Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 25, 2017

Every time I challenge a business plan with little or no budget for marketing, I get the answer that they will be using “viral” marketing, which costs nothing. The founder explains that the product is so “buzz-worthy” that usage will spread rapidly through word-of-mouth only, meaning people loving it and recommending it to their friends.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 11, 2010

Ask a technical founder about his startup, and he'll proudly describe his stunning software — simple, compelling, useful, fun. Four uncomfortable seconds later, a smile breaks across the founder's face. We're putting a 'Retweet' button inside the product to encourage viral growth.".

Software Review 261

Software Review Technical Review Viral Software Developers 261

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2018

My friend Michael Broukhim, founder & co-CEO of FabFitFun and I recently had a catch-up meeting for 3-miles on the Santa Monica “Bird Trail” No company has ever elicited so many questions by friends, colleagues, entrepreneurs, fellow VCs and journalists as has Bird, the company that pioneered the electronic scooter as a service market.

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San Francisco Valuation Technical Review Los Angeles 256

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

Great marketing is required to generate revenue and grow every business, especially new businesses which have no brand recognition nor loyal customer base. Usually these are described as revenue growth drivers, as outlined in a new book, “ The Revenue Accelerator: The 21 Boosters to Launch Your Startup ,” by Dr. Allan Colman.

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Marketing Revenue Matching Viral 333

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 12, 2023

But the insights I see from her book and elsewhere are equally applicable to startup founders of all ages, and businesses of all ages. Viral marketing campaigns to lure new customers will cost you big money. Look for operations that are hogging resources without generating significant revenue. Look for hidden sources of revenue.

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Viral Revenue Distribution Campaign 232

Hunter Walker

FEBRUARY 20, 2024

Here the focus is on Pink Stuff, a British cleaning paste, which was #CleanTok mainstreamed to a quadrupling of revenue ($125m annually) and distribution to 55 countries. As Jared notes, To hedge against this predictable outcome, more founders should adopt longer vesting cycles for themselves and the earliest (big equity) employees.

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Founder Vesting Vesting Cap Table Founder 59

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 27, 2021

Many founders find that building the web site forced them to commit on the product design, set final pricing, define ordering and delivery procedures, and actually schedule and staff the marketing events that they had in mind. Viral marketing needs a website. But word-of-mouth and viral marketing doesn’t work without a web site.

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Web Viral Naming Internet 349

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 21, 2020

But the insights I see from her book and elsewhere are equally applicable to startup founders of all ages, and businesses of all ages. Viral marketing campaigns to lure new customers will cost you big money. Look for operations that are hogging resources without generating significant revenue. Look for hidden sources of revenue.

Viral 430

Viral Revenue Cloud Distribution 430

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

GrowthHackers founder and former Head of Growth at Dropbox, Sean Ellis , coined the term: “A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth. In his course on Growth Mindset (part of CXL’s Growth Marketing Minidegree ), WeTheFuture.org founder John McBride describes three key components of a successful growth marketer: 1.

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Retention Marketing Acquisition Channel 113

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 26, 2019

Founders almost never have a real strategy. Founders explain failures with things like “our two main competitors did [thing] to us” or “customers didn’t understand [our point of view].” The 10,000th biggest company in the world is a very successful company, as is the two-person company where the founders each take home $300k/year.

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Restful Founder Revenue Acquisition 202

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.

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Intellectual Property Startup Forecast Angel Investor 120

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 27, 2016

Similarly, mentioning viral marketing without specifics won’t assure fundability. Even social entrepreneurs need milestones, quantifiable results, and revenue to sustain their value. Some founders are so passionate about their solution that they forget to lead with an explanation of the customer value equation.

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Technical Review Intellectual Property Due Diligence Angel Investor 134

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

Investors and founders alike have been obsessed about “growth at all costs,” just as a virus colony grows without care to its effect on its host cells or whether the colony’s growth ends up destroying the host body completely, taking the colony down with it in a viral version of Lord of the Flies. This is growth driven by values.

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Technical Review Viral Metrics Salary 120

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2021

Yet there are big challenges to hyperlocal, at least for consumer-focused hyperlocal startups, according to Sean Barkulis, Founder of UPlanMe, whose initial consumer-focused business model was an early casualty, writing in Street Fight : Every site requires real curated local content to engage users.

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Finder Startup Curation Seattle 361

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. Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): The potential revenue that you’ll be receiving from a given user.

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Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 20, 2023

These founders all seem to be pushing their technology, rather than highlighting their solution to a painful need. Nice to have does not motivate a revenue stream. This means more time and money for viral marketing, product iterations, and promotions. I say again, customers buy solutions, not technology.

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Customer Sales Cycle Social Media Viral 276

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 7, 2023

Funding for founder salaries at this stage is a red flag. These days, even viral marketing requires real money, for events and promotions. Professional investors always look for a proven business model and an existing revenue stream to minimize the risk. Have backup charts for investors wanting more detail.

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Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 228

Hearpreneur

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

Airbnb founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia had difficulty securing funding, so they launched a mini project to build some funds and catch investors' attention. Using this capital , the founders launched and enjoyed exponential growth in their first year, with 10K users and thousands of listings. Photo Credit: Jack Underwood.

