Berkonomics

OCTOBER 5, 2023

Since this number is budgeted and pre-authorized, managers tend to focus upon other things such as sales, marketing and product development issues. Now: my story of investor-product-market misfit: I have one story that remains as vivid in my mind as when it happened several years ago. The art of good management.

Silicon Valley 118

Silicon Valley Burn Rate Angel Investor Down Round 118

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

When Sloan arrived at GM in 1920 he realized that the traditional centralized management structures organized by function (sales, manufacturing, distribution, and marketing) were a poor fit for managing GM’s diverse product lines. If you’re following Tesla, you might be interested to know that Sloan wasn’t the founder of GM.

Michigan 268

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

Quick summary: Be careful not to have too many co-founders. I don’t think VCs care as much about co-founders & economics as people think. Without strong PMs you build crappy products that nobody needs or that real people can’t use. Don’t hire “relationship management” sales people too early.

Cofounder 388

Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 388

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Waiting until you have something to sell before bringing on a sales and operations staff. Getting a sales contract before manufacturing inventory. For example, a software development startup raising $250,000 from angel investors better be able to operate on $25,000 per month. Social media is not rocket science.

Burn Rate 262

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Salary 262

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 10, 2016

by Nick Candito, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Progressly. Time and time again, there’s one critical component that hampers productivity and efficiency: We are wired to work within the confines of organizational silos. Contact centers are closely tied with marketing, sales, shipping and even product development.

Cofounder 174

Cofounder Technical Review Operations Employee 174

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

You can’t be an effective founder or in the C-suite of a startup if you don’t hold any. Here’s how I learned why they were critical to successful customer development. And he proceeded to lay out a fairly complex and innovative sales and marketing strategy for our next 18 months. What do you think?”

Business Model 305

Business Model Product Development Early Stage Customer Development 305

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 7, 2017

Two conditions that do matter to your startup’s out-year viability are the cost and length of its product development cycle. Startup founders counting the days until break-even or actively seeking outside capital must focus on streamlining their development cycles. Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Cost 100

Cost Developer Small Business Administration Marketing 100

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

Sell to few”: Traditional enterprise sales. Selling into this market requires the traditional enterprise sales approach, comprised of a large ‘boots on the ground’ field sales team that works with key decision makers (e.g. These are long sales cycles, often with multiple departments and stakeholders involved.

Fractional CTO 154

Fractional CTO Software Review Viral Sales Cycle 154

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Waiting until you have something to sell before bringing on a sales and operations staff. Getting a sales contract before manufacturing inventory. For example, a software development startup raising $250,000 from angel investors better be able to operate on $25,000 per month. Social media is not rocket science.

Burn Rate 120

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 120

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 30, 2021

A lot of work goes into starting a business, developing and launching products, and running the day-to-day operations, so marketing often gets put on the back burner. Create a spreadsheet: Include all your current and anticipated operational costs, like professional fees, content outsourcing, sales, tax, and web hosting.

Developer 159

Developer Marketing Social Media Startup 159

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2022

That’s where I see too much entrepreneur burnout, growth plateaus, and founders being replaced, to their chagrin. According to one study a decade ago, only 45% of founders plan to exit after stage one, and my guess is that less than half the remainder survive the next stage in their own company. Optimize the total customer experience.

Mezzanine 368

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 368

YoungUpstarts

MAY 23, 2018

Most startups do not fail because they had a bad idea that could not find a market, but rather because the founders and startup teams got overwhelmed or were missing key ingredients to success. Many founders or startup teams gravitate toward sales or design. Often, founders have an entrepreneurial mindset.

Due Diligence 133

Due Diligence Startup Finance Leadership 133

Small Business Force

AUGUST 27, 2017

In fact, three key elements have to be in sync for your sales to succeed – the right product, the right sales team, and the right sales process. "I They were selling a new product, in a relatively new space, with little training. Not even close. "I coached good; They played bad."

Sales 30

Sales Sales Cycle Product Technical Review 30

YoungUpstarts

MAY 3, 2017

by Bob La Loggia, founder and CEO of AppointmentPlus. From product development to market research, many startups are one-person operations in their early days. Bob La Loggia is the founder and CEO of AppointmentPlus , a fast-growing SaaS business based in Scottsdale, Arizona. The result?

Technical Review 113

Technical Review Management Arizona Software Review 113

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

RBI normally requires founders to pay back their investors with a fixed percentage of revenue until they have finished providing the investor with a fixed return on capital, which they agree upon in advance. For background, see Revenue-Based Investing: A New Option for Founders who Care About Control. Alternative Capital. “

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Insufficient capital, over investment, and low sales are just some of the reasons leading to this sobering statistic. Enter “ The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses “, a New York Times bestseller by founder of IMVU (creator of 3D avatars) Eric Ries.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

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. Doing Reference Checks on VCs “Try to speak to at least one founder that the investor has worked with in a failed investment.

Seed Stage 177

Seed Stage Hiring IPO Analytics 177

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.

San Francisco 97

San Francisco Technical Review Incubator Silicon Valley 97

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

There’s more to your business’s success than how great your product is. There is a myth among first time tech founders that product is everything. Many lack intuitive financial sense that can help them build a great company once they achieve product-market fit. Asset valuation. By Venkat Ramasamy, COO, FileCloud.

