ConversionXL

JANUARY 24, 2014

Today, I was fortunate enough to get Hunter Boyle – Senior Business Development Director of AWeber to talk with us about what exactly business development is, and the role it can play on conversions. In my interview with Hunter, we discuss: The key responsibilities of a business development professional.

Developer 104

Developer API Cofounder New Jersey 104

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small? Let’s start with how much value you think you’ll create for your customer if they use your product in terms of hours saved, costs avoided, extra sales, better conversion rates or whatever.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 19, 2009 Lean hiring tips In preparing for the strategy series panel this week, I have been doing some thinking about costs. I want to talk specifics, and when you come right down to it, most technology startups dont have a very interesting cost structure.

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 29, 2024

Whether it’s managing your supply chain or automating customer service, look for ways to optimise every aspect of your operations. PDF to Word conversion tools can be a lifesaver for managing documents efficiently. Hiring the right people is critical, but it’s just the beginning.

Intellectual Property 158

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Business Model Bootstrapping 158

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

The large players like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent historically would be more likely to simply copy a startup’s features than to hire their talent. Though they’re familiar with technology in the valley, I picked up some important cultural difference from students and startup engineers I talked to. It changes everything for them.).

China 326

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 326

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

For technology vendors and models, see Venture capitalists eating our own dog food: Using technology and analytics to make better investments. . For example, I suggest it doesn’t make a lot of sense to hire a full-time team member who’s an SEO consultant. Customer Development. Is the service scaleable?

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. And the converse is true; Palm would have failed, burning through all their cash, using Handspring’s strategy.

Customer Development 206

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 206

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

The large players like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent historically would be more likely to simply copy a startup’s features than to hire their talent. Though they’re familiar with technology in the valley, I picked up some important cultural difference from students and startup engineers I talked to. It changes everything for them.).

China 218

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 218

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Prior to founding Andela , he co-founded 2U , an education technology startup that went public in 2014. That kicked off this long conversation about how you might try to leverage this evolution of education technology to create scalable impact in places where tuition couldn’t be the driver of growth.

Cofounder 145

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 145

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Prior to founding Andela , he co-founded 2U , an education technology startup that went public in 2014. That kicked off this long conversation about how you might try to leverage this evolution of education technology to create scalable impact in places where tuition couldn’t be the driver of growth.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

Alice and Bettina had taken an idea they had tested in the class – building toys for young girls to have fun with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, and started a company. They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring Channel Sales. “So

PR 318

PR China Lean Channel 318

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

Extra Lucrative Conversion Advice. Conversion Optimization Services. Conversion Research. It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. I feel like “conversion rate optimization” is in 2013 what “social media marketing” was in 2009.

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times Ardent would be my third technology company as a VP of Marketing (Convergent Technologies and MIPS Computers were the other two.) It was my ex boss from Convergent Technologies, “Steve we’ve all just resigned from Convergent and we’re starting a new company.

North Carolina 127

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 127

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

We had thought really hard about “ market type ” and decided to reposition the company from a technology provider to a solutions provider. Theoretically, that’s why I hired them. Now we needed to put the tactical programs in place to make this repositioning strategy happen. You don’t delegate life and death.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 125

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

Alice and Bettina had taken an idea they had tested in the class – building toys for young girls to have fun with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, and started a company. They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring Channel Sales. “So

PR 210

PR China Lean Channel 210

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

These are just a few of the powerful, growth-fostering impacts “Rock Star” customers are creating for a variety of companies. And engaging customers in such ways is generally much less expensive than hiring costly employees or agencies. But it does require some new thinking. You have to make it easy for them to do so.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

Id be honored to have you join the conversation. The Conversation - Harvard Business Review For most of us, the phrase management science conjures up a decidedly non-entrepreneurial image, and for good reason. So you can imagine how I expected some skepticism when pitching ideas about technology innovation to, say, the U.S.

San Francisco 119

San Francisco Management Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

If you look at the top 3 online retailers by conversion rate, none of these are award-winning designs : [link] [link] [link] However, they convert ~25% of visitors to customers. Initially your job is to understand each of the parts of your business model before you hire someone to do it.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

Access to the corporate investor’s ecosystem can open up great opportunities from technology validation to customer and partner development. It comes as no surprise as technology today enables companies to prove product-market fit much earlier in their lifecycles. Now practically everyone is getting involved in Series A.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Technical Review Portfolio 60

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

I continue to collect great content that is the intersection of startups, products, online and technology. Storm Clouds - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 12, 2010 We have enjoyed an amazing run in the web startup and investing space over the past five or six years. Call it facts for hire. What went wrong?

