Hunter Walker

AUGUST 11, 2022

Founders seem to disproportionately come from engineering, product and sales/business unit career paths. Seed Stage Startups Don’t Hire Fulltime For These Roles, And Certainly Not Senior Hires. You’re trying to build a software product, do customer development and find PMF. Nor Do VCs.

Seed Stage 102

Seed Stage Cap Table Founder Marketing 102

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. Freemium models have their own scorekeeping.)

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2014

Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Chief Brand Officer. Chief Human Resources Officer (VP Personnel).

CTO Hire 252

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 252

Steve Blank

AUGUST 22, 2011

Over the last few weeks I’ve gotten involved in hiring for two startups, a public agency and a non profit. In the last week I had four separate groups through the ranch all wanting to talk either about hiring a senior exec or a senior exec looking for a new job. Are you hiring for search or execution skills? Draw a pie chart.

Hiring 290

Hiring Non-Compete Search Customer Development 290

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

I''ve been thinking a lot lately about scaling sales. . Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. How do I build a repeatable, scalable sales process that is like an industrial machine - not a crafts project? 1) Enterprise Sales.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales. He had teamed up with a former product manager at P&G to deliver seminars on just this subject.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

Working with him, I’ve been impressed to watch his small team embrace Customer Development (and Business Model Generation ) and search the world for the right product/market fit. They’ve tested their hypotheses with literally hundreds of customer interviews on every continent in the world. Corporate elephants can dance.

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 222

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Chief Brand Officer. Chief Human Resources Officer (VP Personnel).

CTO Hire 244

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 244

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. They looked at their watches, gave our sales guy a quizzical look and left.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 10, 2012

Spoiler: You can’t hire out sales because in the early days it’s about learning, not selling, and hired guns can’t bring back bad news. At their peak, Groupon sales reps made 1250 calls per week to close 4 sales[1]. The problem is, early stage sales isn’t about making money.

Hiring 51

Hiring Founder Viral Early Stage 51

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. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter?

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Gust

APRIL 20, 2014

Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Chief Brand Officer. Chief Human Resources Officer (VP Personnel).

CTO Hire 171

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 171

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Chief Brand Officer. Chief Human Resources Officer (VP Personnel).

CTO Hire 227

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 227

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2011

At Tekes, government employees (and their hired consultants) – with no equity, no risk or reward, no startup or venture capital experience – try to pick startup winners and losers. The number of serial entrepreneurs is very low and until recently most of the talented sales and marketing professionals choose to work for Nokia.

Finland 324

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 324

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Here are just a few things you might look for: Reducing risk in young companies Bringing innovation to the enterprise Designing and running experiments Customer development strategies All conference passes are on sale right now, and you can compare them here.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

While the last post was titled “ You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When They Offer You a Job “, this post should probably be titled, “You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When You Offer Them a Job.&# These hires were definitely not your standard marketing types.

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Five Easy Pieces – The Marketing Mission After a few months of talking to customers , talking to our channel and working with sales we defined the marketing Mission (our job) was to: Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin. We hired union laborers to do that. It didn’t take more.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 12, 2020

If people aren’t coming into your physical store, consider whether you can refocus sales online. While you may be able to do some DIY marketing, it’s likely you’ll want to hire a marketing agency for tactics such as SEO. . A lot of independent stores have started creating their own app to help with online sales.

Marketing 246

Marketing Social Media PPC SEO 246

ConversionXL

JANUARY 24, 2014

The importance of the customer feedback cycle & the role it plays for AWeber. How to get your software business to the point where you can hire a business development director. Hunter shares some extremely valuable insights that will prove useful in building beneficial relationships and getting highly qualified customers.

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

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

But we were meeting to talk about sales and marketing. They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring Channel Sales. “So Why doesn’t this sound like the right thing to do for channel sales?” Hiring PR Agencies. It’s wrong.

