Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 21, 2021

Great entrepreneurs, like Bill Gates, are great at both. For entrepreneurs, effective networking is required to find investors, partners, and customers. Serious investors expect founders to have their homework done before the first interaction – documented executive summary, business plan, and financial model. Time management.

Technical Review 333

Technical Review Startup Software Review Retention 333

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 10, 2023

We asked entrepreneurs and CEOs about having a business plan and here is what they had to say. #1- That way you can focus on what's important and not worry about whether or not your marketing strategy or product development process makes sense. Thanks to Thomas Phillips, Pet Portraits ! #5-

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Business Plan Jordan Entrepreneur Florida 126

Hearpreneur

SEPTEMBER 9, 2020

Being in love with your business, when you’re an entrepreneur, is even better. Although there are days when tossing in your hat seems like a viable option, remembering how much you love your “job” can quickly snap an entrepreneur out of that mentality. We asked some entrepreneurs what they loved about “being their own boss.”. #1-

Entrepreneur 142

Entrepreneur Jordan Technical Review Green 142

Duct Tape Marketing

OCTOBER 29, 2019

Bringing Marketing and Product Development Together written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. On this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I visit with author and product and marketing executive Jill Soley. Marketing Podcast with Jill Soley. Podcast Transcript.

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Product Development Developer Product Marketing 40

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 16, 2013

Great entrepreneurs, like Bill Gates, are great at both. For entrepreneurs, effective networking is required to find investors, partners, and customers. Serious investors expect founders to have their homework done before the first interaction – documented executive summary, business plan, and financial model. Time management.

Entrepreneur 275

Entrepreneur Technical Review Software Review Retention 275

YoungUpstarts

MAY 21, 2020

by Nick Frandsen, co-founder and managing partner at Dovetail. 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. Nick Frandsen is a co-founder and managing partner at Dovetail. It’s genius!

Product 264

Product Cofounder Audience Product Development 264

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 10, 2020

by Zain Jaffer, serial entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of Zain Ventures. When the time comes, the following actions can help entrepreneurs get back on their feet: 1. sales to product development), the problems will continue to exist. Running a small business can come with a slew of challenges.

Customer 347

Customer Development Team Review Advisory Board Private Equity 347

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 15, 2021

In the last decade, SaaS (Software as a Service) has become a very popular model for new software product development. The largest cost component of establishing a SaaS company is product development costs. This includes the design, development, launch, and enhancement of the SaaS application. .

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Cost Developer Azure Cloud 158

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2020

Desperate entrepreneurs lose their leverage and die young. As a mentor to many entrepreneurs and startups, here are my best recommendations for keeping the burn rate low, planning ahead and maintaining credibility with investors: Manage cash flow personally every day. Buffer your projected resource requirements.

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Burn Rate Hockey Stick Salary Angel Investor 310

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 15, 2010

Great entrepreneurs, like Bill Gates, are great at both. For entrepreneurs, effective networking is required to find investors, partners, and customers. Serious investors expect founders to have their homework done before the first interaction – documented executive summary, business plan, and financial model. Time management.

Entrepreneur 237

Entrepreneur Technical Review Software Review Retention 237

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. Its a key lean startup concept. Great post!

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 2, 2019

Most of you aspiring entrepreneurs have no idea how dramatically your own role has to evolve as you develop a solution, start a business, and expect it to scale into a successful self-managed company. At this stage, I typically find a solo entrepreneur who creates, manages projects, directs, and oversees every step in the process.

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Leadership Technical Review Cofounder Social Media 248

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 28, 2022

Enventys Partners was born when my company Command Partners, a digital marketing firm, vertically merged with Enventys, a product development firm. Our business name is a product of an online naming contest back when we were still starting. #9- A merger of two companies. Photo Credit: Roy Morejon. 10- From a naming contest.

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Naming Entrepreneur Jordan Merger 146

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 29, 2018

Desperate entrepreneurs lose their leverage and die young. As a mentor to many entrepreneurs and startups, here are my best recommendations for keeping the burn rate low, planning ahead and maintaining credibility with investors: Manage cash flow personally every day. Buffer your projected resource requirements.

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Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 223

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2009

This is part of my new series on what makes an entrepreneur successful. I originally posted it on VentureHacks , one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs. They spot opportunities that aren’t being met and the design products to meet these needs. We couldn’t cut product development (we had 23 people!)

Entrepreneur 306

Entrepreneur Burn Rate Cofounder Sales 306

Steve Blank

MARCH 16, 2016

To most founders a startup is not a job, but a calling. But startups require money upfront for product development and later to scale. Founders can now access the largest pool of risk capital that ever existed –in the form of Private Equity (Angel Investors, family offices , Venture Capitalists (VC’s) and Hedge Funds.). (BTW,

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Liquidity Event Founder Liquidation Preference Venture Capital 120

Version One Ventures

MAY 3, 2023

I just returned from a weeklong trip to India, having spent a few days each in Delhi and Bangalore to meet with local entrepreneurs and investors. And I had more than 20 1:1 meetings with founders, angels, emerging fund managers and institutional VC funds. group pic from meet-up w/ Delhi founders

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India LP Silicon Valley Vertical 87

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

by Lu Zhang, founder and managing partner of Fusion Fund. 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

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. So what’s wrong the product development model?

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 24, 2018

Most aspiring entrepreneurs are convinced that their idea and passion are so great that failure is not a possibility. Plan to and assemble the right team, including co-founders. You need skills in finance, operations, and marketing to supplement product development, and more hours of work than one person can manage.

