Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Most of the time, the experiments you run will have a zero percent conversion rate - meaning no customers were harmed during the making of this experiment. I would aim to get no more than 1o0 clicks per day - over the course of a week or two, youll get pretty good conversion data. Measure conversion rates.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Shortly after we sold Opsware to Hewlett-Packard, I had a conversation with the legendary venture capitalist Doug Leone of Sequoia Capital. The Right Way to Lay People Off - Ben's Blog , September 21, 2010 “I’m tryin’ to right my wrongs, But it’s funny them same wrongs helped me write this song”. Kanye West.

Technology 191

Technology Product San Francisco CTO Hire 191

Version One Ventures

JULY 20, 2017

As Ada Support launches its automated chat platform from stealth and announces an impressive $2.5 million seed round, we’re looking back at our journey with founders Mike Murchison and David Hariri. The story underscores the importance of perseverance and having the right founding team.

Artificial Inteligence 150

Artificial Inteligence Silicon Valley Stealth Term Sheet 150

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

First check leads in 5 founding teams, all in stealth. congrats to Fortress IQ on its $12mm Series A led by Lightspeed and a stealth co on their $13.5mm Series A led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Smallstep , Clay , Dark , and Windmill emerged out of stealth. First check to Series B?—?congrats First check to Series A?—?congrats

Advisory Board 79

Advisory Board Stealth Cloud Virginia 79

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

First check leads in 5 founding teams, all in stealth. First check to Series Acongrats to Fortress IQ on its $12mm Series A led by Lightspeed and a stealth co on their $13.5mm Series A led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Smallstep , Clay , Dark , and Windmill emerged out of stealth. Rebel exit to Salesforce.

Advisory Board 78

Advisory Board Stealth Cloud Virginia 78

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

But a decade earlier as undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, he was the father of the second offset strategy using software and semiconductors to build smart weapons, smart sensors, and stealth aircraft that helped end the Cold War. Second: I also gave the commencement speech at the NYU engineering school here.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego Technical Review Incubator 120

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

Being in "stealth mode" is, as Wilson argues, often seen as a bad idea for startups. So why stay stealth? How do you define "stealth"? Is stealth really a matter of locking yourself and your team away in the proverbial garage, working in utter isolation into the day you launch your product?

Stealth 118

Stealth Startup Conversion Naming 118

mashable.com

MAY 5, 2011

In April, “stealth” social media startup Kohort announced its upcoming launch. It may not matter to you what Kohort is or isn’t, nor whether stealth is good or bad. It got 10% conversion,” Carrella says. Kohort said the site was “stealth&# to play up the sense of mystery around its brand and to generate interest.

Pakistan 94

Pakistan Social Media Startup Social Network 94

VC Cafe

DECEMBER 13, 2024

Kol hakavod Alan Bekker, PhD and team eSelf AI for coming out of stealth with a $4.5M Great stuff Dor Sasson and team Stigg on your $17.5M series A to build the first unified monetisation platform to help SaaS startups get better at dynamic pricing! seed round to build live, interactive AI assistants! Keep on creating!

Israel 88

Israel ChatGPT Artificial Inteligence Australia 88

View from Seed

MARCH 3, 2015

Around the same time we were doing those webinars, we launched our first ebook, and that did much better in terms of conversions — click-through-rate on emails, conversions on landing pages, and so on. Some startups are in stealth mode and maybe branding and beautiful design is important.

Marketing 120

Marketing Sales Cycle Startup CTO Hire 120

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 9, 2019

We recently invested in Osano , which is led by the very talented Arlo Gilbert and is currently in stealth mode. By contrast, MOON is going to launch soon and is not in stealth mode at all. We went with the stealth mode approach prior to our launch, as I’ll reflect on at the bottom of this lesson. I could waste no time.

Stealth 48

Stealth Cofounder Los Angeles Technical Review 48

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

bigs : @ericries says Stealth dev is a (undesirable, failure-presaging) customer-free zone. LeanStartup Of course, a big enabler of those kinds of mistakes is stealth-mode. Another recent meme that I hope more and more startups will take to heart: "stealth is a customer-free zone."

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Austin Startup

DECEMBER 17, 2020

We also have several stealth startups that sit at the intersection of AI and healthcare. End of Year Update was originally published in Austin Startups on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story. ai , a Breyer Capital early-stage investment, list on the New York Stock Exchange.

