View from Seed

AUGUST 10, 2021

Here in 2021 startups operate in a more distributed fashion earlier in their lifecycle, a trend which preceded COVID but certainly was accelerated by the remote work environment for knowledge workers brought on by the pandemic.

Chicago 136

Chicago Cofounder Miami B2B 136

Up and Running

JUNE 14, 2017

Some believe in the all-in approach to product development: build an advanced app. Early stage idea validation can be accomplished without building an application. Then, about two weeks before launch, I distributed a survey to those 256 partners. It wasn’t a scalable solution, but it was a start.

Technical Review 96

Technical Review Distribution Redemption Demand 96

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 12, 2010

There are unknowns at every turn, leading product development, attracting customers, managing cash, and dealing with human resources and office politics. Stretch” goals in early-stage are not advised. Setting the wrong or no expectations is another of the most consistent problems I see with every startups.

Advisory Board 125

Advisory Board Startup Forecast Early Stage 125

VC Cafe

JULY 15, 2021

What are the main channels for app marketing and distribution today? Ads – targeted advertising is perhaps THE most reliable channel to market and distribute a consumer app. Therefore, my recommendation for startups who are pre-monetisation is to experiment with new organic distribution ways.

Mobile 190

Mobile Social Media Distribution PR 190

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 3, 2009

When they promise to help you with marketing, sales, distribution, integrated product development, etc. But the venture guys don’t make the calls on what the product / business guys do. And Microsoft always convinces me that their next version of Windows won’t be slow and I get fooled every time.

Strategic Investors 279

Strategic Investors Venture Capital Due Diligence Early Stage 279

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 24, 2014

Investors keep pouring money into startups and early stage companies. Just get it done” is fine when entrepreneurs are starting out, but not when the work is distributed to a bigger team. Yes, consistent inflow of cash is a sure sign that an early stage company is offering consumers a valuable product or service.

Startup 240

Startup Angel Investor Early Stage LLC 240

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 22, 2012

In a way, you can think of BD as “sales when you don’t know what the product is yet.” It’s basically working with potential outside partners to reach your business goals--which could be revenue, distribution, financing, product development, awareness, etc.

PR 144

PR Technical Review Seed Stage Design 144

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 6, 2022

That is the role of the CEO in an early stage company. But if you are going to have somebody who's developing a product, developing a new technology, designing, or going out into marketing and figuring out new ways to market, you really need a thinker. We were early on in the ecosystem in San Francisco.

San Francisco 97

San Francisco Technical Review Incubator Silicon Valley 97

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

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure. Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure. This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

The people who are the lifeblood of an early-stage startup are earlyvangelists. These are people who understand the vision of your company even before the product lives up to it, and, most importantly, will buy your product on that basis. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

We spoke with the head of innovation at one Fortune 500 company who told us his only metric for early-stage innovation is “how many assumptions have you tested this week?” That''s why the most critical attribute of early-stage product development is the ability to learn quickly. That''s changing, slowly.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

This is true for early stage funding as well as venture capital funding. While some investors will be willing to help you build your team, they will not be willing to invest in your startup if you are not willing to distribute responsibility and bring on diversified expertise. Early Stage. Seed to Series A.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

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

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 14, 2010

Raymond has built a nice business through efficient distribution deals and will do about $250,000 in revenue this year. He should then bootstrap his product development by using the consulting fees. Then Raymond McGlamery pitched the O-Port , a guitar and drum accessory company based in Houston, Texas.

Bootstrapping 114

Bootstrapping Marketing Angel Investor Silicon Valley 114

Small Business Force

MAY 9, 2011

Partnering is one of most important vehicles available to an entrepreneur, especially in the early stages of the business, where you can leverage scarce resources to either generate revenue or conserve expenses, or both. Early on in your company's life, look for ways to expand sales distribution or product development.

Partner 33

Partner Early Stage Revenue Distribution 33

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

It encourages a startup to invest in customer discovery and validation in parallel with product development prior to product launch. I see a lot of early-stage entrepreneurs waste too much time chasing money rather than figuring this out first.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2010

Yet at their early stages, they are not small versions of larger established companies. The table below helps elucidate some of the characteristics of entrepreneurial executives by stage of the company. Scalable Startups at Adolescence. They are different in every possible way – people, culture , goals, etc. What’s Next.

