Mucker Lab

APRIL 6, 2023

It's very hard for PLG to be the only or main motion with infrastructure products because it's not something one engineer will just test and buy. If you're generating something that's brand new, like a brand new category, nobody understands about it. What should an early-stage startup founder focus on if they want to implement PLG?

Product 78

Product CTO Hire Startup Fractional CTO 78

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 16, 2015

I love it when entrepreneurs start a pitch with a “Big Vision” and end it with their how their idea will achieve “World Domination.” However, equally important is the ability for entrepreneurs to break down that path to world domination into realistic milestones that line up with funding rounds. Think baby steps.

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Valuation Dilution Chicago Technical Review 100

David Teten

MARCH 18, 2021

We found six categories of VC theses, plus a 7th: the non-thesis. A typical VC thesis: “we invest in tech startups in Europe at an early stage” However, our experience shows that in many cases: . We found seven categories of VC theses, plus an 8th: the non-thesis. The phrase is quite ambiguous.

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Technical Review Cofounder Venture Capital Deal Flow 78

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

The key contributors to an out-of-control burn rate is 1) hiring a sales force too early, 2) turning on the demand creation activities too early, 3) developing something other than the minimum feature set for first customer ship. And I can even imagine cases where it might burn more cash than a traditional startup. Lets see why.

Lean 259

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 259

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 7, 2010

Before I do, however, I want to talk about a thumb rule that I'd like to propose to entrepreneurs about raising money. Bottom line, early stage equity is very, very expensive. Then Liana Thompson pitched Trendy Loot , a very early stage deal site for low-end jewelry. We will work on that with her. Trendy Loot.

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Valuation Silicon Valley Pre-Money Valuation Bootstrapping 119

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

It occurred to me that although we mentioned our new thematic approach when we raised our last fund in 2017, we haven’t really shared a broader manifesto about how we are approaching the early stage market. It’s been an interesting several years in the early stage venture eco-system, and the sands have shifted considerably.

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Hippoland

OCTOBER 9, 2016

To be fair, this number includes pitch emails like this (incl a response from my former colleague Sean Percival). (In fact, the vast majority of pitches I’ve seen probably fall under this category and these only take a few seconds to read and archive, so this is how you get to see 20k pitches!) But you need to address the landscape.

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Seed Stage CTO Hire Email Later Stage 48

David Teten

MARCH 14, 2018

– Build out low-cost force multipliers such as scouts , Advisors, Entrepreneurs in Residence, Venture Partners, and so on. We particularly help companies in winning revenue from our LP network and raising capital for subsequent rounds from top-tier late-stage investors. engineers, designers, business developers).

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Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Cofounder 60

SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

However, the ubiquity of the iPod including use by many folks who certainly would fall in the Time Rich category (lots of time to play with music) suggests that their product and marketing appeals to both segments. Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouh. in Computer Science.

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Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 24, 2019

As I mentioned at the beginning of this series/ebook, over the years I’ve noticed that I tend to frequently share certain Lucky7 posts with entrepreneurs we’ve backed , team members at data.world, or other startup investors I know. So I’m packaging the best of them up for you here in a new series called The Entrepreneur’s Essentials.

Software Review 48

Software Review Sales Cofounder Analytics 48

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention. The real risk in markets like Web 2.0

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 159

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money. Would you mind sharing them?

Silicon Valley 129

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 129

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Entrepreneur-in-Residence After SuperMac I had been approached by one of our venture investors to be an entrepreneur in residence (EIR), a Silicon Valley phrase which says one thing but means another. I offered to introduce him to the firm whose Entrepreneur-in-Residence offer I had just accepted.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2011

.&# Surprisinly, this strategy works well with many entrepreneurs. It’s as though we forgot the management mantra of the 90′s about “core competencies&# or the most common VC advice to entrepreneurs: Focus. So VCs spent a couple of years experimenting with earlier-stage investing, which is OK. Funny, that.

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Venture Capital Software LP Early Stage 296

Austin Startup

JUNE 26, 2019

I recruited a top-flight engineer and serial entrepreneur to build our MVP, on equity?—?and You might notice what’s not on that list above: revenue, investors. No revenue isn’t always a problem for venture-style businesses; no investors + no revenue = challenges for most founders without tremendous self-funding.

Silicon Valley 54

Silicon Valley Startup B2C Sweat Equity 54

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

The company has just missed its quarterly revenue forecast. Lets take an example, and look at how they might do this: They will be able to tell you that revenue is composed of deals. To compute revenue, you multiply average deal size by number of deals. Bookings is the pre-cursor to Revenue. Obvious, isn’t it?

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Metrics Design Entrepreneur Startup 55

ReadWriteStart

JULY 21, 2011

When two out of four pitches in a session are from the same category, it most certainly makes me take notice. I suggested that Andrew tap into some family offices and corporate CSR programs to inject some liquidity to the exchange, otherwise entrepreneurs would not engage. Please note, that I work exclusively with 1M/1M entrepreneurs.

