Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Announce a new product, start its PR campaign, and engage in buzz marketing activities. Even if you must launch to your customers, avoid the urge to also launch in extra places, just because your PR firm can do it at the same time. If you are having trouble raising money, sometimes a little PR can help. Founders push for it.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Instead, we do everything possible to validate the founders belief. Most people cant sustain more than a few of these iterations, and the founders rarely get to be involved in the later tries.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2013

For starters let me use “CEO” as a proxy to include her “inner circle” which might mean co-founders or might just mean senior execs of the business. The Mind of the Founder. A cautious person wouldn’t try to pry people out of Twitter right before their IPO to” join my cause!!”

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Startup Dilution San Diego Stock Options 417

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

In this model, you take some fraction of the lifetime value of each customer and plow that back into paid acquisition through SEM, banner ads, PR, affiliates, etc. Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

For instance, if a consultant proposes to help you with public relations, pay them a commission equivalent to the greater of a flat fee per story placed or a percentage of revenue generated from the PR coverage. Such positions include: PR, Sales, Product Development, Lead Generation, Strategic Planning, Fund Raising, etc. Consultant.

Equity 40

Equity Silicon Valley Cofounder PR 40

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

If you’re a visiting dignitary whose country has a Gross National Product equal to or greater than the State of California, your visit to Silicon Valley consists of a lunch/dinner with some combination of the founders of Google, Facebook, Apple and Twitter and several brand name venture capitalists. California Dreaming.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley San Francisco San Jose Venture Capital 335

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

The full formula works like this: runway = cash on hand / burn rate # iterations = runway / speed of each iteration Very few successful companies ended up in the same exact business that the founders thought theyd be in (see Founders at Work for dozens of examples). No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Engineers are offenders in this category too, but so is any gender-segregated activity, like an all-female PR or marketing team. One last suggestion, which is a technique I learned from my IMVU co-founder Will Harvey. One last suggestion, which is a technique I learned from my IMVU co-founder Will Harvey.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

Cracking the Code

FEBRUARY 4, 2008

2007 was a turning point for the SaaS industry with the successful IPOs of NetSuite, SuccessFactors, DemandTec, Salary.com, Aprimo and Constant Contact. The 23rd started with a quick overview of the achievement of our Software and SaaS portfolio in 2007 presented by Byron Deeter, the co-head of our West Coast SaaS practice.

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Software Review South Korea IPO Portfolio 48

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

Whats striking about these stories, if you get past the PR hype, are two very important themes: These prodigies were self-taught, and had a fundamental fascination with technology from a very young age. Then you set up a web app to co-ordinate volunteers who can wipe a hard drive and install Ubuntu. Third, you market it far and wide.

Programming 143

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

In the end, I believe they co-created our product with us. In the meantime, I think we have a good explanation for what all those PR dollars are being spent trying to obscure. Personally, the framework Ive found most helpful is MTVs "create, share, validate" feedback loop. Leveraged distribution channels. Dont fall for it - its a trap.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Even worse, entrepreneurs are faced with a constant barrage of vanity metrics from competitors and other companies engaged in PR. By only releasing vanity metrics , companies co-opt the press into helping them mislead others. The PR firm helpfully left out that context.) Vanity metrics are generally bigger. The solution?

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Metrics Lean PR 154

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2010

The higher the vanity ratio, the more effective the PR. Paul quotes one of his founders like this: “Thats the actual beauty in the off-the-record-ness: you hear just how screwed up most of these successful startups were on the way up.&# It helps companies with PR. It makes successful founders famous.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Metrics PR 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

When you read stories of successful startups in the popular and business press, you usually hear about how the founders anticipated several of these challenges in their initial vision. What the PR stories tend to leave out is that we can get attached to every part of our vision, even the dumb parts.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

www.paulgraham.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

And since a startup thatsucceeds ordinarily makes its founders rich, that implies gettingrich is doable too. A lot ofwould-be startup founders think the key to the whole process is theinitial idea, and from that point all you have to do is execute.Venture capitalists know better. Ideally you want between two and four founders.