Agile 120

Agile Development Team Review Leadership Merger 120

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

Raymond has built a nice business through efficient distribution deals and will do about $250,000 in revenue this year. He should then bootstrap his product development by using the consulting fees. O-Port Then Raymond McGlamery pitched the O-Port , a guitar and drum accessory company based in Houston, Texas.

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

Raymond has built a nice business through efficient distribution deals and will do about $250,000 in revenue this year. He should then bootstrap his product development by using the consulting fees. O-Port Then Raymond McGlamery pitched the O-Port , a guitar and drum accessory company based in Houston, Texas.

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

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 8, 2015

Do we believe “startup-driven” innovation (innovation that comes from relationships with external, early-stage companies) should be part of the corporate innovation portfolio? Acquiring a growth-stage private startup can provide a faster ROI at lower risk than the acquisition of an early- stage startup.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Acquisition Boston Early Stage 120

ConversionXL

MARCH 7, 2017

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 102

Software Review Design Agile Analytics 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 26, 2015

On Tuesday, we interviewed Amanda Krantz of Dohje, an early-stage startup, to talk about experimenting with product development. Today, we’ve got an edited Q&A with Back To The Roots, who have experimented with all parts of their business —from distribution channels to community engagement, product to retail sales.

Lean 60

Lean Early Stage Distribution Metrics 60

mashable.com

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

No doubt early-stage companies can be started on a shoestring by low-paid entrepreneurs, but when financing a scalable, sustainable product, a free application server won’t make much of a difference. For example, my company decided early on to hire a UI designer, which has helped tremendously with our product development.

Startup 79

Startup Social Media RSS Social Network 79

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 21, 2013

Matrix Partners' David Skok agrees with the 5% churn threshold, but only for early stage companies, and says that you have to see a clear path to getting churn below 2% if you want to scale significantly. “In In the early days of a SaaS business, churn really doesn’t matter that much.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Metrics Churn Rate 167

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

what are the most crucial steps to be taken by a new tech startup when outsourcing major part of the tech to IT firms or outsourcing “product development” eg new social media website project? Near shoring development with your team (ex: your team is based in Canada / India) is cool, but not outsourcing.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Scalable Startup

FEBRUARY 1, 2013

In the last five years, there’s been this sort of acknowledgment of the consumerization of the enterprise, which is consumer product development, design methods applied to business software, of which SaaS and cloud and all these things are examples. It became very hard to get businesses to adopt new stuff.

Software Review 22

Software Review Startup Venture Capital Stock 22

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

As a developer, I feel that design/creative is undervalued in the early stages of product development. Notwithstanding examples like Plentyofish, people respond to well designed, well branded products, and that can be important in getting traction early on.

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

So for this first post, here’s the best advice I can give you: join an awesome founding team and get your product out the door ASAP. One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. Cant wait for more posts on Techcrunch [link]

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

sites from scratch - Experienced with the majority of the social api’s (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Meebo, PayPal, Flickr) - Experience managing offshore dev teams - Most recently a Director of Product Development at an early stage funded startup [link] meeblog » Blog Archive » starting up: finding your co-founders [.]

Cofounder 66

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 66

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

I have come to believe during my time as an operator, entrepreneur and investor that the balance of these skills is so important to the long-term health of a business that if balance is not achieved early then the impact later can be profound - sometimes terminal. Developers who understand and can execute on a business model.

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

ConversionXL

JANUARY 17, 2017

They have a ratings system and build distribution algorithms to best distribute lawn care providers to customers. We also put a lot of effort into testing product communication (emails, SMS, and push notifications) to drive users into our product. How do you determine if one distribution algorithm ‘won’?

Algorithm 48

Algorithm CTO Hire Distribution Engineer 48

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

VC Cafe covers early stage Israeli and European tech & mobile startups. free, distributed source code control management system. Great for visualizing work of product development. It used to be hard to find information about early stage startups. VC & Startup Resources. Seed Startups. Preceden â??

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53