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10 Common Startup Mistakes That Are Rarely Admitted

Startup Professionals Musings

Offer free solutions to bring in more customers. Don’t get caught in the myth that you shouldn’t worry about monetization until after you have a large customer base. Viral marketing costs real money, and your support staff and hosting systems cost even more. Dreams may motivate your team, but customers expect real solutions.

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10 Popular Business Strategies That Most Often Fail

Startup Professionals Musings

Offer free solutions to bring in more customers. Don’t get caught in the myth that you shouldn’t worry about monetization until after you have a large customer base. Viral marketing costs real money, and your support staff and hosting systems cost even more. Dreams may motivate your team, but customers expect real solutions.

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Selling to the enterprise: “Sell to few” vs. “sell to many”?

Version One Ventures

This preference isn’t necessarily due to market size, but rather the structure of the market: are there only a few dozen customers that might buy your product or are there thousands, or even tens of thousands of potential customers? CTO, VP of HR) in the customer organization.

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8 Strategies To Drive Your Startup To Profitability

Startup Professionals Musings

Some make big mistakes, such as Webvan expanding too fast with a huge infrastructure, and Pets.com , trying to grow the business with a negative margin, under the mistaken assumption that winning customers is more important than making a profit. Introduce new products and enhancements every month. Don’t give up your dream too early.

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Growth strategies for marketplaces: key takeaways from a fireside chat on growth

Version One Ventures

The evolution of the growth function changed this dynamic, mashing together product dev and marketing as integrated functions. About five years ago, we saw the early waves of growth – typically an individual or two (“growth hackers”) who were championing growth within product development. It helps to have a KPI-driven mindset.

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10 Startup Mistakes You Can't Afford To Make Again

Startup Professionals Musings

Assume you already know what your customers need and want. Just because you love a new solution doesn’t mean your customers will love it. Before spending any money, make sure you interact directly with potential customers, industry experts and investors. Usually, no competitors means no market -- or it means you haven’t looked.

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Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. They are gaining valuable customer data.

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