Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2016

He nails the current key startup parameters, including the following: Crafting a lean business plan as your road map. The days of lengthy, text-heavy, business plan documents prepared by expensive experts are behind us. Establishing your brand with interactive social media. Measuring progress with big data and analytics.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Groups Social Media 120

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 12, 2022

Learn why the traditional way of writing a five-year business plan is often a waste of time and how to use a Lean Plan instead for smarter, easier strategic planning to establish your long-term vision. But, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t plan for the long term. What is a long-term plan?

Business Plan 83

Business Plan Lean Forecast Exit Strategy 83

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

On the other hand, if you arrive at a VC pitch without a comprehensive understanding of the industry you’re hoping to compete in, or without a clear path to profitability or a thoughtful product-development road map, you’ll likely leave empty-handed. You may be able to generate revenue, but VCs want exponential growth.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. Step 1: Start with a lean plan. Instead of sitting down to write a 40-page business plan, start with a one-page pitch. How to Write a Traditional Business Plan.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

It should go without saying that this post is not advice, nor is it recommendation of what you should do, it’s simply my observation of how companies using Customer Development positioned themselves to successfully raise money from venture investors. Is there a profitable business model? What are Early Stage VC’s Really Asking?

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

But now, as the business model is repeatable and scalable, most employees take the business model as a given, and instead focus on the execution of the model – what is it they are supposed to do every day when they come to work. They measure their success on metrics that reflect success in execution, and they reward execution.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2019

By definition, second-stage ventures generally have 10 to 99 employees and/or $750,000 to $50 million in revenue, and see that as just the beginning. According to one study a while back, only 45% of founders plan to exit after stage one, and my guess is that less than half the remainder survive the next stage in their own company.

Mezzanine 244

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 244

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

These founders specify, design, and build a fully featured product using classic product development methods without ever leaving their building. Executives look at that date and the calendar, working backward to ignite fireworks on the day the product is launched. Confusing traditional job titles with a startup’s needs.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2014

Develop your business plan. Write down the key elements of your business plan very early, and keep it current as things evolve. Product development process. Product development process. Billing and revenue collection. Funding process. It all has to be written down and maintained.

Startup 268

Startup Institutional Investors Angel Investor Bootstrapping 268

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And worse, even if someone does manage to start something new, our management structure has so many financial, legal and HR hurdles that every initiative needs to match our existing business financial metrics, processes and procedures. They’ve learned the best distribution channel to get the product from their company to the customer.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 31, 2013

Develop your business plan. Write down the key elements of your business plan very early, and keep it current as things evolve. Product development process. Product development process. Billing and revenue collection. Funding process. It all has to be written down and maintained.

Institutional Investors 230

Institutional Investors Angel Investor Bootstrapping Database 230

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2017

By definition, second-stage ventures generally have 10 to 99 employees and/or $750,000 to $50 million in revenue, and see that as just the beginning. According to one study a while back, only 45% of founders plan to exit after stage one, and my guess is that less than half the remainder survive the next stage in their own company.

Mezzanine 141

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 141

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 3, 2013

By definition, second-stage ventures generally have 10 to 99 employees and/or $750,000 to $50 million in revenue, and see that as just the beginning. According to one study , only 45% of Founders plan to exit after stage one, and my guess is that less than half the remainder survive the next stage in their own company.

Mezzanine 240

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 240

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2011

Develop your business plan. Write down the key elements of your business plan very early, and keep it current as things evolve. Product development process. Product development process. Billing and revenue collection. Funding process. It all has to be written down and maintained.

Startup 255

Startup Institutional Investors Angel Investor Bootstrapping 255

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target. No matter how low we make the revenue projections for this new product, it’s extremely unlikely that they are achievable. In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

We were even more embarrassed by the pathetically small number of customers we had, and the pathetically low amount of revenue we had earned so far. We’d always cringe as we admitted that, no, we really only had a few thousand customers and a few thousand dollars in monthly revenue. Retention cohort analysis. I am chugging along.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2010

Develop your business plan. Write down the key elements of your business plan very early, and keep it current as things evolve. Product development process. Product development process. Billing and revenue collection. Funding process. It all has to be written down and maintained.

Startup 239

Startup Institutional Investors Angel Investor Bootstrapping 239

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

It provides a basic introduction to analytics as they apply to Lean Startup, including sections on what metrics to use and how to interpret them. For instance, Ben lists out the worst of the “vanity metrics,” a term that describes appealing but meaningless or misleading numbers. We often tell founders that a business plan is nonsense.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 12, 2010

In business, one important measure is the value of the company. That’s because a company’s value is a composite of all of the quantitative and qualitative factors that comprise a company: revenues, expenses, risks, growth prospects, quality of the management team, competitive advantages, strength of the intellectual property, and so forth.

Intellectual Property 223

Intellectual Property .Net Valuation Distribution 223

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 4, 2015

By definition, second-stage ventures generally have 10 to 99 employees and/or $750,000 to $50 million in revenue, and see that as just the beginning. According to one study a while back, only 45% of founders plan to exit after stage one, and my guess is that less than half the remainder survive the next stage in their own company.

Mezzanine 120

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 10, 2011

The VP of an operating division had run into trouble in product development; the product was late and getting later. The revenue plan had the new product baked into the numbers and it was clear that this division General Manager was going to crater his forecast (happens all the time, nothing new here.)

Forecast 264

Forecast Agile Revenue Founder 264

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Most likely, your business plan is loaded with opinions and guesses, sprinkled with a dash of vision and hope. Customer development is a parallel process to product development, which means that you dont have to give up on your dream. This is a common mistake. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

We were lucky to learn about Customer Development early on in the life of our startup. It made more sense than our 60 page business plan predicated on a B-school class and a supernatural ability to predict the future. More importantly, we’d witnessed Customer Development’s massive success at another local startup.

Customer Development 230

Customer Development Developer Customer California 230

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

A business that strives for something like this should absolutely be charging money from day one, in order to establish baselines for their two key metrics: CPA (the cost to acquire a new customer) and LTV (the lifetime value of each acquired customer). This is the simplest ecosystem and simplest driver of growth.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 20, 2017

Businesses that clearly define their short-term and long-term goals tend to achieve their goals faster and more efficiently than those without any plan. I also want to create more SEO packages for small businesses with lower budgets as the industry seems to be lacking this type of offer. Thanks to Jaimyn Chang, Boomin Agency !

Forecast 57

Forecast Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur SEO 57

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

Written By Dan Martell on February 2nd, 2012 | Category: Hiring LeanStartup Marketing Metrics Startup Life | 6 Comments. Building Product 2. Building Metrics / Usage Reports / KPI 3. Product/Metrics (70%/30% time) * Get your product activation (sign-up + meaningful action) to 60% * then, Get your product retention to 20% weekly.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Tim Keane

JUNE 13, 2006

In general, the first part of the discussion runs to whether or not your numbers are tied to metrics with an underlying set of assumptions, or if they are simply a function of a mathematically applied growth rate. John Mullins: Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model. What can possibly go wrong; 3.

Wisconsin 60

Wisconsin Entrepreneur Startup Angel Investor 60