Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 22, 2022

By default, innovation in every business decreases over time, and continuous innovation requires ongoing initiatives and measures of customer perceived value. The long-standing rule of thumb that companies have ten years between significant disruptions was reset a few years ago to five years, according to experts Larry Downes and Paul Nunes.

Metrics 102

Metrics Startup Organization Demand 102

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 8, 2021

Most leaders agree that poor customer service is a business killer today, in terms of lost customers, reduced profits, and low morale. Yet the average perception of customer experience has not improved. You have to start with hiring only people who are willing and able to make serious customer service happen.

Startup 154

Startup Training Custom Customer 154

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2022

According to one study a decade ago, only 45% of founders plan to exit after stage one, and my guess is that less than half the remainder survive the next stage in their own company. These only come with the proper training, investment in tools, and focus on customer relationships. Managing business growth is more than metrics.

Sales 147

Sales Metrics Guide Startup 147

TechCrunch LA

JULY 26, 2022

Four years and hundreds of long lines later, the truck is still there, but the company is taking on what co-founder Nile Dreiling calls “a stale $40 billion donut industry ” by expanding its presence into brick-and-mortar locations in Los Angeles after raising $9 million in financing. The fun part?

Los Angeles 183

Los Angeles Angel Culver City Startup 183

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 7, 2022

After many years in business, working in large companies as well as startups, I’m no longer surprised at why mature and successful companies struggle with introducing innovative new ventures as the market and environment changes. Make sure everyone comes with an entrepreneur mindset for real innovation.

Incubator 143

Incubator Seed Funding Metrics Custom 143

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 6, 2021

Every new business I know dreams of building momentum in their business, where growth continues to increase, customers become your best advocates, and employee motivation is high. Unfortunately, with limited resources, this isn’t possible, and it frustrates customers and the team. Focus first on finding more of the right customers.

Technical Review 160

Technical Review Technical Advisors Startup Mentor 160

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 30, 2022

While these investors, and early customers, will always argue that they found you, I’m convinced that there is no substitute for aggressive networking on your part. Ability to relate aspirations to customer needs. You need to show insights to real customers and their needs, that get beyond your passions and projections.

Startup 113

Startup Custom Customer Technical Review 113

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 12, 2022

Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe, in a classic HBR article on change readiness for large companies, define it as “the ability to continuously initiate and respond to change in ways that create advantage, minimize risk, and sustain performance.” Imbue customer change focus.

Startup 116

Startup Training Statistics Summary 116

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 25, 2020

By default, innovation in every business decreases over time, and continuous innovation requires ongoing initiatives and measures of customer perceived value. The long-standing rule of thumb that companies have ten years between significant disruptions was reset a few years ago to five years, according to experts Larry Downes and Paul Nunes.

Startup 138

Startup Organization Demand Custom 138

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 21, 2014

And as I always assert, “Great companies are built in downturns. It’s when the noise stops and you can actually get customer attention, press articles and VC meetings. And it’s when mediocre companies get pulverized.” I remember, for example, when business intelligence swept through companies globally.

Marketing 354

Marketing Case Study Metrics Sales 354

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 25, 2022

You may think it’s great that demand exceeds your supply chain, but customers only remember it as a loss of your credibility, and will tell others. Proactive customer communication should be your first recourse, followed by cost and service concessions. The result is low productivity, mistakes, and poor customer experiences.

Startup 134

Startup Training Tool Demand 134

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 13, 2021

There is no substitute for talking to customers, analyzing your competition, and honing your solution to meet a target market segment. The ready-fire-aim approach makes sense here, but it should be combined with metrics to learn from feedback, and make pivots as required. You already have a large and loyal customer base.

Marketing 138

Marketing Demand IBM IBM 138

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 21, 2013

Most leaders agree that poor customer service is a business killer today, in terms of lost customers, reduced profits, and low morale. Yet the average perception of customer experience continues to decline. You have to start with hiring only people who are willing and able to make serious customer service happen.

Custom 92

Custom Customer Startup Services 92

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 25, 2016

If you can’t provide a memorable customer experience, your startup won’t survive very long these days. You now need more than loyalty from your customers -- they need to be your best advocates. The days of pushing new and marginal performers into customer service are gone. Every job on your team drives your customer experience.

Custom 55

Custom Customer Startup Coach 55

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2019

For example, one of the first home grocery delivery companies, Webvan, was so enamored with early traction in Silicon Valley, it raised and spent nearly a billion dollars and went public, before filing for bankruptcy three years later. Other customers routinely pay late, or only after they receive one or more prompts from you.

Metrics 86

Metrics Startup Training Custom 86

InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 23, 2013

Pilot agreements are provisional contracts under which companies can assess the veracity of a potential, long-term relationship. The “go / no go” structure of such contracts effectively allows big companies to defer their ultimate decision of whether or not they want to work with the startup until after the Pilot is completed.

Sales 215

Sales Outsource Development Metrics Resource 215

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 3, 2021

To keep you on a positive track with potential investors, I recommend the following logic principles, to balance your passion in presenting your vision of a new business: Make sure your plan includes some business metrics. For example, if you have ever watched the Shark Tank show on TV, they always ask about the cost of customer acquisition.

Entrepreneur 162

Entrepreneur Social Media Examples Metrics 162

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 3, 2023

She brings more than twenty years of experience building and working with globally dispersed teams and Fortune 500 companies around the world. It’s all about contributing and being connected to team and company values for improving the lives of customers, or possibly a higher-level purpose, such as saving the environment.

Startup 113

Startup Summary Coach Metrics 113

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 27, 2019

My simple answer is that they keep their focus on customers, rather than technology. Jeff Bezos has kept his focus on customers. In my view, every startup in today’s world would do well to adopt a management system with the same key objectives: Start with a customer-obsessed business model.

