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The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development

Startup Lessons Learned

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. You can imagine how well that worked. On the minus side, that has made it a wee bit hard to understand.

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Which Fundraising Round Should You Skip?

View from Seed

The reality is that if a founder raised every one of these rounds, and lead investors always got their “target” ownership, the level of dilution would be ridiculous. No good investor would want the founder/CEO of a company to have insufficient ownership by the series A, and every founder I know is sensitive to taking too much dilution.

Dilution 149
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When do I *stop* doing customer interviews and start writing code?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Here are the details of both of those customer development experiences. Recently at WP Engine I did some brand new customer development for a new project that we think will revolutionize WordPress blog management. But there’s no one “number.” Way #1: Go until boredom.

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A real Customer Advisory Board

Startup Lessons Learned

Every time you listen to customers, you fear diluting your vision. Every time you listen to customers, you fear diluting your vision. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? That’s natural. In this particular example, it turned out they were right.

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Changing Equity Structures for Early Startup Employees

www.instigatorblog.com

I get that the numbers are post Series A, but even if you assume 50% dilution, you're giving your first hire developer between 1-2%. I get that the numbers are post Series A, but even if you assume 50% dilution, you're giving your first hire developer between 1-2%. 1% is even less after you factor in dilution.

Equity 41
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Marching through quicksand

Startup Lessons Learned

And as everyone’s attention starts to focus on those same indicators, their value is being diluted. We’ve learned that data can be used as a reality-check against vision without diluting the mission or reverting to “sum of all features&# focus groups. Which leads to the next problem: We need new status indicators.

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Your Product Needs to be 10x Better than the Competition to Win. Here’s Why:

Both Sides of the Table

He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards. So when he saw the browser it instantly dawned on him that this would be the greatest customer development tool ever. Too many entrepreneurs focus on dilution.

Product 350