Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 1, 2015

Viral marketing costs real money, and your support staff and hosting systems cost even more. Cash is always hard to find, but in many cases it’s even harder to find access to needed distribution channels, government contract expertise, or the special skills required to deliver your solution. No startup can afford to do these serially.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Viral Distribution 120

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 9, 2020

Others do far too little, assuming the viral effect and word-of-mouth will soon kick in, and sales will suddenly grow exponentially. Continually add new marketing and distribution partners. 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

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

I break the answer to that question down into three engines: Viral - this is the business model identified in the presentation as "Get Users." Here, the key metrics are Acquisition and Referral, combined into the now-famous viral coefficient. If the coefficient is > 1.0 , you generally have a viral hit on your hands.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

VC Cafe

JULY 15, 2021

What are the main channels for app marketing and distribution today? Ads – targeted advertising is perhaps THE most reliable channel to market and distribute a consumer app. Therefore, my recommendation for startups who are pre-monetisation is to experiment with new organic distribution ways.

Mobile 190

Mobile Social Media Distribution PR 190

The Next Web

DECEMBER 2, 2013

These costs don’t take into account the many relevant systems within Shopify’s business such as maintaining its API, the infrastructure and server space needed to support its 50,000+ shops and designing and developing all of the beautiful templates that help make Shopify so successful. 8) Angry Birds.

Cost 168

Cost San Francisco New York City Ruby 168

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2018

Virality: # of users that refer your product for you: exponential growth if your K factor is greater than 1. Dropbox: first achieved growth through virality. 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.

Retention 106

Retention Artificial Inteligence Channel Email 106

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 29, 2016

Others do far too little, assuming the viral effect and word-of-mouth will soon kick in, and sales will suddenly grow exponentially. Continually add new marketing and distribution partners. 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

crowdSPRING Blog

MAY 17, 2010

Like many small companies with limited marketing budgets, we are forced to work with the resources at hand, so creativity, partnering approaches, social media, and viral efforts tend to be our stock in trade. But critical to consider are whether your product offers enough variation (is there something for (almost) everyone?)

Marketing 84

Marketing Startup Viral Small Business 84

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

” April, 2012 – Andrew Chen writes Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing , which goes viral (2.4K Now, people begin defining growth hacking as a process, a systematic approach, a “viral loop”, etc. The key differentiator being the product-level focus vs. the channel-level focus of traditional marketing effort.

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

vs. sustainable: Compare this to the renewable strategies, like viral marketing, SEO, widgets, and ads, which can scale into 10s of millions of users but are primarily centered around tough, non-user centric work. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

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

mashable.com

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

For example, my company decided early on to hire a UI designer, which has helped tremendously with our product development. Then we allocated the saved money into hiring the highest quality developers available — especially those who have experience working with a distributed team.

Startup 79

Startup Social Media RSS Social Network 79

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

In the Udemy course, Alistair and Ben expand these basics into a description of how to create empathy, stickiness, virality, revenue, and scale. Stickiness, Ben and Alistair say, is where people move on too quickly--they don’t make sure they really have a product that has the right features and functionality to meet their customers’ needs.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

If its part of a viral loop, its probably trying to get them to invite more friends (on average). This gets me into trouble, because it conjures up for some the idea that product development is simply a rote mechanical exercise of linear optimization. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 29, 2020

There has never been a viral outbreak of such magnitude before. Eric Ries, the founder of theleanstartup.com , states that the lean startup philosophy“provides a scientific approach to creating and managing startups and get the desired product to customers’ hands faster.”. Attract customers through content marketing.

Bootstrapping 85

Bootstrapping Global Startup Hungary 85

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 21, 2013

If you're working on the Sticky Engine of Growth , you're focused on very different metrics from those that you care about in the Viral Engine of Growth. Similarly, a two-sided marketplace cares about different things from a traditional e-commerce product. If you do your job well, you’ll disrupt the ecosystem.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Metrics Churn Rate 167

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Another great way to test your idea is to create a minimum viable product, or MVP. This is the simplest version of your product minus the frills and frosting. It’s a particularly popular strategy in the world of product development and is used to quickly and quantitatively test a product or a product feature.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

Others would go even further and say it is better to launch half a product than a half-assed product. The Four Steps to the Epiphany (highly recommended book by Steve Blank) preaches for customer development before product development, advocating a quick launch with a minimal feature set rather than a full fledged product offering.

Lean 120

Lean Customer Development Audience Viral 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Either way, you would have been better off focusing your split-test on high level metrics that measure how much customers like your product as a whole. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

1x hacker in charge of product/development. 1x hipster working with both product and growth. There are a number of other variables here like virality (the chances of a user referring another user), but I don’t want to overcomplicate things. Apr-15: Head of Marketing (growth team). .”

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, October 7, 2008 The App Store after the gold rush I wrote earlier about the issue of distribution advantage on the iPhone. I think its helpful to think about two kinds of competition for distribution: acquisition competition and retention competition. So what can you do?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

As a developer, I feel that design/creative is undervalued in the early stages of product development. Notwithstanding examples like Plentyofish, people respond to well designed, well branded products, and that can be important in getting traction early on. I bogged about this recently too - [link] log/201.

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Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42