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

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of Customer Development , came from the ashes. era&# , but really interested in your take on these “free&# models through the prism of Customer Development. We all know how that ends up.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

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

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Thanks to Suns amazing PR blitz, there was tremendous demand for experts on Java, and I did my best to convince people that I was one of that mythical breed. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

The Next Web

JANUARY 27, 2013

People told me it was impossible to have our product launch featured on one of the top tech blogs without spending $3,000 on some fancy PR agency. Especially because I could have used this time on marketing, sales and customer development, and actually helped our business move forward.

Netherlands 159

Netherlands Technical Review Software Review Cofounder 159

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring PR Agencies. Bettina said, “We want to drive customer demand into our channel.” That’s smart I thought, a real clear charter for PR. The same is true for hiring the PR agency. They learned a ton.

PR 322

PR China Lean Channel 322

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Microsoft will find local “MVP” customers who are well connected in their local communities, and who want to increase their status, and help them do so by providing access to early releases and “insider knowledge.” It’s better to be a thought leader than to depend on the kindness of strangers. Rock Star advocates can help.).

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Engineers are offenders in this category too, but so is any gender-segregated activity, like an all-female PR or marketing team. Engineers are offenders in this category too, but so is any gender-segregated activity, like an all-female PR or marketing team. Diversity is not the only requirement for making good group decisions.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2010

Wait a minute, what about the rest of Customer Development ? Aren’t you going to validate your hypotheses by first getting some customers?”. Now I was confused, and I asked, “Well what do you guys believe – Customer Development or launch on a schedule?” Filed under: Ardent , Customer Development.

Customer Development 316

Customer Development Singapore Channel PR 316

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 21, 2010

It’s the kind of thing you can repeat in an elevator, simple to understand , universally applicable , and, most importantly, doesn’t burden your tech team with a lot of custom development. Often times, that comes in the form of analytics, which is what a biz dev partner would want in order to check on the success of the deal.

Early Stage 126

Early Stage Developer Technical Review Widget 126

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

What the PR stories tend to leave out is that we can get attached to every part of our vision, even the dumb parts. For more on how to figure out which question applies in which context, see Business ecology and the four customer currencies.) and for which customer? and for which customer?

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

Journalists, PR firms, investors, and the public at large love a scrappy come-from-behind story about two guys in a garage who figured out how to take down Goliath. Customer Development : a disciplined approach to finding out if there is a market for your product before its too late.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

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]. Understanding the Consequences of the Business Decisions You Fudge On – [link]. Good, in-depth look at the economics of food trucks – [link].

Social Media 105

Social Media Small Business Design Media 105

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

Whats striking about these stories, if you get past the PR hype, are two very important themes: These prodigies were self-taught, and had a fundamental fascination with technology from a very young age. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Programming 143

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring PR Agencies. Bettina said, “We want to drive customer demand into our channel.” That’s smart I thought, a real clear charter for PR. The same is true for hiring the PR agency. They learned a ton.

PR 214

PR China Lean Channel 214

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

Here’s how I learned why they were critical to successful customer development. I was an aggressive, young and a very tactical VP of marketing at Ardent , a supercomputer company – who really hadn’t a clue about the relationship between profound beliefs, customer discovery and strategy.

Business Model 356

Business Model Product Development Early Stage Customer Development 356

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Customer Development , Agile Engineering and the Lean methodology enforced a process of incremental and iterative development. Startups could now get a first version of a product out to customers in weeks/months rather than months/years. In the new bubble PR may be your new best friend, so invest in it.

Internet 335

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 15, 2016

— Andy explained that, years ago, a PR person’s was to turn so-called influencers like journalists and analysts into advocates for your client. Positioning must be authentic, she stresses: Here’s the thing about great positioning or great PR: You have to be aligned with who you are. Filed under: Customer Development.

Washington 300

Washington Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Cofounder 300

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck. It’s easy to simply buy customers, but only real value makes them stay.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

The Startup Toolkit

DECEMBER 12, 2012

For example, succeeding at PR before you have retention is actively unhelpful. Customer Development and UX both have good tools for doing this. You need to decide which questions matter to your particular business, and then obsess about answering those. When you talk to your team or VCs, bring them back to your own questions.

