Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Cashflow is a basic survival metric for every startup. Things will cost more than you expect. Waiting until you have something to sell before bringing on a sales and operations staff. For example, a software development startup raising $250,000 from angel investors better be able to operate on $25,000 per month.

Burn Rate 262

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Salary 262

abovethecrowd.com

OCTOBER 1, 2013

Over 13 years ago, in March of 2000, I wrote a blog post titled “ The Most Powerful Internet Metric of All. ” The key thesis was this: if an Internet company could obsess about only one metric, it should be conversion. As such, it is time to pound the table again – conversion is by far the most powerful Internet metric of all.

Metrics 93

Metrics Conversion Internet Acquisition 93

Up and Running

MARCH 17, 2022

To get the whole picture and have a framework on which to build your business you also need a strategic plan and an operational plan. What is an operational plan? An operation plan zooms into the details of your business to explain how you are going to achieve your short-term goals. How will your business operate?

Business Plan 145

Business Plan Operations Lean Forecast 145

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

Stage 1: Target the right metrics for an effective long game. 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. Metrics for your demand generation funnel. email, ads, retargeting, etc.)

Demand 124

Demand B2B Distribution Channel 124

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Through rapid experimentation, short product development cycles, and rigorous measurements of the right metrics, they can ascertain what customers really want. Customer development (the understanding of customer needs) must be married to agile development (a process which drives waste out of product development).

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Cash flow is a basic survival metric for every startup. Things will cost more than you expect. Waiting until you have something to sell before bringing on a sales and operations staff. For example, a software development startup raising $250,000 from angel investors better be able to operate on $25,000 per month.

Burn Rate 120

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Tech IPO prices exploded and subsequent trading prices rose to dizzying heights as the stock prices became disconnected from the traditional metrics of revenue and profits. Lean was designed to inform the founders’ vision while they operated frugally at speed. Some have labeled this period as irrational exuberance. The result?

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

ConversionXL

AUGUST 30, 2018

It slows product development. It costs money. The key is to connect user research to an improved user experience and, in turn, an increase in customer retention, leads, or any other metric for which C-suite members are accountable. In many organizations, user research creates friction. It has no clear ROI. Image source ).

Design 111

Design Framework Product Development Technical Review 111

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2019

Why our CRO jobs will die: Teams operate at different paces. Conversion teams: 6–8 week experiment cycles; Marketing teams: Prepare, campaign, prepare, campaign; Product teams: 2-week sprints. Conversion/Optimization teams might become a nightmare for marketing and product teams. It costs money to learn. Not anymore.

Artificial Inteligence 114

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Metrics SEO 114

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 29, 2013

For example, when your company adds ano ther blade to its disposal razors , the product’s technical development, marketing and sales will follow relatively predictable paths. But that’s not to say that every established company developing personal grooming products is operating risk-free. in ten years?

Lean 165

Lean Technical Review Startup Software Review 165

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. They measure their success on metrics that reflect success in execution, and they reward execution.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. I am heavily indebted to earlier theorists, and highly recommend the books Lean Thinking and Lean Software Development. I like the term because of two connotations: Lean in the sense of low-burn.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

The software was sold based on installation cost running on local servers for enterprises—which was very, very expensive. Another great way to test your idea is to create a minimum viable product, or MVP. This is the simplest version of your product minus the frills and frosting. Estimating Realistic Startup Costs.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 14, 2013

By the end of his workshop, you will know how to apply innovation accounting to truly track the progress of your product. Patrick Sheridan will lead a workshop on bringing mobile development to established companies , especially for execs and team leaders. If there’s a problem in production, developers need to own it.

Continuous Deployment 162

Continuous Deployment Norway Lean Analytics 162

ConversionXL

DECEMBER 3, 2018

Even in this obscure niche, their napkin-math suggested that improper moisture management cost companies $1 billion in repair and replacement costs each year. They’d built a range of products that completely solved the problem—but they couldn’t reach their potential customers. It generates lots of irrelevant traffic.

B2B 133

B2B Marketing SEO Search 133

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. And what of the product development team? Compared to the million-dollar startup, they are operating at micro-scale.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Convertible debt financings have become an increasingly attractive approach for seed rounds because it delays the valuation discussion, costs less from a legal standpoint, and is an easier financial instrument to “keep raising more small amounts of money” on. No updates, screen comps, or metrics have been publicly shared yet.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Hes a new employee, and he was not properly trained in TDD So far, this isnt much different from the kind of analysis any competent operations team would conduct for a site outage. This approach is a the heart of breaking down the "time/quality/cost pick two" paradox , because these small investments cause the team to go faster over time.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

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. That depends.

