Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 29, 2018

Cash flow is a basic survival metric for every startup. For example, a software development startup raising $250,000 from angel investors better be able to operate on $25,000 per month. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year.

Burn Rate 223

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 223

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. ” Fire, Ready, Aim.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

by Lu Zhang, founder and managing partner of Fusion Fund. Competition from other startups and established incumbents, constraints on time and capital, and limited access to talent and technology resources are just a few of the hurdles nearly every first-time founder faces while trying to build a business.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Creators of new products in environments of extreme uncertainty, startups face enormous risks. Enter “ The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses “, a New York Times bestseller by founder of IMVU (creator of 3D avatars) Eric Ries.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Cashflow is a basic survival metric for every startup. For example, a software development startup raising $250,000 from angel investors better be able to operate on $25,000 per month. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year.

Burn Rate 262

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Salary 262

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2022

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. That’s where I see too much entrepreneur burnout, growth plateaus, and founders being replaced, to their chagrin. Growth is more than simply repackaging existing products, and adding bells and whistles or slick incentives.

Mezzanine 368

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 368

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 5, 2008 The product managers lament Life is not easy when youre working in an old-fashioned waterfall development process, no matter what role you play. The product manager was clearly struggling to get results from the rest of the team. Lets start with what the product manager does.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Cash flow is a basic survival metric for every startup. For example, a software development startup raising $250,000 from angel investors better be able to operate on $25,000 per month. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year.

Burn Rate 120

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 120

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2016

But for founders who do their homework, the cost of entry is lower and the opportunity is higher than ever. Excellent detailed resources are everywhere, including a new book, “ The Startup Checklist ,” by serial entrepreneur and founder of the New York Angels, David S. Building a minimum viable product, with customer validation.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Groups Social Media 120

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2021

Many entrepreneurs never get past their first-stage focus on their innovative product, to scaling the business globally, organizing a structure to handle thousands of employees, and concentrating their focus “on the business” rather than working “in the business.” In fact, it’s highly unlikely that you as the Founder will survive.

Merger 379

Merger Due Diligence SEC IPO 379

Up and Running

MAY 15, 2014

As an entrepreneur raised in the era of analytics, I want to find metrics for everything. When I was going through the co-founder “dating” process, I’d found a potential partner through my network who seemed to be perfect. The problem is that this is harder to do than it sounds. Finding the right business partner for me.

Partner 113

Partner Cofounder Equity Metrics 113

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 25, 2011

And this year, we’re going to talk not just about business and product development, but we’ll be exploring one of the Lean Starutp movements next big frontiers: the role of design. But along with Intuit founder Scott Cook, Brad is a leader that recognizes that entrepreneurship is critical to his company’s success.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Silicon Valley Lean Agile 146

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 9, 2010 Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# theory of management At any given time, something like four percent of the US population is engaged in some form of new-company-creation. Are we solving the right problem? We can do better by focusing on process instead of personality.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. It consists of a highly intelligent and opinionated founder – Nick Halstead. In his spare time he raised nearly $30 million. It is really working.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board Fractional CTO CTO Hire Los Angeles 365

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Nick Kim , Crosscut’s Head of Platform, in his presentation at the 4th Annual VC Platform Summit, shared their Platform development methodology, which he viewed as an exercise in product development. For example, recruiting writ large is useful at all stages of development. AskAnything.VC Advantages.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 4, 2015

Full of vigor and enthusiasm with a product-market fit that seems destined to change the world, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement and strive for world domination. Use OKRs to establish how company success is measured, establish a metrics-driven culture and track performance progress. Here’s how: 1.

Agile 100

Agile Startup Cofounder Metrics 100

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2020

In my experience as an advisor to startups, the difference is almost always related to the founder and their execution strategy , more so than to the solution quality or the market. Define success metrics, and measure progress regularly. If you have completed four out of five milestones, we can both see success in your future.

Advisory Board 308

Advisory Board Agile Social Media Metrics 308

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, July 13, 2009 The Principles of Product Development Flow If youve ever wondered why agile or lean development techniques work, The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen is the book for you.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

Not because they have a conversion problem but because they never really nail the product or how to market it. This is a customer development problem. Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, developed a methodology for creating businesses that runs in parallel with the traditional product development process.

