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I did a presentation this week at Coloft that looked at how Non-Technical Founders can go about getting their MVP built. The second bullet, getting feedback from customers is most often not valid either. And the back-end is something that a non-technical founder can manage. It had a passionate group of 50 people attending.
Some analysis and duediligence along the following lines should be performed on every idea, as a reality check, before committing your efforts and other people’s money to building a business: Look for places where competitors are few. Don’t forget to consider customer alternatives, like trains versus airplanes.
I spend a lot of time with startups and thus hear many companies talk about their approach to sales and their interactions with customers. From these meetings you can really tell the leaders that care deeply about their customers and those the look down on them. You’d be very wrong. Contrast that with a VC conversation I had.
Most technology startups seem to be funded by product people or business people. Whenever I heard why we didn’t feel a sales process at an important customer was going well (or if we lost) I would get involved myself. They are as good at selling you as they are at selling your product to customers.
You need to do the duediligence to make that decision before you sign away your equity. As a former startup investor, I was often involved with duediligence on founders, and I felt that founders should do the same on co-founders, as well as investors. Your gut-check finds this to be a good fit.
This is final part of a series that describes a sales methodology for technology companies or frankly many other types of companies, too. You know exactly when you want to sell to this customer and presumably it’s this quarter! Which customers to target: Elephants, Deer or Rabbits ? Unique Selling Proposition.
Social proof is defined as “looking for others to guide our decisions&# and is also one of the most important techniques in acquiring customers in your company. It influenced a generation of tech marketers. The book popularized the technology adoption lifecycle curve that originally came out of Iowa State University shown below.
One of the largest concentrations of technical talent in Los Angeles is in Glendale, at YP -- staffed with a surprising number of Los Angeles startup vets. Our whole product and technology team is about 500 people. Darren Clark: Our missions is to help small businesses and communities grow. Louis and Atlanta.
As organizations we have become more open and I believe this is great for businesses and their customers. We spent time out in the marketplace talking with customers, looking at their solutions, comparing ourselves with our competition and then squirreling ourselves away in our offices designing our next set of features.
However, Redondo Beach-based StaffRanker (www.staffranker.com) has rolled out a system to help those companies better manage what is a notoriously difficult segment of the labor market, which has a lot of turnover and which just doesn''t match existing, corporate performance management systems. Who is your ideal customer?
The second is that the retailers were constrained by their high costs of local real estate and service staff relative to the costs of centralized warehouses where goods could be stacked high, sorted by robots, managed by RFIDs and then shipped via overnight to eager, cost-conscious customers across the US. 10x the experience.
One of the largest concentrations of technical talent in Los Angeles is in Glendale, at YP (www.yp.com) -- staffed with a surprising number of Los Angeles startup vets. Our whole product and technology team is about 500 people. Darren Clark: Our missions is to help small businesses and communities grow. Louis and Atlanta.
Saving cost won’t help you if you can’t make the daily innovations required to stay competitive. Leading edge technology software and manufacturing require constant course corrections and iterative restarts. Customer-facing services, like call centers, should rarely be outsourced. Don’t let leading edge become bleeding edge.
I could have listened to her for hours as many of her lessons were ones I hadn’t heard before such as how she used online gaming when she was younger as a way of both teaching herself tech as well as learning to lead remote teams. Nanea Reeves has a storied career in senior leadership roles at technology companies.
And if I’m going to help a bit while I’m here the better I know ‘what’s what’ the easier it will be for me to help and be on my way.&#. until the technology matures?&#. Find ways to get friendly people to do peer reviews on parts of your business and offer the same in return.
Clearly in an enterprise customer this is unlikely. We will have to build (or buy) technology in this area.” She might gladly tell you who gets decisions made, who is a pain in the arse, who is super technical, etc. Having senior executive air cover is invaluable to help streamline these leg-breakers.
Many times they also pick up product and tech, too. Often times you find the CEO who really just likes to do product or tech. Similarly I talk to CEOs who can’t do a sales pipeline review with me. I once did duediligence on a potential investment where the CEO was projecting $9 million in sales for his next 12 months.
Usually after a Monday partner meeting you get a pretty strong: Yes, term sheet coming No, sorry we’re passing Maybe, we need to do more duediligence / analysis / work I always counsel founders that “good news comes early” so if you haven’t heard by Tuesday at noon chances are it wasn’t likely a clean “yes.”
There’s an article making the rounds in tech circles titled “ Growth Hacking is Bull ” written by Muhammad Saleem. His early experience was at LogMeIn and then he went on to help Xobni, DropBox, LookOut and EventBrite to name a few companies I’m sure you’ve heard of.
Michael Chasin: LawKick.com is essentially a marketplace that makes it easier than ever to find legal help. How the website works, is the client goes to the website, and indicates what they need help with. That''s how we ended up developing this technology, to take that initial step out of the process. What''s LawKick about?
Companies that have leveraged technology to make the procurement and delivery of food more accessible to more people have been seeing a big surge of business this year, as millions of consumers are encouraged (or outright mandated, due to Covid-19) to socially distance or want to avoid the crowds of physical shopping and eating excursions.
You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on. By going on sales calls you pick up directly the feedback of what customers want and also what they’re telling you about competition.
