but not outsourcing.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

Rob Adams, the director of MootCorp, is doing an amazing job at providing value to all participants, whether it’s feedback on their business model or making the right introductions. MootCorp in particular has an impressive track record of putting early stage tech companies on the right path towards funding.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 143

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 20, 2012

Customer discovery turns founders’ initial hypotheses about their market and customers into facts. Unlike “mainstream” business or consumer-product customers who want to buy a finished, completed, tested product, earlyvangelists are willing to make a leap of faith and buy an early product from a startup.

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Customer Advisory Board Engineer Cofounder 119

adam.heroku.com

MAY 18, 2012

Founders and early employees tend to be very self-directed so the need for management is nearly non-existent. You have a single group chat channel and a single all@yourcompany.com mailing list. Your single internal chat and email channels continue to work fine. Everyone is a generalist and works on a little bit of everything.

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techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

So for this first post, here’s the best advice I can give you: join an awesome founding team and get your product out the door ASAP. One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. Then, forget everything else, VCs included, and just build.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

When the product and channel are bits, adoption by 10’s and 100’s of millions and even billions of users can happen in years versus decades. The second thing that’s changed is that we’re now Compressing the Product Development Cycle. The founders were simply wrong about their assumptions about customer needs.

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Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 227

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 24, 2010

Compressing the Product Development Cycle. In the past, the time to build a first product release was measured in months or even years as startups executed the founder’s vision of what customers wanted. This meant building every possible feature the founding team envisioned into a monolithic “release” of the product.

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Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital Software Review 335

Transformify

JUNE 6, 2019

Even if the product launch was not as successful as planned, this doesn't necessarily mean that you need to pivot immediately. Initially, it will be your processes and product development road map that will require attention, to be followed by your product development roadmap and go to market strategy.

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Lean Management Technical Review Software Review 56

Seeing Both Sides

JANUARY 13, 2015

People: founder-run and trying to recruit amazing technical talent (the product development team is a huge priority at this stage) and integrate a few senior managers to help prepare the company for scale - which leads to cultural clashes and communication challenges. Time to enlist some 3rd party developers!

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Mezzanine IPO Finance Business Model 20