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

JUNE 23, 2013

Simply, this is identifying a customer need that has economic value to them if they can solve it. This solves the customer question, “Why Buy Anything?”. If a customer knows they have a problem they need to select a vendor who best solves that problem (or they can build in-house tools). That always stuck with me.

Sales 328

Sales Customer Custom Examples 328

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

TechEmpower

NOVEMBER 13, 2023

During signup, the professional is prompted to enter their profile into a form, with an upload box for a resume, fields for awards, skills and certifications, and then a textbox - 500 characters max - for their professional summary. So instead, we fill it with a completely custom blurb, written just for him: Hello!

Generative AI 295

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence TechEmpower Tips 295

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2013

This post is about how to work with your largest customers when you’re an early-stage software company and about how you can increase your margins by selling your roadmap. For starters as a young enterprise software company you need to think about the customer segments you serve. One way of slicing customer segments is by size.

Customer 297

Customer Custom Pricing Startup 297

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

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

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

socalTECH

APRIL 24, 2013

Santa Monica-based Nimble , the developer of cloud-based, customer relationship management and contact management software, has debuted a new dashboard feature, the firm announced Tuesday.

Santa Monica 153

Santa Monica SaaS Summary Screening 153

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2010

Let’s assume you run a Customer Support software company. Do you simply begin by asking, “I’d love to understand what your objectives are in customer support? You need to identify a customer problem and talk about how your solution meets the needs of that problem. Where are your current pains?&#.

Sales 314

Sales Startup Venture Capital Customer 314

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

We’re here for Greycroft’s CEO Summit – a gathering of the CEO’s of their portfolio companies with guest speakers covering topics including how to build your team, PR, customer development, etc. It is the key to “customer development” that Steve Blank talks about. We learned this weekend that it was named after his East Hampton home.

Startup 279

Startup Venture Capital Tips Custom Development 279

SoCal CTO

APRIL 2, 2013

They look at the following high level definition of Lean: and they interpret that as write up an executive summary with your ideas and hand it to developers to build. Have you conducted Problem, Solution and Feature Interviews with customers? What's Going to Go Wrong A lot of founders don't really understand Lean Startup principles.

CTO Coach 219

CTO Coach Metrics Framework Software Development 219

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

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

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

I wrote about that here – regarding “evangelical sales” In your earliest stages the founders she do much of the selling precisely for the reasons Erin highlights: you need customer feedback to refine your product, your pricing and your differentiation versus the competition. In Summary.

Startup 319

Startup Sales Course Competition 319

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. They want to see revenue to share in the return.

Product 169

Product Summary Startup Examples 169

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

With nearly 25 million customers using Netflix it’s clear that everyone will have an opinion on this. But for now feel free to read my short summary of the key principles. As Dan Frommer pointed out, all of the news reports on Netflix said that they had lost 1 million customers from their recent price increase.

Netflix 329

Netflix Evite Pricing Hulu 329

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 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

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 25, 2011

Service as a bridge to a product business - One of the best ways for young startups to finance their business without any dilution is what I call “customer financing,&# which is mostly only possible in businesses that target businesses rather than consumers. You own the IP you create. It’s pure irony.

Services 332

Services Venture Capital IP Startup 332

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

The functions of an early-stage board are pretty obvious and well understood: Providing introductions to customers, biz dev partners, recruits, the press, other investors, etc. Over time you start to figure out who you customers are and how to sell to them or how to get them to adopt your products if you’re a consumer-oriented startup.

Startup 325

Startup Sales Technical Review Software Review 325

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 4, 2012

But as usual there is a short summary to know the key topics where you can just skip to the critical point in the video you want to watch. 4:30 How did you come up with the idea of customer development? 37:45 Let’s talk about the dichotomy between customer development and Y Combinator? This video is pure gold.

Startup 350

Startup Ideas Education Class 350

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 17, 2011

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This is a long post, so I put an executive summary here if you want to get the point without reading all the detail. If you plan to read the post you can skip the summary if you want. My ideas morph the way your products do when you test them with customers and watch how they use them.

Writing 356

Writing Startup Ideas Summary 356

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2013

It’s best to think of your VC partnership as a customer. In summary, VC partnerships are like any organization. And it would well be worth your while to broaden your relationships within your VC firm. Don’t just assume that if you keep you lead partner updated that everything will be good.

Venture Capital 309

Venture Capital Summary Organization Entrepreneur 309

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 3, 2013

I know that back in your office you will disagree with each other – but never in front of investors, customers, partners, etc. Summary : Teams matter. You’d be surprised how often people disagree in front of me and it’s clear when they don’t agree. It’s a terrible sign and VCs don’t miss this.

Venture Capital 377

Venture Capital Slides Course Summary 377

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 22, 2010

In designing GUI interfaces for people coming from the green-screen world we built applications that would be great for desktop publishing, not customer service reps. In summary, 2 quick rules: Do usability testing. We built in too many clicks, too many features, too many distractions.

Design 325

Design Startup Web 2.0 Tips 325

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 17, 2013

Clearly in an enterprise customer this is unlikely. Calling high means reaching the highest level appropriate person in an organization that you can reach to hear your pitch. In a small to mid-sized organization this is likely the CEO or perhaps a COO or SVP.

Sales 375

Sales Technical Review Organization Case Study 375

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 Customer Custom 174

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

“If you write a blog post then every one of your customers will read it and question the privacy issue and you yourself know that the article was a red herring. And the Twitter effect would have been a direct bullseye for our target customers and partners. Summary Lessons? Why legitimize it? But don’t pounce.

Press 336

Press Blogging Journal News 336

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

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 Customer Custom Social Media 170

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

Summary notes, as always, provide below. He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards. So when he saw the browser it instantly dawned on him that this would be the greatest customer development tool ever. Overture (Goto.com).

Competition 350

Competition Idealab Product CitySearch 350

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 18, 2021

Here is a summary of some key insights I have gathered over the years from talking to and reading about serious entrepreneurs, including some of the “movers and shakers” today who have built multi-billion dollar enterprises, and really changed our world: The magic is in only pursuing smart risks. Today’s world will continue to evolve.

Entrepreneur 171

Entrepreneur Satisfaction Demand Customer 171

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

Or if you’re pinched on time the summary is below and the time coding can help you watch a brief snippet on topics that interest you. 57: 00 How do you rectify company mission and customer demand. what lessons can we draw from Steve Jobs successes? Eric is so damn good. I could have gone 2 hours. 46:50 Engines of Growth.

Social Media 301

Social Media Startup Metrics Media 301

Berkonomics

JULY 6, 2017

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. That response is quite different than one where competitors have paved the way and existing customers prove through use that the product or service is valued.

Competition 266

Competition Research Summary Pricing 266

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