A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
NOVEMBER 7, 2017
We’re tired of hearing how small software companies usually fail. The data show that the two most common causes are: (1) Product isn’t useful to enough people, and (2) Problems with the team. But what about the companies that die even though they did sell some copies of software, and where the early team isn’t dysfunctional? I don’t have data for that cohort (tell me if you do!
Steve Blank
APRIL 5, 2017
I was having coffee with the CEO of a new startup, listening to her puzzle through how to communicate to potential customers. She was an academic on leave from Stanford now selling SAAS software to large companies, but was being inundated with marketing communications advice. “My engineers say our website is old school, and we need to be on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, my VP of Sales says we’re wasting our marketing dollars not targeting the right people and my board keeps giving me their op
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Startup Lessons Learned
DECEMBER 14, 2017
Guest Post by Misti Yang, Writer for Lean Startup Co. Editor’s Note: We wrapped up the 2017 Lean Startup Week in San Francisco just a few weeks ago, and we’re excited to share with you some of the best lessons learned in entrepreneurship and corporate innovation. Expect to read a new story each week straight from our keynote and breakout stages. In an interview with GE’s Culture Transformation Leader Janice Semper during Lean Startup Week, Eric Ries remarked, “Listen, that's our specialty here.
YoungUpstarts
AUGUST 25, 2017
Artificial intelligence is increasingly making inroads into different areas of our lives. Many of the current and proposed uses for artificial intelligence are things that only a short time ago would have sounded right at home in speculative science fiction. As more and more of these seemingly magical uses of artificial intelligence come to be realized, there is also an increasing awareness developing of just how much we can achieve with truly intelligent machines and pieces of software.
Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic
Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in
Up and Running
OCTOBER 9, 2017
This article is part of our “ Business Planning Guide “ —a curated list of our articles that will help you with the planning process! Conducting a SWOT analysis of your business is a lot more fun than it sounds. It won’t take much time, and doing it forces you to think about your business in a whole new way. The point of a SWOT analysis is to help you develop a strong business strategy by making sure you’ve considered all of your business’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as the op
Occam's Razor
MARCH 30, 2017
A rare post today. It looks a little further out into the future than I normally tend to. It attempts to simplify a topic that has more than it’s share of coolness, confusion and complexity. While the phrase Artificial Intelligence has been around since the first human wondered if she could go further if she had access to entities with inorganic intelligence, it truly jumped the shark in 2016.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
ConversionXL
MAY 11, 2017
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” —Napoleon Bonaparte. When your competitors make mistakes, it makes winning so much easier. But what if it’s you who is making a mistake, while your competitors are off to the races? You won’t know until you figure out what your competitors are up to. Knowing what the competitors are doing – how they are thinking about the market, what tactics they are using, how they are crafting messages and design – can make all the differen
Growthink Blog
DECEMBER 27, 2017
Are you looking to raise venture capital ? You need a good idea – and an excellent business plan. Business planning and raising venture capital go hand-in-hand. A business plan is required for attracting venture capital. And the desire to raise capital (whether from an individual “angel” investor or a venture capital firm) is often the key motivator in the business planning process.
Version One Ventures
JULY 20, 2017
As Ada Support launches its automated chat platform from stealth and announces an impressive $2.5 million seed round, we’re looking back at our journey with founders Mike Murchison and David Hariri. The story underscores the importance of perseverance and having the right founding team. Just after closing Fund II in October 2014, Boris took a trip to Toronto.
VC Adventure
AUGUST 31, 2017
If you read my blog regularly you know I love (LOVE) metrics. So no surprise that when River Cities Capital released an overview of SaaS operating and valuation benchmarks, I hung on every juicy detail. It’s chocked full of them – I’d highly recommend your reading the full report. But if you’re too busy for that, below are some of the key take-aways.
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
AUGUST 22, 2017
Product teams have been repeating the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) mantra for a decade now, without re-evaluating whether it’s the right way to maximize learning while pleasing the customer. Well, it’s not the best system. It’s selfish and it hurts customers. We don’t build MVPs at WP Engine. The motivation behind the MVP is still valid: Build something small, because small things are predictable and inexpensive to test.
Steve Blank
SEPTEMBER 14, 2017
A shorter version of this post first appeared on the HBR blog. — I just watched a very smart company try to manage innovation by hiring a global consulting firm to offload engineering from “distractions.” They accomplished their goal, but at a huge, unanticipated cost: the processes and committees they designed ended up strangling innovation. There’s a much better way.
