Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 20, 2011

There are unknowns at every turn, leading product development, attracting customers, managing cash, and dealing with human resources and office politics. Make it clear that you intend to re-forecast your plan every three months, and communicate changes proudly to your team, rather than apologetically.

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Advisory Board Startup Forecast Early Stage 232

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 20, 2017

Besides the general focus on customer and product development, an entrepreneur should foresee the next moves that will serve to guide him on the right path.When an entrepreneur can forecast his next moves, even his/her employees become part of the moves the business makes. 7- Several forecasts. Photo Credit: Jaimyn Chang.

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Forecast Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur SEO 56

Growthink Blog

SEPTEMBER 13, 2017

And a boost toward a faster timeline and better probability of a business sale at an exciting price. Company Scenario #2: A company with a solid revenue base - say more than $5 million in sales - but competes in an industry not one of great, current interest to buyers / investors. A boost toward better financial results. Relationships.

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Harvest IP Software Review Forecast 48

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 10, 2021

When you put together a business plan, you have to spend time thinking about things like your target market , your sales, and marketing strategy , the problem you solve for your customers, and who your key competitors are. Beyond understanding your business strategy, investors will also want to understand your financial forecasts.

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Business Plan Forecast Balance Sheet Exit Strategy 138

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 12, 2010

There are unknowns at every turn, leading product development, attracting customers, managing cash, and dealing with human resources and office politics. Make it clear that you intend to re-forecast your plan every three months, and communicate changes proudly to your team, rather than apologetically.

Advisory Board 125

Advisory Board Startup Forecast Early Stage 125

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

These founders specify, design, and build a fully featured product using classic product development methods without ever leaving their building. Traditionally, engineering, sales, and marketing have all focused on the immovable launch date. Executing on a sales and marketing plan. Focusing on the launch date.

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Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 12, 2022

It has less focus on financial forecasting and a greater focus on the big picture. They’re a waste of time because they typically follow the same format as a traditional business plan, where you are asked to project sales, expenses, and cash flow 5 and 10 years into the future. Let’s be real. They’re just fantasy.

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Business Plan Lean Forecast Exit Strategy 83

YoungUpstarts

MAY 16, 2018

Years of working at an established company can payoff by teaching you the tradecraft of sales, managing a workforce and negotiating with suppliers. People in big companies see innovation through the lens of new product development. All this had to be in place before he tested his product in the market.

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Silicon Valley Forecast Venture Capital Business Plan 142

Up and Running

OCTOBER 10, 2018

She might benefit from developing a simple sales and expense forecast , maybe even a profit and loss , so she can plan how to use and develop her resources. One suggestion for getting started is to develop your plan in stages that meet your real business needs. Can you live without a sales and expense forecast?

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Startup Forecast Lean Balance Sheet 114

Up and Running

JANUARY 24, 2023

Payroll often makes up a large portion of a business’s expenses, so it’s important to spend some time working on this portion of your forecast. That’s OK and the exact reason why you should work on a personnel forecast. It’s OK for your personnel forecast to have a mix of teams and individuals.

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Forecast Cost Salary Employee 84

Spencer Fry

MAY 2, 2014

Anyone who works in product development will know that ten months is an eternity. Unfortunately, it’s just the nature of product development — and especially so when you’re working with part-time people —that deadlines are missed and work takes much longer than you expected. I’m glad I held out, though.

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Bootstrapping Revenue Forecast Product Development 57

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. In contrast, sales and marketing activities before first customer ship are adhoc, fuzzy, and don’t have measurable, concrete objectives. Freemium models have their own scorekeeping.)

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

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Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Small Business Force

SEPTEMBER 10, 2017

" A recent article in The Wall Street Journal noted that Lego, the Danish manufacturer of interlocking toys, would lay off 1400 workers after the first sales drop in more than 13 years. We were going to miss our forecast by 25%. . "We realized we weren’t going to make our numbers." But it was management’s plan.

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Small Business Leadership Salary Forecast 32

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 7, 2013

Painting the scenario of how things will evolve, Cort Isernhagen of IDC Insights forecasted at the recent Infocomm Technology Roadmap Symposium 2012 that the ICT landscape over the next 10 years needs to consider four macro trends supported by four key pillars of technology. What will the future of InfoComm Technology (ICT) be like?

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Technology Singapore Malaysia Indonesia 159

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 12, 2010

You can also use this space to keep track of innovators (R&D personnel) and rainmakers (sales & marketing personnel). Products: You obviously can’t create value without a viable product (or service) to sell. You should inventory your best accounts and prospects, as well as the status of any pending major sales.

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Intellectual Property .Net Valuation Distribution 223

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products. While it’s useful to be able to have a sales forecast and expense budget early on, it’s not something you need until you’ve validated your idea. This is the simplest version of your product minus the frills and frosting.

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Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

JANUARY 10, 2011

The VP of an operating division had run into trouble in product development; the product was late and getting later. The revenue plan had the new product baked into the numbers and it was clear that this division General Manager was going to crater his forecast (happens all the time, nothing new here.)

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Forecast Agile Revenue Founder 264

Up and Running

MARCH 24, 2021

Keeping track of this measurement and noting any positive or negative changes can help inform your return on investment for any marketing or sales campaigns. One of the best ways to start developing your market penetration strategy is using the Ansoff Matrix. Launch a new product or service.

