Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2018

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Join a startup incubator. Use crowd funding to build reserves.

Intellectual Property 134

Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 134

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 10, 2020

by Zain Jaffer, serial entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of Zain Ventures. In the early stages, it isn’t uncommon for businesses to bank their earnings on a handful of customers (or sometimes, just one). When the time comes, the following actions can help entrepreneurs get back on their feet: 1. Rip the Bandaid off.

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Customer Development Team Review Advisory Board Private Equity 347

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 23, 2017

Moore titled “ Crossing the Chasm ,” but most entrepreneurs have no idea how it relates to them. In fact, it’s all about the “focus” required to get early stage technology products across the deadly chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers. Product development chasm.

Customer 191

Customer Entrepreneur Technical Review Dilution 191

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 18, 2013

Moore titled “ Crossing the Chasm ,” but most entrepreneurs have no idea how it relates to them. In fact, it’s all about the “focus” required to get early stage technology products across the deadly chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers. Product development chasm. Marty Zwilling.

Entrepreneur 252

Entrepreneur Marketing Technical Review Dilution 252

Up and Running

APRIL 12, 2018

Working on a startup can be exciting, exhilarating, fulfilling and maybe even a little terrifying. Creating financial forecasts and budgets are not typically how many entrepreneurs envision spending their time, but these tools are incredibly necessary. The early days of a startup can be intense. The value of a forecast.

Forecast 77

Forecast Early Stage Software Review Technical Review 77

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 27, 2019

Moore titled “ Crossing the Chasm ,” but most entrepreneurs have no idea how it relates to them. In fact, it’s all about the “focus” required to get early stage technology products across the deadly chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers. Product development chasm.

Technical Review 255

Technical Review Dilution Early Stage Product Development 255

YoungUpstarts

MAY 21, 2020

You envision your business as the next Uber or Spotify, yourself as the next Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, reaching that prestigious ‘unicorn’ startup status in record time. Like most entrepreneurs, you’ve probably mapped out the business plan, dreamed up the layout and you’re already snapping up domains and emailing developers with your plan.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

Back in the early 2000s, the Maker Movement took hold in California, based on the emergence of such do-it-yourself (DIY) tools as 3-D printers, and now sites such as SketchUp and Makerspaces have all the tools you need to make almost anything computer related. Countless startup teams have already been spawned from these.

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Startup Cofounder Incubator Early Stage 397

YoungUpstarts

MAY 6, 2019

by Arsalan Sajid, startup community manager at Cloudways. Life is not a box of chocolates and startups are not always easy to start. There is a complete process that governs the startup lifecycle including inception to exit. These people exist and they are called ‘Serial entrepreneurs.’. Early Stage.

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Startup Technical Cofounder Merger Early Stage 113

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 10, 2012

Moore titled “ Crossing the Chasm ,” but most entrepreneurs have no idea how it relates to them. In fact, it’s all about the “focus” required to get early stage technology products across the deadly chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers. Product development chasm.

Startup 254

Startup Technical Review Dilution Early Stage 254

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

Moore titled “ Crossing the Chasm ” (1991), but most entrepreneurs have no idea how it relates to them. In fact, it’s all about the “focus” required to get early stage technology products across the deadly chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers. Product development chasm.

Marketing 238

Marketing Entrepreneur Technical Review Dilution 238

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

Most startups view venture capital funding as a blessing from above — eager to take it as soon as they can get it. While the rewards may be a boon to their company in the short term, the consequences of accepting outside funding too early can be debilitating. Typical startups take in multiple rounds of funding from multiple investors.

Early Stage 85

Early Stage Venture Capital Bootstrapping Pre-Money Valuation 85

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 2, 2023

Angel investors and venture capitalists are looking for startups with real products and a proven business model, ready to scale. Yet I still get too many business plans that clearly are looking for money to do research and development (R&D) on a new and unproven technology. Specialized VCs start to jump in at this stage.

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Angel Investor Early Stage Incubator Government 256

YoungUpstarts

MAY 30, 2019

by Will Koffel , head of the Google Cloud Startup Program in the Americas. In 2013, I left a CTO job overseeing a 50-person product engineering team for the same job at a four-person startup. ” Most early startups don’t understand the distinction between the two. Manage Your Workflow — Or Else.

Management 138

Management Product SCRUM Early Stage 138

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

In the startup world, opportunities are fleeting, and obstacles are ubiquitous. Competition from other startups and established incumbents, constraints on time and capital, and limited access to talent and technology resources are just a few of the hurdles nearly every first-time founder faces while trying to build a business.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 20, 2011

The challenges stem from the simple fact that every entrepreneur is starting something new, where things are predictably unpredictable. There are unknowns at every turn, leading product development, attracting customers, managing cash, and dealing with human resources and office politics. Too slow or too fast to change.

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Advisory Board Startup Forecast Early Stage 232

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

Aligning the Startup Team Strategy with the Capitalization Strategy. The single most important factor to raising capital for any tech startup is the management team. This is true for early stage funding as well as venture capital funding. Furthermore, a startup works differently than a large corporation.

