Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 30, 2022

In fact, it’s all about the “focus” required to get early stage technology products across the deadly chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers. Missions and products that are too broad confuse your team, your customers, and potential investors. Customer support chasm. Product development chasm.

Technical Review 375

Technical Review Startup Dilution Early Stage 375

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 12, 2021

Sometimes entrepreneurs are so focused on making change happen for customers that they forget that continually changing themselves and their company is equally important. Seek out customer trends before they become an avalanche. Don’t stop doing the in-depth communication with customers that brought you initial success.

Technical Review 417

Technical Review Entrepreneur Due Diligence Institutional Investors 417

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 16, 2022

Manage customer service. They probably have arbitrated differences many times before in their lives, and know how important it is to remain calm and soft-spoken in the face of emotional customers and processes that are not working. Marketing and sales to Gen-Y customers.

Advisory Board 368

Advisory Board Dividend Angel Investor Cofounder 368

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 25, 2021

In other words, inventions are necessary but not sufficient to create real value for investors and customers. You need a viable business model and customers. Investors expect proof that your invention can be manufactured in volume, and can justify a sales price at least double the cost, to a large customer set that has money to spend.

Technical Review 391

Technical Review Intellectual Property Early Stage Global 391

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 26, 2023

Often, despite your passion and expectation, customers don’t immediately see the value and need that you see, and you have no idea why the initiative is stuck , and what could be the real customer issue or fix. Customers won’t buy what they can’t find or don’t understand. Customers need supporting approvals to fully benefit.

Product 354

Product Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Dividend 354

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 14, 2021

With the advent of the Internet, social media, and instant communication via texting, customer expectations for service, as part of their entire customer experience, have changed. They expect you to be there, to know their history as a customer, and to treat them with priority and respect.

Customer 427

Customer Social Media Public Relations Internet 427

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2022

You can have the best technology, but if customers don’t know you exist, or they don’t know how your technology solves a real problem for them, your startup will fail. How many customers will have any idea what this means to them? You need to clearly convey what makes your startup the only choice for your customers.

Marketing 353

Marketing Technical Review Social Media Technology 353

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 13, 2022

You may feel good when that first burst of customers arrives, but don’t assume that “ word of mouth ” and those early adopters will grow your business to match your dreams of success. In these days of global competition via multiple channels, you need continuous marketing to find more customers. They won’t find you.

Technical Review 355

Technical Review Social Media Channel Flash 355

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2022

Today more than ever, the evidence is clear that business people need to find and communicate a purpose that goes beyond making a profit, in order to ensure customer engagement, as well as your own, and drive results in the marketplace. As you grow, so will your team and customers. Driven to reduce personal hardship and suffering.

Technical Review 357

Technical Review Green Social Media Lean 357

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 6, 2023

Others schedule exhaustive training sessions for everyone on the team, including showcase customers, to make sure that everyone paints a consistent picture. Due diligence always involves on-site visits, informal discussions with any or all members of the team, vendors, and good customers as well as bad. Traction in the marketplace.

Technical Review 296

Technical Review Due Diligence Term Sheet Bankruptcy 296

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 25, 2023

A common initiative I hear from business owners today is their effort to improve the customer experience. To achieve real growth, business leaders need to improve both employee as well as customer experiences. Flexible – listen to allow flex hours and customization. Proactive – timely communication to build trust.

Employee 282

Employee Matching Customer Leadership 282

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 22, 2023

The distributed model draws on a diverse pool, helps manage costs, and captures regional insights and focus necessary to win local customers. Witness the recent backlash against Facebook and Twitter for the non-transparent use of customer data, and for enabling foreign election interference.

Global 345

Global Silicon Valley Marketing Indonesia 345

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 30, 2020

With information overload due to the Internet, you need to find your customers, rather than assume they will find you. That first burst of customers via word-of-mouth or a viral video won’t sustain your growth. Let me assure you that companies without marketing plans don’t get the attention of either investors or customers.

Intellectual Property 432

Intellectual Property Entrepreneur Technical Review Angel Investor 432

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 11, 2022

In those years I learned to properly build product, price products, sell products and serve customers. I am enjoying more discussions with startups about the ROI benefits for customers who use our products rather than the coolness of our products. Steve Jobs still walked from his house on Waverly to the Apple Store on University Ave.

Valuation 466

Valuation San Francisco Ratchet Liquidation Preference 466

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 29, 2021

New generations of customers respond better to the “ participative ” approach, where they get to provide input via social media and the Internet. Some call it a move from always “ hunting ” for new customers in the wild, to “gardening” or nurturing loyalty and value from the ones you already have.

Customer 420

Customer Marketing Social Media Campaign 420

TechEmpower

NOVEMBER 13, 2023

So instead, we fill it with a completely custom blurb, written just for him: Hello! Thanks to his custom blurb, instead of closing his browser and feeling inadequate for the rest of the day, Mark completes his bio and becomes a happy customer. Which means better conversions and happier customers.

Generative AI 295

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence Houston America 295

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 14, 2022

Investors, partners, team members, and customers implicitly value or devalue a startup based on the leader’s physical presence, emotional identity, social skills, intellectual agility, moral values, and past performance in the domain. I have paraphrased his key points here as follows: Leader personal impact. Focus on talent and people growth.

Technical Review 323

Technical Review Due Diligence Valuation Leadership 323

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 22, 2021

Every business I know is intimately familiar with outbound marketing, or pushing your message out to customers through email, newspaper, and television advertising. Only a few really understand the process and value of inbound marketing, for pulling customers to your brand. Don’t just monitor – engage customers.

