Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2020

Deferred payments start with stretching the payables period but, more importantly, include giving employee equity in lieu of a higher salaries and negotiating vendor deferred payments out of future revenues. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year.

Burn Rate 310

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Salary Angel Investor 310

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 28, 2020

But for founders who do their homework, the cost of entry is lower and the opportunity is higher than ever. Excellent detailed resources are everywhere, including a classic book, “ The Startup Checklist ,” by serial entrepreneur and founder of the New York Angels, David S. Building a minimum viable product, with customer validation.

Intellectual Property 404

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Groups Social Media 404

ConversionXL

JANUARY 18, 2022

To succeed in today’s crowded market, you need to harmonize product marketing and brand marketing. In this article, you’ll learn the difference between brand marketing and product marketing, and how to balance both to stand out above the crowd. Brand vs product marketing: Friends or foe? They rely on each other for success.

Marketing 110

Marketing Product Audience Equity 110

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 10, 2020

by Zain Jaffer, serial entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of Zain Ventures. When it occurs, the consequences can be swift and devastating, wreaking potential havoc on a once steady stream of revenue. sales to product development), the problems will continue to exist. Among the list: the loss of a major client.

Customer 347

Customer Development Team Review Advisory Board Private Equity 347

ConversionXL

JUNE 25, 2021

An effective product launch strategy helps you generate awareness, build intrigue, and validate your product positioning. The best product launches take into account the product lifecycle—understanding where it fits into the bigger picture, and how to transition through each phase. But it’s not a linear journey.

Product 96

Product Social Media Audience Software Review 96

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. There is an art to efficient management of a process, whether that is the process of bringing a product to market from R&D to production or developing a new product’s launch program.

Silicon Valley 118

Silicon Valley Burn Rate Angel Investor Down Round 118

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 29, 2018

Deferred payments start with stretching the payables period but, more importantly, include giving employee equity in lieu of a higher salaries and negotiating vendor deferred payments out of future revenues. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year.

Burn Rate 223

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 223

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

by Steve Owens, Founder and CTO of Finish Line Product Development Services. Poor Product – 17%. Product Mis-Timed – 13%. Rule #2: Revenue is your first priority. There is no product, processes or history to guide decisions. Rule #2: Revenue is your first priority.

Startup 133

Startup Revenue Product Development Distribution 133

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,

Liquidity Event 120

Liquidity Event Founder Liquidation Preference Venture Capital 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. ” Fire, Ready, Aim.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

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. The criteria change after a company reaches the growth stage when it is deemed to have attained product market fit. After that, the money is used to maintain the company’s expansion.

Seed Stage 126

Seed Stage Technical Review Early Stage Due Diligence 126

K9 Ventures

AUGUST 13, 2010

SneakerLabs’ first product was a Java-based chat server and client. Since I had good connections with the University, we got a lot of feedback on how the product could be improved to meet their needs. We listened to their feedback and started adding features to the product accordingly. The product worked. Not so fast.

Revenue 72

Revenue Developer Java Customer Development 72

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 17, 2018

by Felix Winstone, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Talkative. As a startup co-founder with a growing team, here are the recruiting tips I’ve learnt over the last couple of years. Robert Metcalfe, co-founder and CEO of 3Com, says you need to think about it as “recruiting, not hiring”. Hiring = Sales. Be Specific.

Cofounder 164

Cofounder Elevator Pitch Hiring Dividend 164

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Deferred payments start with stretching the payables period but, more importantly, include giving employee equity in lieu of a higher salaries and negotiating vendor deferred payments out of future revenues. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year.

Burn Rate 262

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Salary 262

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

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In his tenure as CEO of DataSift we have never missed a monthly revenue figure. 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. In his spare time he raised nearly $30 million.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 18, 2019

by Anish Sebastian, Co-Founder of Babyscripts. The article is authored by Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook. The article is authored by Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook. As the CEO of BabyScripts, Anish has focused his efforts on product and software development, as well as research validation of their product.

Security 127

Security Cofounder Social Media Affiliate 127

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 14, 2015

It really takes a complementary pair of founders to improve the odds. Consider the original founders of Apple and Microsoft as examples. Since both skills are required in equal amounts for success, the single founder failure rate today is reported to far exceed 50 percent. If we design a great product, investors will find us."

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Startup Angel Investor Social Media 120

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. Finally, GM created the notion of perpetual demand within brands by continually obsoleting their own products with new models rolled out every year. What happened to him?

Michigan 268

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

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. Be ready when it counts.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

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. Longer, costlier cycles drain cash on hand while delaying the onset of crucial revenue streams. Focus on Your Minimum Viable Product. A minimum viable product is market-ready, not a prototype.

Cost 100

Cost Developer Small Business Administration Marketing 100

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

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

And to today, when its major product is simply innovation. When the product and channel are bits, adoption by 10’s and 100’s of millions and even billions of users can happen in years versus decades. The second thing that’s changed is that we’re now Compressing the Product Development Cycle.

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Deferred payments start with stretching the payables period but, more importantly, include giving employee equity in lieu of a higher salaries and negotiating vendor deferred payments out of future revenues. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year.

Burn Rate 120

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 120

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

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

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.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Startup Forecast Angel Investor 120

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. Growth is more than simply repackaging existing products, and adding bells and whistles or slick incentives.

Mezzanine 368

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 368

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

Between January 2015 and January 2016, we grew our platform Slidebean from $1K to $20K in monthly recurring revenue. Getting the first tracks of revenue is one of the toughest processes of building a startup. 1x hacker in charge of product/development. 1x hipster working with both product and growth.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

So you’ve started a business: you’ve made a great product, achieved product-market fit and have an extraordinary road map laid out. But to build a scalable business you need more than just product-market fit. There’s more to your business’s success than how great your product is. Asset valuation.

Founder 118

Founder Valuation Dividend Startup 118

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

Now that Dick and Jane have added a CTO to SayAhh’s founding team, they’ve turned their full attention to working on their product. Since SayAhh is in the pre-launch development stage, the company doesn’t have any revenue yet. This results in a gross margin of $0, where gross margin is revenue – cost of goods sold.

Balance Sheet 125

Balance Sheet Fractional CTO Burn Rate Salary 125

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

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

If you have a technical background and you are focused on product development, consider a co-founder with a sales and marketing background that can focus on selling your world class product. Rather, give titles such as VP of Engineering, Product/Technology, Sales, Marketing, Finance, etc. Early Stage.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2016

But for founders who do their homework, the cost of entry is lower and the opportunity is higher than ever. Excellent detailed resources are everywhere, including a new book, “ The Startup Checklist ,” by serial entrepreneur and founder of the New York Angels, David S. Building a minimum viable product, with customer validation.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Groups Social Media 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

He turned his PhD thesis into a killer product, got it funded and now was CEO of a company of 30. It was great to watch him embrace the spirit and practice of customer development. What I saw reminded me of some of the best and worst things I did as a founder. We’re building the wrong product!” A Pivot a Week.

Founder 316

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 316

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

I am always surprised when critics complain that the Lean Startup’s Build, Measure, Learn approach is nothing more than “throwing incomplete products out of the building to see if they work.”. Back then, an entrepreneur used a serial product development process that proceeded step-by-step with little if any customer feedback.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 1, 2020

Earlier this year, I was on a panel with Guy Podjarny, Snyk’s founder, at SaaStock Remote to discuss how the team’s community-driven freemium approach led to the company’s stellar growth. How can a product-led sales motion help in the current environment, and how important is a freemium model to drive product-led growth?

Early Stage 62

Early Stage Open Source Development Team Review Security 62