TechEmpower

JULY 24, 2023

Even when they have talked to multiple developers or development firms, we’re often the first to ask basic questions like “Who are your customers?” Who are the customers? Can you provide specific examples of different types of customers, what they need, and what the system will do for them? will you leverage?

Developer 520

Developer Technical Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO 520

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 8, 2021

Most leaders agree that poor customer service is a business killer today, in terms of lost customers, reduced profits, and low morale. Yet the average perception of customer experience has not improved. You have to start with hiring only people who are willing and able to make serious customer service happen.

Technical Review 385

Technical Review Salary Metrics Matching 385

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2024

Finding a customer for your product in the Department of Defense is hard: Who should you talk to? Looking for DoD customers How do you know if they have money to spend on your product? How do you get their attention? It almost always starts with a Program Executive Office. government intends to communicate this information.

Programming 249

Programming Customer Portfolio Government 249

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

But it will be patiently deployed, waiting for a cohort of founders who aren’t artificially clinging to 2021 valuation metrics. We could talk with customers, meet the entire management team, review financial plans, review customer purchasing cohorts, evaluate the competition, etc. By 2021 we had to write a $3.5m

Technical Review 416

Technical Review Pre-Money Valuation San Francisco Valuation 416

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 22, 2023

With a singular focus on building unicorns, very rapid growth has been a key metric. The distributed model draws on a diverse pool, helps manage costs, and captures regional insights and focus necessary to win local customers. Even here, Elon Musk faced this issue with Tesla, needing a support ecosystem as well as new technology.

Global 345

Global Silicon Valley Marketing Indonesia 345

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 27, 2021

Most of the entrepreneurs I meet as an investor and advisor have no shortage of right-brain thinking, showing vision and creativity, but often don’t realize that their potential is being limited by a balancing focus on results, metrics, and customer specifics. Listen to customer feedback and tune your vision.

Technical Review 332

Technical Review Metrics Leadership Technology 332

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 8, 2020

As a long-time mentor to entrepreneurs, here is my collection of smart risks that investors and I look for in new startups: Focus on a tough customer problem rather than a fun technology. Investors hate technology solutions looking for a problem, due to the high risk of no customers. Customers like leaders, not followers.

Management 322

Management Entrepreneur Forecast Stock Options 322

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2020

With a singular focus on building unicorns, very rapid growth has been a key metric. The distributed model draws on a diverse pool, helps manage costs, and captures regional insights and focus necessary to win local customers. Even here, Elon Musk faced this issue with Tesla, needing a support ecosystem as well as new technology.

Silicon Valley 312

Silicon Valley Indonesia Venture Capital Global 312

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 14, 2022

In his classic book, “ The Leadership Capital Index ,” Dave Ulrich, a best-selling author, business consultant, and business school professor, provides some real insights and metrics on what makes up the elements of goodwill in the minds of top valuation experts. I have paraphrased his key points here as follows: Leader personal impact.

Technical Review 323

Technical Review Due Diligence Valuation Leadership 323

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 28, 2020

Building a minimum viable product, with customer validation. Early customer feedback will position your solution, and help you make pivots before critical time and money are lost. You don’t have to be a heavily funded later stage startup to get access to “big data,” customer analytics, and metrics dashboards.

Intellectual Property 404

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Groups Social Media 404

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2021

Look for validation from your mainstream customers. No matter how passionately you believe that everyone needs one, and positive feedback from friends and early adopters (false positives), before you invest in scaling the business, make sure you set and meet good metrics in cost of customer acquisition, recurring sales, and margin.

Technical Review 329

Technical Review Merger Software Review Acquisition 329

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 15, 2020

In his classic book, “ The Leadership Capital Index ,” Dave Ulrich, a best-selling author, business consultant, and business school professor, provides some real insights and metrics on what makes up the elements of goodwill in the minds of top valuation experts. I have paraphrased his key points here as follows: Leader personal impact.

