VC Cafe

JANUARY 10, 2024

Not so long ago, we were all posting AI profile pictures on social media, but very quickly we’re now seeing an emergence of generative AI tools and LLM applications to assist almost every role in the organisation, across industries and verticals. Likewise, venture dollars will still funnel into startups in the space.

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Generative AI Artificial Inteligence Open Source 109

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 8, 2021

Every startup entrepreneur wants to see their company grow. They want to snowball their customer acquisition, attracting thousands of new people to the brand, and reach diverse new audiences in new locations. So what are the biggest barriers startup entrepreneurs experience in their route to achieve long-term growth? Or is it?

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The Startup Magazine

MAY 20, 2020

So is it worth setting up an online bingo site as a gaming startup business, given the volatility of the market? And when we say ‘niche’ we’re not referring to things like iGaming verticals. It’s a bit tough for a gaming startup business. The post Is an online bingo site startup still a viable business option?

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Affiliate Software Review Technical Review Startup 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

I was in New York last week with my class at Columbia University and several events made me realize that the Customer Development model needs to better describe its fit with web-based businesses. In it, I got asked a question I often hear: “What if we have a web-based business that doesn’t have revenue or paying customers?

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Customer Development Web Developer Customer 226

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

Finally, I’ll write about 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.

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Duct Tape Marketing

OCTOBER 13, 2021

Finding New Customers In Untapped Places written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Pam is best known for her book Escape from Cubicle Nation, and she recently wrote a new book called – The Widest Net: Unlock Untapped Markets and Discover New Customers Right in Front of You – launching in November 2021. Like this show?

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

Modern entrepreneurship began at the turn of the 21 st century with the observation that startups aren’t smaller versions of large companies – large companies at their core execute known business models, while startups search for scalable business models. all markets can be described by what job the user wants to get done.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 21, 2017

Rather, buyer behavior is rooted in their strategy — a combination of product thesis, their theory of their market’s evolution, how they need to position for customers and against competitors, their long-term brand development, geographic expansion plans, and so on. Startups shouldn’t act smug about this. It worked.

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Balance Sheet Vertical Acquisition Revenue 242

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. The goal of their startup in this stage becomes “getting funded.”

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VC Cafe

JANUARY 27, 2021

–JJ Oslund, The Startup. Bizzabo is on fire these days, though it could have been easy to predict a downfall for the events-tech startup when the coronavirus froze an industry worth 500 billion dollars. Vertically-focused startups design products to better meet the needs of particular user segments.

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Vertical Video Technical Review Europe 148

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 22, 2023

As a result, businesses in this field should leverage technology to provide interactive, easy-to-understand educational content that can help customers make health-related decisions and maintain healthy habits. Positive experiences create emotional value, which keeps customers coming back and makes small businesses stand out from the rest.

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Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Entrepreneur Social Media 125

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 19, 2017

Established businesses understand the competitive landscape – they know their customers and they know their competition. The primary challenge (ignoring disruption) is to find ways to better service their customers at lower and lower cost. Start-ups are very different from established businesses.

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Product Development Lean Developer Product 153

The Startup Magazine

FEBRUARY 7, 2022

Testing out new software, evaluating customer service and technical support, as well as improving company performance on a very tight budget, is an excellent opportunity. You can increase or decrease resources, use vertical or horizontal scaling – as you wish. Good news for IT startups planning to develop on cloud platforms.

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View from Seed

OCTOBER 18, 2017

When describing the Everyday Economy, it is helpful to talk about some of the verticals that are seeing wholesale redesign and the opportunities within those verticals. We have blogged about a few of the verticals so far, including housing , food , entertainment , and others. WeWork also falls into this category.

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Vertical Seed Stage Viral Portfolio 166

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 243

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2021

At the front-end of these innovations are startups – organizations the Department of Defense hasn’t previously dealt with at scale. Mrinal and Jeff’s article below explains how startups can adapt and thrive while working with the Defense Department. And how the Department of Defense is learning to work with startups.

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Artificial Inteligence Marketing Startup Silicon Valley 353

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 10, 2021

To steal customers away from competitors without throwing endless amounts of money at major advertising platforms, work smarter, not harder. Detail the customer demographics that purchase certain products or services. In this article, we’ll talk about some less saturated digital advertising strategies you can use to get ahead.

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Advertising Cost Customer PR 131

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup. Lets see why.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 257

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” As the engineers were busy rearchitecting the original Stanford MIPS chip into a commercial product, one of my jobs was to find out what features customers wanted.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 283

Austin Startup

AUGUST 7, 2017

The time has come for the Texas startup community to band together to change the world once again. Texas has produced world-changing startups in the past such as Dell Software , National Instruments and Whole Foods Market but all of those were founded more than 30 years ago. We truly are an accelerator of the Austin startup ecosystem.