Customer Development 126

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 126

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 21, 2015

Successful entrepreneurs start with a customer problem, and develop a solution, rather than the other way around. They build a startup culture of working for customers rather than pushing a product. Develop market insights and a growth vision far beyond today. Manage by metrics rather than by crisis and emotion.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Metrics Hosting Leadership 120

Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 31, 2016

More than 75 marketplace founders and investors attended the event – coming from as far as South Africa and Nova Scotia. As an investor and former founder, I know that scalable growth (and the pretty hockey stick graph) is the holy grail for every startup. Then, the startup needs to get strong product-market fit.

Software Review 60

Software Review South Africa Hockey Stick Viral 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2019

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. That’s where I see too much entrepreneur burnout, growth plateaus, and founders being replaced, to their chagrin. Growth is more than simply repackaging existing products, and adding bells and whistles or slick incentives.

Mezzanine 244

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 244

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

The investors, founders, and “community” are all super excited about ASC. ASC starts building product, but as they get into the thick of it, the team realizes executing on their vision is going to be extremely hard. No updates, screen comps, or metrics have been publicly shared yet. Heads down on product, they say.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. More on that in a moment.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 18, 2024

Guest Author: Shagun Malhotra , Founder of SkyStem LLC An area on the financial side of startup growth that is often left by the wayside is the balance sheet. The difficulty with startups is that, in many cases, metrics are going to be tricky to track if you’re in the very early stages.

Balance Sheet 121

Balance Sheet Startup Early Stage Equity 121

YoungUpstarts

JULY 2, 2020

by Boris Pfeiffer , CEO and Founder of Riddle. Another common mistake that marketing teams are making is using the same metrics for success that they have used in the past. If you use these same metrics, you’re going to be sorely disappointed in the results. Boris Pfeiffer is CEO and Founder of Riddle Technologies.

Marketing 262

Marketing Metrics Channel Differentiation 262

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 29, 2013

Eric has talked often about recognizing a startup as an organization designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Most commonly, that’s uncertainty about whether you can build the product at all (what MBAs call “technical risk”) or whether anybody will use or buy it (“market risk”). in ten years?

Lean 165

Lean Technical Review Startup Software Review 165

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Everyone was in the flow; the team was hyper-productive. In many cases, they did the impossible, building a new product faster, cheaper, and better than anyone could have predicted.

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 7, 2016

As a founder of a startup myself (we’re six years old now, in fact), I know those feelings all too well. So, as counterintuitive as this sounds, you should be working hard to encourage customers to point out deficiencies and problems with your product or service. Ensure company founders do customer support.

Customer 60

Customer Retention Startup Metrics 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Five Whys has its origins in the Toyota Production System. And yet the key to startup speed is to maintain a disciplined approach to testing and evaluating new products, features, and ideas. As start-ups scale, this agility will be lost unless the founders maintain a consistent investment in that discipline.

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 25, 2022

First off, many founders don't really feel the need to have external accountability. Not only that, founders get a lot of warnings from other founders about “losing control” and to be careful about ceding too much power to investors. Metrics around these efforts.

Equity 108

Equity Metrics Widget Bandwidth 108

ConversionXL

APRIL 13, 2017

Jonathan Price wrote on the same Quora thread that he believes growth marketing to differ from regular marketing because it “is technology-centric and it blurs the boundary between marketing and product development.” A growth team, however, is largely overlapped with product, engineering, and design as well.

Analytics 99

Analytics Engineer SEO Channel 99

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 18, 2014

Of the NextView-backed founders have have tried to raise this round, over 70% have done so (compared to a mean success rate in the industry of around 27%, according to some sources ). Higher founder salaries, which some investors view as a sign of being less hungry or aggressive, did not affect how quickly a startup raised its Series A.

Syndicate 333

Syndicate Syndication Seed Stage Startup 333

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

———– Whether your venture is a new pizza parlor or the hottest new software product, beware: These nine flawed assumptions are toxic. First and deadliest of all is a founder’s unwavering belief that he or she understands who the customers will be, what they need, and how to sell it to them.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 6, 2016

To create this first year in business checklist, I turned to our in-house experts here at Palo Alto Software: Sabrina Parsons, CEO; Noah Parsons, COO; Josh Cochrane, Vice President of Product Development; and Josh Fegles, Academic and Government Channel Sales Director, and founder of gluten-free cookie company Jude’s Foods.

Forecast 60

Forecast Software Review Lean Finance 60

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. (See

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168