A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 17, 2010

If this is your attitude, your conception of tech support is completely backwards and you're missing out on important channels for marketing, product development, and sales. Tech support is sales. At Smart Bear we made millions of dollars in both individual and enterprise sales without "sales.".

Technical Review 245

Technical Review Sales Turkey Software Review 245

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 26, 2011

The management team has to have a bias toward making decisions. There is an old management adage that says, “Hire slowly, fire fast.” Hire Slowly? I also subscribe to the views that you should always be recruiting (ABR) and when great people pop up you hire them and then find a way to make the role fit.

Hiring 335

Hiring Technical Review Startup Framework 335

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 17, 2018

by Felix Winstone, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Talkative. As a new entrepreneur or business owner, the most important thing you will do is hire talent. Hiring = Sales. A good recruitment process has many parallels with a sales funnel. What does the right hire look like? Know When To Hire.

Cofounder 164

Cofounder Elevator Pitch Hiring Dividend 164

YoungUpstarts

MAY 3, 2017

From product development to market research, many startups are one-person operations in their early days. If you’re a first-time entrepreneur, I’m willing to bet you work longer hours than necessary trying to manage easily outsourced tasks. You’ll find your to-do list growing shorter and more manageable.

Technical Review 113

Technical Review Management Arizona Software Review 113

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 29, 2018

Don’t wait until you are almost out of cash before managing every dollar spent, or looking for the next refueling from investors. As a mentor to many entrepreneurs and startups, here are my best recommendations for keeping the burn rate low, planning ahead and maintaining credibility with investors: Manage cash flow personally every day.

Burn Rate 223

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 223

Version One Ventures

AUGUST 26, 2016

There’s a lot of debate surrounding the right time to bring executive level hires into your start-up. Every start-up is unique so the same path won’t work for every company and management team. With that said, here are some general guidelines I have developed over the years for building a management team.

Part-Time VPE 60

Part-Time VPE Management Finance Vertical 60

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

But not anal if one founder who shares equity graciously with early employees who are treated as “co-founders” My idea startup team is heaving on tech personnel but also has strong product management. Without strong PMs you build crappy products that nobody needs or that real people can’t use.

Cofounder 388

Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 388

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 2, 2019

Most of you aspiring entrepreneurs have no idea how dramatically your own role has to evolve as you develop a solution, start a business, and expect it to scale into a successful self-managed company. Thus my job as a small business advisor really is really more about getting you developed than perfecting the business.

Leadership 248

Leadership Technical Review Cofounder Social Media 248

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. It has to be found and managed.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 25, 2014

Larry didn’t practice any kind of textbook management, but he was an intense communicator and inspiring leader. It wasn’t always perfect, but it was way more right than wrong, It informed our product development to a great degree and kept us working on more or less the right stuff. Hired the Smartest People.

Technical Review 333

Technical Review Venture Capital Software Review Database 333

View from Seed

JULY 5, 2022

CC: Our customers are companies that are collecting, managing, and tracking their ESG data. . One hour I’m deep into product development, the next I’m thinking about our hiring needs and recruiting, to the next on a sales call. RH: Who are your customers? My favorite part is how many different hats I wear.

DC 156

DC Software Review Government Boston 156

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Don’t wait until you are almost out of cash before managing every dollar spent, or looking for the next refueling from investors. As a mentor to many entrepreneurs and startups, here are my best recommendations for keeping the burn rate low, planning ahead and maintaining credibility with investors: Manage cashflow personally every day.

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

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 19, 2020

Capturing and analyzing data enables companies to get insights that benefit their companies in cost-saving, relevant marketing, product development, etc. These days, instead of hiring an MBA from a big university, companies need Data Scientists. you can align your products’ improvements.

Technical Review 152

Technical Review Forecast Analytics Social Media 152

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2022

Growth is more than simply repackaging existing products, and adding bells and whistles or slick incentives. Hire more help than helpers. In addition to fresh products, you need people smarter than you for real help, with the right combination of skills, experience, and passion to foster and manage new growth.

Mezzanine 368

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 368

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

Mucker Lab

MAY 28, 2020

This post originally appeared in TechCrunch back in 2015, written by our co-founder and managing partner Erik Rannala. Like a teenager with a million-dollar allowance and an identity crisis, a startup with too much capital and no product-market fit will become capable of making larger mistakes. Hire the wrong people.

Startup 78

Startup Cofounder Burn Rate Technical Review 78

Transformify

JULY 13, 2019

‘’Diversity Hiring’’ series features world diversity and inclusion leaders and their thoughts on diversity recruitment, cultural diversity and equality. What does diversity hiring mean to startups? Building great products requires a diversity of thought. Congratulations!

Hiring 66

Hiring Entrepreneur Startup Angel Investor 66

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 10, 2013

Website hosting, internet access and other IT products will be a part of the technological costs of starting a new business. Product Development and Marketing. A big part of your startup budget will have to be dedicated to product development and marketing. Start with a small number of employees.

