Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

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? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal. What’s going on?

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

How to move from a free to a paid product without losing all your users. So be sure to make a free user account and participate in the offline conversation there. On the other hand, if you’re used to having side projects and that’s part of your personality. So what’s the URL for your company?

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Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. Noah has been a key figure in the making of LivePlan, our own SaaS product. Instead of sitting down to write a 40-page business plan, start with a one-page pitch.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

I think this idea is particularly appealing to those of us from an engineering background. Sometimes an early negative result from an experiment is a harbinger of doom for that product, and means it should be abandoned. Still, this manager is going to spend the company’s money, and needs to be held accountable.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 4, 2023

Grow Your Business Faster Through Experimentation written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Experimentation is the engine that drives innovation. 11:41] Today, Semrush offers many more solutions other than an SEO tool – what’s been the challenging part of redefining what people view your company as? [14:08]

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SEO Audience Channel Campaign 86

BeyondVC

MAY 30, 2007

As an early stage investor and board member of several companies, I am fortunate to get the opportunity to work with some great entrepreneurs and also pattern match and observe trends, both good and bad, in early stage companies. Take the test – ask your key executives what the 3 key company goals are for the month?

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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. Building and testing prototypes. Talking to potential customers and competitors customers.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 4, 2012

Running WP Engine takes all my time. Which leaves no time for “can I pick your brain for 15 minutes” or “can I get your feedback on my pitch deck” and especially “can you spread the word on your blog.” I don’t have their Twitter account. Also I value my family time.

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Internet Email Engineer Web 270

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

At IMVU, we were terrified by how early we shipped (and charged for) our first product. We were even more embarrassed by the pathetically small number of customers we had, and the pathetically low amount of revenue we had earned so far. I just emailed your article to him and recommended that he take your advice to heart.

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San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Blog About Log in Register Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition In the many thousands of articles advising entrepreneurs on what they have to focus on to build successful startups, much has been written about three key factors: team, product and market, with particular focus on the importance of product/market fit.

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Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 2, 2020

Customer offboarding: all the steps involved in a customer canceling their account and successfully disengaging from the product. When was the last time you sat down to think strategically about your customer offboarding flow? this was probably the craziest account cancellation step*s* i had ever gone through.

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Retention Email Customer Aggregator 83

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 10, 2008

Like SaaS products themselves, we now intend for these laws to be periodically refined through major releases to reflect the changing landscape of the SaaS world. Save Asia for post-IPO Single instance, multi-tenant, single datacenter - Have only one version of the code in production. Great companies innovate, but pick your battles!

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Software Review North America Europe Metrics 48

mashable.com

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

And for those in the coveted in-crowd, Silicon Valley, San Francisco and the greater tech community become a world of opportunity where you’re only limited by the quality of your idea and the caliber of your friends. The Investors In researching this post, we solicited the advice of a number of investors.

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Angel Investor Startup San Francisco Social Media 80

pandodaily.com

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

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. This time around, there has been an explosion at the early stages, and the very late pre-IPO growth stages. Now it’s glutted.

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Technical Review Silicon Valley Incubator Syria 93

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. The race has already begun! Need proof?

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Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

189 Answers To The Top Startup Questions On Your Mind. 189 Answers To The Top Startup Questions On Your Mind. Cause your scared. There’s a great quote that I love that goes “Ask not if you’re worthy of your goals, ask instead, are your goals worthy of your life?”. Building Product 2. Maple Butter.

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Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

You can argue that the DNA created by Microsoft's over emphasis on distribution (Steve) and development (Bill), has ultimately cost it $50bn or more in lost revenue, market share and market capitalization. It is right that Google and Facebook pride themselves on being engineering organizations (note - so did Microsoft).

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Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

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. Transcript Automated transcription services provided by: Jason: Hi, Jared, tell me a little bit about your business. With a customer-facing front end as well so it also manages your front-end website?

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API Software Review Hosting Technical Review 220

infochachkie.com

DECEMBER 5, 2011

If youre new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed , follow me on Twitter , connect with me on Quora. Lousy Products Might Break Your Bones – But A Name Will Seldom Hurt You John Greathouse – Posted in: Entrepreneur , Strategic Planning. Great product names help and bad product names hurt.

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Naming Technical Review Product Product Name 40

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Think of your company as a machine One way to look at how companies work is to imagine them as a machine that has Outputs, and Levers that you, the management team, can pull to affect it’s behavior. The company has just missed its quarterly revenue forecast. To compute revenue, you multiply average deal size by number of deals.

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Metrics Design Entrepreneur Startup 55

Reid Hoffman

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

Whether you’re pivoting in the early days because you haven’t yet found product-market fit, or you’re pivoting by reinventing yourself later on, all companies – if they’re going to become and stay successful – are going to have to pivot. If you launch your product and you’re not embarrassed by it, you’ve launched too late.

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Startup Silicon Valley Business Model Mobile 36

www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

If your friends or family happen to be rich, the line blurs betweenthem and angel investors. There are three maindisadvantages: you mix together your business and personal life;they will probably not be as well connected as angels or venturefirms; and they may not be accredited investors, which couldcomplicate your life later.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Startup Software Review Angel Investor 76

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. Yet, as it turns out, the earlier you got laid off, the earlier you got your Google options. And if it doesnt, at least youll have spent your time doing something intrinsically worthwhile.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94