View from Seed

MARCH 24, 2021

At NextView Ventures we have written many pieces about venture capital — how to raise it, build your business, engage with investors, iterate your product, navigate expanding industries, etc. Rethinking the Standard Fundraising Deck “I’d make it crystal clear what your product actually does. VCs sure do love writing.

Seed Stage 177

Seed Stage Hiring IPO Analytics 177

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

If you can check these boxes and convince venture capitalists that you’ve achieved product fit in a market with plenty of room for growth, you have a real shot at securing funding. When I started my last company, we were focused on developing technology to lower the cost of detecting and diagnosing Type 2 diabetes.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

abovethecrowd.com

OCTOBER 1, 2013

Over 13 years ago, in March of 2000, I wrote a blog post titled “ The Most Powerful Internet Metric of All. ” The key thesis was this: if an Internet company could obsess about only one metric, it should be conversion. As such, it is time to pound the table again – conversion is by far the most powerful Internet metric of all.

Metrics 93

Metrics Conversion Internet Acquisition 93

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 7, 2022

There is no magic lever for growth, so several initiatives are required, with metrics to assess value returned. Real growth requires new and innovative ways to find customers, as well as old-fashioned advertising and email blasts. Introduce new products and enhancements every month. Ask every employee to focus on sales.

Startup 335

Startup Social Media Metrics Viral 335

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 5, 2008 The product managers lament Life is not easy when youre working in an old-fashioned waterfall development process, no matter what role you play. The product manager was clearly struggling to get results from the rest of the team. Lets start with what the product manager does.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. Email updates frequently. Key point – if your emails are as long as my blog posts you’re forked. Make your emails actionable.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Women Entrepreneurs Can

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

Among these, sales, marketing, customer service, and product development take center stage. Additionally, relying on subpar accounts receivable services can severely hamper operational efficiency, adversely impacting overall productivity. To thrive, a business must excel in a multitude of functions.

Software Review 40

Software Review Metrics Analytics Software 40

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2019

Conversion teams: 6–8 week experiment cycles; Marketing teams: Prepare, campaign, prepare, campaign; Product teams: 2-week sprints. Conversion/Optimization teams might become a nightmare for marketing and product teams. Product and marketing teams should be involved. Optimizing email, social, etc., is also optimization.

Artificial Inteligence 114

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Metrics SEO 114

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 5, 2010

In the quest for optimization, A/B tests, metrics, and funnels, we're in danger of losing the fun and value of creative work. When we demand overwhelming customer outcry before committing to the slightest product change, we're in danger of losing the value of creating a cool feature that takes too much effort but people just love.

Software Review 226

Software Review Metrics Lean Algorithm 226

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The metrics and levers of engagement, presentation on Engagement Loops for Facebook Developer Garage SF Ill be presenting a talk at the Facebook Developer Garage SF Wednesday evening. A few days ago, I received a great email from Warhammer Online.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Version One Ventures

APRIL 11, 2019

To help us perform functional testing without mock objects, we maintain a seed database that reflects the database schema and contains the data definitions that we would expect in production. Besides unit testing, engineers also perform manual developer end-to-end testing. Value to customers.

Part-Time VPE 99

Part-Time VPE Software Review Engineer Technical Review 99

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 9, 2020

There is no magic lever for growth, so several initiatives are required, with metrics to assess value returned. Real growth requires new and innovative ways to find customers, as well as old-fashioned advertising and email blasts. Introduce new products and enhancements every month. Ask every employee to focus on sales.

Social Media 329

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 329

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2018

How many emails do you get cc’d or bcc’d on? email: use data to send highly personalized message by pulling data from across sources (e.g. Ezra Firestone – What Works in Email Marketing Right Now. Email & ads are the 2 big communication channels. On avg $1 spent on email returns $38. Corporate Agility.

Retention 106

Retention Artificial Inteligence Channel Email 106

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

Not because they have a conversion problem but because they never really nail the product or how to market it. This is a customer development problem. Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, developed a methodology for creating businesses that runs in parallel with the traditional product development process.

Customer Development 126

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 126

Brandanew

APRIL 25, 2016

Now, the course allows everyone to send in their questions on a special email address after they have gone through the material and soaked in the information. Don’t fall for every vanity metric out there. You can spend your energy towards client acquisition, collaboration, and product development.

Marketing 100

Marketing Curation Channel Small Business 100

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Occam's Razor

APRIL 23, 2012

While there is a great deal of appreciation for the power of metrics/data, I've come to realize that Sr. Leaders don't quite appreciate the deep, and often corrosive, consequences of choosing metric x over metric y as a key performance indicator (KPI). It is a standard metric. You pimp product specs (ugh!).