Cost 183

Cost Startup Web Development Finance 183

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 11, 2020

Take a closer look at how you manage your company. For example, you could offer sales bonuses and incentives for high-performing workers. Not putting resources into staff development. When a team isn’t meeting goals, some companies hire a third-party expert to fix the problem. Have you been making the same mistake?

Cost 150

Cost Technical Review Salary Social Media 150

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 3, 2012

There are unknowns at every turn, leading product development, attracting customers, managing cash, and dealing with human resources and office politics. Trusted partners quit, personal friends become enemies, and staff management becomes a huge burden.

Advisory Board 240

Advisory Board Forecast Early Stage Product Development 240

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

Maybe hire an employee for $30 per hour and re-bill them at $60. Suppose you hire an employee at $60,000/year. And let’s suppose you want to allocate just a little time for career development. Employee turnover becomes more common, so you’re permanently in hiring mode. Easy money, right? Double is nothing.

America 330

America Employee Hiring HTML 330

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Don’t wait until you are almost out of cash before managing every dollar spent, or looking for the next refueling from investors. As a mentor to many entrepreneurs and startups, here are my best recommendations for keeping the burn rate low, planning ahead and maintaining credibility with investors: Manage cash flow personally every day.

Burn Rate 120

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 120

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

The single most important factor to raising capital for any tech startup is the management team. Don’t hire people with skills and qualifications similar to yours. Hire based on functionality and avoid having too many C’s. Hire based on functionality and avoid having too many C’s. Series A to Series B.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 26, 2020

He also said, “The most important hire I made in my time at the JAIC was the chief technology officer, Nand Mulchandani.” Nand changed the culture of the JAIC, bringing in Silicon Valley tools for product development, product management and for the first time a culture that focused on UI/UX, MVPs and continuous integration and deployment.

Artificial Inteligence 388

Artificial Inteligence Fractional CTO Technology CTO 388

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. This engineering manager is a smart guy, and very experienced.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

YoungUpstarts

JULY 16, 2019

Have you developed any vision of a product development strategy? And keep in mind that the best option is to develop at least 5 domain names connected to your brand’s name to find an unoccupied domain. At least 6 team members should participate in your product development. What slogan do you see there?

eCommerce 113

eCommerce Software Developers Software Development Hosting 113

Up and Running

JANUARY 3, 2019

Here’s the simple truth of business: Without customers to buy your products, you’re not going to make any money. Many businesses develop personas to help them make the right choices as they start, grow, and advertise their business. Success in marketing and product development comes from a deep understanding of your target customer.

Software Review 130

Software Review Product Development Portland Software 130

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. Trusted partners quit, personal friends become enemies, and staff management becomes a huge burden.

Advisory Board 232

Advisory Board Startup Forecast Early Stage 232

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 5, 2018

by Keith Johnstone, Head of Marketing of Peak Sales Recruiting. That is, if they have the right sales team in place…. Ahead of CES, product development teams scrambled to make sure their shiny new product was ready for prime time. Here are 3 ways fast-growing startups build sales teams differently: 1.

Sales 113

Sales Artificial Inteligence Retention Startup 113

ConversionXL

AUGUST 24, 2021

News declaring it the number one job in sales and marketing, and a median average salary of around $142,000 in the U.S., it’s no surprise that people are looking at how to become a marketing manager. Everything you need to know about the marketing manager role. What does the day-to-day of a marketing manager look like?

Management 141

Management Marketing Campaign Social Media 141

Gust

APRIL 27, 2014

Think about the implications of each to your own business, and the potential impact of getting them done incorrectly, or forgetting to do them entirely: Manage your financials and physical assets. Product development process. Manage human resources. If you are contracting or outsourcing, this is even more important.

Startup 187

Startup Institutional Investors Angel Investor Bootstrapping 187

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

The second thing that’s changed is that we’re now Compressing the Product Development Cycle. In the 20 th century startups I was part of, the time to build a first product release was measured in years as we turned out the founder’s vision of what customers wanted. That’s no longer the case. We now understand that’s wrong.

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 4, 2015

by Melissa Lincoln, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Leadspace. This fertile crescent of B2B technology is an unbeatable homebase for a growing technology product’s sales, marketing, and success teams. A San Francisco office empowers “boots on the ground” B2B sales, marketing, and success teams.

B2B 100

B2B San Francisco Semantic 100

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 6, 2016

To create this first year in business checklist, I turned to our in-house experts here at Palo Alto Software: Sabrina Parsons, CEO; Noah Parsons, COO; Josh Cochrane, Vice President of Product Development; and Josh Fegles, Academic and Government Channel Sales Director, and founder of gluten-free cookie company Jude’s Foods.

Forecast 60

Forecast Software Review Lean Finance 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, September 11, 2009 The cardinal sin of community management Once you have a product launched, you will the face the joys – and the despair – of a community that grows up around it. This probably sounds illogical. We were totally unprepared for the magnitude of what happened.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158

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