Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 9, 2020

Some make big mistakes, such as Webvan expanding too fast with a huge infrastructure, and Pets.com , trying to grow the business with a negative margin, under the mistaken assumption that winning customers is more important than making a profit. Actively listen to customer feedback, and don’t be a one-trick pony.

Social Media 329

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 329

Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 31, 2016

The evolution of the growth function changed this dynamic, mashing together product dev and marketing as integrated functions. About five years ago, we saw the early waves of growth – typically an individual or two (“growth hackers”) who were championing growth within product development. It helps to have a KPI-driven mindset.

Software Review 60

Software Review South Africa Hockey Stick Viral 60

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 3, 2016

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. Viral marketing costs real money, and your support staff and hosting systems cost even more. Dreams may motivate your team, but customers expect real solutions.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Investor Viral 120

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2018

Amazon built its growth on top of these 4 pillars: Customer Centricity. The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer” – Jeff Bezos. They may believe “the customer is always right” but how do they act? Aligning customers & business objectives. The power is in how customer data is used.

Retention 106

Retention Artificial Inteligence Channel Email 106

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 1, 2015

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. Viral marketing costs real money, and your support staff and hosting systems cost even more. Dreams may motivate your team, but customers expect real solutions.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Viral Distribution 120

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 12, 2020

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 336

Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 336

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 Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

I break the answer to that question down into three engines: Viral - this is the business model identified in the presentation as "Get Users." Here, the key metrics are Acquisition and Referral, combined into the now-famous viral coefficient. If the coefficient is > 1.0 , you generally have a viral hit on your hands.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

ConversionXL

APRIL 13, 2017

Jonathan Price wrote on the same Quora thread that he believes growth marketing to differ from regular marketing because it “is technology-centric and it blurs the boundary between marketing and product development.” This usually comes down to very company specific things, like what channels are effective for growth.

Analytics 99

Analytics Engineer SEO Channel 99

VC Cafe

JULY 15, 2021

What are the main channels for app marketing and distribution today? App discovery today: Word of mouth – family and friends remain the #1 channel for new app discovery. Ads – targeted advertising is perhaps THE most reliable channel to market and distribute a consumer app. Several startups, like Copy.ai

Mobile 190

Mobile Social Media Distribution PR 190

mashable.com

JUNE 11, 2013

Your first product will likely be just a little bit ugly, and thats okay — its part of getting to market quickly and testing your idea in front of live customers. In my first company, people liked our product but were embarrassed to share it because the design and presentation was so poor. Assuming Virality. "A

Cofounder 111

Cofounder Technical Review Startup Software Review 111

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

The chicken-egg issue of getting customers to your platform while you don’t have any money to spare is a puzzle that many companies are unable to figure out at all. 1x hacker in charge of product/development. 1x hipster working with both product and growth. Apr-15: Head of Marketing (growth team).

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

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.

Elevator Pitch 285

Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 285

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

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

This value-based model bringing all the right customers to their yard is called demand generation. In today’s market ( 8,000 martech products alone ), it’s easier to attract the right customer with material they value than it is to chase down and convert a prospect who isn’t ready to buy. email, ads, retargeting, etc.)

Demand 124

Demand B2B Distribution Channel 124

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 20, 2012

In this excerpt, authors Steve Blank and Bob Dorf continue to explain the Customer Discovery Philosophy (see Part One, " Is Your Startup a Valid Vision or Just a Hallucination? "). Customer discovery turns founders’ initial hypotheses about their market and customers into facts. We call these early adopters earlyvangelists.

Customer 119

Customer Advisory Board Engineer Cofounder 119

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 29, 2016

Some make big mistakes, such as Webvan expanding too fast with a huge infrastructure, and Pets.com , trying to grow the business with a negative margin, under the mistaken assumption that winning customers is more important than making a profit. Actively listen to customer feedback, and don’t be a one-trick pony.

Social Media 120

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

But from a customer experience point of view, Im not yet sold. Even with only a few months of development, third parties have crammed every single category in the store full of apps. There are other models, in other distribution channels. On Facebook, viral distribution has proved decisive. I havent found any yet.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

A description of the problem you’re solving for your customers, and your solution to the problem, which is usually your product or service. In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products. The best way to do this is to get out and talk to your potential customers.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

mashable.com

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

For example, my company decided early on to hire a UI designer, which has helped tremendously with our product development. Then we allocated the saved money into hiring the highest quality developers available — especially those who have experience working with a distributed team. Check out our starter program.

