Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

Instead of a Sales team and organized to sell with a consistent and successful sales roadmap generating revenue, it is a disorganized and unhappy organization burning lots of cash. Because the company based its headcount and expenses on the expectation that the Sales organization will bring in revenue according to plan. innovation.

Customer Development 232

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 232

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

The Founder’s New Insight Smart founders are never satisfied with simply executing their current business model, they are constantly observing, orienting and deciding whether their current business model can be made better. But the purpose of this post is what happens when a founder (or large company CEO) finds a better business model.

Customer 216

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 216

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

Was the sales revenue model based on actually testing the hypotheses outside the building? No newly hired sales and marketing exec is going to tell a founder, “Hey my prior experience and assumptions may not actually be relevant to this new startup.” Where exactly did the assumptions in our startup business plan come from?”

Customer Development 244

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 244

The Equity Kicker

MAY 9, 2016

The bit I liked the most described the role of Stanford in getting Silicon Valley going in the late 1950s. Inspire entrepreneurialism – highlight the positive effects of startups and make ‘founder’ a popular career choice. We focus on ecommerce and marketplaces.

Silicon Valley 60

Silicon Valley Venture Capital eCommerce Startup 60

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 1, 2023

By Daniel Sokolovksy, Co-Founder and CEO, WARP and Troy Lester, Co-Founder and CRO, WARP The dissolution of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was more than just a bank collapse, it was a reality check for both startups and the VCs that fund them. We’re hitting record revenue months, weeks, and margins. That includes us.

Early Stage 115

Early Stage Los Angeles Silicon Valley Cofounder 115

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 3, 2011

In How To Defend Your Dream Against All Odds , Alex and I explore the company's journey to $200 Million in revenue, while their VCs wrote them off. Zoho is already over $100 million in revenue and is seeing tremendous traction. In that case, the verticals of choice could be manufacturing, wholesale and retail.

North Carolina 116

North Carolina San Diego Entrepreneur Balance Sheet 116

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 131

Transformify

APRIL 21, 2017

I spoke with Toptal Co-founder and CEO Taso Du Val to find out more about how Toptal got started and his predictions for the future of the talent economy. We really wanted to build a network of top tier talent, similar to the caliber of talent that’s working in-house at top Silicon Valley tech companies.

Technical Review 40

Technical Review Silicon Valley Software Review Cofounder 40

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 23, 2011

I asked Harshil to focus his entire product and go-to-market strategy on the college-bound age 18 market and develop his assessment module, vertical search engine for colleges and trust network to address the needs of that market and that market alone. Age 18 is worried about college and that in itself is a sizable market.

Spain 115

Spain Entrepreneur India San Francisco 115

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 27, 2011

Taariq Lewis, the founder of Voluble, is a 1M/1M premium entrepreneur. However, the mistake Said has made is to go "spray and pray" and build numerous different verticals without really fleshing out the business strategy for any of them. She is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant. PTA Portals.

Entrepreneur 116

Entrepreneur San Francisco Technical Review New Jersey 116

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. would look in each of the verticals. Business and Revenue Model – How do we organize to make money? Marketing – How do you create end user demand?

Vertical 125

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year. Creating a vertically oriented regional ecosystem is a pretty amazing accomplishment for any country or industry. With 317 million people the U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Luckily (or maybe because we were in Silicon Valley where there was a domain expert for everything) there was a very smart consultant in the retail computer space, Seymour Merrin, who preached about the importance of packaging. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.)

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2011

John already has a couple of customers, and needs about 50 customers to get to $1M in annual revenue. In fact, in the discussion on JuJu brands is yet another validation of the verticalization and niche-ization of the Internet. So, effectively, at the cost of one full-time sales rep, they can access coverage in four different regions.

Vertical 115

Vertical Web San Francisco Entrepreneur 115

Austin Startup

DECEMBER 20, 2020

the Connectors, Angels, Venture Capitalists, Founders, Professors, Hackers, Press… and the Legends. Find the Connectors , the Angels , the Venture Capitalists , the Founders , the Professors , the Hackers , and the Legends you need to meet and get some hints about the best ways to meet them. Here is your COVID-friendly cheat sheet.

Austin 110

Austin Texas Cofounder Los Angeles 110

Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

Corner Cases and Consensus are For Large Companies Carefully considering each and every possible outcome before you proceed with a decision is something large companies with large revenues, shareholders and employees need to do. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 201

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 201

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan put in place GM’s management accounting system (borrowed from DuPont) that for the first time allowed the company to: 1) produce an annual operating forecast that compared each division’s forecast (revenue, costs, capital requirements and return on investment) with the company’s financial goals. What happened to him? Who was he?

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 179

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Yet we used the product development model not only to manage product development, but as a road map for finding customers and to time our marketing launch and sales revenue plan. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 269

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

Sales people cost money, and when they’re not bringing in revenue, their wandering in the woods is time consuming, cash-draining and demoralizing. The Customer Development process says preserve your cash by not hiring anyone in sales and marketing until the founders turn hypotheses into facts and you have found product/market fit.

Lean 260

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 260

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

As you stated, the VCs only want to hear about product development and, I would add, revenue models. Reply founders, beware « Adisababa’s Weblog , on January 20, 2010 at 10:05 am Said: [.] great book on a related matter is 4 steps to the epiphany, by steve blank, founder of… E.piphany, once a big [.]

