Burn Rate Hiring Product Development 
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 12, 2010
Even if you don’t have “direct&# sales I would tell you that “everything is a sale&# including fund raising, hiring, getting press and doing business development. One of the biggest mistakes I see early-stage startups making is hiring “seasoned&# sales professionals or hiring people too senior, too early.
Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 2, 2009
The key contributors to an out-of-control burn rate is 1) hiring a sales force too early, 2) turning on the demand creation activities too early, 3) developing something other than the minimum feature set for first customer ship. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.
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Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 16, 2009
They realized that they were selling a bunch of cool products but none that had enough economic value. They had wasted a lot of money because they had raised a lot of money and therefore hired a large staff. I advocated LOUDLY at the board that we needed to cut our burn rate. We were SMOKING cash.
Feld Thoughts
NOVEMBER 18, 2013
They close on the $750k, hire a buddy or two, buy some Macs, and get to work. ASC starts building product, but as they get into the thick of it, the team realizes executing on their vision is going to be extremely hard. Eventually early product demos start happening but they’re rough and the product looks very alpha.
The Next Web
DECEMBER 2, 2013
Therefore, if you want to bring an MVP ( Minimum Viable Product ) to market, Werdelin approximates that you’ll need $50,000 to $250,000 , depending on the skill sets of the developers and designers you hire. Werdelin equates building a successful product to building a nightclub. 4) WhatsApp. million plus overhead.
Startup Lessons Learned
MARCH 27, 2009
The full formula works like this: runway = cash on hand / burn rate # iterations = runway / speed of each iteration Very few successful companies ended up in the same exact business that the founders thought theyd be in (see Founders at Work for dozens of examples). Were talking PayPal -sized variations. Work in small batches.
Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 18, 2010
Now the company is in crisis mode because the rest of the organization (product development, marketing, etc.) Why it’s not a crisis is that the Customer Development process says, “do not staff and hire like you are executing. The alternative to firing and crises is the Business Model/Customer Development process.
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