Angel Investor 249

Angel Investor Cofounder Finance Operations 249

Small Business Force

DECEMBER 12, 2013

Every entrepreneur wishes they were as prescient or creative as Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, or Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders, respectively of Apple, Amazon and Google. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs are just ordinary schmos. Yet, if you think about it, customer and/or market input is critical to a product's success.

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Development Team Review Product Development Developer Customer 36

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2013

“Scope creep” (or feature creep) is an insidious disease that kills more good startups than any other, especially high-tech ones, and yet most founders (who may be the cause) never even see it happening. This term refers to the penchant to add just one more feature to the product or service before first delivery, just because you can.

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Technical Review Startup Software Review Database 275

View from Seed

DECEMBER 6, 2018

As a seed stage VC, I have a unique privilege of confidentially spending time with a number of entrepreneurs throughout their company formation and initial product development process. And it’s amazed me how many times I’ve seen two or more entirely separate groups of founders?—?without

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The Startup Magazine

AUGUST 11, 2023

It is necessary to cover the early stages of product development, thorough market research, and other processes during the initial step. Founders often prefer to approach syndicates ahead of an angel network due to the speed with which they might receive funding. The earliest investors in a business are usually syndication.

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Seed Stage Technical Review Early Stage Due Diligence 126

View from Seed

MARCH 24, 2021

” Below are our favorite pieces from the past few years, divided in to a few key categories: fundraising, company building, product development, industry trends, and the life of a VC. 7 Common Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make in VC Pitches and How to Fix Them “Different partners in a VC firm are different.

Seed Stage 177

Seed Stage Hiring IPO Analytics 177

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Jeff Katzenberg has a great track record – head of the studio at Paramount, chairman of Disney Studios, co-founder of DreamWorks and now chairman of NewTV. Most entrepreneurs today don’t remember the Dot-Com bubble of 1995 or the Dot-Com crash that followed in 2000. It has to find product-market fit before running out of cash.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

YoungUpstarts

MAY 3, 2017

by Bob La Loggia, founder and CEO of AppointmentPlus. Every entrepreneur knows this — at least in theory. From product development to market research, many startups are one-person operations in their early days. As an entrepreneur, you wear several hats, each requiring a different skill set. The result?

Technical Review 113

Technical Review Management Arizona Software Review 113

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 4, 2016

The good news is that everyone expects entrepreneurs to make mistakes, since founders explore uncharted territory. In fact, investors recognize that founders usually learn more from mistakes than from success, so a well-explained startup failure can improve their odds of funding the next time around. Hire slow and fire fast.

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Intellectual Property Startup Forecast Angel Investor 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 9, 2010 Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# theory of management At any given time, something like four percent of the US population is engaged in some form of new-company-creation. What motivates all these entrepreneurs? What do entrepreneurs look like?

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San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 17, 2018

by Felix Winstone, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Talkative. As a new entrepreneur or business owner, the most important thing you will do is hire talent. As a startup co-founder with a growing team, here are the recruiting tips I’ve learnt over the last couple of years. Not sales, product development, or fundraising.

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Cofounder Elevator Pitch Hiring Dividend 164

Mike Michalowicz

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

Small Business Association (SBA) and AARP announced they are teaming up to train entrepreneurs over the age of 50 who want to start a business. Old entrepreneurs are in fact the winners. She was one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time, and controlled billions of dollars. Old Entrepreneurs Rule. Us old(er) guys?

Entrepreneur 123

Entrepreneur SBA Architecture Washington 123

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

The entrepreneur who founded and grew the largest startup in the world to $10 billion in revenue and got fired is someone you have probably never heard of. If you’re following Tesla, you might be interested to know that Sloan wasn’t the founder of GM. The founder of what became General Motors was William (Billy) Durant.

Michigan 268

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 19, 2017

by Steve Owens, Founder and CTO of Finish Line Product Development Services. Instead of the “entrepreneur that knows what the market wants”, we move to the “entrepreneur that knows how to discover what the market wants”. Reducing product turn time. Extending the runway. The Lean Start-Up Environment.

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Product Development Lean Developer Product 153

Hearpreneur

FEBRUARY 14, 2018

We asked entrepreneurs and business owners what their side hustles are and here are the responses. #1- My background comes from owning my own photography business when I became an entrepreneur back in 2008. I love helping creative entrepreneurs get found online. They mainly sprout out of a simple idea or hobbies. y side hustle.

Entrepreneur 71

Entrepreneur Technical Review SEO New York City 71

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2022

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. That’s where I see too much entrepreneur burnout, growth plateaus, and founders being replaced, to their chagrin. Of course, not every entrepreneur wants to tackle this challenge. There is no free lunch.

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Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 368

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2015

That’s why I recommend that they find a co-founder who loves business challenges, including marketing and finance. Thus it’s a waste of time for most entrepreneurs to be looking for investors until they have a product and some customer revenue. Most founders bootstrap product development.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Intellectual Property Cofounder Bootstrapping 120

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 6, 2022

Steve is the CEO of Founders Space, one of the world’s leading startup accelerators with over 50 partners in 22 countries. Founders Space was ranked the #1 incubator for overseas startups by Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazines. 18:05] How does the Founder Space operate? [20:21] He's the CEO of founders space.

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San Francisco Technical Review Incubator Silicon Valley 97