Austin 84

Austin Silicon Valley Technical Review Texas 84

VC Adventure

APRIL 8, 2010

Recently Dan Frommer over at the Silicon Alley Insider wrote about the reemergence of “stealth mode ”. Niel Robertson, the CEO of Trada, wrote one of the best articles that I think I’ve read on the subject of stealth on the Trada blog that further describes our thought process around operating the business stealthfully for a number of months.

Stealth 80

Stealth SEM Portfolio Operations 80

VC Cafe

DECEMBER 6, 2024

ElevenLabs now offers the ability to building conversational AI agents. Mazel tov Or Israel and team bananaz on coming out of stealth with $5.3M Bitcoin crossed the $100K mark for the first time this week. Google DeepMind released GenCast , a very accurate weather forecasting model.

Israel 78

Israel Technical Review Early Stage Venture Capital 78

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2010

AwesomeBox : AwesomeBox is currently in stealth mode so I’ll respect that. On average the platform is generating 30+% increase in conversions and 15% decrease in cost per lead. Gyroscope is in double-dog secret stealth mode right now so I’ll focus more on the entrepreneur. We’re excited to work with them.

Los Angeles 276

Los Angeles Securities and Exchange Commission Stealth Southern California 276

JANUARY 9, 2014

Introducing a solution early on can lead the conversation too much and mean potential missed opportunities. “We Launching too late (or too early) Too many startups spend months (or years in some cases) in ‘stealth mode’, hidden away from prying eyes, and end up never releasing at all as uncertainty and competition spoil the show.

Early Stage 102

Early Stage Startup Cofounder Design 102

mashable.com

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

Craig is currently the CEO and founder of stealth-ish startup BetterWorks. Serbinski has since gone on to invest in a handful of stealth startups in the gaming, mobile and location arenas. Passion was certainly a recurring topic of conversation amongst the investors we interviewed.

Angel Investor 80

Angel Investor Startup San Francisco Social Media 80

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 21, 2010

They know that a call will lead to a higher conversion rate and a better chance to cross-sell products leading to higher average order values. It should lead to higher conversion rates and happier customers. Social networks continue to drive conversion of marketers. It turns out the advertisers want you to call, too.

Advertising 284

Advertising Las Vegas Affiliate RSS 284

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 26, 2024

Sierra’s mission is to ‘be the conversational AI platform for businesses’ The company raised an $85M “seed” round. Many companies in the Agentic AI space choose to remain in stealth, but just know that it’s never too early to speak with us. With this in mind, can startups even compete?

Generative AI 78

Generative AI Cofounder Security Stealth 78

Version One Ventures

DECEMBER 15, 2015

Improvements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Programming (NLP) now make it possible to: 1) use conversational language as command line (the bot understands what you want) and 2) automate the execution of the command (the bot does what you asked for).

Artificial Inteligence 60

Artificial Inteligence Aggregator Stealth Technical Review 60

VC Cafe

DECEMBER 1, 2015

Graphcore (in stealth, see this video at 28:58) calls them Intelligent Processor Units. These would have the advantage of avoiding the privacy concerns of conversational toys like Toy Talk and Mattel’s ‘ Hello BarbieTM’ , at least until voice can be processed locally rather than in the cloud.

Artificial Inteligence 60

Artificial Inteligence Algorithm Software Review Startup 60

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

Be aware, though, that the person who introduces you is important and can make or break your conversation, so choose wisely. I always begin conversations by asking my new connection about herself. Throughout the conversation (and the subsequent relationship), make sure to check your own motives. So what’s next?

Stealth 200

Stealth Conversion Founder Revenue 200

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2010

I list all of the companies (except one in stealth) on my blog and this includes both VC investments and angel ones. I’ve had to have hard conversations with entrepreneurs when things aren’t going well. I tell them “throw a dart at that list and talk to four or five of them randomly. I’m the same.

Term Sheet 298

Term Sheet Venture Capital Stealth Cofounder 298

K9 Ventures

JANUARY 26, 2016

“ US Navy Sea Shadow stealth craft ” by US Navy employee – [link]. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Stealth is overrated. Today, I have seen it enough times from companies in my portfolio and others that are not in my portfolio that have utilized the “We’re in stealth mode” line.