Valuation 311

Valuation Technical Review Due Diligence Leadership 311

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 2, 2022

As a long-time mentor to entrepreneurs, here is my collection of smart risks that investors and I look for in new startups: Focus on a tough customer problem rather than a fun technology. Investors hate technology solutions looking for a problem, due to the high risk of no customers. Customers like leaders, not followers.

Forecast 304

Forecast Stock Options Technical Review Metrics 304

Steve Blank

JUNE 20, 2022

Had a continuous customer discovery to create products that customers need and want. Instrument the process with metrics and diagnostics. His challenge was to. find these islands of innovation and who was running them and understand if/how they. Leveraged existing company competencies and assets. Get out of the office.

CTO 368

CTO Technical Cofounder CTO Hire Incubator 368

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 30, 2022

As a potential investor, I always think of the high rate of failure of disruptive technologies, due to the longer learning curve of customers, infrastructure change consistently required, and higher marketing costs. Before you act, shut up and listen to employees, customers, and futurists. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

Technical Review 252

Technical Review Silicon Valley Software Review Metrics 252

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 6, 2021

Don’t forget to add all pesky “overhead” costs, with fixed elements, like rent, insurance, and administration, and variable elements, like delivery, customer support, and commissions. A required metric is average days to payment compared to expectations. A required metric is average days to payment compared to expectations.

Technical Review 379

Technical Review Finance Startup Salary 379

The Startup Magazine

APRIL 4, 2025

With the explosive rise of TikTok marketing , brands have a golden opportunity to pivot towards more engaging and dynamic customer interactions, making it an indispensable tool in today’s digital strategist’s kit. By encouraging customers to share their stories and experiences, brands cultivate a sense of community and loyalty.

Video 103

Video Marketing Audience Social Media 103

View from Seed

JULY 8, 2020

Updating your investor set, especially to include “asks” for customer introductions, advisor recommendations, and recruiting assistance, gives Founders leverage beyond the team that is on the payroll. The remainder of the email should include other highlights, core business metrics, financial metrics, challenges, goals, asks & thanks.

Email 331

Email Seed Stage Syndication Syndicate 331

The Startup Magazine

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

It’s not just about moving goods but also about optimizing routes and providing exceptional customer service. Freight management software helps brokers track shipments in real-time, optimize routes, and easily analyze performance metrics.

Developer 130

Developer Technical Review Software Review Reputation 130

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 13, 2022

Exposure to customers, incumbents, and competitors all drive success. Being close to your customers, your vendors, or even your competitors can make all the difference. But it is an important metric for firms in pursuit of explosive growth. It’s just the first of many. Exposure is another key ingredient.

Las Vegas 309

Las Vegas Silicon Valley Arizona Montana 309

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 25, 2020

It is considered to be an extremely personal way of reaching target customers. Your message can be tailored to customer actions so that every communication is relevant to their interest. There is practically no other distribution channel that drives engagement and builds customer relations better than email marketing.

Email 232

Email Sales Marketing Campaign 232

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

There is nothing more pure than building a product, putting it out in the world and seeing paying customers using your product and in some cases loving it. As companies get this initial customer feedback on their product they start to have to ask harder questions about unit economics: How much does it cost us to acquire a new customer?

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 2, 2020

How can businesses and marketing teams reach customers in the age of COVID-19, respond to lightning-fast changes in the marketplace, and keep up with new consumer demands? Agile marketers recognize that the future is impossible to predict accurately, so how customers will react to a marketing promotion is equally impossible to predict.

Agile 264

Agile Marketing Campaign Sales 264

Steve Blank

JANUARY 17, 2023

The studio’s internal team builds the minimal viable product, then validates an idea by finding product/market fit and early customers. If the idea passes a series of “Go/No Go” decisions based on milestones for customer discovery and validation, the studio recruits entrepreneurial founders to run and scale those startups.