Customer 431

Customer Marketing Social Media Channel 431

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

This class is built on conducting in-person of interviews with customers/ beneficiaries and stakeholders, but due to the pandemic, teams now had to do all their customer discovery via a computer screen. How would customer interviews work via video? See here for an extended discussion of remote customer discovery.).

Lean 417

Lean Security Asia SBIR 417

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 16, 2022

We are living in a new generation of business, where customers drive the experience, and highly engaged employees are required to keep up with customer expectations. The bottom line is that by directing your actions toward helping others pursue their dreams and customer dreams, you will make amazing progress in achieving your own.

Leadership 380

Leadership Customer Employee Channel 380

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 26, 2022

Today’s customers are much more proactive in going online for the latest information, rather than simply reacting to the “push” messages that businesses traditionally use to drive commerce. Discipline is required to continually track results, return on investment, and customer satisfaction. A strategy of speedy execution is required.

Agile 379

Agile Technical Review Leadership Social Media 379

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 16, 2022

by Donna Cutting, who is a globally-recognized guru on employee culture and optimizing customer service. In my experience, a healthy team is a prerequisite for a thriving business, innovation to meet market needs, and high customer loyalty. Emotional stability. Other studies have shown a return of up to 400 percent for this approach.

Technical Review 353

Technical Review Cofounder Employee Global 353

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 3, 2021

In reality, the best business process innovations usually come from regular employees on the front line of your business, just trying to do a better job and better serve customers. Thus I recommend the minimum viable product (MVP) approach with iteration, to test innovations until the product or service really meets today’s customers.

Technical Review 431

Technical Review Leadership Operations Networking 431

Steve Blank

JUNE 20, 2022

Had a continuous customer discovery to create products that customers need and want. His challenge was to. find these islands of innovation and who was running them and understand if/how they. Leveraged existing company competencies and assets. Understand if/how they co-opted/bypassed existing processes and procedures.

CTO 368

CTO Technical Cofounder CTO Hire Incubator 368

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 3, 2021

In fact, customers today also seem more attracted to companies with a higher purpose than profit. Every business will offer you many opportunities in this regard, including honing your communication skills, new business models, and exciting customers.

Business Model 432

Business Model Entrepreneur Cost Customer 432

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 27, 2023

With interactive social media and video everywhere, everyone needs to feel they have a relationship with their leaders, and every brand needs leader personification for customers to relate. Interact with employees and customers on a regular basis. Never be too busy to talk to real customers.

Customer 350

Customer Miami Private Equity Social Media 350

Steve Blank

JANUARY 17, 2023

The studio’s internal team builds the minimal viable product, then validates an idea by finding product/market fit and early customers. If the idea passes a series of “Go/No Go” decisions based on milestones for customer discovery and validation, the studio recruits entrepreneurial founders to run and scale those startups.

Technical Cofounder 368

Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 368

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 30, 2022

Today’s customers are much more in control of their buying decision, as they have more choices and more information than ever before. Bloom’s classic book, “ The New Experts: Win Today's Newly Empowered Customers.” This is a key moment where your customer acquisition costs go way down, and your profits go way up.

Customer 365

Customer Social Media Acquisition Internet 365

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the building; Agile Engineering – to rapidly build minimal viable products to test product/market fit.

Customer 427

Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 427

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 20, 2021

With real-time online reviews and feedback via the Internet, and instant relationships via social media, a voice from the top that is inconsistent with what is heard from the firing line defines a dysfunctional and noncompetitive company for today’s customer. Thus team makeup is the critical success factor.

Developer 387

Developer Startup Social Media Internet 387

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

We could talk with customers, meet the entire management team, review financial plans, review customer purchasing cohorts, evaluate the competition, etc. Of course our execution against the strategy has had to change but the strategy has remained constant. In 2009 we could take a long time to review a deal.

Technical Review 416

Technical Review Pre-Money Valuation San Francisco Valuation 416

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 11, 2023

Most of the machines were custom-built to crack a specific code, and increasingly used a new ERA invention – the magnetic drum memory to process and analyze the coded texts. ERAs systems were designed to solve problems defined by their Navy code-breaking customer. They wanted ERA to get its government customers.

Minnesota 317

Minnesota Engineer Minneapolis Silicon Valley 317

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 12, 2023

Offer free solutions to bring in more customers. Don’t get caught in the myth that you shouldn’t worry about monetization until after you have a large customer base. Social causes are great, but your ability to sustain your value contribution is directly linked to your ability to find paying customers.

Intellectual Property 312

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Investor Viral 312

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

You will see that I believe innovation is only one of many factors that ultimately determine your position with customers and your own legacy: Ideas are everywhere – success is all about execution. Search for customer pain rather than high margins. New customers don’t see incremental improvements.

Artificial Inteligence 286

Artificial Inteligence Technology Leadership Business Model 286

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 9, 2023

I’m sure you can imagine how much that impacts any business or startup’s ability to react to changing customer needs and growth opportunities, no matter how insightful their leaders. If you and your team are confident in each other, and proud of your business solution, you will not be afraid to innovate as customer requirements change.

Social Media 294

Social Media Global Campaign Leadership 294

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 21, 2023

Remember you are pitching to investors, not customers. Investors don’t need to know the implementation details of your patent or customer support plan. I’ve seen several presentations that never moved past the first slide before running out of time. Don’t forget to ask for the order.

Technical Review 369

Technical Review Elevator Pitch Angel Investor Matching 369

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 12, 2022

With today’s worldwide Internet and social media, your brand impact is not set by what you say, but by numbers of followers, influencers, and satisfied customers. Just be aware that building your customer base first requires deep pockets, or many investors.

Valuation 368

Valuation Technical Review Due Diligence Angel Investor 368