Hunter Walker
JANUARY 2, 2017
When the WSJ and the NYTimes write the same trend story you can assume it’s a narrative that is being pushed by people who want it to be true! And the narrative for 2017 is OLD ECONOMY COMPANIES WANT TO BUY YOUR STARTUP. So, is it true? Largely yes, but the pot of gold might be more modest than some of 2016’s notable transactions suggest (Jet, Cruise, Dollar Shave Club).
Duct Tape Marketing
JULY 21, 2017
10 Must Have Tools to Monitor, Analyze and Respond to Brand Mention written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing. What are people saying about your brand? I am not speaking about those paid advertisements or reviews on popular blogs that you have been orchestrating. I mean real, organic brand mentions from your user base. Chances are you have no idea, not unless it has been a major complaint that has come directly through your customer service office.
Up and Running
AUGUST 8, 2017
I’ve had a 30-year love-hate relationship with mission statements. I’ve read thousands. I love it when a mission statement defines a business so well that it feels like strategy —which does happen—and I hate it when a mission statement is generic, stale, and completely useless. Which also happens, but not nearly as often. What is a mission statement?
Occam's Razor
AUGUST 28, 2017
Over the last couple years, I’ve spent an increasing amount of time diving into the possibilities Deep Learning (DL) offers in terms of what we can do with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Some of these possibilities have already been realized (more on this later in the post). And, I could not be more excited to see them out in the world. Through it all, I’ve felt there are a handful of breath-taking realities that most people are not grasping when it comes to an AI-Powered world.
Hearpreneur
JANUARY 29, 2017
Share André Gide wrote that,”Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” Quotes are an important part of motivation, though many of them are repeats of another turn of phrase. Business owners are particularly partial to famous quotations. Reading a motivational speech from a business legend or famous creative mind can give you a spark.
ConversionXL
AUGUST 23, 2017
Customer journey mapping is a widely used and impactful technique that can help you make better product, marketing, UX, and merchandising decisions. However, like other UX research techniques (including user personas ), there’s some vagueness and obscurity around how to actually create customer journey maps. This article will draw processes and customer journey mapping examples from experts in the field, and you’ll hopefully walk away with a real and clear picture of how to do it on
Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 15, 2017
Upfront Ventures was created 20 years ago as one of the original VC funds in Los Angeles. Back then only 15% of our dollars were invested locally whereas today 50% of our dollars are invested in LA. 10 years ago we found ourselves trying to persuade LPs and VCs that it was worth spending more time getting to know the LA market and now the most common refrain that I hear from them is “there really is something going on in LA.
YoungUpstarts
AUGUST 23, 2017
When we look at successful startups we often focus on how the company has been successful with their end products or services but we often ignore what the founders went through and did to be successful. Like any other startups, those started by students often begin with ideas, but venture capitalists may dismiss the individuals as being young, inexperienced and naive.
Gust
DECEMBER 17, 2017
It’s that time of year when we’re all staring down the end of the December, wondering where the months have gone. This is also the time when a lot of entrepreneurs wrestle with their plans for the next year, asking themselves: Where should I bet big? Are the growth targets right? How am I going to pay for all these. Read more >. The post Beyond VC: Funding Options for Early-Stage Startups appeared first on The Gust Blog.
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
OCTOBER 17, 2017
Forget work/life integration for a minute. How much time do you have, regardless of partitioning? From your 24-hour daily allotment, the 1950s-style break-down is 8 hours for work, 8 for home and commute, and 8 for sleep and ablutions. So, “work” and “home” are the two things in which you can spend 40+ hours per week. This is the amount of time it takes to tackle something huge.
Steve Blank
MARCH 8, 2017
Getting ready for our next semester’s class, I asked my Teaching Assistant why I hadn’t seen the posters for our new class around campus. Hearing the litany of excuses that followed –“It was raining.” (The posters go inside the building.) “We still have time.” (We had agreed they were to go up a week ago) — I had a strong sense of déjà vu. When I took the job of VP of Marketing in a company emerging from bankruptcy, excuses seemed to be our main product.
Feld Thoughts
OCTOBER 25, 2017
A few weeks ago I was in Atlanta for Techstars Atlanta Demo Day and the Venture Atlanta Conference. I had a great time and it’s fun to see the vibrancy of the Atlanta startup community. My brother Daniel came with me and we had dinner with our cousin Kenny, who lives in Atlanta, so we got some nice, quiet, emotionally intimate family time. My favorite keynote at Venture Atlanta was from Scott Dorsey.
