Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 7, 2022

Continually add new marketing and distribution partners. Resist the urge to delegate accounting decisions, under the assumption that incoming revenue takes the pressure off. Unfortunately, the challenges of scaling a business, and making it profitable, often last longer than the product development phase.

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Startup Social Media Metrics Viral 335

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Waterfall Development. While it sounds simple , the Build Measure Learn approach to product development is a radical improvement over the traditional Waterfall model used throughout the 20 th century to build and ship products. The “build” step refers to building a minimal viable product (an MVP.) Lessons Learned.

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Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 8, 2009

Your friends and advisers tell you that this means you need revenue because in this economy VC’s will only fund businesses with revenue. So if it’s not necessarily revenue that’s preventing an investment, then WTF is traction? They tell you they’re going to ship product and they do.

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Technical Review Term Sheet Revenue Venture Capital 309

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

People had a terrible experience using their product. After turning their attention toward feedback and testing, letting the voice of their customers fuel their content strategy and product development, they took off. The introductory stage is rarely profitable because of high distribution and promotion expenses but low sales.

Product 102

Product Marketing Social Media Channel 102

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

Between January 2015 and January 2016, we grew our platform Slidebean from $1K to $20K in monthly recurring revenue. Getting the first tracks of revenue is one of the toughest processes of building a startup. 1x hacker in charge of product/development. 1x hipster working with both product and growth.

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Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 4, 2010

Whether your new software is ‘in the cloud,’ an online download, or distributed on a CD through various direct and indirect distribution channels, the process of localization is still a time consuming, manually intensive, and expensive effort. In addition this person should report, dotted line, to product development or engineering.

Software 200

Software Distribution Europe Database 200

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

The entrepreneur who founded and grew the largest startup in the world to $10 billion in revenue and got fired is someone you have probably never heard of. Just as Durant had multiple interests, Musk is not only Tesla’s CEO and Product Architect, overseeing all product development, engineering, and design.

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Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 299

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 9, 2020

Continually add new marketing and distribution partners. Resist the urge to delegate accounting decisions, under the assumption that incoming revenue takes the pressure off. Unfortunately, the challenges of scaling a business, and making it profitable, often last longer than the product development phase.

Social Media 329

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 329

Up and Running

JUNE 14, 2017

Some believe in the all-in approach to product development: build an advanced app. Then, about two weeks before launch, I distributed a survey to those 256 partners. But when I ran the numbers, the revenue from just the first three months from the 150 who were interested in premium would cover the investment and more.

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Technical Review Distribution Redemption Demand 96

VC Cafe

JULY 15, 2021

According to Statista, revenue generated from apps (paid downloads and in-app advertising) will reach $935 billion by 2023, and that doesn’t doesn’t include the many trillions of dollars transacted via apps in the last decade alone (think Amazon, Uber, games, etc). Worldwide mobile app revenues in 2014 to 2023 (in billion U.S.

Mobile 190

Mobile Social Media Distribution PR 190

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

On the other hand, if you arrive at a VC pitch without a comprehensive understanding of the industry you’re hoping to compete in, or without a clear path to profitability or a thoughtful product-development road map, you’ll likely leave empty-handed. You may be able to generate revenue, but VCs want exponential growth.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

While some investors will be willing to help you build your team, they will not be willing to invest in your startup if you are not willing to distribute responsibility and bring on diversified expertise. Typically, these hires fall into 2 buckets: product development and sales. Early Stage.

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Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 7, 2019

They will initially generate crowdsourcing revenues by matchmaking science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) researchers with government, academia and industry employers who pay to access the scientists seeking employment. We will also seek first-mover STEM recruiting customers in order to generate revenues.

Intellectual Property 48

Intellectual Property Technical Review Malta Startup 48

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. And I can even imagine cases where it might burn more cash than a traditional startup. Lets see why.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 263

Growthink Blog

SEPTEMBER 13, 2017

To illustrate, let’s investigate two typical company scenarios: Company Scenario #1: A company lacking great financial traction - slow revenue growth, little profit - but one that competes in an industry attractive to strategic and financial buyers. Many distribution, manufacturing, and service businesses fit this description.

Harvest 48

Harvest IP Software Review Forecast 48

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? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Transformify

MARCH 14, 2020

At the same time, the stock markets collapsed, and most businesses already report skyrocketing losses, unmet revenue targets and insufficient stock due to production slow down in China, India and the rest of the world. Work from home and remote work also significantly cut office costs.