Marketing 123

Marketing Technical Review Custom Customer 123

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 8, 2019

A recent high-profile one, Theranos , the blood-testing company, had no trouble getting customers, but promised more than their technology could deliver, Another, Shyp , an early on-demand delivery platform, blamed their demise on premature scaling. Demand continuous innovation to keep up with change.

Startup 88

Startup Demand Training Custom 88

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 29, 2019

A platform is a business model and capability that can be accessed and customized by external users. Create and practice an obsession over customers. Make sure everyone knows it’s their job to maintain empathy and exceed customer expectations. Institute deep metrics measuring all aspects of the customer experience.

Commerce 89

Commerce Artificial Inteligence Cloud Computing Platform 89

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 7, 2020

In the short term you need customers to find you at any price, and in the longer term you need revenue, profit, and return loyalty. In a larger public company, it’s all about making your quarterly numbers, versus investing in strategic growth alternatives that may not pay off until several quarters later.

Technical Review 124

Technical Review Layoffs Social Media Metrics 124

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 31, 2020

Even if you are still in school, and never started a company before, strong entrepreneur candidates can point to projects they initiated, led, that produced significant results. These days, customers expect to hear and see social and environmental value from a new business, rather than just a new technology or profit.

Entrepreneur 124

Entrepreneur Startup Examples Metrics 124

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2019

According to one study a while back, only 45% of founders plan to exit after stage one, and my guess is that less than half the remainder survive the next stage in their own company. These only come with the proper training, investment in tools, and focus on customer relationships. Managing business growth is more than metrics.

Startup 97

Startup Sales Metrics Guide 97

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

An alternate outcome that I also unfortunately observe in some cases are companies who had extreme early success with an initial product adoption but failed in key areas that limited the growth and therefore the ultimate financial outcomes. How long does it take me to pay back my original customer acquisition costs?

Startup 286

Startup Technical Review Custom Customer 286

SoCal CTO

MARCH 11, 2013

If you do build the MVP and show it to them, they will ask you about your metrics. They really want metrics, not a product. The real question you should be asking is "When I've built this product and show you the following metrics, would you invest?" Investors demand more than that.

Metrics 264

Metrics Venture Capital News Product 264

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2018

For example, most e-commerce platforms today offer millions of products, with a changing mix daily and a changing market, such that it’s virtually impossible to manually predict a strategy for mapping customer demographics to products displayed online. Configure every decision step into real-time software. The efficiency gain is tremendous.

Artificial Inteligence 84

Artificial Inteligence Metrics Commerce Software 84

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 12, 2019

Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe, in a classic HBR article on change readiness for large companies, define it as “the ability to continuously initiate and respond to change in ways that create advantage, minimize risk, and sustain performance.” Imbue customer change focus.

Startup 94

Startup Training Statistics Summary 94

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 10, 2019

They don’t realize that they are missing out on a great opportunity for “free” promotion, as well as taking a great risk by not listening to what customers are saying, and not monitoring or responding to undeserved challenges to their reputation. Use business metrics and tools to tune your efforts.

Social Media 99

Social Media Media Tool Startup 99

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 8, 2018

As a long-time advisor to entrepreneurs and business owners, I rarely find someone who doesn’t proclaim that the business world is changing rapidly, with new technology, new customer expectations, and new cultures. Others still routinely have phone hold queues for customer contact that can last up to an hour, with no alternative options.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Custom Customer Startup 84

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

There are very few people in Silicon Valley who have such a precise grasp on what defines success of early-stage startup companies than Eric Ries. should companies do spreadsheets / plan / have a hypothesis for success? how do you handle internal company morale? 9:14 What was the root cause of the failure of your first company?

Social Media 301

Social Media Startup Metrics Media 301

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 10, 2020

You may recognize these in your own company, and can overcome all of them with a proactive management focus and conviction: Everyone is proceeding with unreasonable expectations. You can and must fix this by communicating business goals and objectives, and establishing personal metrics which only reward success.

Startup 113

Startup Examples Coach Metrics 113

TechEmpower

OCTOBER 9, 2023

So let’s summarize what we've already found to be different about searching with LLMs: What’s Different About Search with LLMs Search methods powered by LLMs stand out as transformative tools, offering businesses an edge in their information retrieval and customer engagement processes. Strive for a balanced outcome.

Generative AI 346

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence Tool Knowledge Base 346

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 10, 2018

As a business advisor, one of the things I see most often as a drag to productivity and growth is employees who, despite their best efforts, can’t change things that they know are hurting the company. Yet every CEO I know believes that his team is motivated and empowered to make the business better for both customers and the company.

Startup 62

Startup Organization Custom Customer 62

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 8, 2020

As an advisor to entrepreneurs, I often hear the desire to run their own company, to avoid having someone else telling them how to run the business. They don’t seem to realize that investors can be the most demanding bosses your ever had, since it’s their money you are using and potentially losing.

Technical Advisors 125

Technical Advisors Startup News Resource 125

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 5, 2012

During the late 1980's, Steve accepted a senior executive role at SuperMac, a Macintosh graphics card company that Steve jokes was, “Fifth in a group of three.". Despite these abundant resources, the team's ineffectiveness was reflected by the company's dismal 11% market share. Steve's first question was, “Who are our customers?"

Marketing 271

Marketing Startup Sales Custom 271

socalTECH

JANUARY 14, 2011

MarketShare recently launched a rebranding effort for the company, and is in the midst of a major hiring and expansion phase. Wes Nichols: MarketShare is an analytics company. Its primary goal is to focus on identifying what is truly driving demand, analytically, so that our customers can optimize their activities.

Social Media 235

Social Media Demand Activity Marketing 235