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8 Reality Checks That Every Startup Founder Dreads

Startup Professionals Musings

Starting a business is a lot like starting a marriage. Product development is stuck at that 90% mark, a key person leaves, and customers are talking but not buying. I challenge any startup to show me they have avoided all of these: One of the founders isn’t delivering. But all too soon, reality sets in. Marty Zwilling.

Founder 250
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Seed Stage Funding 101: What it Is & How it Works

The Startup Magazine

It is necessary to cover the early stages of product development, thorough market research, and other processes during the initial step. Seed capital is a component of the initial investments made in young businesses. During the pre-seed fundraising stage, investors need a viable business plan to base their investments on.

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Profound Beliefs

Steve Blank

In the early stages of a startup your hypotheses about all the parts of your business model are your profound beliefs. You can’t be an effective founder or in the C-suite of a startup if you don’t hold any. Here’s how I learned why they were critical to successful customer development. Who are the payers?

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What Founders Need to Know: You Were Funded for a Liquidity Event – Start Looking

Steve Blank

To most founders a startup is not a job, but a calling. But startups require money upfront for product development and later to scale. Founders can now access the largest pool of risk capital that ever existed –in the form of Private Equity (Angel Investors, family offices , Venture Capitalists (VC’s) and Hedge Funds.). (BTW,

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Is the Lean Startup Dead?

Steve Blank

Jeff Katzenberg has a great track record – head of the studio at Paramount, chairman of Disney Studios, co-founder of DreamWorks and now chairman of NewTV. First Movers” didn’t understand customer problems or the product features that solved those problems (what we now call product-market fit). ” Fire, Ready, Aim.

Lean 335
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Why Build, Measure, Learn – isn’t just throwing things against the wall to see if they work

Steve Blank

While it sounds simple , the Build Measure Learn approach to product development is a radical improvement over the traditional Waterfall model used throughout the 20 th century to build and ship products. They are: value proposition, product/service the company offers (along with its benefits to customers).

Lean 120
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The Customer Development Manifesto: Reasons for the Revolution.

Steve Blank

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. Product Development Diagram 1.