Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 11, 2020

Many passionate entrepreneurs fight to add more features into their new products and services, assuming that more function will make the solution more appealing to more customers. Focus is the art of limiting your scope to the key function that really matters for the majority of customers. It’s tough for an elephant to be agile.

Startup 424

Startup Bandwidth Distribution Agile 424

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

I was having breakfast with Radhika, an ex-grad student of mine who wanted to share her Customer Discovery progress for her consumer hardware startup. Who can I hire later? Activities define the unique expertise your company needs to deliver the value proposition, customers, channels, customer relationships and/or revenue. (If

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 13, 2013

The second bullet, getting feedback from customers is most often not valid either. Even with these, you will have paper-tested your MVP, but the reality is that customers will not be able to assess the value to them until they actually use it. The real reason to build an MVP is to do early tests of key Startup Metrics for the business.

Technical Cofounder 338

Technical Cofounder Technical Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO 338

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. For startups, the entrepreneur and founder is almost always the face of the company.

Technical Review 323

Technical Review Due Diligence Valuation Leadership 323

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. it is an art) and again hired professionals. Some men see things as they are and ask why.

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Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 334

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 15, 2020

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. For startups, the entrepreneur and founder is almost always the face of the company.

Valuation 311

Valuation Technical Review Due Diligence Leadership 311

The Next Web

NOVEMBER 17, 2013

In order to find out, I asked a panel of 12 successful founders from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) the following question: What are the pros/cons of hiring an agency to do development work, vs. having all your technical talent in house? Hiring an agency is usually less expensive, and you can utilize them only when there’s a problem.

Developer 145

Developer Hiring Startup LLC 145

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 30, 2011

When & Whom should you hire? when is the right time to hire your first sales employee? How do you get access to customers? agile sales process? 14:18 Your first hire should be someone who’s hungry and willing to work. 15:00 Hire somebody who will punch above their weight class. junior vs. senior?

Software Review 300

Software Review Sales Due Diligence Startup 300

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 26, 2015

Business agility is defined as the ability to adapt rapidly and cost efficiently. 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. It all starts with agile leadership.

Agile 120

Agile Technical Review Leadership Social Media 120

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 15, 2022

A common practice is to hire local employees who know the geographic culture, even though this may well dilute the company culture. For additional growth, most companies expand the product portfolio to cater to more customers, and sell more to existing customers. The challenge during this phase is to stay innovative and agile.

Dilution 355

Dilution Startup Merger Flash 355

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 8, 2020

Chief amongst these mistakes is the belief that your company can maintain a sluggish, sordid presence on popular platforms instead of needing an agile, fresh-faced approach. Do you have an agile social media policy? How to improve social media agility. Here’s how to determine if you’re making the best of social media.

Social Media 103

Social Media Agile Media Campaign 103

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

Working with him, I’ve been impressed to watch his small team embrace Customer Development (and Business Model Generation ) and search the world for the right product/market fit. They’ve tested their hypotheses with literally hundreds of customer interviews on every continent in the world. Corporate elephants can dance.

Silicon Valley 239

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 239

Steve Blank

MARCH 15, 2017

His company had marched through customer discovery, learning about the customer problem, validated solutions and was now scaling sales and marketing. But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. Help Engineering understand customer needs. All good news.

Startup 329

Startup PR Public Relations Channel 329

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 12, 2020

Attracting new customers and nurturing them along through the sales pipeline is what every business tries to do effectively and efficiently. Customers seek information from businesses when and where they want it. Customer relationship management software. That’s where customer relationship management (CRM) software comes in.

Small Business 173

Small Business Agile Software Software Developers 173

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? This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. They are gaining valuable customer data.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

None of this was law, and nothing in writing required this; this was just how these firms did business to protect their large institutional customers who would buy the stock. This required a repeatable and scalable sales process, which required a professional sales staff and a product stable enough that customers wouldn’t return it.

Founder 281

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 281

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 30, 2010

A virtual assistant (VA) is a remote worker hired to complete tasks you should not be doing as the founder of a startup. In an ideal world, when a customer wants a new hosted account they would fill out a web form with all of their information and their new hosted version would be ready in 30 seconds. What is a Virtual Assistant?

Software Review 284

Software Review Startup Technical Review Hosting 284

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 6, 2023

Many passionate entrepreneurs fight to add more features into their new products and services, assuming that more function will make the solution more appealing to more customers. Focus is the art of limiting your scope to the key function that really matters for the majority of customers. It’s tough for an elephant to be agile.

