Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 27, 2023

With interactive social media and video everywhere, everyone needs to feel they have a relationship with their leaders, and every brand needs leader personification for customers to relate. Interact with employees and customers on a regular basis. Never be too busy to talk to real customers.

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Custom Customer Social Media Metrics 140

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.” Great startups manage to continually improve the relationship through outstanding follow-on support and service.

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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. His professional background includes having held marketing-executive roles at big companies as well as startups. Social-media advertising. Email marketing. Cold calling.

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Custom Customer Marketing Startup 146

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 15, 2023

Entrepreneurs have always believed that their product or service must show real value to customers, but today the smart ones are even able to make their marketing valuable. Now customers seek out people who are willing and able to add value, with expertise and insight, even before they have a product. The key is consistency.

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Content Custom Customer Marketing 104

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 25, 2021

Today’s customers are overloaded and overwhelmed by too much information, so making a decision is a challenge. You may think this is only important to your marketing and sales people, but in reality it doesn’t matter how great your product or technology might be, you won’t succeed if you don’t understand your target customer decision process.

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Custom Customer Sales Social Media 136

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 23, 2021

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.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 20, 2022

As a startup advisor, I see too many entrepreneurs get distracted by technology or their favorite cause, and then wonder why they can’t find an investor, attract customers, or build a long-term business. Customers now put big value on experience, social impact, empowerment, and feedback.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 20, 2023

Technical entrepreneurs love their technology, and often are driven to launch a startup on the assumption that everyone will buy any solution which highlights this technology. Instead, they need to validate a customer problem and real market need first. I say again, customers buy solutions, not technology. Neither is positive.

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Custom Customer Social Media Technology 110

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 29, 2021

New generations of customers respond better to the “ participative ” approach, where they get to provide input via social media and the Internet. Some call it a move from always “ hunting ” for new customers in the wild, to “gardening” or nurturing loyalty and value from the ones you already have.

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Custom Customer Marketing Social Media 168

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 14, 2021

With the advent of the Internet, social media, and instant communication via texting, customer expectations for service, as part of their entire customer experience, have changed. They expect you to be there, to know their history as a customer, and to treat them with priority and respect.

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Custom Customer Social Media Design 171

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 2, 2022

Many entrepreneurs think that adapting to the new technologies, like smart phones and Internet commerce, are the key to attracting new customers. High-technology product startups, without customers, don’t make a business. During today’s dynamic customer journey, consumers often find themselves at a point of indecision.

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Custom Customer Social Media Technical Review 122

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 21, 2023

Proof of any business model starts with a finished product or solution, sold to a new customer for full price, with high satisfaction for the value received. The conundrum is that once you have really proven the business model, you no longer need the investor money you asked for to start the business. Marty Zwilling

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 23, 2020

Today’s customers demand more than a good product; they expect a great customer experience. A few companies are leading the way, including Apple with their iPad and iPhone, offering irresistible stores with friendly experts, elegant packaging, and customer service that never ends.

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Custom Customer Design Product 150

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 22, 2021

As I talk to many of you in my role as business advisor, I still often hear the concern for maximum return to the business and stakeholders, more than a passion for sustainably enriching the lives of your customers and team. This applies to your own team, as well as customers. Make every customer experience memorable.

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Custom Customer Satisfaction Metrics 114

TechCrunch LA

APRIL 14, 2021

A security lapse at online grocery delivery startup Mercato exposed tens of thousands of customer orders, TechCrunch has learned. The company fixed the data spill, but has not yet alerted its customers. The company fixed the data spill, but has not yet alerted its customers.

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TechCrunch LA

MAY 3, 2022

” She grew up in Houston and went on to attend Stanford and major in engineering. The company Winters was working for sponsored her MBA to Harvard Business School, and it was there that she came up with the idea for Upgrade. One of Britney Winters’ goals is to “live a less tangled life.” The company, which raised $1.7

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Tool Custom Customer Marketing 179

L.A. Business Journal

MAY 18, 2020

a downtown-based fintech startup, is adapting to the Covid-19 crisis by helping its customers adapt. Finli Inc.,

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Help Custom Customer Startup 190

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 7, 2014

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. Starting with a positive. You’d be very wrong.

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Custom Customer Venture Capital Software Review 341

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.

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Custom Customer Satisfaction Examples 133

socalTECH

AUGUST 9, 2019

Los Angeles-based fintech startup Dave , which offers up an online banking service which helps users build their credit, announced on Thursday that it has named Mia Alexander as its new VP of Customer Experience. Alexander was most recently VP of Customer Experience at Green Dot, where she had been for over 16 years.

