InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

Most sophisticated investors ignore them, focusing their attention on an entrepreneur's pitch and presentation materials, financial forecast and executive summary. As such, the primary goal of your executive summary is to open the door to an in-person meeting. Entrepreneurs routinely seek my advice regarding their executive summaries.

Venture Capital 211

Venture Capital Summary Technical Review Template 211

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 27, 2022

In my experience as a business advisor, most organizations, large and small, struggle to keep up with the pace of change and competitive forces today. A question I often get is how to transform that overall team into a smooth-running machine that will keep up with the pace of market change, and competition in today’s world.

Competition 136

Competition Resource Startup Organization 136

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 30, 2022

Today’s customers are much more in control of their buying decision, as they have more choices and more information than ever before. Bloom’s classic book, “ The New Experts: Win Today's Newly Empowered Customers.” This is a key moment where your customer acquisition costs go way down, and your profits go way up.

Customer 146

Customer Custom Startup Course 146

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

The world keeps changing, and visible business strategies that worked well in the past, including being the premium brand or low price producer, simply don’t get the customer loyalty they once did. Today, customers are looking for real relationships, a memorable shopping experience, and satisfaction of a higher purpose.

Customer 133

Customer Custom Satisfaction Examples 133

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 17, 2010

Know your market and competition, or don’t spend a dime on anything else. I have stated previously that I love absolutes – statements with no wiggle room for gray-area responses. There is no competition.” Bell’s competition was the written message, doing nothing, the telegraph and old fashioned word of mouth.

Marketing 247

Marketing Competition Research Summary 247

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

My list of excuses includes: product, pricing, competition and lack of sales support. I think it works well for startups because in startups there are inherently less rules and with customers there is less clarity about your product category. This includes presentations, ROI calculators, competitive analyses and so forth.

Startup 319

Startup Sales Course Competition 319

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 20, 2020

Contrary to popular opinion, viral marketing has not eliminated the need for old-fashioned lead generation to bring customers to a startup. Here is my summary of the seven most successful lead-generation vehicles he and I still recommend today, despite the popularity of viral marketing: Search-engine marketing. Display advertising.

Customer 146

Customer Custom Marketing Startup 146

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 3, 2020

Today’s customers are much more in control of their buying decision, as they have more choices and more information than ever before. Bloom’s classic book, “ The New Experts: Win Today's Newly Empowered Customers.” This is a key moment where your customer acquisition costs go way down, and your profits go way up.

Customer 124

Customer Custom Startup Course 124

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2014

There’s a healthy balance between allowing a design team to dream up functional requirements, talk with customers, analyze competitors and for technical projects – research the latest cool-kid tools to play with. In summary – I have been involved with software development for 25 years. CEOs are time-driven creatures.

Software 344

Software Startup Design Course 344

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 22, 2014

They were a little too fierce in their competitive practices against Lyft to sign up drivers. As somebody who has to rub shoulders with big tech companies often I can tell you that there is much blood spilled in the competitive trenches of Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Google and so on. I doubt they have a customer problem.

Press 418

Press Journal Startup Training 418

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2010

They care about the quality of what is build more than they care about end customers. As you head into the phase where you’ve had real customers paying real money for a period of time you’ll have a whole new set of issues. In summary. You still have some leeway to hire above them if need be.

CTO Hire 400

CTO Hire Fractional VPE Startup Outsource Development 400

InfoChachkie

JULY 21, 2011

Paige is a gifted communicator and my summary does not do him justice. He offers a number of worthwhile tips and tricks that I was not able to capture in the textual summary, so the 14-minute audio file is well worth your time. What follows is a summary which paraphrases Paige’s responses. Click here to listen to the Audio File.

Summary 246

Summary Tips Sales Entrepreneur 246

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 19, 2014

Today’s customers are much more in control of their buying decision, as they have more choices and more information than ever before. Bloom’s recent book, “ The New Experts: Win Today''s Newly Empowered Customers.” This is a key moment where your customer acquisition costs go way down, and your profits go way up.

Customer 98

Customer Custom Entrepreneur Startup 98

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 11, 2010

Modern investors love to first read a two-page summary of your business plan, formatted like a glossy marketing collateral sheet, with text well laid out in columns and sidebars, and a couple of relevant graphics. You may have already found several articles, web pages, or books about writing the perfect executive summary.

Summary 55

Summary Writing Competition Metrics 55

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 14, 2018

Detailed roadmap of features you plan to build Detailed customer information Salary information Any other information you wouldn’t want seen or know by your competitors or a larger audience In short, there is nothing in your deck that should give you pause or make you feel like you can’t just send the damn file to somebody.

Funding 239

Funding Venture Capital IP Email 239

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

Exec Summary: Most companies (98+%) in the world (even tech startups) should be very profit focused. If you had huge customer growth but just didn’t focus on revenue that’s a different story. Do 20% of the customers make 80% of the revenue or do the top 3 customers represent 80% of the revenue.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2011

I think you’ll really enjoy this video , but as always I have summary notes for those with less time. If you like the quick summary notes, please check out Adam’s blog on tech, entrepreneurship & VC as a thank you. Hopefully it will entice you to come back and watch the show at a later time! West Coast”).

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Venture Capital Startup Artificial Inteligence 281

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 25, 2011

But the reality is that sellers are no longer in charge of the customer buying process. Kristin Zhivago, in her new book “ Roadmap to Revenue ,” makes the point that the selling system is broken, since sellers no longer sell the way customers are buying. The best way to do this is with real customer interviews.