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Hiring Bulgaria Italy Spain 98

ConversionXL

MAY 1, 2017

Reporting in the Harvard Business Review on a major study of growth stalls they conducted, Olson and his colleagues cite the case of the iconic brand Levi Strauss, which hit a historic high mark of sales in 1995, reaching revenue of $7 billion, but then, starting in 1996, saw a decline in sales so precipitous that by 2000, revenue was down to $4.6

Technical Review 127

Technical Review Algorithm Channel Analytics 127

VC Cafe

NOVEMBER 11, 2011

BigBand Networks, which has more than 200 customers in North America, Asia and Europe, provides broadband service providers with digital video networking solutions designed to make it easier to distribute, manage and monetize video. Fifty of its manufacturing activities and 70% of its consolidated revenues derive from global operations.

Israel 96

Israel Peru Technical Review North America 96

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 26, 2022

You're likely going to be experiencing revenues in waves, owing to the pandemic booms and dips, and the varying regulations. Video marketing will also allow small businesses to distribute the same video content across many platforms, allowing them to serve a wide spectrum of clients at the same time. Photo Credit: Kevin Burke.

Software Review 127

Software Review Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur 127

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2015

In the first 50 years of commerce in the then-new United States, most businesses were general merchants , buying and selling all types of products as exporters, wholesaler, importers, etc. and concentrated on a single part of the supply chain – importing, distribution, wholesale, retail.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Venture Capital United States Technical Review 120

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 22, 2012

In a way, you can think of BD as “sales when you don’t know what the product is yet.” It’s basically working with potential outside partners to reach your business goals--which could be revenue, distribution, financing, product development, awareness, etc.

PR 160

PR Technical Review Seed Stage Design 160

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2018

mobile is ~50% of revenue, shorter form works better. Flip your funnel – only 5% of revenue comes from optimisation but 92% of revenue from retention. In an A/A test the distribution of p-values is random. Be agile, move at the speed of business, don’t hold up product development. upleveled aesthetic.

Retention 106

Retention Artificial Inteligence Channel Email 106

Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 24, 2017

We’re very new to the industry, and while we’re passionate about the product, there have been obstacles every step of the way – production, shipping, distribution, etc. But it’s rewarding to see our customers so excited about the product, and the huge growth in sales from last year has been encouraging.

Las Vegas 91

Las Vegas Entrepreneur Software Review Community 91

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?)

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

One is explaining the world as it used to work: the importance of gatekeepers, the scarcity implied by limited distribution, and the resulting quality bar that the industry is so proud of. Mostly it is the time and expense required to create the means of distribution for that industry. It’s just taking some longer than others.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 5, 2019

Because they used the magic term ‘personas,‘ development teams were discouraged from developing their own, not realising that a market segment might contain multiple personas. Development teams couldn’t use marketing personas to make design decisions, so they decided personas weren’t that useful. (It Career background?

Software Review 115

Software Review Design Agile Analytics 115

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. When we’re optimizing, product development teams encounter similar situations. I mean, here we are, paying them to be there, and they won’t use the product!

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Product Startup RSS 271

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 12, 2010

That’s because a company’s value is a composite of all of the quantitative and qualitative factors that comprise a company: revenues, expenses, risks, growth prospects, quality of the management team, competitive advantages, strength of the intellectual property, and so forth. In business, one important measure is the value of the company.

Intellectual Property 223

Intellectual Property .Net Valuation Distribution 223

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 24, 2014

Just get it done” is fine when entrepreneurs are starting out, but not when the work is distributed to a bigger team. To help build new product development and venture teams, my colleague Rob Goldberg, of Stages of Innovation , created an assessment tool called Talent for Growth.

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Startup Angel Investor Early Stage LLC 252

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 29, 2016

Continually add new marketing and distribution partners. Resist the urge to delegate accounting decisions, under the assumption that incoming revenue takes the pressure off. Unfortunately, the challenges of scaling a business, and making it profitable, often last longer than the product development phase.

Social Media 120

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 120

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 27, 2022

Are there ways that you’ve seen local businesses use this in a way that might effectively drive revenue? [19:23] One is, you know, potentially revenue. Not, not just to build numbers, but to do something that might effectively, uh, drive revenue. 19:23] What’s next for businesses on Facebook? [22:24]

Community 76

Community New York Small Business New York City 76

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

They’ve found product/market fit (what products customers want to buy). They’ve learned the best distribution channel to get the product from their company to the customer. They’ve figured out the revenue model (subscription, license, direct sale, etc.) and how to price the product.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

ConversionXL

MARCH 7, 2017

Because they used the magic term ‘personas’, development teams were discouraged from developing their own, not realising that a market segment might contain multiple personas. Development teams couldn’t use marketing personas to make design decisions, so they decided personas weren’t that useful. (It Career background?

Software Review 102

Software Review Design Agile Analytics 102