Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Evangelism marketing is an advanced form of word of mouth marketing (WOMM), now largely replaced by Facebook and Twitter.

CTO Hire 244

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 244

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Evangelism marketing is an advanced form of word of mouth marketing (WOMM), now largely replaced by Facebook and Twitter.

CTO Hire 227

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 227

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Finally the day came, we unleashed the landing page, emailed our existing customers, and started advertising online. If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order?

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Since this was the marketing department, I was going to be planning to spend some advertising and public relations dollars. Now I had happy and surprised customers walking around with paid advertising for my company. Who did they think were the leaders in the color graphics board and monitor market? What reviews did they trust?

Silicon Valley 213

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 213

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 24, 2022

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have a wide reach, and if you can use them effectively, you can significantly increase your customer base. Just keep in mind that when you are advertising on Facebook , you have to make sure that your ads are targeted to the right audience. Develop a Strong Online Presence.

Social Media 157

Social Media Startup Audience Web Development 157

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 4, 2014

In many cases, new or updated equipment offers some form of functional benefit(s) to your customers, and this can be used as a key selling point. Marketing your business with traditional offline strategies such as television, radio and print advertising can be costly. Find New Sales Channels.

Customer 168

Customer PPC Software Review Finance 168

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires. We will accomplish this through demand-creation activities (advertising, PR, tradeshows, seminars, web sites, etc.),

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

It’s often said that you shouldn’t talk about price during customer development interviews. If you want to scale faster you’ll need venture funding, both because of the anemic revenue, and because otherwise you can’t afford to advertise. Again, like shared hosting companies.) This is a hard slog.

Bootstrapping 294

Bootstrapping Technical Review B2C Sales Cycle 294

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

I think the best solution for the social networking era is “in-stream&# advertising. It offers Internet radio targeted advertising and is growing really well. My take was that this follows three trends: a) customer involvement in product design, b) mass customization [e.g. But I made it for a reason.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

Gust

APRIL 20, 2014

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Evangelism marketing is an advanced form of word of mouth marketing (WOMM), now largely replaced by Facebook and Twitter.

CTO Hire 171

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 171

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10 weeks. While all the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ), Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, each of their journeys was unique. He runs H4X Labs.

Lean 417

Lean Security Asia SBIR 417

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

I thing I’ve learned over the years is that technology purists hate advertising even when it is that revenue stream that truthfully drives much of our industry. He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

Traffic.com sold 10-second in-content advertising spots to local TV broadcasters. Assistly is a customer support product designed to meet the needs of the current era of multi-channel touch points (think Twitter, email, chat, forum in addition to phone calls). So the whole customer development cycle is very streamlined.

San Diego 267

San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Such direct experiences allows one to test critical “leap-of-faith” assumptions about what customers like and dislike. Customer development (the understanding of customer needs) must be married to agile development (a process which drives waste out of product development).

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Check your assumptions, what went wrong?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 12, 2012

This points to a fundamental disconnect between established companies and the customers they’re trying to reach. Executives from powerhouse advertisers like Walmart, Unilever, Coca-Cola, and others are pushing Facebook for access to more user data. And yet the firm is having substantial problems monetizing its business.

Social Media 164

Social Media Media Marketing Software Review 164

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

These don’t require coding skills—they’re usually visual templates that are easy to use but don’t allow for great customization (that would require technical skills). Custom development. This means hiring/contracting a freelance web developer or an agency to design and develop your site from start to finish.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

The Startup Magazine

DECEMBER 17, 2021

There are many ways to build your reputation as a trustworthy software developer. Keep a sense of perspective through testing and honest advertising, and things should develop steadily from there. The post Building A Reputation As A Trustworthy Software Developer appeared first on The Startup Magazine.