Duct Tape Marketing
OCTOBER 12, 2017
How to Optimize Your Event Marketing Campaigns: Before, During and After Events written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Frost and Sullivan report that the live events industry is worth around $512 billion. Alon Alroy, CMO of Bizzabo, explains how event marketers can measure and optimize their event marketing campaigns before during and after the event process.
Up and Running
OCTOBER 30, 2017
This article is part of our “ Business Startup Guide ”—a curated list of our articles that will get you up and running in no time! People often ask us for a list of steps they can use to start their own business. From business type to business model to physical location, there are so many variables! However, there are things that every business needs to do to get off the ground.
Occam's Razor
JANUARY 31, 2017
Ten years, and the 944,357 words, are proof that I love purposeful data, collecting it, pouring smart strategies into analyzing it, and using the insights identified to transform organizations. In the quest for that last important bit, I am insanely obsessive about 1. simplification and 2. pressing the right emotional buttons. The reasons are that we all like complexity, it gives us energy :), we tend to be logical, and we often treat data output as the end when in reality the data output is jus
Hearpreneur
JUNE 10, 2017
Music can change your spirit. If you’re having a bad day and listen to your favorite song, it can change your entire mood. Music can also help you to get through difficult moments in life. One of the hardest things anyone can ever do is start and run a business. We knew that entrepreneurs have the best playlists and we decided to ask them their favorite tracks. #1 – All I do is Win by DJ Khaled.
ConversionXL
AUGUST 31, 2017
At this point in time, the field is flooded with solutions. Finding a proper A/B testing tool isn’t the problem anymore. Now, the problem is choosing the right one. If you work in conversion optimization – whether at an agency, in-house, or as a consultant – you almost certainly run A/B tests. Though you could hire someone full time to sift through and analyze the pros and cons of each tool, it’s easier to learn from the experience of others and make a decision based on that.
For Entrepreneurs
DECEMBER 6, 2017
I’ve seen hundreds of startup pitch decks in my time at Matrix, and have found total addressable market (TAM) slides to be among the most frequently mis-executed. I get the sense they are often included as a formality in an attempt to get VCs to check a mental box and continue on hearing about other.
YoungUpstarts
DECEMBER 28, 2017
8 of the Best Executive Assistant Conferences in 2018. Executive Assistants never seem to rest, let alone take time away from work to focus on themselves. That’s why these Executive Assistant conferences are perfect for all those powerhouses who love to work eight days a week. Why are these events perfect for motivated assistants? These Executive Assistant conferences: Let Executive Assistants take a breath without taking a break.
Gust
AUGUST 15, 2017
So you’ve developed a game-changing product, formed a business with a killer team, quit your job, and are rolling the product out to market. Your business is the next unicorn, and all is good in the world. Fantastic. Now only one thing is inhibiting your company’s growth: you have no money. For many founders of high-growth startups, bootstrapping has limits.
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
APRIL 25, 2017
We’ve all laughed at detailed renderings of constellations overlaying a paltry set of stars that are in fact quasi-random. Like Fornax, which is just three stars: But which humans have no trouble rendering as an intricate sequence of machinery: It would be funny, if this natural compulsion didn’t also cause us to make bad decisions, all the time.
Steve Blank
FEBRUARY 28, 2017
When you’re up to your neck in alligators, don’t forget the goal was to drain the swamp. I love teaching because I learn something new every class. This time it was, “Don’t let process distract you from finding the strategy.”. The latest “aha” moment for me when I was at Columbia University teaching an intensive 5-day version of the Lean LaunchPad/I-Corps class.
Feld Thoughts
JUNE 13, 2017
Today Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) announced their support for Global EIR , a cause for which I care deeply. As you may know, over breakfast in 2015 Jeff Bussgang and I launched Global EIR with the hope of advancing the startup visa effort on a local and state level after it stalled in Congress. Since then, Global EIR has grown to 13 university programs across the country, helping 42 international founders start companies.
Duct Tape Marketing
APRIL 7, 2017
Why Small Businesses Have the Social Media Marketing Advantage written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing. As a small business owner, you’re constantly looking for new ways to get your company’s brand on the radar of potential customers. If you don’t already, using social media in business is a great way to engage with current customers as well as attract new ones.
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