Metrics 152

Metrics Analytics Search Channel 152

Up and Running

MAY 15, 2014

As an entrepreneur raised in the era of analytics, I want to find metrics for everything. Conversations that should have taken minutes would take hours, and would often require a post-mortem email or phone call to discuss our working styles. I wasn’t just going to boss around the product guy and make demands. I could hustle.

Partner 113

Partner Cofounder Equity Metrics 113

Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 31, 2016

Just a decade ago, most software/cloud startups used a traditional model where product and marketing were siloed: product teams created the product and marketing drove people to the website to buy it. The evolution of the growth function changed this dynamic, mashing together product dev and marketing as integrated functions.

Software Review 60

Software Review South Africa Hockey Stick Viral 60

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Everyone was in the flow; the team was hyper-productive. In many cases, they did the impossible, building a new product faster, cheaper, and better than anyone could have predicted.

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

ConversionXL

DECEMBER 3, 2018

They’d built a range of products that completely solved the problem—but they couldn’t reach their potential customers. Many B2B companies run into the same problem, particularly those that are: Complex, with products that require deep expertise to understand and use. It created powerful network effects.

B2B 133

B2B Marketing SEO Search 133

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

At least, not in the traditional sense of trying to squeeze every tenth of a point out of a conversion metric or landing page. In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. For example, I’m a big believer in split-testing.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

ConversionXL

APRIL 13, 2017

Jonathan Price wrote on the same Quora thread that he believes growth marketing to differ from regular marketing because it “is technology-centric and it blurs the boundary between marketing and product development.” A growth team, however, is largely overlapped with product, engineering, and design as well.

Analytics 99

Analytics Engineer SEO Channel 99

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.&# And, most importantly, it helps team members develop the courage to stand up for these values in stressful situations. This is precisely the dilemma that the doctrine of minimum viable product is designed to solve.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

ASC starts building product, but as they get into the thick of it, the team realizes executing on their vision is going to be extremely hard. No updates, screen comps, or metrics have been publicly shared yet. Heads down on product, they say. Seven months in, there is a beta product. It’s too early for that s**t.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Five Whys has its origins in the Toyota Production System. And yet the key to startup speed is to maintain a disciplined approach to testing and evaluating new products, features, and ideas. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Speed up or slow down?

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown, and the key to success is building an integrated team that includes product development in the feedback loop with customers. 2008 09 06 Eric Ries Haas Columbia Customer Development Engineering View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. Sure, Id be delighted to.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Noah has been a key figure in the making of LivePlan, our own SaaS product. A description of the problem you’re solving for your customers, and your solution to the problem, which is usually your product or service. In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

I used to think that investments in metrics were a form of waste. Customers dont care if you have good metrics, only if you have a good product. The only reason we learned the art of metrics-based decision making at IMVU was out of necessity. We set sales targets from day one, $300 the first month.

San Francisco 98

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 98

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

If you’re building a startup, you’re likely to be in one of these two situations: Launching and selling a new product that nobody’s ever heard about, and probably don’t even know they need, or… Improving an existing product or service, which means that you’re going head on against someone with more traction, people, and money than you.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

YoungUpstarts

JULY 2, 2020

Another common mistake that marketing teams are making is using the same metrics for success that they have used in the past. If you use these same metrics, you’re going to be sorely disappointed in the results. Don’t focus on old measurements for success. The quicker you understand this, the better off you’ll be. corporations.

Marketing 262

Marketing Metrics Channel Differentiation 262

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 8, 2009 Datablindness Most of us are swimming in a sea of data about our products, companies, and teams. That’s because many of our reports feed us vanity metrics: numbers that make us look good but don’t really help make decisions. Too much of this data is non- actionable.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

blog comments powered by Disqus Newer Post Older Post Home Subscribe via email Blog Archive ▼ 2010 (48) ► October (3) Case Study: Rapid iteration with hardware The Lean Startup Bundle Stop lying on stage ► September (4) Good enough never is (or is it?) Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Try About the author.

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 6, 2016

To create this first year in business checklist, I turned to our in-house experts here at Palo Alto Software: Sabrina Parsons, CEO; Noah Parsons, COO; Josh Cochrane, Vice President of Product Development; and Josh Fegles, Academic and Government Channel Sales Director, and founder of gluten-free cookie company Jude’s Foods.

Forecast 60

Forecast Software Review Lean Finance 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process. (See

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. And what of the product development team?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Build a truly mainstream product. Build the product in stealth mode to build buzz for the eventual launch. The whole company and board play-tested the product to see its new features first hand. Everyone had fun; the product worked. This is why agility is such a prized quality in product development.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150