Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 30, 2022

As a potential investor, I always think of the high rate of failure of disruptive technologies, due to the longer learning curve of customers, infrastructure change consistently required, and higher marketing costs. Before you act, shut up and listen to employees, customers, and futurists. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

Technical Review 252

Technical Review Silicon Valley Software Review Metrics 252

ReadWriteStart

JULY 23, 2020

Customer satisfaction and AI move to the front. Additionally, this new technology has given lawyers and law firms new service models that are customer-centric and that meld human resources with tech to optimize performance. In these new models, profit flows from customer satisfaction rather than hours billed. .

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Technical Review Software Review Artificial Inteligence Incubator 152

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2018

One of the reasons that now is the time to be an entrepreneur is the explosion of startup assistance organizations, usually called incubators or accelerators. A few are still trying to make a profitable business out of nurturing startups, but it’s a challenge to make money when your customer startups don’t have many resources to give.

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Incubator Silicon Valley North America Small Business Administration 218

ReadWriteStart

MAY 5, 2011

In addition, I asked him to do a competitive analysis on the pricing models of the various mobile app platforms and come back to me with both sets of market data, namely, customer research and competitive analysis. This is an interesting trend we're seeing as we connect with incubators around the world.

Costa Rica 115

Costa Rica Incubator Silicon Valley India 115

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 17, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Saturday, February 17, 2007 A Different Kind of Incubator - The Hive I recently met with The Hive a new incubator in Orange County. Technology Advisor Technology Roles in Startups Pricing Customer Acquisition Sunk Costs and More -. Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouh.

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Incubator Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles 150

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

I asked Tsutsumi-san to write a guest post for my blog to describe his experience with Customer Development in Japan. But customers didn’t agree. This made me believe deeply in the extreme importance of talking to customers before investing time and money, something I took to my next startup. ————-.

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Japan Customer Development Developer Customer 292

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 28, 2020

Building a minimum viable product, with customer validation. Early customer feedback will position your solution, and help you make pivots before critical time and money are lost. Angel groups, accelerators, and incubators are pervasive. Just make sure you can fill in all the details. The cost of social media done well is low.

Intellectual Property 404

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Groups Social Media 404

Version One Ventures

MARCH 29, 2024

Uniswap announced its first program, Uniswap Hook Incubator, an 8-week program to help devs build hooks (v4’s flagship feature). Shippo announced Addresses API , a fast reliable solution for validating, parsing and storing customer addresses. You can read more about the token, airdrop and other details in their post: Announcing ETHFI.

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Portfolio Software Review San Francisco API 82

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 30, 2019

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Join a startup incubator. Commit to a major customer.

Intellectual Property 219

Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 219

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 17, 2011

A new incubator program, Imagine K12 , launched today in Palo Alto aimed specifically at building entrepreneurship in the education space. That's a pretty significant comment from the co-founder of one of the most successful startup incubators in Silicon Valley history, and begs the question: what is Imagine K12 doing that Y Combinator can't?

Incubator 116

Incubator Technical Review Silicon Valley Cofounder 116

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 30, 2012

The class teaches founders how to dramatically reduce their failure rate through the combination of business model design, customer development and agile development using the Startup Owners Manual. More importantly, it makes no demands of you to stand and deliver your weekly customer development progress in front of your peers.

Startup 335

Startup Lean Incubator Business Model 335

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 8, 2022

Success in any business these days requires a constant flow of new and innovative solutions, to keep up with changes in the market, competition, and to attract new customers. In fact, people lower in the organization are often closer to the customer and have more insight into what works and what doesn’t.

Stock Options 277

Stock Options Incubator Framework Stock 277

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2014

One of the reasons that now is the time to be an entrepreneur is the explosion of startup assistance organizations, usually called incubators or accelerators. A few are still trying to make a profitable business out of nurturing startups, but it’s a challenge to make money when your customer startups don’t have many resources to give.

Incubator 247

Incubator Silicon Valley Startup Small Business Administration 247

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 3, 2023

One of the reasons that now is the time to be an entrepreneur is the explosion of startup assistance organizations, usually called incubators or accelerators. A few are still trying to make a profitable business out of nurturing startups, but it’s a challenge to make money when your customer startups don’t have many resources to give.

Incubator 231

Incubator Silicon Valley North America Small Business Administration 231

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 23, 2018

In recent years, startup accelerators and startup incubators have become the place of choice for any budding entrepreneurs to be the next unicorn. Though both startup accelerators and incubators are used to help nurture young companies, the two platforms have subtle differences.

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Incubator South America San Francisco Chile 127

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 15, 2019

Steve Blank via Flickr by jdlasica I see more and more entrepreneurs who seem to have everything going for them – vision, motivation, passion, even a good business plan, product, and money, and yet they can’t close customers. Great businesses begin with a customer problem that has a big and monetizable pain point. Nail the solution.

Startup 245

Startup Angel Investor Technical Review Incubator 245

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 11, 2020

One of the reasons that now is the time to be an entrepreneur is the explosion of startup assistance organizations, usually called incubators or accelerators. A few are still trying to make a profitable business out of nurturing startups, but it’s a challenge to make money when your customer startups don’t have many resources to give.