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Software Review Marketing Campaign Forecast 146

Up and Running

MAY 22, 2013

In a consumer product category such as household cleaning products, the industry success rate is a dismal 15 percent to 20 percent according to a Bloomberg Businessweek interview with former Proctor & Gamble CEO, Alan “A.G.” Half the companies in our survey experience budget overruns in new-product development.

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Product Marketing Forecast B2B 75

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

1x hacker in charge of product/development. 1x hipster working with both product and growth. Aug-15: Head of Sales (growth team). Nov-15: Graphic Designer (growth/product). Nov-15: Graphic Designer (growth/product). Dec-15: Developer (product team). Apr-15: Head of Marketing (growth team).

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Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2012

Joe Dinucci, our VP of Sales, was hot on the trail of our next big order. He had just demo’d our product to his friend, the CFO of Autodesk. After seeing the demo, the CFO walked Joe over to the office of Autodesk’s VP of sales, and said to her, “I think this product might solve your sales reporting problem.”.

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Forecast Sales Matching Customer Development 290

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

A few of the detailed case studies include: Tech legend Bill Gross building an MVP in 1999 to test demand for online car sales, which grew into CarsDirect.com. PayPal, under the leadership of David Marcus and Bill Scott, re-defining and re-engineering itself by embracing Lean Startup to improve the product experience.

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Lean Entrepreneur Agile San Francisco 167

The Startup Magazine

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

Others in that cohort included Zviki Shimon (CFO), Yair Areli (senior VP of global sales), Nir Mandel (VP of product management), and Aviv Canaani (VP of marketing). The promotion signals the importance of product development for the company’s growth roadmap.

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Hiring Software Review Customer 143

Up and Running

JULY 3, 2014

We will consult with our banker to provide payment options on all export sales.”. “We Conducting an Export Marketing and Sales Analysis. Figure out sales strategies. Write a detailed product or service description. Map out the product life cycle. We will have fun in the export journey to success!”.

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Business Plan Widget France Global 74

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan realized that the traditional centralized management structures (like General Motors had in 1920) were poor fits for the management of GM’s already diverse product lines. 2) Provide corporate management with near real-time divisional sales reports and budgets that indicated when they deviated from plan.

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

Ben's Blog

OCTOBER 17, 2011

It’s a great alignment, because when you think about it, processes cover the import aspects of a business—product development process, sales process, financial planning process, etc. Tidemark enables companies to capture their process architecture and the related key performance indicators in software.

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Romania Architecture Analytics Cloud 78

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

Optimize product development and marketing process. Understand how to monetize a product based on actual user needs. It is a good way to justify market demand for a product and then get support from investors or partners. The practice of building a minimum viable product is a long-standing one on the tech market.

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San Francisco Audience SMS Demand 106

Up and Running

JULY 27, 2016

While you always want to focus on improving your product or service to help retain customers, there are a few things you can do to help reduce churn that aren’t related to product development and building out new features. See Also: A Complete Guide to Forecasting Sales for Your Monthly Subscription (SaaS) Business.

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Revenue Churn Rate Metrics Analytics 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 6, 2011

Most of our management tools, like planning and forecasting, require a long and stable operating history. Luckily, pre-orders (no matter how early) count as sales towards that first week's total. Amazon keeps a sales rank for the book, which has been bouncing around quite a bit.

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Lean Startup Metrics Private Equity 167

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 3, 2012

In 2012, analysts forecast the company will achieve nearly $1.5 Later joined by Jonathan Seelig, an MIT Sloan MBA student, the Akamai team raised an $8 million Series A based on the lab prototype in order to commercialize the product. This is the magic of what Akamai and other multi-product companies achieve as they scale.

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Distribution Lean Massachusetts Cofounder 49

Hearpreneur

SEPTEMBER 25, 2022

Besides the general focus on customer and product development, an entrepreneur should foresee the next moves that will serve to guide him on the right path. When an entrepreneur can forecast his next moves, even his/her employees become part of the moves the business makes. Thanks to Chris Jones, Upreports Infotech ! #24-

Forecast 125

Forecast Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur Technical Review 125

Tim Keane

JUNE 13, 2006

In other words, if you are forecasting 100 orders in the next quarter, at $10,000 each, I’d ask how many potential orders there are in the market, whether there is any existing competitive experience, and how you derived your timing. Do you have assumptions about how long it will take to achieve each order? What it will cost?

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Wisconsin Entrepreneur Startup Angel Investor 60

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Get 18 months or more of cash (runway) in the business against a conservative forecast. This can take the form of a traditional sales pipeline or a registration-activation-revenue chart. Act now, act with speed. Protect the vital core of the business.Use a scalpel to make strategic cuts. Use Google Apps.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Up and Running

OCTOBER 8, 2015

Instead, we built a product first (that’s expensive!) and then started hunting around for the right target market (that’s usually the cheap part of product development). Do it because it will improve your marketing and sales process. What Is a Market Forecast? We neglected to do our market research.

Marketing 60

Marketing Forecast CTO Hire Finder 60

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2010

The good news is this team found a business model, product/market fit and a repeatable sales model. What lies ahead, however, is a different set of challenges: finding the new set of mainstream customers on the other side of the chasm and managing the sales growth curve.

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Agile Development Team Review Leadership Merger 120

BeyondVC

JANUARY 2, 2006

All too often we are enamored with how cool or sexy a technology is, invest lots of dollars to create that killer product, and sometimes forget that it is all about the people. As I look to the new year, it is important to have an option forecast just like any financial forecast.

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Management Equity Forecast Salary 60