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View from Seed

JUNE 23, 2022

Automating their end-to-end eCommerce operations (from managing inventory to order fulfillment to customer service). RH: Who are your customers? Long-term: Influencers across the world with 10K+ followers and across all major verticals (e.g. legal, bank accounts, government filings, etc) behind setting up a startup.

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DC Cambodia eCommerce Social Media 156

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 7, 2017

Launching your startup in a down economy doesn’t make it any less likely to last. Two conditions that do matter to your startup’s out-year viability are the cost and length of its product development cycle. But it’s not perfect — merely good enough to perform its intended function and delight your first customers in the process.

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Cost Developer Small Business Administration Marketing 100

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Pattern Recognition One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that you are constantly running a pattern recognition algorithm against a continual collection of customer and market data. While this sounds inexplicable to an outside observer, sometimes it makes sense. Other times it’s just plain dumb.

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Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 210

ConversionXL

MARCH 17, 2021

At the time we were planning a workshop for B2B tech startups from the IMEC accelerator (Ghent, Belgium) and had a chance to interview many of the companies that had signed up. And while this was a good start, a significant position of these companies were early-stage startups.

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B2B Sales Cycle Belgium IP 150

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2009

The relevant part starts about 4:30 into the video (wait for it to download.) luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building. luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building.

Customer Development 126

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 126

Hunter Walker

AUGUST 31, 2021

Early adopter verticals — such as software development and tech sales — is mostly in Gen 3. Other times it was their teams, customers or reporters probing for their POV. And the third generation added ML/AI to reorganize/optimize those workflows based upon the intelligence of the computer, not the habits of the user.

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Software Vertical Framework Software Developers 116

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

founder paired with a mentor who had two operating companies in this space, who had developed and sold vertical market software to companies in this space, and had studied the field as an academic specialty. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching. In this class this seemed like a perfect fit – a driven (irrational?) Not exactly.

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Vertical Agile Customer Development Lean 333

VC Cafe

AUGUST 30, 2023

But it’s not just large tech companies fighting for their share of cloud revenue – startups are entering the space quickly. In 2023 so far, Generative AI startups raised $15.2B Venture investors are realizing that generative artificial intelligence might not be enough to stem years long startup downturn.

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Generative AI ChatGPT Software Review API 78

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 15, 2017

Since AI and ML startups cut across verticals (analytics, fintech, health, adtech, security, etc), it’s easier to group them under the “machine intelligence” umbrella, coined by Shivon Zillis , a partner at Bloomberg Beta. Noteworthy Machine Intelligence startups in Israel ?? Billion in VC funding.

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Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Startup 122

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 22, 2013

But have you ever had the opportunity to pick the brains of founders who created amazingly successful startups and companies like Envato , Backblaze , Simple , or Treehouse ? If you pick one vertical and do it well, other folks will find you. Figure out what your milestones are – customers, pageviews, revenue, etc. –

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Cofounder Founder Startup Bootstrapping 164

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 18, 2020

Small businesses, medium-sized ventures, and international enterprises in different niches are actively rethinking operateions and how to address customer needs during the Coronavirus recession. On the other hand, banks try to give their customers psychological relief by promoting full transparency and clarity in financial processes.

Global 179

Global Technical Review Analytics Mobile 179

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 23, 2021

While these may be necessary for funding, they may not be sufficient to make your startup the great success embodied in your vision. It also starts with a good summary of the intangibles, summarized as the five rules of relevancy, by Mark Zawacki: A startup needs to be relevant and stay relevant. A startup must gain balanced traction.

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Early Stage Vertical Sales Global 379

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.&# Context here.)

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Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 214

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

And he recognized it was making his startup feel and act like a big ponderous company. Most decisions in a startup must be made in the face of uncertainty. Since every situation is unique, there is no perfect solution to any engineering, customer or competitor problem, and you shouldn’t agonize over trying to find one.

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Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 305

View from Seed

OCTOBER 5, 2016

What about the second cousin who is a startup lawyer? The more verticalized your startup’s offering, especially if the venture is B2B, the more opportunity there is to identify industry insiders who will care about your company. The next step is then to prioritize and customize your outreach. Affinity by industry.

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Angel Investor Boston Seed Stage Syndicate 332

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 21, 2019

The Forrest Four-Cast: February 21, 2019 Fifty diverse startups will aim to impress a panel of judges and a live audience with their skills, creativity and innovation at SXSW Pitch Presented by Cyndx. Helping our customers get accurate, accessible, and timely information helps them equip their stakeholders with the same.

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Denver Startup Austin Vertical 48

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 6, 2019

While these may be necessary for funding, they may not be sufficient to make your startup the great success embodied in your vision. It also starts with a good summary of the intangibles, summarized as the five rules of relevancy, by Mark Zawacki: A startup needs to be relevant and stay relevant. A startup must gain balanced traction.

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Startup Early Stage Vertical Sales 242