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Incubator Silicon Valley North America Startup 398

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 14, 2014

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Join a startup incubator. Commit to a major customer.

Entrepreneur 283

Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 283

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 1, 2017

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Join a startup incubator. Commit to a major customer.

Product Development 177

Product Development Cost Developer Product 177

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 17, 2016

One of the reasons that now is the time to be an entrepreneur is the explosion of startup assistance organizations, usually called incubators or accelerators. A few are still trying to make a profitable business out of nurturing startups, but it’s a challenge to make money when your customer startups don’t have many resources to give.

Incubator 120

Incubator Silicon Valley Startup Small Business Administration 120

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 4, 2019

You need to build business relationships with partners, team members, investors, and of course customers. It really is possible for an introvert to succeed as an entrepreneur, even though you can’t expect to start and build a business alone. Increase your visibility and expertise in your domain.

Entrepreneur 261

Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch Angel Investor Incubator 261

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Join a startup incubator. Commit to a major customer.

Intellectual Property 309

Intellectual Property Technical Review Venture Capital Startup 309

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 3, 2016

A question I often get as an adviser is whether or not to join a business incubator or accelerator as a way to move forward faster and smarter and increase the odds of business success. Most incubators start their program with some aptitude and business acumen tests. Costs, returns in equity and funding access.

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Incubator Due Diligence Startup Equity 120

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 7, 2022

Even with advantages that independent startups can never hope to match, including brand recognition, customers, financial capital, and distribution, I don’t often see the entrepreneurial passion for innovation, agility, and team perseverance exhibited by new startups. Commit a source of internal or external seed funding.

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Advisory Board Incubator Dilution Agile 359

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2018

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Join a startup incubator. Commit to a major customer.

Intellectual Property 134

Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 134

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

The key was the realization that start-ups are not simply smaller versions of large companies, which execute/ exploit known business models, and whose customers, problems, and necessary product features are all “knowns.” To be truly successful at ambidexterity firms must master the new skills of ideation, incubation, and scaling.

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Steve Blank

MAY 19, 2021

They then incubated and delivered a solution that will help get large vessels back to sea faster, potentially saving the Navy $20M-$30M a year. A Navy team recently sourced 80 problems, then curated down to one priority problem to solve. In less than 60 days they created 26 MVPs while interviewing over two dozen companies.

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Curation Technical Review Lean Australia 344

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

With hindsight we should have had “proof of concepts” tested in a corporate center (think ‘pop-up incubator’) where they would do extensive Customer Discovery. Eventually Qualcomm did create a corporate incubator to handle projects beyond the scope of traditional R&D, yet too early to hand-off to existing business unit).

Programming 265

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 265

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 6, 2019

Success in any business these days requires a constant flow of new and innovative solutions, to keep up with changes in the market, competition, and to attract new customers. In fact, people lower in the organization are often closer to the customer, and have more insight into what works and what doesn’t.

Stock Options 236

Stock Options Incubator Framework Stock 236

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 17, 2010

By Jim Flowers A few months ago, Marty invited me to comment on business incubation and what a startup company ought to expect from an incubator. Tags: entrepreneurs incubators relationships startups. Relationships , I said back then. And I stand by that assertion. And it all happens in the span of 90 days.

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Incubator Programming Virginia DC 201

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

We think teaching teams a formal methodology around the Lean Framework (Business Model design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) is a natural evolution of how successful incubators/accelerators will build startups. Given something tangible, customers were able to start gauging their willingness to use and pay.

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Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 315

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 18, 2014

I see more and more entrepreneurs who seem to have everything going for them – vision, motivation, passion, even a good business plan, product, and money, and yet they can’t close customers. Great businesses begin with a customer problem that has a big and monetizable pain point. Nail the solution. Nail the go-to-market strategy.

Entrepreneur 283

Entrepreneur Startup Angel Investor Technical Review 283

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2015

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Join a startup incubator. Commit to a major customer.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 120

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 12, 2017

I see more and more entrepreneurs who seem to have everything going for them – vision, motivation, passion, even a good business plan, product, and money, and yet they can’t close customers. Great businesses begin with a customer problem that has a big and monetizable pain point. Nail the solution. Nail the go-to-market strategy.

Startup 161

Startup Angel Investor Technical Review Incubator 161

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

Touted as the first-ever startup competition for marketing technology companies where the brands and customers have the final say in the winner, EXPANDMYBRAND is looking for five lucky emerging social technology startups who will get to pitch to a panel of representatives from top brands such as Starbucks, Nike, Macy’s and Gap as well as social (..)

Incubator 159

Incubator Social Media New York Web Development 159

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 25, 2012

Use this approach before you have a real valuation, a real product, or any real customers. Startup incubators. A startup incubator is a company, university, or other organization which provides resources for equity to nurture young companies, helping them to survive and grow during the startup period when they are most vulnerable.

Technical Review 257

Technical Review Bootstrapping Venture Capital Incubator 257

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 1, 2020

The primary source of your funds should be your paying customers, i.e., your business should generate enough revenues and profits to fund the growth and expansion. Any custom manufactured IoT device would require software development as well as hardware customization. Incubators and Accelerators.

Startup 150

Startup Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch Seed Stage 150