Software Developers 180

Software Developers Software Development Reputation Software Review 180

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

All the marketing materials, data sheets, advertising, press releases, trade shows, etc. Technically our positioning was correct, and with an infinite marketing budget (my back of the envelope calculations said $60M) and time, we might have made this technical fact ( QuickDraw acceleration) something a customer understood and cared about.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 161

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Each of these four currencies represents a way for a customer to “pay&# for services from a company. A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 15, 2013

Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link]. Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link]. Facebook Newsfeed Advertising: Why We Won’t Do That Again | MarketingProfs – [link]. Crowdsourced Workforces Rising | Xconomy – [link].

Social Media 105

Social Media Small Business Design Media 105

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

The only difference between us and the Internet bubble that would follow was that we did branding on the cheap by creating our image with public relations, whilethe dot-bomb era was to do it by spending enormous sums on advertising (those large venture rounds had to get spent somewhere.) Hindsight is wonderful. We all know how that ends up.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 25, 2014

The Ultimate List of Customer Development Questions – crowdspring.co/1nHT6tS. The Ultimate List of Customer Development Questions – crowdspring.co/1nHT6tS. The image above is a piece of cycling awareness street art created by Peter Drew , an artist based in Adelaide, Australia.

Social Media 92

Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

You declare how much someone clicking an advertisement is worth to you, and then the search engine does its best to get you as many clicks as it can at that price. Those rates gave us a map that told us a lot about our customers; insights that proved stable even when the company grew orders of magnitude bigger. SEM is a simple idea.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

And other startups are in a New Market — creating a market from scratch (like Apple with the iPhone, or iPod/iTunes.) (“Market Type&# radically changes how you sell and market at each step in Customer Development. As another example, I could see which magazines are on people desks, and that tells me where to advertise.

Silicon Valley 146

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 146

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 6, 2014

Customer Development 101) – crowdspring.co/1pNIOcD. Crowdsourcing Your Way To What Customers Really Want | Fast Company – crowdspring.co/1oNJIZp. Customer Development 101) – crowdspring.co/1pNIOcD. How to become a mentor – crowdspring.co/RVMhdc.

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Software Review 94

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Traditional approaches to marketing and sales will only screw up customer advocacy. It’s painful to watch web-based media initiatives use traditional marketing techniques such as interruption advertisements or ‘all about us’ marketing communications. Wrong message, wrong audience. Rock Star advocates can help.).

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 9, 2013

He adds: “All that you have to do is exceed your customers’ expectations, not by a huge margin, but just enough so that they’re pleasantly surprised. That’s where word-of-mouth advertising begins. When you hit that point, there’s a multiplier effect to the investment you make to secure the customer.

Customer 170

Customer Technical Review Florida Cofounder 170

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Customer development. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. For customer development, start with Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany or take a look at his recent Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Lecture.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ) Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique. He runs H4X Labs.

Oakland 315

Oakland Asia Lean Video 315

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

It included things like advertising, marketing analytics, cyber security. We started to do that in the advertising space first. Filed under: Customer Development. ” So I wrote a 9-page charter of what I thought we should do. There were things like drones in there. Very, very far-fetched ideas, frankly.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Analytics 120

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. ► May (3) Thank you Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

ConversionXL

MAY 22, 2014

If you don’t have customers, our articles on customer development & writing compelling copy when you don’t have any customers , to help you to start getting people to buy. Recommended Reading: It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. Australian Air Force Banner. image source.

Software Review 116

Software Review PPC Analytics Search 116

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. ► May (3) Thank you Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. ► May (3) Thank you Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

Topics have included “Leveraging Pinterest”, “Mobile Commerce”, and “Facebook Advertising”. Lean Startup Circle Boston – Meetup dedicated to the lean startup and customer development methodology. Clypd – Video Advertising (backed by Atlas, DataPoint, Boston Seed). Great for recent grads or career switchers.

Boston 71

Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

If you don’t have customers, our articles on customer development and how to write compelling copy without customers can help you get started. This feedback can improve your acquisition strategies , your value proposition , and your processes on every level. Lure in your market by split-testing ad creative.

Acquisition 111

Acquisition Software Review PPC Analytics 111