Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2010

A while back I wrote a bunch of posts on Sales & Marketing and have been meaning to get back to that theme for a while. Even if you don’t have “direct&# sales I would tell you that “everything is a sale&# including fund raising, hiring, getting press and doing business development.

Hiring 346

Hiring Sales Startup Early Stage 346

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 30, 2021

If you’re new to marketing and amid a startup, all of it can seem overwhelming. A lot of work goes into starting a business, developing and launching products, and running the day-to-day operations, so marketing often gets put on the back burner. Choose your Market Audience. Choose a Brand Name.

Developer 78

Developer Marketing Social Media Startup 78

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 29, 2018

Cash flow is a basic survival metric for every startup. Yet it always amazes me that I can find two different startups, seemingly working on the same problem, with one having a burn rate several times higher than the other. They understand startup realities. Use social media for early marketing. You will make mistakes.

Burn Rate 223

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 223

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

Rob Sobers said about the marketing growth strategy, “It’s not about tactics—it’s about people and process.”. When it comes to process, growth marketers must learn to fail. A marketing growth strategy is about small and incremental wins that build up over time. Growth marketing is about process over tactics.

Marketing 115

Marketing Framework Metrics Channel 115

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2020

Cash flow is a basic survival metric for every startup. Yet it always amazes me that I can find two different startups, seemingly working on the same problem, with one having a burn rate several times higher than the other. They understand startup realities. Use social media for early marketing. You will make mistakes.

Burn Rate 310

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Salary Angel Investor 310

ConversionXL

JANUARY 18, 2022

In 2018, after two short years and $3 million raised in startup funds, recruitment AI company Ansaro shut down due to bad market fit. Muun found a market need but failed to compete with bigger names that provided customers with authoritative content and resources. Both companies suffered from a fatal lack of marketing.

Marketing 110

Marketing Product Audience Equity 110

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

My rationale is simple: everything goes wrong and only great teams can respond to competitors, markets, funding environments, staff departures, PR disasters and the like. Final startup grind from msuster. And the folks at Startup Grind have been kind enough to invite me to present this morning in Mountain View on the topic.

Cofounder 388

Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 388

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 18, 2013

Most investors and startup professionals expand this concept of focus to apply to key issues of every aspect of strategic and tactical planning in a startup. Missions and products that are too broad confuse your team, your customers, and potential investors. Product development chasm. Marketing and sales chasm.

Entrepreneur 252

Entrepreneur Marketing Technical Review Dilution 252

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 6, 2019

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Join a startup incubator. Use crowd funding to build reserves.

Finance 320

Finance Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 320

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 7, 2017

Launching your startup in a down economy doesn’t make it any less likely to last. Two conditions that do matter to your startup’s out-year viability are the cost and length of its product development cycle. A minimum viable product is market-ready, not a prototype. Brand-faithful design and layout.

Cost 100

Cost Developer Small Business Administration Marketing 100

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2018

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Join a startup incubator. Use crowd funding to build reserves.

Intellectual Property 134

Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 134

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 1, 2013

Product development is stuck at that 90% mark, a key person leaves, and customers are talking but not buying. I challenge any startup to show me they have avoided all of these: One of the founders isn’t delivering. Sales aren’t meeting projections. entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki startup founder marriage business'

Founder 250

Founder Startup Software Developers Software Development 250

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 7, 2022

A common pain of startups after an exhilarating first surge of early adopters is a long and frustrating plateau of slow growth, where it seems like nothing you do will get your business to profitability. Others do far too little, assuming the viral effect and word-of-mouth will soon kick in, and sales will suddenly grow exponentially.

Startup 335

Startup Social Media Metrics Viral 335

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 15, 2021

In the last decade, SaaS (Software as a Service) has become a very popular model for new software product development. The largest cost component of establishing a SaaS company is product development costs. This includes the design, development, launch, and enhancement of the SaaS application. .

Cost 158

Cost Developer Azure Cloud 158

Mucker Lab

MAY 28, 2020

Like a teenager with a million-dollar allowance and an identity crisis, a startup with too much capital and no product-market fit will become capable of making larger mistakes. As an investor, I root for startups. Before you indulge in marketing, sales and blinged-out offices, find product-market fit.

Startup 78

Startup Cofounder Burn Rate Technical Review 78

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

Customer Development 233

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 233

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 27, 2019

Most investors and startup professionals expand this concept of focus to apply to key issues of every aspect of strategic and tactical planning in a startup. Missions and products that are too broad confuse your team, your customers, and potential investors. Product development chasm. Marketing and sales chasm.

Technical Review 255

Technical Review Dilution Early Stage Product Development 255

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 10, 2013

Assessing the upcoming expenditure and determining your startup budget will be essential for the smooth and problem-free start of business activities. To estimate the startup costs for a new business, you will have to take a look at several different categories of expenditure. Product Development and Marketing.

Cost 183

Cost Startup Web Development Finance 183

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Cash flow is a basic survival metric for every startup. Yet it always amazes me that I can find two different startups, seemingly working on the same problem, with one having a burn rate several times higher than the other. They understand startup realities. Use social media for early marketing. You will make mistakes.

