Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 31, 2010

This is part of my ongoing Sales & Marketing Series. In the first part of this post I talked about how sales in a startup is often evangelical , requires as consultative sale and needs constant adjustments based on customer feedback. We had 4 or 5 sales reps that had been around since the early days.

Sales 286

Sales PR Forecast Technical Review 286

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

And building a startup is not for the faint of heart. The tools and temperament needed to get from startup idea to startup success were the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Prior to founding Andela , he co-founded 2U , an education technology startup that went public in 2014.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

And building a startup is not for the faint of heart. The tools and temperament needed to get from startup idea to startup success were the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Prior to founding Andela , he co-founded 2U , an education technology startup that went public in 2014.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

This is the failure of many early-stage companies when they try to scale. How can I hit my quota selling to Deutsc he Bahn – their sales cycles are so slow! The funny thing about a startup is that if you keep it together for several years life happens along the way. Tags: Startup Advice.

Ireland 319

Ireland Sales Bankruptcy Germany 319

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

With enterprise customers, this would result in tremendous exit barriers, making sales cycles long and involved, which a small startup will find hard to withstand. Tags: StartUp 101. Now, the Web self-service software market is very crowded with major players like RightNow already deeply entrenched. Photo by brokenarts.

India 114

India Silicon Valley Incubator Bootstrapping 114

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.

Acquisition 103

Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103

Hippoland

AUGUST 16, 2018

Especially at the early stages. Often as an entrepreneur, it’s hard to know whether your product is differentiated, because you don’t know what other startups are out there. Or, a lot of investors call themselves “early stage” investors and aren’t good fits for pre-seed companies.

Sales Cycle 54

Sales Cycle Differentiation Early Stage Bootstrapping 54

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? In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Don’t startups exist for the same reason?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Hippoland

AUGUST 16, 2018

Especially at the early stages. Often as an entrepreneur, it’s hard to know whether your product is differentiated, because you don’t know what other startups are out there. Or, a lot of investors call themselves “early stage” investors and aren’t good fits for pre-seed companies.

Sales Cycle 48

Sales Cycle Differentiation Early Stage Bootstrapping 48

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 23, 2013

In an early-stage business where your product is less developed the business case might be higher level. Or simply if you’re earlier in the sales cycle and you don’t want to get bogged down in too much detail until you have customer buy-in to your high-level value statement. Startup Advice'

Sales 328

Sales Campaign Sales Cycle Early Stage 328

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 7, 2014

For most startups, one of the most exciting and frustrating phases is deciding how to price their offering for their first paying customer. Pricing is especially tricky for enterprise startups because there’s very little data available, and new entrepreneurs often price their product or service way below its value. Revenue Growth.

Metrics 219

Metrics Churn Rate Startup Acquisition 219

David Teten

APRIL 6, 2015

ff Venture Capital does virtually no investing in life sciences, and historically has also been adverse to healthcare IT startups, given the long sales cycles, heavy regulatory burden, and our own lack of internal knowledge in these sectors.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Technical Review Non-Compete Philadelphia 60

infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Be The Beatles Not The Flock Of Seagulls John Greathouse’s Bio ConTraps Part 2 ConTrap Part 3 ConTrap part 4 Startup Children Pt 2 Startup Children Pt 5 Startup Children Pt 3 Startup Children Pt 4 Decision Making 101 Talks: Jason Nazar on how to Persuade. Hands-on startup advice for emerging entrepreneurs.

Equity 40

Equity Silicon Valley Cofounder Technical Review 40

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Blog About Log in Register Designing startup metrics to drive successful behavior Great companies are almost always run by great management teams. Sales and marketing funnel – summary metrics We will also want to look at some metrics that cover the entire sales and marketing funnel from top to bottom.

Metrics 55

Metrics Design Entrepreneur Startup 55

Lightspeed Venture Partners

APRIL 13, 2015

Traditionally, selling to governments has been associated with long sales cycles and conservative buyers. Am increasingly coming across early stage startups seeing great traction selling to states and municipalities, in some cases while deploying an inside sales model, which would have been unthinkable even 3-4 years ago.

Sales Cycle 60

Sales Cycle Government Demand Distribution 60

Small Business Force

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Building a business is not just about numbers.It's about how you make those numbers happen.Many early stage entrepreneurs make the mistake of focusing on detailed spread sheets with myriad pivot tables and assumptions, being able to model even the most insignificant detail of their proposed business.

Forecast 37

Forecast Sales Cycle Early Stage Sales 37

BeyondVC

DECEMBER 15, 2005

As for startups, not many were mentioned, and most of the technology buyers said your best bet was coming in through a larger partner whether it be a Sun, Cisco, HP, or IBM. On the other hand if you deliver on your promises and have a great base of early reference customers, it will pay huge dividends.

Advisory Board 60

Advisory Board New York Dividend Sales Cycle 60

Rob Go

JANUARY 10, 2017

FYI – this is tuned towards an individual who is still in the relatively early stages of their career. Having great EQ is important too, because there is a fine line between someone who is pervasive and has a positive reputation in the startup ecosystem and someone who is perceived as inauthentic and annoying.

Technical Review 28

Technical Review Due Diligence Deal Flow Early Stage 28

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

I’ll give you an example with my own startup LaunchBit and how our understanding of the problem and the customer became more refined over time: V1: Helping online marketers get customers profitably. I.e. it might be difficult to raise money at the early stages, because most investors in the seed space have smaller funds (esp pre-seed funds).

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

I’ll give you an example with my own startup LaunchBit and how our understanding of the problem and the customer became more refined over time: V1: Helping online marketers get customers profitably. I.e. it might be difficult to raise money at the early stages, because most investors in the seed space have smaller funds (esp pre-seed funds).

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 24, 2011

One of the cool things about being a fund that works with so many early stage companies is that bringing the whole portfolio together in one place results in a lot of collaborative learning opportunities. Actually, startups tend to drop the ball on recruiting the same way they mess up in PR. if you're searching for salespeople.

Startup 116

Startup Ruby PR Sales Cycle 116

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 10, 2008

In my case (LucidEra -- a SaaS analytics provider focusing on sales, marketing, and financial analytics), weve found that success requires not only building some best practices for analytics into our solution, but also coming up with a repeatable and scalable way to show the customer how to use the analytics and how to interpret the results.

Software Review 48

Software Review North America Europe Metrics 48