PR 314

PR China Lean Channel 314

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

We knew from back-of-the-envelope calculations that I would need 3 times the combined marketing and sales budgets of the incumbents for a head-on assault. (I The 3:1 Lanchester Laws said I would need $60M in marketing and sales spending to win. If we tried to match them on their playing field we’d never catch up.

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I had last been in Chapel Hill on a winter’s day in 1986, traveling with the VP of Sales of our new supercomputer startup, Ardent. My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

They close on the $750k, hire a buddy or two, buy some Macs, and get to work. Things start to get a little fuzzy in terms of priorities, but not to fret, the new office is coming along really well with all of the hiring! Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

The excerpts, which appeared first at Inc.com , highlight the Customer Development process, best practices, tips and instructions contained in our book. Yet without direct and continuous customer contact, it’s unknown whether the features will hold any appeal to customers. Executing on a sales and marketing plan.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

I was glad to see him but it was clear over coffee that he was struggling with his first hiring failure. I’ve been running our company, cycling through Customer Discovery and Validation and the board suggested that I was running out of bandwidth and needed some help in closing our initial orders. a well-understood group of customers.

Startup 312

Startup Business Model Customer Development Bandwidth 312

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

A college degree is great if you’re looking to get hired. We were charging a really high up-front annual fee to these providers and the end result of that was a pretty long sales cycle. We tested the new strategy with several customers in the pipeline and it took our sales cycle from about 60 days to 1 week.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

———— T o: Marketing Department From: Steve Subject: Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters Generating Leads Ownership If your company is going to a show to generate leads, then sales owns the show. This is worthy of an open and honest discussion with sales up front. And inviting to the booth/dinner/private demo.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 29, 2024

Then, consider how you’ll reach your customers and what kind of relationship you want to build with them. Will you opt for direct sales, subscriptions, or a freemium model? Hiring the right people is critical, but it’s just the beginning. Revenue streams are another critical component of your business model.

Intellectual Property 129

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Business Model Bootstrapping 129

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

We were impressed when we found that they did the in-person interviews by hiring usertesting.com for $39 to set up test scenarios, gave the users specific tasks to accomplish with their minimum viable product, videotaped the customer interactions and summarized customer likes and dislikes.) Demand generation?

Customer 234

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 234

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

Our small training department had been without a manager for months and finding a replacement didn’t seem to be high on the VP of Sales list. I walked into the VP of Sales’ office and with my knees trembling, I politely asked for the job. For entrepreneurs good things come to those who ask. What’s Marketing?

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

But we were meeting to talk about sales and marketing. They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring Channel Sales. “So Why doesn’t this sound like the right thing to do for channel sales?” Hiring PR Agencies. It’s wrong.

PR 206

PR China Lean Channel 206

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2012

Think about it: Companies hire people who come from outside the buyer’s world and don’t share his interests — employees, agencies, consultants, and the like — and expect them to persuade buyers to hand over their money. Cultivate customer sales and marketing people. Build strong customer communities.

Marketing 234

Marketing Software Review Technical Review Social Network 234

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

You can almost set your watch to six months or so after first customer ship, when Sales starts missing its “numbers,” the board gets concerned and Marketing tries to “make up a better story.” Having failed to deliver the promised revenue, the VP of Sales in a startup who does not make the “numbers” becomes an ex-VP of Sales.

Burn Rate 247

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

I vividly remember the sales guy saying, “It’s only some kid in field service. Some sales guy who was too busy to take the meeting was probably retired in Maui on the commissions. Your Customers are Not Who You Think For years I thought this “million unit chip sale by accident&# was a “one-off&# funny story.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

A college degree is great if you’re looking to get hired. We were charging a really high up-front annual fee to these providers and the end result of that was a pretty long sales cycle. We tested the new strategy with several customers in the pipeline and it took our sales cycle from about 60 days to 1 week.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

I’ll publish the final post in this series this week and then move on to my next series – sales & marketing. I’ll be covering my PUCCKA sales methodology. The exact same team had worked on 2 previous customer service startups (and 1 non-CS product). It will be controversial – I know.

San Diego 267

San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267