Austin Startup

MARCH 3, 2020

TDaaS uses 3D content to automate the creation of pre-annotated synthetic image data to train Vision AI models. Their algorithms control the placement of 3D content into custom environments, which can be created in massive parallel variations. With the exception of LexSet, what tech trend is your team most excited about?

Technical Review 63

Technical Review Los Angeles Cofounder Silicon Valley 63

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 23, 2020

Syndio has over 60 enterprise customers including Nordstrom, Match Group, Target, Adobe and PagerDuty and already more than 1.3 The pay gap speaks to the distribution of women and minorities in a company. million employees on the platform. She is passionate about issues surrounding equal pay, employee wellness, and equity at work.

Technical Review 62

Technical Review Seattle Elevator Pitch Equity 62

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2015

I first met Evangelos Simoudis when he ran IBM’s Business Intelligence Solutions Division and then as CEO of his first startup Customer Analytics. and the emergence of new industries, markets and customers. and concentrated on a single part of the supply chain – importing, distribution, wholesale, retail.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Venture Capital United States Technical Review 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

There’s nothing wrong with a business that supports you and perhaps an extended family. But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year. With 317 million people the U.S. Trip 2 to the U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Rob Go

JULY 11, 2013

As a seed fund, we tend to layer in “ capital efficient beginnings ” to the mix given our investing model and belief about the best way to build internet and software businesses. We tend to favor companies that have a “distribution advantage”. So what are some examples of distribution advantages?

Distribution 66

Distribution Vertical Viral B2B 66

abovethecrowd.com

APRIL 17, 2013

eBay recently launched an aggressive campaign attacking Amazon’s rate table on a vertical-by-vertical basis ( those percentages can be found here ). This is one of my favorite marketplace business model “tweaks.” As Jeff Bezos is fond of saying, “ your margin is my opportunity.”. Let’s start with Facebook.

Europe 101

Europe Social Network Technical Review IPO 101

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 24, 2014

We want to see traction – specifically, how quickly you can capture the initial market or vertical** that you are targeting, and how engaged these early users are. After you demonstrate your strong sense of product design and development, we want to know how you will build a real business beyond just features. How can you expand TAM**?

Vertical 167

Vertical Distribution Business Model Framework 167

Mucker Lab

OCTOBER 12, 2016

Furthermore, the venture “business” is a business of making money off outliers. Normal distributions do not exist; standard deviations are meaningless. Out of hundreds of daily-deal companies funded, one or two became long-term businesses. Vertical integration of different funding risks. Betting on the wrong horse.

Harvest 60

Harvest Vertical IPO Early Stage 60

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 24, 2014

We want to see traction – specifically, how quickly you can capture the initial market or vertical** that you are targeting, and how engaged these early users are. After you demonstrate your strong sense of product design and development, we want to know how you will build a real business beyond just features. How can you expand TAM**?

Vertical 153

Vertical Distribution Business Model Framework 153

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

Vertical 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 14, 2019

Today, retail is dominated by international giants with powerful supply chains and increasingly digitized distribution systems. They know everything about their customer (thanks, big data) and have the ability to customize every part of the business for efficiency. . It simply would not work on a global scale.

Global 189

Global Vertical Agile Engineer 189

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 28, 2020

In a relatively short period of time, we went from an agency business model to become a sales automation and sales accelerator technology provider. But the prerequisite of a successful business is always challenging yourself to be relevant. And we wanted our brand to reflect that. Who do you want to become?

Social Media 191

Social Media Channel Vertical Partner 191

www.pakman.com

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

To build the online media giants of tomorrow, companies need models where the costs of both content and distribution are near zero. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and countless others employ this model. These models allow scale to emerge at very low-cost. But that’s because they choose that model.

Social Media 47

Social Media Vertical Advertising Distribution 47

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

In this time, building a successful business meant building a company that had paying customers quarter after quarter. It did not mean building a startup into a company to flip or hype on the market with no earnings or revenue, but building a company that had paying customers.

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Ps: my limited perspective comes with self recognition of a lack of hands on experience always enjoy it when I stop in to read here Steve Reply Aamir , on July 2, 2009 at 10:18 am Said: Awesome post Steve… but isn’t drawing the business model for a gaming company going to be easy? Make game, market, sell, profit?

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Mucker Lab

DECEMBER 2, 2015

Most brilliant “Internet of Things” ideas are quicksand for capital unless you have the branding, vertical integration and customer lock-in that Apple achieved. The iPod model will separate IoT platforms from fads. Low switching costs and built-in product “half-life” demolish customer loyalty.

Vertical 60

Vertical Widget Distribution China 60

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 18, 2011

mile manufacturing complex, with 100,000 workers – vertically integrated and optimized mass production. By 1923, through a series of continuous process improvements, Ford had used the cost advantages of economies of scale to drive down the price of the Model T automobile to $290. But Sloan went further.

