Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2022

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. Switch your attention from product development to sales.

Mezzanine 368

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 368

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2019

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. Switch your attention from product development to sales.

Mezzanine 244

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 244

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? But all things are never equal.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 10, 2020

In almost every case, the data that’s most useful to a startup in its early days is the information needed to build complete customer profiles. What’s most important is to reach common ground and arrive at a customer definition everyone can agree on. Setting the Right Standards. How to Use Your Ideal Customer Profile.

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Customer Startup Analytics B2B 180

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

Defining the pre-seed round It’s futile to look for ‘one true’ definition. I genuinely believe that the next 24-36 months will be a great vintage to invest in early stage. Data from Crunchbase shows a pretty consistent picture.

Valuation 186

Valuation Software Review Generative AI Technical Review 186

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2017

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. Switch your attention from product development to sales.

Mezzanine 141

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 141

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Another advantage of the early stages is that most dont have to juggle too many competing priorities. If you dont have customers, a product, investors, or a board of directors, you can pretty much stay focused on just one thing at a time. And why do those problems seem to get worse as the company grows?

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 3, 2013

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. Switch your attention from product development to sales.

Mezzanine 240

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 240

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

The companies I spoke to all agreed that the community there was extremely supportive, especially in the critical ulta-early-stage. Then, create an encouraging environment for early-stage companies. Provide early seed capital, and be the ones to make those introductions. And do your customer development.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

It seems the focus on “virtual&# goods has been both the demo of the consumer as well as the fact that by definition virtual goods have almost no marginal costs to the seller so giving a huge slice to the carrier (and Zong) isn’t a problem since actual costs are ~ $0. 15mm in Series A.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

The Equity Kicker

NOVEMBER 28, 2016

Different investors place different weights on the three elements but as a rule earlier stage investors place more emphasis on the team and later stage investors place more emphasis on the market. Some very early stage investors go as far as to say that for them team is everything.

Seed Stage 60

Seed Stage Later Stage Early Stage Partner 60

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 4, 2015

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. Switch your attention from product development to sales.

Mezzanine 120

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 120

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 1, 2018

Though most founders would agree culture is important in an organization’s success, it often takes a back seat to product development and generating a profit in the early stages of an organization’s life. Series A – Define Your Vision & Values. .

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Cofounder Hiring Leadership Employee 113

The Equity Kicker

JULY 16, 2015

Team structure in early stage ecommerce and marketplace companies is a function of manpower and skills necessary to build the company and the founder(s)’ skillset(s). The development requirement might be full time, or approaching full time, but the product, design and marketing requirements are part time.

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eCommerce Burn Rate Early Stage Hiring 60

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. Hope you find it useful!

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Such positions include: PR, Sales, Product Development, Lead Generation, Strategic Planning, Fund Raising, etc. Their story, market positioning, products, etc. At the early stages of your company’s life, you cannot rely on disinterested, hired guns to define your company’s key tasks. Pyramid Power. Uncle Saul.

Equity 40

Equity Silicon Valley Cofounder Technical Review 40

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. What are Early Stage VC’s Really Asking? The Traditional VC Pitch Entrepreneurs who pursue the traditional product development model don’t have customer data to answer these questions.

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

1x hacker in charge of product/development. 1x hipster working with both product and growth. Especially in the early stages, keeping a relationship with your customers can be paid off exponentially, not only in overall engagement but with extremely valuable word of mouth marketing. Masterful onboarding (cheap).

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Unfortunately, most decisions that confront startups lack a definitive right answer. Sometimes an early negative result from an experiment is a harbinger of doom for that product, and means it should be abandoned. Other times, it’s just an indicator that further iteration is needed.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

OnlyOnce

MAY 26, 2011

Founders and CEOs of early stage companies don’t disrupt the flow of the business. They dominate the way everything works by definition — product development, major prospect calls, client dialog, strategy, and changes in strategy. Most of the time, they ARE the flow of the business.

Early Stage 67

Early Stage Product Product Development Engineer 67

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 14, 2010

By definition, the capital investment needs to be relatively low such that the investors and the entrepreneurs all make a healthy return on investment. He should then bootstrap his product development by using the consulting fees. Nicola Corzine of the Band of Angels Acorn Fund discusses this at length in our interview with her.

