Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

In this model, you take some fraction of the lifetime value of each customer and plow that back into paid acquisition through SEM, banner ads, PR, affiliates, etc. For eBay, this is caused by the incredible network effects of their business (so-called demand-side increasing returns and supply-side increasing returns).

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

For example, one angel investor reportedly invested in several hundred social networking ventures employing this philosophy. SEM on five dollars a day Andrew Chen: Growing renewable audiences Marc Prensky's Weblog: Cell Phones in Class A new version of the Joel Test (draft) Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your c.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Customers found it confusing and it turned out to be at odds with our fundamental value proposition (which really requires an independant IM network). Unfortunately, positioning our product as an "IM add-on" was a complete mistake. So we had to completely throw that code away, including all of its beatiful tests and specs. Talk about waste.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

This was 2004, and we had never even heard of MySpace, let alone had any understanding of social networking. It required hearing customers say it over and over again for us to take a serious look, and eventually to realize that social networking was core to our business. But the early customers all compared it to MySpace.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Pick a similar product that they do use, and ask them "who was the first person you know who started using [social networking, mobile phones, plasma TV, instant messaging.]? For companies in the early-adopter phase, you can play "the earlyvangelist game" whenever a customer turns out to be too mainstream for your product. More of the same.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 133

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

This is completely analogous to the situation elsewhere on the internet, where launching a new website, product, or service with PR is getting harder and harder. On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral. Or if your lifetime value is high enough, you can just keep spending on SEM.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

If you sell an online service that solves a defined problem, you can compete in SEO or SEM. And in some markets its decisive, because of well-known network effects (as happened with Microsoft, eBay, and many others). This can even vary by category, as people apply different criteria to games vs. utilities vs. social networking apps.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74