Customer 96

Customer Custom Search Engine Optimization Summary 96

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 30, 2015

Today’s customers are much more in control of their buying decision, as they have more choices and more information than ever before. Bloom’s classic book, “ The New Experts: Win Today's Newly Empowered Customers.” This is a key moment where your customer acquisition costs go way down, and your profits go way up.

Customer 101

Customer Custom Startup Course 101

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2020

To be clear, I define a product specification as the technical definition of your product, to be used for development and testing purposes, with a quick business summary for context. Use non-fuzzy terms to quantify customer value. Provide specifics on the customer business model. and trademarks.

Product 169

Product Summary Startup Examples 169

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2014

It’s building a product that is substantially differentiated, and, as Bill Gross, one of the most prolific tech entrepreneurs of our era says, “ It needs to be 10x better than the competition ” (because if you shoot for that then in competitive markets you might achieve 3x.

Marketing 379

Marketing Startup SEM SEO 379

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 15, 2021

All this was done without damaging anyone’s credibility, or stealing customers. Here is a summary of each: Complementary strengths allows extended market penetration. It’s very unusual for two competitors to have exactly the same strengths – in development, marketing, distribution, or customer support.

Startup 173

Startup Outsource Development Examples Custom 173

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 22, 2015

But the bigger truth is the competition is important. market share today and are stuck with high real-estate costs, shitty customer service, bad value propositions and no ability to respond to competition because they have effectively become real-estate holding companies that store stuff for cashflow.

Funding 150

Funding Competition Marketing Summary 150

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2011

A summary of what we discussed is below: Not 100% in order of the video, but close. Competition. Progress to date of your company (when started, key milestones, what shape is the product in, any pilot / beta customers, financing). Demo could go here]. Market sizing. Potential future exit possibilities.

Venture Capital 340

Venture Capital Slides Doc Startup 340

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2011

I wrote the summary notes in this blog post. I talked about this in the TWiVC video but I didn’t do a good enough job of writing it up in the summary notes in the post. And when you finish the demo you can bring in the other important components such as competition, team, customer acquisition strategy, etc.

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Slides Technical Advisors Startup 299

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

As a CEO you never stop needing to go on sales calls (or to work the phones in telesales or customer support) and ceasing to do this as your company grows because you’re focusing on investors, recruiting, PR or whatever is a mistake. I also make visits to senior level customers of portfolio companies with which I’m involved.

Startup 308

Startup CTO Coach Technical Review CTO Hire 308

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 15, 2020

When entrepreneurs introduce new products to the market, their passion and conviction often leads them to assume that every potential customer will see the immediate need and value, and will quickly adopt the solution. The more revolutionary the solution, the more important it is to educate customers on a solution’s existence and value.

Case Study 174

Case Study Startup Custom Customer 174

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2020

Your concept has to be understood by customers and investors in 30 seconds or less, and everyone needs to immediately see how awesome it would be, or that they would be nuts not to have it. I’m looking for the “hook” right up front, or I lose interest quickly, just like every customer and investor these days.

Startup 166

Startup Education Ideas Custom 166

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?

Startup 286

Startup Technical Review Custom Customer 286

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 30, 2021

Based on my own years of experience helping new businesses grow, I’d like to offer my own summary of some key lower-level action items, which I believe every business professional and entrepreneur can learn and practice to their advantage: Show ambition and a sense of urgency in every role. Build community with team members and advisors.

Coach 162

Coach Startup Resource Competition 162

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 23, 2021

The specifics of these shortcomings are hard to nail down, but I was impressed with the good summary provided in a new book, “ Make It, Don’t Fake It ,” by Sabrina Horn. For example, a few years ago Wells Fargo seriously damaged its brand trying to grow the business by creating accounts without proper customer consent.

Examples 170

Examples Custom Customer Social Media 170

Berkonomics

AUGUST 31, 2023

Know your market and competition, or don’t spend a dime on anything else. In this case, the competition was not from a company but from a new technology. When I listen to a pitch from an enthusiastic entrepreneur or read the summary of a business plan, one of the first questions I ask is about the strength of the competition.

Competition 156

Competition Research Summary Pricing 156

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2020

It’s clear things have changed for good and the need for managing remote communities of employees, customers and partners has become ever more important. In marketing materials founders often refer to their customer base as a “community”, but there’s a huge gap between having customers and creating a community.

Software 234

Software Startup Tool Platform 234

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2011

That, plus I love the space of high-customer-service, focused eCommerce for moms worried about what their kids eat & wear.&#. That said, a summary below is available for those who prefer to read the notes version. A very big thank you to Travis Biziorek of Kibin who did the summary notes below. I love the concept.

Startup 292

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Summary 292

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 31, 2020

Serious investors, on the other hand, look for a professional business plan or summary first, and hardly ever look at the product plan. These requirements must be based on market analysis, expert input, and existing customer feedback. Opportunity segmentation and competitive environment. Provide details on the business model.

Entrepreneur 124

Entrepreneur Startup Summary Product 124

InfoChachkie

AUGUST 18, 2011

What follows is a summary which paraphrases Mark’s responses. How does SteelHouse enable its customers to leverage the existence of these various consumers? And then create the audience and deliver the right offer to the shoppers so they get the incentive they need to convert and the site gets the sale and a new customer.”.

eHarmony 204

eHarmony Media Oracle Commerce 204

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 9, 2023

Even in this age of videos and text messages, the quickest way to kill your startup dream with investors, business partners, or even customers, is embarrassingly poor writing. In the competitive realm of business, you only get one chance to make a great first impression. You can’t afford that competitive disadvantage.

Tips 123

Tips Writing Startup Summary 123