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review Way back when the money was doled out, the team made a compelling pitch about the large market that was going to adopt their new innovative product or service. Leave a comment or reply to someone else. Fostering that dialog is important.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Steve Blank

MARCH 1, 2016

And just having cool technology doesn’t make a successful business. Brandon McNaughton , co-founder and CEO of Akadeum Life Sciences cell sorting technology company. He also founded and served as chief technology officer of Life Magnetics. what matters more is the … the customer’s problem. …

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Michigan Detroit 120

ConversionXL

MARCH 28, 2014

You’ve likely already heard that explainer videos can boost conversions anywhere between ten and ten bazillion percent. With over 100 years of movie & video history embedded in our collective subconscious, your customer’s expectations are really high. It’s not the technology. We’re really adamant.

Video 122

Video Software Review Cofounder Metrics 122

Steve Blank

APRIL 19, 2011

And finally, I have them experience all of this first hand by teaching them theory side-by-side with immersive hands-on using Customer Development to find a business model. It’s a much higher-level conversation than just teaching. If you want to hone specific skills or reach an exact goal hire a coach.

Early Stage 299

Early Stage Audience Hiring Business Model 299

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

Now there was nothing wrong with their analysis: anyone who invents a technology as sophisticated as The Transformers is definitely going to make a lot of money. Turns out, they were incredibly well-credentialed graduate students who had, in fact, developed some interesting new robotics technology. who is the customer?

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. But where do those ideas come from in the first place?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

This reminded me of a conversation with one of my direct reports years before my daughter was born. Oh, and we had no installed customer base. I had hired the VP of marketing from a potential software partner who was responsible to get all this 3 rd party software on our computer. Jim: Great, I have a bunch of calls into them.

Silicon Valley 329

Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 329

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2016

HowU Innovate provides campus-wide innovation courses, in which students are guided through the process of founding technology startups. Grant explained why: …This parallel between hip-hop and startups is an important one, particularly when you think about technological entrepreneurship for people of color. Do we hire 50 sales people?

Cofounder 120

Cofounder DC Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 30, 2015

I would say that in the last five or six years, it’s gone from a weird conversation to have to if you’re not having it, you’re not in the mainstream anymore. It’s a conversation. I’ve seen so many of my colleagues are hiring entrepreneurship directors, creating new programs. Dave : Absolutely. …

Artificial Inteligence 120

Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur Silicon Valley New York 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

For example, to outflank a competitor who had faster products, Intel moved the conversation about microprocessors away from speed and technology to create a valued brand. Both Apple and Intel were selling complicated technology but did so by simplifying the message so it had broad emotional appeal. The question is when ?”

Marketing 315

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 315

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

This event is free, and their conversation will be followed by a live Q&A for webcast attendees; register today to join them. Those conversations can often circle around the difficulties of entrepreneurship outside Silicon Valley. like Asia, is that the methods most of us are familiar with are actually pretty culturally specific.

Silicon Valley 168

Silicon Valley Lean Puerto Rico Japan 168

viniciusvacanti.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

Hire a Programmer The Hope: You’ll use the programmer to build a prototype that will get you traction and experience. You know how to product manage and you’ve hired programmers before. I recommend you start by reading this post on how to hire a programmer. We tried this at Yipit and failed. davetomback Great post.

Cofounder 43

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Ruby 43

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

I replied: “This is really important for our success as company and I’m really at a loss why customers didn’t respond the way we expected. From there, the conversation took a different trajectory. Anybody else got some other ideas?&# It was definitely a “Zen moment&# for me in terms of my career.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

Lean 254

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 254

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

So I generally feel right at home in these conversations. The other revels in the world as we all know it will be someday: limitless distribution enabled by new technologies, the importance of collaborative filters, and on-demand availability of all content for end-users. There are too many products clamoring for attention.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

As one engineer recently told me, “Once we had money in the bank and were near-profitable, I think we would have been well-served by increased up-front product and technology planning. Darn good - I have struggled in relevant conversations with our in house move to scrum/agile. He’s right. Eric, great post.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

Certainly using techniques such as customer development (www.custdev.com) and lean startup (minimum viable product) can help go a long way to giving the tech co-founder some early payback in terms of whether there will be any traction in the idea and reduce their inital involvment to get to prototype stage. Thoughts on. Expository (1).

Technical Cofounder 42

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Engineering Fractional CTO 42