Detroit 302

Detroit Distribution Vertical Finance 302

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

In the real world, most business plans don’t survive the first few months of customer contact. And even if they did – customers don’t ask to see your business plan. Preparing for a year is not the best way to spend time, rather getting customers is the better way to an Investor’s heart.

Business Plan 140

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 16, 2020

One of 50 finalists for SXSW Pitch 2020 , FilmChain is the first collection service to use the blockchain technology to provide payment automation, lower the costs of film revenue collection and distribution, and significantly speed up the money flow end-to-end. Investor pitching can be soul wracking, and so is losing an important customer.

Cofounder 88

Cofounder Vertical Austin Revenue 88

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 20, 2020

Richard Ma , CEO and Co-Founder at Quantstamp , says, “We focus on helping our customers stay safe and succeed because our philosophy is that technology is only a tool to solve people’s problems.” The Governor of Colorado was there promoting Colorado as a hub for blockchain and distributed ledger technology.

San Francisco 97

San Francisco Cofounder Colorado Security 97

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

This provides us more time to develop meaningful relationships with prospects and customers. A number of analysts have particular focus on serving the customers of technology companies, e.g., Gartner and 451 Research , and their work is also relevant for investors. 3) Raise capital. 6) Due diligence.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 27, 2020

Last summer, Etihad Airways, the United Arab Emirates’ national carrier, joined the many airlines and hotels that have partnered with Switzerland-based Winding Tree to bypass intermediaries using distributed ledger technology. If you are an entrepreneur, check out the SXSW 2020 Startups Track , which runs March 13–17.

United Arab Emirates 63

United Arab Emirates Switzerland Cofounder France 63

Ben's Blog

APRIL 28, 2010

Jobs not only killed all the commodity hardware and the horizontal strategy; he went radically vertical. Knowledge of all customer data and feedback generated from day one. The new, professional CEOs were unwilling to let go of the most basic assumptions driving the cost structure of their businesses.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 78

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. Initially your job is to understand each of the parts of your business model before you hire someone to do it. That’s 10x what many websites convert.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Mucker Lab

MAY 1, 2013

From the outside, they are vertically integrated challengers to decades if not hundred-years old incumbents. Turns out, for whatever reason – cultural, business model, leadership, even bad luck – many incumbents have yet to figure out what to do with software, always on connectivity, and technology.

Software 107

Software Silicon Valley Los Angeles Columbus 107

The Next Web

OCTOBER 2, 2013

The larger your customer base, the more opportunities for monetization, and therefore the more attractive your startup is for investors. Distribution and cashflow pose challenges in China. That’s why the free business model is so popular in China. It is also the world’s largest smartphone market.

China 122

China Developer Intellectual Property Mobile 122

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. No building, no money, no customers, no market? Think about all the assumptions you’ve made to get your business off the ground. Who are the customers?

Silicon Valley 212

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 212

Occam's Razor

OCTOBER 14, 2014

This recommendation also valuable for companies that have very unique business models, or face other unusual circumstances (geographic, size, amount of innovation, and many others). Any big shifts in investment (marketing, customer experience, team sizes, tools). See Page 269. :). So how can you use your own data?

Analytics 133

Analytics Vertical Metrics Web 133

The Next Web

DECEMBER 8, 2013

This is in part because these businesses are unencumbered by legacy constraints that had previously been hardwired into the companies and industries these startups are trying to disrupt. One such business model is the “online marketplace,” an entirely new business category not possible (at scale) before the Internet.

B2C 136

B2C B2B Demand Vertical 136

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

I responded to their RFP by proposing that Ardent build the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center a distributed supercomputing environment with hundreds of Ardent personal supercomputers rather than a monolithic Cray supercomputer. Cray called two years ago and bought it back for parts for an unnamed customer still running one.

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 185

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

An existing market is one where competitors have a profitable business selling to customers who can name the market and can tell you about the features that matter to them. Do you know have they distribute their product? Do you know the archetype of their customers? Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

Silicon Valley 181

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 181

Ben's Blog

AUGUST 31, 2020

For customers who typically might not have sought out a “neobank,” COVID has provided the extra push to get new account openers to consider a challenger brand. Matthieu Hafemeister , a16z fintech deal analyst Better models for SMB lending COVID-19 has prompted a scramble in the world of online SMB lending, as delinquencies pile up.

IPO 36

IPO Stock Software Review API 36

VC Cafe

APRIL 15, 2024

Initially, many publishers were slow to recognize the internet’s impact on their business model as distribution and the classifieds and ad worlds split – or what Ben Thompson calls the “ Great Unbundling ”. Media companies can create their own smaller, specialised LLMs to boost vertical content creation.

Generative AI 142

Generative AI Media Artificial Inteligence Vertical 142

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Occam's Razor

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

Such is the power of being able to proactively identify which of your competitor's strategies are working well, where their current customers come from, and what specific tactics you should experiment with to create and advantage for yourself. Every website in the world has a unique business strategy. Is it someone else?

Metrics 60

Metrics Analytics Non-Compete Search 60