Startup 79

Startup Social Media RSS Social Network 79

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

In most applications, most of the time, customers return to use the application not in response to a notification or event, but under their own volition. These decisions are critical to the success of any high-engagement product, and they take place entirely inside the minds of customers.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

mashable.com

MAY 24, 2011

May 23, 2011 by Christina Warren 20 Share on Tumblr email share Share on Tumblr email share The Mobile App Trends Series is supported by Sourcebits , a leading product developer for mobile platforms. Sourcebits offers design and development services for iOS, Android, Mobile and Web platforms. ); // Welcome to Mashable!

Mobile 90

Mobile Web Social Media Software Review 90

crowdSPRING Blog

MAY 17, 2010

Like many small companies with limited marketing budgets, we are forced to work with the resources at hand, so creativity, partnering approaches, social media, and viral efforts tend to be our stock in trade. Which brings me back to my old friend (and yours, too, I hope) the four P’s&# Product. Does your product provide value?

Marketing 84

Marketing Startup Viral Small Business 84

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

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

” April, 2012 – Andrew Chen writes Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing , which goes viral (2.4K It is simply getting customers. And by the transitive property, anything that gets customers is marketing. […] Welcome to growth hacking. PR and publicity drive attention…to drive sales. via FastCompany).

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 30, 2019

As Peter Drucker famously wrote, “The aim of marketing is to know the customer so well the product or service fits them, and sells itself.” ” In conversion optimization , we talk about the importance of knowing our customers a lot. Identifying new product development opportunities you might have otherwise overlooked.

Audience 125

Audience Artificial Inteligence North America Iowa 125

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Thats the conclusion Ive come to after watching tons of online products fail for a complete lack of customers. Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. We finally settled on a $1.99

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

mashable.com

MARCH 7, 2011

Mashable | The Social Media Guide Viral Topics Twitter YouTube Facebook iPhone Google Video About Mashable Company About Us Advertise Submit News Contact Us Announcements Resources Guidebooks Lists How To Trending Twitter List Directory Mashable Awards Subscriptions Partners W3 EDGE Rackspace Concentric Sky Dynect DNS Intridea Welcome to Mashable!

Developer 93

Developer HTML API Ruby 93

ConversionXL

DECEMBER 11, 2018

Or look at MailChimp, a startup-turned-$400-million-revenue-machine that is always creating viral campaigns that set them above their competition, like this recent “Did You Mean Mailchimp” one. What are 1–3 benefits of the Beacon live chat product? Beacon is human-first by always connecting customers to a human, never a misleading bot.

Campaign 134

Campaign Marketing Design Differentiation 134

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

In the Udemy course, Alistair and Ben expand these basics into a description of how to create empathy, stickiness, virality, revenue, and scale. Stickiness, Ben and Alistair say, is where people move on too quickly--they don’t make sure they really have a product that has the right features and functionality to meet their customers’ needs.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Announce a new product, start its PR campaign, and engage in buzz marketing activities. Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. Product launch) In todays world, there is no reason you have to do these two things at the same time. Do your customers really read TechCrunch?

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

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. The answer to the question is neither.

Dilution 114

Dilution Revenue Finance Entrepreneur 114

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Very simply, your cost to acquire a customer needs to be lower than the value of that customer (lifetime value). Product second. This is obvious.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Very simply, your cost to acquire a customer needs to be lower than the value of that customer (lifetime value). Product second. This is obvious.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

The Next Web

FEBRUARY 3, 2014

This is native advertising in real life, on a real website, acting as a key player in the race for the strongest, viral, engaging content. The company, known for viral social content, is predicted to bring in $100 million in revenue in 2014 from native advertising on 150 million unique visitors a month, according to a 2013 Forbes article.

Advertising 139

Advertising San Francisco New York Viral 139

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 15, 2017

Practically speaking, the burning need was to begin hiring employees so that I could spend more of my day on product development, partnerships and driving sales. RL: At a high level, technology has created many ways to increase our productivity while also providing freedom to run the business from anywhere in the world.

Marketing 48

Marketing Design Acquisition Bootstrapping 48

crowdSPRING Blog

JULY 13, 2016

When offering a new product or service it is important for a business to quickly demonstrate value to prospective customers and differentiate itself from the competition. Though most startups know the importance of brand identity, it can often take the back seat to more pressing matters such as product development or finances.

Marketing 48

Marketing Startup Differentiation Naming 48