Technical Cofounder 368

Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 368

The Startup Magazine

AUGUST 7, 2024

Running an ecommerce business requires efficient order fulfillment processes to get products to customers quickly and cost-effectively. Streamlining your fulfillment workflows can help you ship orders faster, reduce costs, and provide better customer service. Just be sure to integrate new shipping services across your platforms.

eCommerce 167

eCommerce Software Review Metrics Analytics 167

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 25, 2023

Don’t fail to develop the proper comprehensive metrics for assessing how you and any partners are doing in terms of value creation. It is vitally important to leverage your efforts to maximize all key constituents, including customers, team members, partners, and other stakeholders. Not having a means to measure holistic impact.

Partner 350

Partner Operations Metrics Leadership 350

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. After a few months of talking to customers and working with sales, we defined the marketing Mission (our job) as: Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin.

Startup 329

Startup PR Public Relations Channel 329

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 21, 2025

Performance management software is at the forefront of this evolution, offering solutions that streamline the review process while providing customized options tailored to an organization’s needs. This clarity helps prevent misunderstandings and ensures alignment across the organization.

Software Review 117

Software Review Technical Review Employee Agile 117

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 1, 2022

Winning business owners really listen and act on feedback from customers and advisors. Technology, competitors, and customers are changing every day, so the “ tried and trusted ” ways you do things need to be reviewed and updated regularly. Don’t be totally driven by a key customer. Listening to customers also helps.

Technical Review 302

Technical Review Social Media Metrics Hosting 302

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 22, 2023

Most leaders agree that poor customer service is a business killer today, in terms of lost customers, reduced profits, and low morale. Yet the average perception of customer experience has not improved. You have to start with hiring only people who are willing and able to make serious customer service happen.

Technical Review 249

Technical Review Salary Metrics Matching 249

TechEmpower

NOVEMBER 13, 2023

This isn’t just our opinion - our startup metrics prove it! So instead, we fill it with a completely custom blurb, written just for him: Hello! Thanks to his custom blurb, instead of closing his browser and feeling inadequate for the rest of the day, Mark completes his bio and becomes a happy customer.

Generative AI 297

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence Houston America 297

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 30, 2022

While these investors, and early customers, will always argue that they found you, I’m convinced that there is no substitute for aggressive networking on your part. Ability to relate aspirations to customer needs. You need to show insights to real customers and their needs, that get beyond your passions and projections.

Silicon Valley 284

Silicon Valley Technical Review Leadership Metrics 284

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 7, 2020

In the short term you need customers to find you at any price, and in the longer term you need revenue, profit, and return loyalty. It’s your job as a leader to be the model high performer, quantify the team view with metrics, and expand awareness to the best outside competition and new tools.

Technical Review 312

Technical Review Due Diligence Merger Social Media 312

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 19, 2022

Yet the value of real relationships, as with consumer customers, has become critical to your business services growth and success. Here is my list of some key recommendations to help you get your fair share of business: Customize and personalize every communication you can. Make sure clients know how you manage your business.

Technical Review 303

Technical Review Social Media Metrics Media 303

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 1, 2023

Develop metrics to monitor work intensity. Work intensity could be anything from number of meetings in a day, to number of production line emergencies, to number of angry customers during a shift. These metrics are also the best way to gauge when your team needs more help, and identifying strong and weak contributors.

Metrics 270

Metrics Conversion Global Product 270

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2022

It’s the same for customers and products, where analytics have long proven their value. Efficiency in the workplace is the time it takes to do something, but it can ignore work quality and customer impact. Use data analysis and metrics to measure for results. Working on the wrong problem or assumption.

Analytics 303

Analytics Hiring Open Source Employee 303

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

Exposure to customers, incumbents, and competitors all drive success. Being close to your customers, your vendors, or even your competitors can make all the difference. But it is an important metric for firms in pursuit of explosive growth. It’s just the first of many. Exposure is another key ingredient.

Las Vegas 243

Las Vegas Silicon Valley Arizona Montana 243