Startup 287

Startup Bandwidth Distribution Agile 287

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

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. Yet time after time, after the product shipped, startups would find that customers didn’t use or want most of the features. That’s no longer the case. The founders.

Restful 249

Restful Silicon Valley San Jose Puerto Rico 249

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 29, 2019

A platform is a business model and capability that can be accessed and customized by external users. Create and practice an obsession over customers. Make sure everyone knows it’s their job to maintain empathy and exceed customer expectations. Institute deep metrics measuring all aspects of the customer experience.

Artificial Inteligence 222

Artificial Inteligence Agile Technical Review Demand 222

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. So far, I have found "lean startup" works better with the entrepreneurs Ive talked to than "agile startup" or even "extreme startup.") Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. I have personally sold many copies of his book, and continue to recommend it as one of the most important books a startup founder can read.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. And most startup code and features end up on the floor as customers never really wanted them.

Lean 263

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 263

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 17, 2014

Many passionate entrepreneurs fight to add more features into their new products and services, assuming that more function will make the solution more appealing to more customers. Focus is the art of limiting your scope to the key function that really matters for the majority of customers. It’s tough for an elephant to be agile.

Bandwidth 262

Bandwidth Distribution Agile Social Media 262

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 2, 2020

Of course, users won’t be able to customize their project as fully as if they were coding it from scratch. But in most cases, that level of customization isn’t necessary. In the past, a business that needed a custom app, website, or other digital solution would have to be prepared to make a big investment.

CTO Hire 264

CTO Hire eCommerce Engineer Software 264

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

and get the chip designed into companies building engineering workstations – powerful personal computers, all while trying to refine how to find the right markets, customers, and sales process. Our chip was nearing completion, and I had convinced early lighthouse customers to design it into their computers. I was devastated.

Part-Time VPE 334

Part-Time VPE Employee Cofounder Hiring 334

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 12, 2020

Different ways of working are better suited to different industries and business sizes, so it’s crucial to consider these sorts of things before you begin hiring or go to market. Using SOM is perfect for system designers who’re interested in having customization of the interface, form factor, and other electronic components.

SCRUM 147

SCRUM Software Review Technical Review Differentiation 147

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

First, a definition: the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. In a lot of cases, this requires a lot of energy invested in talking to customers or metrics and analytics. Some caveats right off the bat.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Thats the conclusion Ive come to after watching tons of online products fail for a complete lack of customers. Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. We finally settled on a $1.99 Setup a simple website.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 27, 2020

Everything from customer service, technical support, to back office operations are able to be outsourced as a way to reduce costs, keep up with the evolving consumer expectations, and drive a faster return on investment. Put simply, offshore outsourcing means hiring a company to perform a service from a different part of the world.

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Offshore Dominican Republic Costa Rica Jamaica 165

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 14, 2009 Business ecology and the four customer currencies Lately, I’ve been rethinking the concept of “business model&# for startups, in favor of something I call “business ecology.&# Let’s begin with the four customer currencies. And this is true outside of games.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Duct Tape Marketing

JULY 19, 2024

The concept of “Thoughtfully Fit” is a framework designed to help individuals and teams enhance their performance and navigate challenges with greater agility. Exclusive to new customers—upgrade and grow your business with ActiveCampaign today! Now, this offer is limited to new active campaign customers only.

Leadership 90

Leadership Framework Agile Campaign 90

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2019

A common practice is to hire local employees who know the geographic culture, even though this may well dilute the company culture. For additional growth, most companies expand the product portfolio to cater to more customers, and sell more to existing customers. The challenge during this phase is to stay innovative and agile.

Dilution 224

Dilution Merger Flash Global 224

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 29, 2018

Either way, custom software development is an effective way to build brand awareness and give your business a competitive edge. In order to bring the most value to your business, it’s important you explore ways to enhance your customer experience. Where to Hire Developers for Your Project. Source: Pexels.

Developer 100

Developer Offshore Software Development Software Developers 100

The Next Web

MARCH 6, 2014

The business development team needs to see the customer feedback they deliver make it back into the product, and the tech team needs to see reasonable requests to develop new features without a constant stream of changing direction. Practice Agile Development. Hire T-Shaped People. Make sure to hire T-shaped individuals.

Technical Review 129

Technical Review Development Team Review Developer Agile 129

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 4, 2024

Customer Satisfaction: Improve customer satisfaction scores by 15% in the next year through enhanced support and product improvements. Cost Control: Implement cost-saving measures without compromising on quality or customer experience. It’s not just about attracting new customers but also about retaining them.

Technical Review 146

Technical Review Agile Audience Employee 146