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Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

Mucker Lab

MAY 28, 2020

Some entrepreneurs think that (more) money will solve all their company’s problems. Like a teenager with a million-dollar allowance and an identity crisis, a startup with too much capital and no product-market fit will become capable of making larger mistakes. As an investor, I root for startups.

Startup 78

Startup Cofounder Burn Rate Technical Review 78

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2010

If you’re interested in recruiting sales people, I wrote on the topic of startup sales people: who to hire & when – understanding the roles of Journeymen, Mavericks & Superstars. Evangelical sales – Understanding startup sales people and process. Reminds me of Eats, Shoots & Leaves. You learn by asking.

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Hiring Sales Startup Early Stage 346

View from Seed

MAY 11, 2016

However, I find that none of this is really the case, and entrepreneurs face especially tough challenges in the very beginning of their process of finding that second company to start. But some of the most successful serial entrepreneurs realize they have unfair advantages in markets they know and just keep coming back (e.g.,

Founder 159

Founder Cofounder CTO Hire Early Stage 159

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 27, 2010

Moore titled “ Crossing the Chasm ” (1991), but most entrepreneurs have no idea how it relates to them. In fact, it’s all about the “focus” required to get early stage technology products across the deadly chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers. Product development chasm. Marty Zwilling.

Startup 227

Startup Technical Review Dilution Early Stage 227

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 25, 2017

This technology is not only spawning a new generation of entrepreneurs, but is also changing the educational landscape, all the way down to early grade school. In my view as an advisor to new ventures, the Maker Movement is an integral part of a new age of the entrepreneur. These ideas can grow quickly into real products.

Technical Cofounder 153

Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property Wiki Cofounder 153

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 244

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 13, 2015

Angel investors and venture capitalists are looking for startups with real products and a proven business model, ready to scale. Yet I still get too many business plans that clearly are looking for money to do research and development (R&D) on a new and unproven technology. Specialized VCs start to jump in at this stage.

Product Development 120

Product Development Developer Product Angel Investor 120

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 3, 2012

The challenges stem from the simple fact that every entrepreneur is starting something new, where things are predictably unpredictable. There are unknowns at every turn, leading product development, attracting customers, managing cash, and dealing with human resources and office politics. Too slow or too fast to change.

Advisory Board 240

Advisory Board Forecast Early Stage Product Development 240

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

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. Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

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. There is no free lunch.

Mezzanine 368

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 368

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 12, 2010

The challenges stem from the simple fact that every entrepreneur is starting something new, where things are predictably unpredictable. There are unknowns at every turn, leading product development, attracting customers, managing cash, and dealing with human resources and office politics. Too slow or too fast to change.

Advisory Board 125

Advisory Board Startup Forecast Early Stage 125

The Next Web

OCTOBER 3, 2012

Andrew is the co-founder and CTO of Parse.ly , a technology startup that provides big data insights to the web’s best publishers. Startups die due to a variety of causes. In 2007, Paul Graham gave a variety of causes for startup death in How Not To Die. Distraction is fatal to startups.

Cofounder 155

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 155

Hearpreneur

JULY 10, 2017

We asked some entrepreneurs and business owners, why they started their businesses: #1 – Personal Quest. Losing my younger brother at the age of ten to cancer, I pledged to live a healthy life very early on. Prior to starting Ozmo both Ming and I worked in a design house creating new and better products.

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Entrepreneur Hungary Software Review Cofounder 99

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 31, 2022

As a mentor for aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs, I talk to a fair number who may have a great vision and a strong engineering background, but have a negative interest in the role of public speaking in business. As a startup, you as the entrepreneur are the brand, the brand builder, and the major lead generator.

Marketing 283

Marketing Early Stage Lead Generation Hosting 283

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 4, 2015

It’s no secret that setting goals is critical to achieving any kind of success, and making sure they’re realistic and measurable is vital to maintaining momentum and motivation, especially in the startup game. The challenge for most startups is that they don’t just have a few goals — they have every goal. How OKRs Can Help.

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Agile Startup Cofounder Metrics 100

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. There is no free lunch.

Mezzanine 244

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 244

mashable.com

JUNE 11, 2013

16 Common Mistakes Young Startups Make. Are you working on a startup? In fact, recent research shows that 75% of startups fail (based on a study of 2,000 startups that received VC funding from 2004 to 2010). Some startups are destined for failure. Whats This? By Lauren Drell 2013-06-10 14:46:07 UTC.

Cofounder 111

Cofounder Technical Review Startup Software Review 111

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 15, 2018

In an effort to support startups looking for capital and mentorship, The Startup Magazine is supporting International Airlines Group (IAG) in its launch of its third Hangar 51 global innovation programme in collaboration with British Airways, Avios and IAG Cargo. Check out the overview video… Startup Benefits.

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Technical Review Due Diligence Startup Analytics 60

Hearpreneur

FEBRUARY 14, 2018

We asked entrepreneurs and business owners what their side hustles are and here are the responses. #1- I run an early stage-startup called Smarthome NX that helps consumers discover Smart home technologies through content, collaborative partnerships and commerce. I love helping creative entrepreneurs get found online.

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Entrepreneur Technical Review SEO New York City 71