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Affiliate San Francisco Entrepreneur India 130

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

I think this idea is particularly appealing to those of us from an engineering background. Imagine a general manager that has read The Innovator’s Dilemma and related books, and is therefore trying hard to help her organization make a transition to a new product category via disruptive innovation.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 15, 2020

That's why the Corona Initiative is a Public Benefit Corporation--a for-profit company dedicated to the public good that aims to fund its research with its revenues. Before that, I was an electronics engineer. He went to the same school I did, Georgia Tech, and studied electrical engineering. Robert Rhinehart : I did.

Technical Review 68

Technical Review Software Review Finance Technology 68

techcrunch.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

This is a big reversal, as software has long been the dominant category for venture deals, but it’s unknown whether software has lost favor, or whether it’s just become so pervasive that it doesn’t really hold together as a category anymore. Those categories represent roughly 84% of all portfolio companies.

Venture Capital 62

Venture Capital Technical Review Sweat Equity Valuation 62

pandodaily.com

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

Essentially, we got here by entrepreneurs having too much of a good thing. And because capital requirements are lower, entrepreneurs are holding onto more ownership, making it a lot easier to flip your company for less than, say, $30 million and become very rich. More cash equals more entrepreneurs who get to start companies.

Technical Review 93

Technical Review Silicon Valley Incubator Syria 93

mashable.com

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

This dynamic births serial entrepreneurs and motivates angels and venture capitalists to pull their friends into investment deals. For the first-time entrepreneur or founder looking for seed stage funding, this circle can be especially difficult to penetrate. Just don’t call Feld on the phone.

Angel Investor 80

Angel Investor Startup San Francisco Social Media 80

www.singlefounder.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Go ahead and laugh, but over 95% of Moon River Software’s revenue this year has been from consulting services. The software I sell has made up less than 5% of total revenue in the past 12 months. All of these men are listed in the category of Forbes Billionaires. In the early stages of a company, this can be critical.

Software Review 40

Software Review Software Startup Massachusetts 40

Eric Friedman

JUNE 11, 2019

This keeps the firm and final answer on investing nebulous and entrepreneurs moving the firm in their tracking sheet or CRM around for no reason. Partnership Forcing Functions can be tricky because they typically don’t involve revenue, which drives most business decisions, but there are other reasons to do the deal.

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Term Sheet Stock Options Early Stage Agile 68

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

It is the first in a series of posts he’s writing about the decisions a young entrepreneur needs to make when she/he is first starting a business. 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. Sorry, folks.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

And make sure to read our recent posts with advice from Mint CEO Aaron Patzer on his advice to entrepreneurs as well ( here and here ). If you’re a business major – go check out the Engineering Society’s monthly meeting. One’s a PM and the other’s an engineer. How To Get There, is here.

Cofounder 66

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 66

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

Written By Dan Martell on February 2nd, 2012 | Category: Hiring LeanStartup Marketing Metrics Startup Life | 6 Comments. If you’re an Entrepreneur, you can do it from any place in the world. I would focus on one product and set a goal to generate $1M in yearly revenue from it. You are here: Home » Hiring » Crazy!

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

The Next Web

JANUARY 15, 2014

At the other end of the spectrum, Shazam responded to a straightforward practical need for a tune-recognition search engine in a touch. He repeatedly sent the engineers back to the drawing board until they came up with the world’s first single-button MP3 player. Entrepreneur Insider Investigations' Now that was extreme!

Web 141

Web Tampa Non-Compete Search 141

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Yet we used the product development model not only to manage product development, but as a road map for finding customers and to time our marketing launch and sales revenue plan. Engineering focuses on building the product; it designs the product, specifies the first release and hires a staff to build the product.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 268

infochachkie.com

DECEMBER 5, 2011

Hands-on startup advice for emerging entrepreneurs. Lousy Products Might Break Your Bones – But A Name Will Seldom Hurt You John Greathouse – Posted in: Entrepreneur , Strategic Planning. Successful entrepreneurs have a bias toward action, as illustrated in Tom and Huck. infoChachkie. Thanks for visiting!

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Naming Technical Review Product Product Name 40

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

But without sales there is no revenue, and without revenue there is no company. All the strategic thinking in the world won’t make up for a missed revenue plan. If sales revenue and profits are high enough, we could take the company public or sell it, and the stock would be worth more than the paper it was printed on.

Silicon Valley 130

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 130

trada.com

APRIL 7, 2010

He noted that Chris Dixon ( @cdixon ) of Hunch tweeted, “New early-stage start up trend: get big quietly, so you don’t tip off potential competitors.&# The perfect situation is to have a few people moving between all the categories. As Trada, we spent an immense amount of time engaging people in what we were doing.

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Stealth PPC Advertising Conversion 40

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 8, 2012

This is a long episode (1:20), but it’s a conversation that will resonate with a lot of early-stage startup founders. Also, you have to rotate the content and put them in different categories, otherwise this or that happens. All you’ve proven is that you can make $200 a month in revenue off of some basic websites.

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API Software Review Hosting Technical Review 220