Lean 54

Lean Startup Metrics Retention 54

SoCal CTO

JULY 13, 2011

This site aggregates and filters content from thought leaders who talk about topics such as Marketing , Sales , Design , Revenue , Hiring , Social Media , Business Models , Metrics , PR , Venture Capital , Angel Investors , Bootstrapping , Incubators , Agile and many others.

Intellectual Property 175

Intellectual Property Aggregator Startup Angel Investor 175

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

In the meantime, I think we have a good explanation for what all those PR dollars are being spent trying to obscure. Labels: product development 2comments: Anonymoussaid. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Dont fall for it - its a trap. Great post!

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2009

It had no PR agency. It was the model for almost every military startup that followed, and its alumni who lived through its engineering and customer-centric culture had a profound effect on the rest of the valley, the intelligence community and the country. ESL had no marketing people. It shunned publicity.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley RSS California Washington 281

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Noah Parsons says, “Start collecting contact information for interested, prospective customers. Develop a landing page, do some lightweight advertising, and generally reach out to as many potential customers as you can.”. Do your own PR. Whether or not you’ve got the budget, doing your own PR to start with is a good idea.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Even worse, entrepreneurs are faced with a constant barrage of vanity metrics from competitors and other companies engaged in PR. That’s what you pay PR firms for: to get an article written that is entirely factual and yet still provides positive spin for your company. The PR firm helpfully left out that context.)

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Metrics Lean PR 154

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2010

The higher the vanity ratio, the more effective the PR. It helps companies with PR. And companies crave positive PR and control over their message – all for rational reasons. The higher the vanity ratio, the more effective the PR. It helps companies with PR. It sells newspapers and magazines.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean PR Metrics 167

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

PR and publicity drive attention…to drive sales. It is simply getting customers. On Sean’s GrowthHackers.com , categories include… So, essentially everything from customer development and onboarding to persuasion and social marketing fall under the umbrella of growth hacking. Conducted Customer Development.

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

HOF Capital has stitched together our workflow across Google Suite , Slack , Airtable , Asana , Streak , and some other tools (leveraging Zapier for basic 3rd party integration, in addition to custom development for certain other integrations). This information is used to automate screening during origination.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 27, 2011

This is lean development without any customer development. Every startup needs PR, but this is even more true of flips. Creating quick buzz and social proof is not the same a developing long-term customer development, but it pays off. The focus is on building. Create Buzz.

Lean 144

Lean Startup Agile Coder 144

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 20, 2011

Product management and customer development, KISSmetrics. One caveat: if you come by, you are automatically volunteering to be subjected to some intense customer development. Also: booze. The evening's slate: 20 Ways to Not Build Stuff Cindy Alvarez. Co-founder, Backblaze.

Czech Republic 114

Czech Republic Costa Rica Brazil Romania 114

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

This "success theater" is occasionally useful for PR or getting through a tough board meeting. This "success theater" is occasionally useful for PR or getting through a tough board meeting. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Metrics 121

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 121

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 15, 2016

— Andy explained that, years ago, a PR person’s was to turn so-called influencers like journalists and analysts into advocates for your client. Positioning must be authentic, she stresses: Here’s the thing about great positioning or great PR: You have to be aligned with who you are. Filed under: Customer Development.

Washington 120

Washington Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Cofounder 120

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 17, 2010

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? 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 107

San Francisco Romania Cleveland South Africa 107

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2020

You don’t need custom development to get the job done. Going back and forth with a developer is usually far from fast. Thankfully, doing this is extremely easy, and it’s one of my favorite PR hacks. Remember: you want to scale these pages fast and with templates / drag-and-drop.

SMS 134

SMS Campaign PR Sales 134

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

Well, it turns out that to port long tail productivity apps to Google's App Engine is a somewhat cumbersome job, and requires a lot of custom development. The long tail apps can easily be ported to or developed on Google App Engine in a third of the time and cost using OrangeScape as an application platform. Enter OrangeScape.

Entrepreneur 114

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley India Massachusetts 114

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 26, 2012

But this is actually the biggest news, and the thing I'm most excited about.

San Francisco 159

San Francisco Lean Houston Engineer 159

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

This is completely analogous to the situation elsewhere on the internet, where launching a new website, product, or service with PR is getting harder and harder. Customers and prospects are overwhelmed by the number of media and companies clamoring for their attention. Acqusition competition is how new apps get new customers.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68