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital California 133

ReadWriteStart

MAY 6, 2011

An incubatee with Indian Angel Network, Anirudh Motwani from New Delhi, India, discussed IndiaCollegeSearch , a vertical search engine to address the problem of finding detailed information about various colleges and institutions in India. IndiaCollegeSearch. And you can sign up for the 1M/1M premium program here.

India 115

India Vertical Entrepreneur Connecticut 115

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

We Changed Our Mind In 1966, 10 years after Hewlett’s memo, Hewlett Packard’s revenue and headcount had grown ten fold; $200 million and 11,000 employees – all from test and measurement equipment. At HP the founders were still at the company and still running the business.

Silicon Valley 186

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 186

Hippoland

JULY 24, 2016

Your startup’s valuation is not based on a proforma of your revenue. This is really key to understand, because so many founders wonder, “Why was that company over there who has 0 revenue able to raise their round at a $10m cap convertible note? Supply - amount of your round and Demand - investor demand.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Valuation Vertical Demand 48

ReadWriteStart

MAY 12, 2011

Today, he has over a thousand, and he has chosen to focus on the realtor vertical. Sramana Mitra is the founder of the One Million by One Million (1M/1M) initiative, an educational, business development and incubation program that aims to help one million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Entrepreneur Silicon Valley India 125

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Most publishers are still caught up in an outdated “vision vs. metrics&# argument, which is already obsolete here in Silicon Valley. What is the right revenue model? Consider this question: what percentage of all books that are purchased does the buyer actually finish reading cover-to-cover? Thanks again for a great post.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 10, 2011

Edward Varghese from New Delhi, India, pitched i-Globify , an outsourcing service catering to the niche travel vertical, focusing on building Web 3.0 I liked his approach to building an outsourcing solution: focusing on a niche and building in-depth skills and credibility within that vertical.

India 116

India Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Vertical 116

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 20, 2011

Kelly's business has already done about $150,000 in revenue in 2010, which tells me that she has successfully validated at least some of her assumptions. He has run some experiments within the entrepreneurship training vertical, and has seen success when he has brought on known thought leaders.

Entrepreneur 114

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Vertical Massachusetts 114

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

The first step in Customer Development was Customer Discovery ; extracting hypotheses from the business plan and getting the founders out of the building to test the hypotheses in front of customers. Good if you have your own money, better if the cash comes from investors, but best if it’s revenues from customers.

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 8, 2011

Some vertical ad networks have gone after this opportunity, Glam Media being one of the most successful of the lot. There are some excellent comments, especially observations made by Vikrant Mathur, founder of iFood.tv. She is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant. It's just not worth it.

Greece 116

Greece Entrepreneur India Silicon Valley 116

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

No changes were made to the customer journey, and it had nothing to do with revenue lift. It isn’t about finding quick hacks to boost short-term revenue. Growth hacking is a term that emerged from the Silicon Valley tech community and the lean startup methodology. Yet, this was a successful growth marketing campaign.

Framework 102

Framework Marketing Acquisition Retention 102

Austin Startup

AUGUST 7, 2017

More connections means more business, more investors, more revenue, and more growth. Partnerships with innovative global companies in major industry verticals provide unique opportunities for customer validation, pilot programs and strategic investment. It’s not Silicon Valley.

Texas 97

Texas San Antonio Houston Dallas 97

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

Page views drive his ad revenue, which is probably CPM based. He spoke at the Founder Institute last week, and his advice was to not hire a PR agency until there were so many inbound requests that you can’t handle them yourself. He prefers to interact directly with the founders of a startup. Order Here. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 210

Reid Hoffman

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

It might cater to new customers, it might solve a different need, or it might involve a different revenue model. For example, if you think you have a great idea for a business, a standard Silicon Valley startup technique is to create a faux website and run some Facebook or Google ads to see whether or not the concept appeals to the market.

Startup 36

Startup Silicon Valley Business Model Mobile 36

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 11, 2011

One theme seems to come up over and again, especially from geographies outside Silicon Valley: lack of a reliable pipeline of deals. We spent considerable time exploring ways to verticalize the app and creating an ad-supported business model instead, which would also broaden his exit options considerably. About Sramana Mitra.

Silicon Valley 105

Silicon Valley Columbus Ohio Incubator 105

Cracking the Code

MARCH 28, 2022

While the average forward revenue multiple has declined slightly since its February 2020 peak (19x), it’s still higher today than last year at 17x vs 15.8x The firm was founded more than 35 years ago and the team quickly realised that innovation was not confined to Silicon Valley. The Index added another $0.9T in Sept 2020.

Global 62

Global Europe Software Review 62

www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

spent $20 million to get back to the same revenue that I had when I was CEO. created a vastly higher cost structure; I had 80 people mostly on base salaries under $100,000 and was bringing in revenue at the rate of $20 million annually. .”). During this year they. deprecated the old feature-complete product (ACS 3.4)

Software Review 79

Software Review Startup Technical Review Vesting 79

Hearpreneur

AUGUST 19, 2015

We are unbelievably lucky to be here right now, with a team of über-talented people from the best and brightest Silicon Valley companies, at a moment when what a book should be is morphing before our very eyes. I am founder on an unconventional online gallery, The Art and Craft Gallery. That’s massive.

Entrepreneur 48

Entrepreneur Australia Technical Review Community 48