Bootstrapping 114

Bootstrapping Marketing Angel Investor Silicon Valley 114

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Customer Development Manifesto « The Secret History of Silicon Valley 12: The Rise of “Risk Capital” Part 2 Raising Money Using Customer Development » 8 Responses Jake Lumetta , on November 2, 2009 at 10:49 am Said: Great post.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Small Business Force

OCTOBER 8, 2017

Whether you’re an early stage company or you’ve been around for ten years, growth is something every entrepreneur or small business owner is continually chasing. Either, organically, through internal product development, or strategically, through acquisition or partnering. Determine how you will do this.

Revenue 25

Revenue Early Stage Small Business Partner 25

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Most startups don’t have the luxury of hiring an experienced PM early in their journey. Many founders have to turn to brute force to figure it out, even when they themselves don’t have practitioner product management experience. What about bugs, UX fixes and other types of “maintenance work” that seem like the right thing to do?

Hiring 120

Hiring Bandwidth Product Early Stage 120

The Next Web

OCTOBER 3, 2012

I have heard many founders — even in the first few months of product development — expect to raise seed rounds, pay themselves salaries, etc. Here’s the problem: this opportunity doesn’t exist for early-stage startups, because, by definition, they have no users or customers.

Cofounder 155

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 155

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Another great way to test your idea is to create a minimum viable product, or MVP. This is the simplest version of your product minus the frills and frosting. It’s a particularly popular strategy in the world of product development and is used to quickly and quantitatively test a product or a product feature.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

By definition, the capital investment needs to be relatively low such that the investors and the entrepreneurs all make a healthy return on investment. He should then bootstrap his product development by using the consulting fees. Nicola Corzine of the Band of Angels Acorn Fund discusses this at length in our interview with her.

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

By definition, the capital investment needs to be relatively low such that the investors and the entrepreneurs all make a healthy return on investment. He should then bootstrap his product development by using the consulting fees. Nicola Corzine of the Band of Angels Acorn Fund discusses this at length in our interview with her.

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 5, 2019

Teams were savvy enough to know that fully formed, completed descriptions of users are an impossibility at the early stages of design. Because they used the magic term ‘personas,‘ development teams were discouraged from developing their own, not realising that a market segment might contain multiple personas.

Software Review 115

Software Review Design Agile Analytics 115

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

Filed under: Marketing , Technology , Venture Capital | Tagged: Steve Blank , Venture Capital , Entrepreneurs , Early Stage Startup , Tips for Startups « Customer Analytics – From Those Who Should Know SuperMac War Story 10: The Video Spigot » 14 Responses Michael F.

Business Plan 140

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

We were focused on revenue, but we didnt understand that revenue is not important for its own sake in an early stage company. And speaking of Facebook, I definitely didnt think it was a good idea when I first heard about it. Definitely one of the best posts from you. Heck, Id already seen Friendster flame out.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

After I retired, I began teaching Customer Development , a theory of how to reduce early stage risk in entrepreneurial ventures. You most definitely read the book for the content. Customer Development Manifesto. The Leading Cause of Startup Death: The Product Development Diagram.

Silicon Valley 202

Silicon Valley Customer Development IP Developer 202

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

And I understand the nitty gritty operations required to do these customer acquisition methods, so that gives me conviction that with the right team, this type of business can fly. On the flip side, I am definitely the wrong person to help with a fly-business. I know nothing about viral marketing.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

And I understand the nitty gritty operations required to do these customer acquisition methods, so that gives me conviction that with the right team, this type of business can fly. On the flip side, I am definitely the wrong person to help with a fly-business. I know nothing about viral marketing.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

ConversionXL

MARCH 7, 2017

One of the best definitions I’ve found, which expounds a bit more, comes from Tony Zambito circa 2002 : Tony Zambito: Buyer personas are research-based archetypal (modeled) representations of who buyers are, what they are trying to accomplish, what goals drive their behavior, how they think, how they buy, and why they make buying decisions.

Software Review 102

Software Review Design Agile Analytics 102

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

Next, you have to deal with the daily crisis of product development and acquiring early customers. And here’s where life gets really interesting, as the reality of product development and customer input collide, the facts change so rapidly that the original well-thought-out business plan becomes irrelevant.

Founder 297

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 297

BeyondVC

JANUARY 2, 2006

All too often we are enamored with how cool or sexy a technology is, invest lots of dollars to create that killer product, and sometimes forget that it is all about the people. The next question you may have is what is the definition of market. With respect to bonuses, there are no guaranteed bonuses, only performance-based ones.

Management 60

Management Equity Forecast Salary 60