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. Although it costs to pay down the principal, we gain by reduced interest payments in the future.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

So instead of having sales, marketing, and business development, we have a problem team implementing customer development. And instead of design, engineering, QA, and operations we have a solution team implementing a startup-centric version of agile development. dalelarson : "Metrics are people, too."

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Similar results apply in product management, design, testing, and even operations. When operating with continuous deployment, its almost impossible to have integration conflicts. Luckily, I now have the benefit of a forthcoming book, The Principles of Product Development Flow. Small batches reduce overhead.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

We spent weeks working on this new product, racing the clock so it would be done in time for the real presidential debates. We had endless arguments internally about what features it should include, how the avatars should look, and how much it should cost. Just load them all in and choose a low cost-per-click. I used to use $.05,

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. Thats why we need continuous integration and test-driven development.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

It is becoming easier and cheaper for companies to bring products to market, leveraging free and open source software , cloud computing, open social data (Facebook, OpenSocial ), and open distribution (AdWords, SEO). Lean startups have the ability to use this commodity stack to lower costs and, more importantly, reduce time to market.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 22, 2008 Net Promoter Score: an operational tool to measure customer satisfaction Ive mentioned Net Promoter Score (NPS) in a few previous posts, but havent had a chance to describe it in detail yet. The whole episode cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

.Net 158

.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

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. Alistair: There are plenty. Consider a restaurant.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

ctotodevelopers.blogspot.com

JULY 11, 2012

The x-axis depicts technical complexity, risk, and cost which are all related. decide on success metrics, measure, and then decide if additional investment is warranted. If the innovation is successful, then the metrics should help drive the enhancement into the top/right "agile happy place" quadrant. ► 2011. (14).

Agile 40

Agile Architecture Offshore Software Developers 40

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 1, 2012

For example, the average cost of customer acquisition diminishes. Because you get organized around marketing metrics, because your campaigns get optimized, because your landing pages and drip campaigns become stronger, because word of mouth produces sales “for free,” and so forth. Less time training customers.

Customer 320

Customer Revenue Acquisition Cofounder 320

Seeing Both Sides

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

By viewing product development and marketing as integrated functions, not silos, leading tech companies like Facebook and Pinterest are rethinking their approach to driving growth and achieving breakthrough results. Cost to execute the test. Confidence that the test will yield a successful result.

Management 20

Management Analytics Technical Review Framework 20

Seeing Both Sides

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

By viewing product development and marketing as integrated functions, not silos, leading tech companies like Facebook and Pinterest are rethinking their approach to driving growth and achieving breakthrough results. Cost to execute the test. Confidence that the test will yield a successful result.

Management 20

Management Analytics Technical Review Framework 20

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 12, 2010

It’s human nature to prioritize the metrics that get measured, so the simple act of keeping track is often enough to have a significant positive impact. Products: You obviously can’t create value without a viable product (or service) to sell. Detail isn’t important; tracking your progress is.

Intellectual Property 223

Intellectual Property .Net Valuation Distribution 223

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 7, 2013

This emergence of the 3rd Platform creates four pillars, namely: 1) Mobility – Connecting People and Process Increasingly, intelligent devices will provide cost effective telemetry (remote data measurements) for infrastructure, vehicles, and people. IT masterplans and roadmaps need to consider these sea changes.

Technology 174

Technology Singapore Malaysia Indonesia 174

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 14, 2015

They fear they’re being asked to create a low-quality product that will put their reputation—or even people’s lives—at risk. Minimally viable” does not mean operating in a sloppy or undisciplined way, building bad code that’s going to result in a lot of technical debt, or ignoring safety or health concerns. This is a misconception.

Stealth 60

Stealth Engineer Leadership Design 60

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Customer development is a parallel process to product development, which means that you dont have to give up on your dream. Our goal in product development is to find the minimum feature set required to get early customers. This is a common mistake. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 11, 2019

Easy does it: The right CRM can work magic, serving as a single platform that can span across the entire breadth of an organization — sharing information and providing value for customer service, sales, product development, management, operations and more. Time to Act With Analytics.

Artificial Inteligence 127

Artificial Inteligence Sales Cycle Colorado Retention 127

Up and Running

MAY 12, 2015

You want to vet your metrics with experts in your industry, see if there are any holes in your presentation, and make sure it reads well before you pitch your investors. An old standby for a good reason—your local Small Business Development Center is an excellent resource for information on a variety of business-related topics.

Angel Investor 60

Angel Investor Software Review Technical Cofounder Due Diligence 60