Startup 105

Startup Cofounder Software Stock 105

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Thanks to those of you who were willing to fill out the survey, I learned my net promoter score (about 25) as well as some clear other segmentation insights: about 80% of you are founders of or work at a startup, you read many of the same other blogs, and many of you would like to engage with Lessons Learned in formats and venues beyond this blog.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 17, 2010

► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. The visionary’s lament The Superbowl ad test Lo, my 57692 subscribers, who are you? Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco 107

San Francisco Romania Cleveland South Africa 107

Up and Running

APRIL 17, 2013

Google was a private company and their CEO and co-founder was visiting his and my alma mater in Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan, where I had just graduated a few months prior and was bumming around getting my own startup off the ground. Tech-Nation turns it’s lonely eyes to you.

Michigan 96

Michigan Boston Jordan Austin 96

Cracking the Code

FEBRUARY 12, 2007

Attendees included Blue Nile , Postini , LinkedIn , Lifelock , Wize , Sparter , Zopa , Revver , Wikia , Flock , Vimo , Delivery Agent , Gerson Lehrman Group , Pure Networks , Zensys , Summit , T3Ci , Endeca and Nominum - a wide spectrum of companies, both in terms of stage (very early to pre-IPO) and sectors (consumer internet, software, chipsets.).

Software Review 48

Software Review SEM Marketing Las Vegas 48

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

This "success theater" is occasionally useful for PR or getting through a tough board meeting. This "success theater" is occasionally useful for PR or getting through a tough board meeting. Once again, we revisit the topic of Actionable metrics and their nemesis: Vanity metrics. But how do we know which metrics to look at?

Metrics 121

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 121

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

It was still a year away from its IPO. Cultural Revolution at Large Corporations – the Founders Return Of the companies that do reinvent themselves it’s interesting that often its the founder or an outsider that has the insight and makes the radical changes. But first some background.)

Silicon Valley 182

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 182

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

As a founder of a company, there is nothing more painful than to see your most loyal and devoted customers suffering. Have you personally visited the Content Creator forums and read through the PR thread? When new changes roll out that aren't anticipated or expected - like the whole PR deal that became a PR mess - people PANIC.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158

Scalable Startup

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

Via Stanford, Berkeley, Facebook, Google, recruiting Harvard and MIT undergrads, their wonderful PR machine, advertising free meals, free car washes, free dry cleaning, free day care. Recruitment – Most of the leaders in SV are from elsewhere because Silicon Valley aggressively acquires the best from all over the world.

Silicon Valley 22

Silicon Valley San Francisco Angel Investor Hawaii 22

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

This is completely analogous to the situation elsewhere on the internet, where launching a new website, product, or service with PR is getting harder and harder. On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral. Dont do PR upfront, dont put out a press release. My advice: dont launch big.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

I liked the flattering Venture Hacks commentary so much Ill just quote it: Many founders believe that early stage startups are endeavors of execution. What happened when we got early press (circa 2004) in violation of our own no-PR rule. The customer is known, the product is known, and all we have to do is act.

Lean 74

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 74

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

Almost all of them got scooped up by pre-IPO Google this time. That year, right before the IPO, those months mattered a great deal in terms of financial outcomes. In fact, I remember sending him and his obscure-to-me co-founder (aka Reid Hoffman ) a bug report early-on, instead of taking them up on their offer of an in-person meeting.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

Having worked with dozens of founders over the past few months, I think I can safely say, without naming any names, that most of us are not too clear on what were talking about when it comes to markets. Founders are constantly being barraged by incoherent and contradictory advice. Is a market a set of paying customers?

San Francisco 89

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Ruby Lean 89

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

You could try and drive home that positioning with an expensive PR campaign, superbowl ads, and whatnot. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

Viral 140

Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 140