Burn Rate 120

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 120

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

Most investors and startup professionals expand this concept of focus to apply to key issues of every aspect of strategic and tactical planning in a startup. Missions and products that are too broad confuse your team, your customers, and potential investors. Product development chasm. Marketing and sales chasm.

Marketing 238

Marketing Entrepreneur Technical Review Dilution 238

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 10, 2012

Most investors and startup professionals expand this concept of focus to apply to key issues of every aspect of strategic and tactical planning in a startup. Missions and products that are too broad confuse your team, your customers, and potential investors. Product development chasm. Marketing and sales chasm.

Startup 254

Startup Technical Review Dilution Early Stage 254

The Startup Magazine

AUGUST 11, 2023

These investments are a tremendous help to your startup because they will serve as a stepping stone to reach your target eventually. It is necessary to cover the early stages of product development, thorough market research, and other processes during the initial step. Hence they will miss the finish line.

Seed Stage 141

Seed Stage Technical Review Early Stage Due Diligence 141

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Creators of new products in environments of extreme uncertainty, startups face enormous risks. Insufficient capital, over investment, and low sales are just some of the reasons leading to this sobering statistic. As a startup owner, what can you do to improve your chances? Key ideas from the book include the following: 1.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 6, 2011

Product development is stuck at that 90% mark, a key person leaves, and customers are talking but not buying. I challenge any startup to show me they have avoided all of these: One of the founders isn’t delivering. Sales aren’t meeting projections. But all too soon, reality sets in. The team is not getting along.

Startup 245

Startup Software Developers Software Development Business Model 245

YoungUpstarts

MAY 23, 2018

Most startups do not fail because they had a bad idea that could not find a market, but rather because the founders and startup teams got overwhelmed or were missing key ingredients to success. Many founders or startup teams gravitate toward sales or design.

Due Diligence 133

Due Diligence Startup Finance Leadership 133

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. Its a key lean startup concept.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development.

Customer Development 245

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 245

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2021

When you see startups like SpaceX and Pinterest grow from a low valuation to a billion dollars in just a few years, it’s easy to assume that if you just keep doing what you are doing, you can get there as well. Switch your focus from product development to sales. Isolate marketing from sales for maximum customer focus.

Merger 379

Merger Due Diligence SEC IPO 379

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2010

Many of you have read or at least know the primary thesis of “ Crossing the Chasm &# the seminal book on marketing your products to mainstream consumers by Geoffrey Moore. It influenced a generation of tech marketers. We all intuitively know this curve now but we don’t all market effectively to it.

Customer 294

Customer Marketing Technical Review Iowa 294

YoungUpstarts

MAY 6, 2019

by Arsalan Sajid, startup community manager at Cloudways. Life is not a box of chocolates and startups are not always easy to start. There is a complete process that governs the startup lifecycle including inception to exit. They make money by starting a product from scratch and then selling it in thousands of dollars.

Startup 113

Startup Technical Cofounder Merger Early Stage 113

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

Startup companies often face numerous obstacles that stand in the way of their desired level of success—from lack of planning to inability to scale up or poor management to neglecting marketing. Among these obstacles exists the idea of product viability and adaptability. No one has ever said it’s easy to start a business.

Software Review 103

Software Review Management Early Stage Startup 103

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 26, 2011

That doesn’t work in a startup. There’s a certain cadence that you can feel when you spend time hanging any well-run startup company. The startup entrepreneur knows that they’re going to be wrong often. Only half of this adage is accurate for startups. 3 months is a lifetime in a startup. Hiring at a Startup.

Hiring 335

Hiring Technical Review Startup Framework 335

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 20, 2011

There are unknowns at every turn, leading product development, attracting customers, managing cash, and dealing with human resources and office politics. Probably 80% of the startups I know have found human resource issues to be the most treacherous. Strategically timid and haphazard marketing.

Advisory Board 232

Advisory Board Startup Forecast Early Stage 232

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Cashflow is a basic survival metric for every startup. Yet it always amazes me that I can find two different startups, seemingly working on the same problem, with one having a burn rate several times higher than the other. They understand startup realities. Use social media for early marketing. You will make mistakes.

Burn Rate 262

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Salary 262

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 31, 2022

As an investor, I sometimes see CEOs who negotiate to send their VP of Marketing to talk. As a startup, you as the entrepreneur are the brand, the brand builder, and the major lead generator. In a small startup, it may be cool to have a CEO who wears a hoodie and communicates via text messages.

Marketing 283

Marketing Early Stage Lead Generation Hosting 283

The Startup Magazine

JANUARY 26, 2022

There are several elements that go into hardware product design that taps an unaddressed customer need, has the customer WOW factor, and succeeds long term in the market. Complicating the development of a useful product is the stringent safety and compliance approval testing that varies based on country and industry.

Design 150

Design Development Team Review Product Technical Review 150

Gust

APRIL 27, 2014

Software Development Process via Wikipedia. Even when your startup is a one-man show and lots of fun, a “business” needs some discipline and controls to keep it from being defined as a hobby by investors, and assure some financial return. Product development process.

Startup 187

Startup Institutional Investors Angel Investor Bootstrapping 187