Founder 117

Founder Valuation Dividend Startup 117

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 30, 2021

A lot of work goes into starting a business, developing and launching products, and running the day-to-day operations, so marketing often gets put on the back burner. Create a spreadsheet: Include all your current and anticipated operational costs, like professional fees, content outsourcing, sales, tax, and web hosting.

Developer 78

Developer Marketing Social Media Startup 78

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? What the winners start with is the realization that in a world of continuous disruption, they have only a few years to develop new capabilities or be pushed over the brink. Is it that some CEOs are better than others? Are their people smarter?

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

He has grown our US operations from 1 employee (him) to a global organization of 75 employees that will finish the year with 8-digit revenues (90+% recurring) and more than 350% year-over-year growth. It consists of a highly intelligent and opinionated founder – Nick Halstead. What Rob wrote in his post is right.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

View from Seed

AUGUST 10, 2021

We first invested in co-founders Ben Forgan & Pat Wilbur in early 2015, when NextView led a $1.3M Here in 2021 startups operate in a more distributed fashion earlier in their lifecycle, a trend which preceded COVID but certainly was accelerated by the remote work environment for knowledge workers brought on by the pandemic.

Chicago 177

Chicago Cofounder Miami B2B 177

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 6, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan On August 20, Eric will sit down with developer and Hut8Labs co-founder Dan Milstein for a webcast you can join to discuss “Getting Engineers Into the Lean Startup Cycle.” It’s also for founders who want to think about how engineering and the rest of the business team can realign around a shared set of goals.

Lean 167

Lean Engineer Startup Cofounder 167

YoungUpstarts

JULY 2, 2020

by Boris Pfeiffer , CEO and Founder of Riddle. Many companies, in the face of declining sales, are becoming more aggressive in their marketing strategies. Empathize with your customers and understand that pushy sales pitches won’t work – worse, you could come across as uncaring and greedy. corporations.

Marketing 262

Marketing Metrics Channel Differentiation 262

View from Seed

AUGUST 10, 2021

We first invested in co-founders Ben Forgan & Pat Wilbur in early 2015, when NextView led a $1.3M Here in 2021 startups operate in a more distributed fashion earlier in their lifecycle, a trend which preceded COVID but certainly was accelerated by the remote work environment for knowledge workers brought on by the pandemic.

Chicago 156

Chicago Cofounder Miami B2B 156

Berkonomics

AUGUST 10, 2017

Since this number is budgeted and pre-authorized, managers tend to focus upon other things such as sales, marketing and product development issues. Not long after, the company was sold in a “fire sale” amounting to slightly less than the debt on the books. All investors, including the VC firm, lost everything.

Silicon Valley 97

Silicon Valley Burn Rate Angel Investor Down Round 97

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. So their management teams were insisting that they OEM (buy from someone else) these products.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

The product or website (be it software, e-commerce, or a service) might be awesome , but if it puts itself in front of the wrong market, or packages itself so the right market can’t figure out why it’s awesome, the startup will fail. So What is Customer Development? The Problem With Traditional Product Development.

Customer Development 126

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 126

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2019

That’s where I see too much entrepreneur burnout, growth plateaus, and founders being replaced, to their chagrin. According to one study a while back, only 45% of founders plan to exit after stage one, and my guess is that less than half the remainder survive the next stage in their own company. Optimize the total customer experience.

Mezzanine 244

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 244

View from Seed

AUGUST 10, 2021

We first invested in co-founders Ben Forgan & Pat Wilbur in early 2015, when NextView led a $1.3M Here in 2021 startups operate in a more distributed fashion earlier in their lifecycle, a trend which preceded COVID but certainly was accelerated by the remote work environment for knowledge workers brought on by the pandemic.

Chicago 136

Chicago Cofounder Miami B2B 136

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 18, 2014

That’s why the human learning machine prefers to operate in a low gear — on autopilot — as much as possible: It’s a conservation thing. Well, the big problem is that business has taken the “laziness model” — aka operational excellence — as far as it can go. Although the brain comprises only about 2.5

Employee 162

Employee Operations Global Dilution 162

Feld Thoughts

MAY 5, 2011

This approach worked much better, but by this point one of the co-founders was frustrated with the customer dynamics (all business facing) and decided to leave to start a new consumer-facing business (he left on good terms, we are still good friends, and he’s much happier today).

CTO Hire 131

CTO Hire Cofounder Architecture Product Development 131

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 26, 2011

And so things operate on a CYA basis. And just as my gut feel about the likely success of startups is often determined by looking at their velocity of product development and market progress of their product, so too is recruiting a factor in my assessment. Good enough isn’t. That doesn’t work in a startup.

Hiring 335

Hiring Technical Review Startup Framework 335

Small Business Force

AUGUST 31, 2013

Picking a partner or co-founder isn't like finding a new friend. So, how do you avoid finding yourself in a similar situation somewhere down the road between you and your partner/co-founder? This forces a formal communication, beyond what you have on a daily basis about the business operations, Have a Way Out!

Cofounder 40

Cofounder Partner Technical Review Founder 40

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 29, 2013

For example, when your company adds ano ther blade to its disposal razors , the product’s technical development, marketing and sales will follow relatively predictable paths. But that’s not to say that every established company developing personal grooming products is operating risk-free. in ten years?

Lean 165

Lean Technical Review Startup Software Review 165

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. In fact, this company hasn’t shipped any new products in months.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167