Stealth 48

Stealth Silicon Valley Cofounder Portfolio 48

Austin Startup

OCTOBER 15, 2017

Sprung in stealth mode! part 2) was originally published in Austin Startups on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story. One of the tips Matt suggested was to research the VC/angel panel to understand their backgrounds, business status and what things interested them.

Texas 48

Texas Austin Stealth Australia 48

www.metamorphblog.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

“Stealth Mode&# = FAIL. To go back to our original conversation, entrepreneurs want to focus on accomplishment rather than idle praise. To go back to our original conversation, entrepreneurs want to focus on accomplishment rather than idle praise. After the month or so is over, then sit down and talk equity. link] Neil A.

Founder 51

Founder Startup Cofounder Vesting 51

The Equity Kicker

FEBRUARY 25, 2014

He had tens of conversations with consumers, homeowners and agencies which validated his core assumptions about unsold inventory, willingness to discount, willingness to book late and appetite for discounts and gave him a detailed picture of exactly what he should do to make the business fly straight out of the traps.

Stealth 141

Stealth Cofounder Aggregator Europe 141

Austin Startup

DECEMBER 16, 2018

This was exceptionally hard for a candidate to prepare for in the early days because our company was in stealth-mode, as I wrote about in this post. For example, for a Sales Director candidate, we would continue and say, “We need you to come in on Monday and present to us like we are a prospect”.

Part-Time VPE 48

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Hiring Austin 48

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

Mari is now building a new venture in human-machine interaction within the Samsung accelerator, currently in stealth mode. There is tremendous value in conversations around what’s the latest in areas that matter to the operating units. Previously she was Co-Founder and CEO of SNAZZ, a cloud-based event management platform.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Technical Review Portfolio 60

The Next Web

JULY 24, 2013

Ticckle itself has been operating in stealth mode for more than nine months already, but in June had its proper launch for the iOS app, with iOS being the target of choice not least because of Stephen Fry’s known love of Apple, and therefore the amount of traffic he drives every time he posts a Ticckle. It all sounds very light-hearted.

Video 131

Video Cofounder Stealth Angel Investor 131

Up and Running

MARCH 29, 2018

With a tool like Basecamp, for example, it’s easy to track progress and keep track of conversations and items that require collaboration with a few different people. Using a project management tool like Basecamp can be helpful keeping everyone on track and storing documents and conversations all in one place. Identify risks.

Framework 136

Framework Stealth Conversion Software 136

VC Cafe

AUGUST 3, 2023

One of the first companies (outside of Disney) to get access to the Snap Camera SDK, Zoog has some of the best conversion metrics I’ve seen for a B2C consumer app. From AI generated ads / creative, to conversion optimisation tools, automated customer success and automated pricing/ promotions to increase revenue.

Israel 148

Israel B2C Generative AI Artificial Inteligence 148

Reid Hoffman

AUGUST 17, 2021

During the conversation, Ramaswamy, Hoffman and Yeh explored how startups can approach building a differentiated product, to identify different levels of competition, and how large incumbents view the challenger startups. You can listen to the podcast here, and read the full transcript of the conversation below. TRANSCRIPT.

Cofounder 69

Cofounder Differentiation Search Advertising 69

Reid Hoffman

AUGUST 17, 2021

During the conversation, Ramaswamy, Hoffman and Yeh explored how startups can approach building a differentiated product, to identify different levels of competition, and how large incumbents view the challenger startups. You can listen to the podcast here, and read the full transcript of the conversation below. TRANSCRIPT.

Cofounder 69

Cofounder Differentiation Search Advertising 69

BeyondVC

MARCH 6, 2007

recently broke the news on my fund’s ( Dawntreader Ventures) latest investment which is still in stealth mode. I know – having stealth companies is a pain, but we were truly trying to keep the company under wraps until we rolled out our beta system later this year.

Algorithm 78

Algorithm Web Technology Stealth 78

VC Adventure

MARCH 18, 2010

Trada has been working in stealth mode for the last 18 months to build a system that harnesses the power of a “crowd” of search experts to work on behalf of advertisers. These experts get paid only for generating clicks and/or conversions for Trada advertisers (depending on whether a campaign is in pay per click or pay per action mode).

Search 82

Search Stealth CPA Campaign 82