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Haystack

FEBRUARY 1, 2019

For Spotify’s core business, which charges consumer subscriptions for the ability to have unlimited mobile access to an enormous music library, music as the audio source converts high engagement minutes into recurring revenue via subscriptions. market by launching in connection with Facebook viral invites? Remember Stitcher?

Acquisition 134

Acquisition Media Audio Technical Review 134

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Founded in November 2007 in New York City by Alexis Maybank and Kevin Ryan (co-founder of DoubleClick); CEO is Susan Lyne (ex-CEO Marta Stewart Living Omnimedia) Revenue estimates: $50mm in 2008; $170mm in 2009 (versus budget of $150mm); $450mm forecasted for 2010. Note that these are “gross” revenue numbers. Employees: 20.

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Partner New York City Cofounder Syndicate 240

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 25, 2007

Part of the discussion around this is the talk about the founder who only got $83M (as compared to $3xxM for the other founders) who bailed out early and choose to go back to school. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO? The poor guy. What a bad $200M decision.

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Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

The Next Web

DECEMBER 12, 2013

But now that we’ve entered a mobile, social era, commerce companies have to find engaging ways to keep customers involved and coming back to get the most bang for their buck,” says Manish Chandra , founder and CEO of Poshmark. “So So many commerce startups get it wrong – focusing on customers before community.”.

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Mobile Silicon Valley Viral Technical Review 136

ConversionXL

APRIL 4, 2017

Virality and Referral. Virality is the key lever of many of the most famous growth examples: Dropbox, Uber, Facebook, Hotmail. If, for every customer you acquire, you can acquire 1-10 more with viral loops , you can spend a lot more on acquiring that first customer, right? Predictable Revenue. Unbounce blog.

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Channel Marketing Viral SEO 118

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 12, 2020

Funding for founder salaries at this stage is a red flag. These days, even viral marketing requires real money, for events and promotions. Professional investors always look for a proven business model and an existing revenue stream to minimize the risk. Have backup charts for investors wanting more detail.

Elevator Pitch 336

Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 336

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. But its not really viral growth, even when its exponential.

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San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

In it, I got asked a question I often hear: “What if we have a web-based business that doesn’t have revenue or paying customers? And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” They’re putting money into web services/business – most without early revenue. End of theory.&#

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Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Up and Running

JULY 10, 2017

I talked to Adam Hempenstall, founder and CEO at BetterProposals , who has been using freemium for three years for his SaaS product: “Honestly, I think it was a mistake. You’re not going to go viral Dropbox style, so having a freemium model doesn’t really work. Let’s face it—everyone likes free stuff. Youtube ads. $1

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Startup Non-Compete Viral Software Review 110

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 19, 2020

These founders all seem to be pushing their technology, rather than highlighting their solution to a painful need. Nice to have does not motivate a revenue stream. This means more time and money for viral marketing, product iterations, and promotions. Customers buy solutions, not technology. Limit the features and complexity.

Technology 317

Technology Marketing Sales Cycle Social Media 317

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 15, 2019

Many founders find that building the web site forced them to commit on the product design, set final pricing, define ordering and delivery procedures, and actually schedule and staff the marketing events that they had in mind. Viral marketing needs a website. But word-of-mouth and viral marketing doesn’t work without a web site.

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Viral Web Naming Internet 191

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 17, 2013

When questioned, founders usually mention word-of-mouth, viral marketing, and a top quality product. These founders need a reality check on what recognized brand names have spent to reach that threshold, and how long it is likely to take.

Marketing 265

Marketing Viral SEM Startup 265

Austin Startup

AUGUST 3, 2017

If your answers starts with, “We have multiple revenue streams…” that’s a bad thing. What I really hear is, “ We have no idea what the most significant revenue driver will be. “ We believe the risk of low consumer adoption will be addressed if we can show a Viral Coefficient of 1.5 with 95% Monthly Active Users.

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Startup Technical Review Texas Email 69

Duct Tape Marketing

MAY 18, 2023

He’s the Founder of theCLIKK, an email newsletter about digital marketing. He's the founder of theCLIKK an email newsletter about digital marketing. I also look at sort of the virality, like how can I take any subscriber that maybe I've bought right at $4 or $6 or whatever and turn that into 1.5 This is John Jantsch.

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ChatGPT Advertising Email Viral 92

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal. More on that in a moment.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 16, 2014

When questioned, founders usually mention word-of-mouth, viral marketing, and a top quality product. These founders need a reality check on what recognized brand names have spent to reach that threshold, and how long it is likely to take.

Marketing 257

Marketing SEM Viral Social Media 257

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 26, 2018

As an advisor to many new venture founders, I often hear their frustration at being told by investors “I love your idea, but come back when you have more traction.” The intent is to indicate that founder passion is not a substitute for real customers buying the product. Build a realistic revenue model and price, based on cost.

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Angel Investor Distribution Bootstrapping Viral 147

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

At Hustle Fund, we back both first time founders as well as repeat founders. One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. This is obvious. Marketing first. Product second.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

At Hustle Fund, we back both first time founders as well as repeat founders. One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. This is obvious. Marketing first. Product second.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48