And of course the most successful technology companies: Google, Facebook, Salesforce.com [duh], Oracle, Microsoft all have loads of sales people. The most important way to sell a product for an early-stage business (or frankly any stage) is to have strong referenceable customers. How do you get referenceable customers?
The main thrust of the post is that with YouTube taking a 45% of revenue and talent taking 70% of the remaining revenue, YouTube Networks didn’t have sustainable businesses unless they invested heavily in technology as a tool to increase margin and provide defensibility. That is the definition of Disruptive Technology.
In the initial phases of any new market you’re developing a product (hopefully with a minimal set of features), getting feedback from customers, refining your product based on user feedback and then re-launching your product. Testing is what helps determine whether you’re really on to something. Rinse & repeat.
Taking on a business partner can be an excellent strategic decision in helping move the business forward. Access to new technologies. 1. Perform preliminary duediligence: Review the business plan including marketing, sales strategies and financial needs. Review tax returns – up to 3 years if available.
Many of the founders of these companies are surprised to learn that I'm willing to review what they are doing (maybe an hour) and get on the phone for an hour with them and provide free advice. Generally I can provide quite a bit of help in that brief time. And I try my best to point them to resources that can help them longer term.
Yet, as a business consultant, I often find minimal focus on improving employee engagement and assessing their customer-facing performance. For example, I commonly see metrics to keep track of revenue per employee, overtime, and absenteeism, but I don’t often see measures of overall customer satisfaction with individual employees.
Traditional marketing says you have to “push” your message out to customers, over and over again, to get you remembered. A more effective approach in today’s Internet and interactive culture is to use “pull” technology to bring customers and clients to your story. Help visitors navigate. Refresh it often. Make it fast.
Many of the founders of these companies are surprised to learn that I'm willing to review what they are doing (maybe an hour) and get on the phone for an hour with them and provide free advice. Generally I can provide quite a bit of help in that brief time. And I try my best to point them to resources that can help them longer term.
help you integrate your product with other systems making it harder for your product to be replaced by competitors. deliver profitable revenue that while on gross margins of 50% vs. software at 85-95% it is still profits to help you cover fixed costs. Minimize Any Custom Work That Will Not Feed Back Into Your R&D.
One startup that aims to help make the process simpler, cheaper and less stressful by helping people manage the home renovation process has raised $6 million to help it grow even faster. Construction tech startups are poised to shake up a $1.3-trillion-dollar trillion-dollar industry.
It got me thinking about the tech industry. Work on budgets, submit RFPs, answer customers support calls, work the bug-tracking software, and trying to meet the next sprint release schedule. Because often these Conference Hos bring back their latest idea from the hot tub cocktail session with their favorite tech superstar.
I see way too many startup founders who don’t have experience in selling and probably don’t feel that comfortable going to customers and asking for orders. This is probably because many founders are product or technology people. I only found out through customer meetings.
Given the thousands of startups Venture Capitalists review annually, they must adopt efficient methods of quickly assessing if a person/opportunity is worth further diligence. Such deals are ideally funded by customer dollars until the opportunity is adequately proven and/or management accrues an adequate level of experience.
So how did a company that provides storage grow so fast (we’ll exit 2017 with 10’s of millions in recurring revenue), why is it so defensible and is it really a tech startup? If you buy that Amazon is a tech startup then essentially you’ve already answered the question. In short — how the hell did we raise $30 million?
As a long-time business executive and adviser to entrepreneurs, I see a definitive shift away from customer trust in traditional business messages, and the executives who deliver them. I summarize the key elements of the transformation as follows: Customers are seeking control in a run-away world.
The technology team disagrees on direction and wants resolutions. Maybe it helps that I love controversy and pushing the boundaries so people felt it was OK for them to do it as well. There’s a guy in Los Angeles that I met at several tech networking events. Your head of sales thinks she should fire somebody. he asked.
If I’m interested I get to spend more time with them, if I’m not I don’t have to – A few companies per month come in that have fascinating business ideas that warrant my spending more time trying to understand their people, company, technology and market. So I spend much time with them and trying to help.
Compelling in the sense that you solve a real problem a target group of potential customers has with a product that is significantly better than the alternatives on that market. The idea of “going deep” with customers has always shaped how I think. I found myself in violent agreement with Fred’s blog post(s).
Irvine-based technology distributor Ingram Micro says it is looking to help the many U.S. and Canadian small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) it serves, who are facing a cash crunch due to the ongoing COVID-19 disease outbreak. of the total purchase price. READ MORE>>.
How does it meet customers’ needs? One way to approach that last question is to use this simple model: Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) How will your business reach prospects? Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) How much money will your business generate from each converted customer? What does the business do?
But if you level up , raise capital and grow customers, revenue and staff – life changes. The “span of control” for a growing tech startup is probably 6-9 people. You help them prioritize their objectives and review the results. They review competitors offerings and analyst reports. Engineering?
A closer analysis often indicates the cause to be a lack of diligence in handling common business finances. I found a good summary of the most common mistakes in a classic book by Kelly Clifford, “ Profit Rocket ,” written primarily to help you on the other side of the equation – skyrocket your profits. In startups, cash is king.
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