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Custom Customer Los Angeles Report 113

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 9, 2022

Most businesses spend big money testing their brand logo, catchy marketing phrases, and demographics, but spend little time training and validating that their employees can and do deliver exceptional experiences to their customers. Keep your team happy to create engaged customers. Walking the talk is the place to start.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 16, 2020

For decades, efforts to satisfy customers have been built around demographics – capitalizing on race, ethnicity, gender, income, and other attributes. Customer personalities define customer experience, and sets what they love, and what they hate. There is no one set of exceptional experiences that will work for all customers.

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Custom Customer Social Media Satisfaction 158

socalTECH

JUNE 1, 2021

A new, Los Angeles-based dog care startup, Dogdrop, says it has started offering up one free week of doggy daycare services to new customers, as the economy begins to open up and people start going back to work. The company's CEO and co-founder is Shaina Denny.

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Custom Customer Technical Review Startup 100

socalTECH

MARCH 14, 2018

As part of our sponsor relationship with the conference, we're running a series of interviews with speakers from the conference about their experience in the area of recurring revenues, customer service, and similar topics. What's the biggest lesson you've learned about retaining and keeping your customers using the subscription model?

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Custom Customer Conference Social Media 166

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 1, 2020

Attracting the right customers is the key to success in business, whether you have a new startup or a mature enterprise. For example, Xerox tried to broaden the use of "xerox" as the standard term for "photocopying" to extend their existing customer segment into office automation and all kinds of computing.

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Custom Customer Technical Review Examples 123

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 18, 2021

Customers are people too, so customers tend to take their relationship with a brand personally. But how do you know if your brand is projecting warmth and competence to your customers? For loyal customers, a business has to first demonstrate genuine warmth, concern, and commitment. Brands are people first.

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Custom Customer Commerce Social Media 109

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 5, 2020

As an advisor to entrepreneurs, I find that I often have to remind them that the world of customers has changed since they started their last business. Pushing yourself on customers by touting features and price doesn’t work anymore. Use analytics to see why customers are buying, as well as what.

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Custom Customer Social Media Startup 133

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 22, 2021

Every business I know is intimately familiar with outbound marketing, or pushing your message out to customers through email, newspaper, and television advertising. Only a few really understand the process and value of inbound marketing, for pulling customers to your brand. Don’t just monitor – engage customers.

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Custom Customer Marketing Social Media 172

socalTECH

OCTOBER 3, 2016

Los Angeles-based BlackLine said this morning that it has named Karen Flathers as the company's new Chief Customer Officer. BlackLine said Flathers will oversee oversee the day-to-day functions of its Implementations, Support, Customer Success and Product Training departments. BlackLine just filed for an IPO. READ MORE>>.

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Custom Customer Training Startup 153

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 22, 2020

Entrepreneurs have always believed that their product or service must show real value to customers, but today the smart ones are even able to make their marketing valuable. Now customers seek out people who are willing and able to add value, with expertise and insight, even before they have a product. The key is consistency.

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Custom Customer Marketing Content 127

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 10, 2021

Unfortunately, for most solution markets, early adopters represent only 10 to 15 percent of the total opportunity, so it’s easy to get mislead on the real requirements of mainstream customers. The good news is that early adopters are never reluctant to sign up as beta customers and will provide you early feedback on product quality.

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Custom Customer Technical Review Product 117

Tech.Co

DECEMBER 29, 2023

2023 hasn't been an easy year to be a startup. In fact, according to Crunchbase more than 212 startups closed their shutters in the third fiscal quarter alone – the highest number recorded in the firm's history. Yet, while many early-stage startups crumbled under the pressure, diamonds also emerged.

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Startup Generative AI Newsletter Tool 210

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 6, 2011

I’m going to take that thought out into the field and validate it with my customers." I’ve spoken to dozens of customers, I have a validated customer persona, built an MVP to test key behavioral hypotheses, and the data doesn’t back what you’re saying." Customer Validation 101. " OR… "You’re wrong.

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Custom Customer CTO Coach Startup 227

socalTECH

JULY 7, 2021

Los Angeles-based fintech startup Sunbit announced this morning that it has appointed Bill Walsh as the company's first Chief Customer Officer. Sunbit offers up point of purchase financing at auto dealership service centers, optical practices, dentist offices and specialty healthcare services.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 4, 2023

Businesses see this as the Holy Grail for finally being able to predict who, where, and when customers will buy their existing solutions, and what their future solutions must look like to be attractive. According to published estimates , ninety percent of the data in the world today was captured in the last two years, at roughly 2.5

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Custom Customer Social Media Research 115

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 17, 2020

Maybe we haven’t seen the results yet, but there are thousands of startup opportunities to offer new alternatives and services, to replace those destroyed by the crisis. The impact of the current pandemic on small businesses and staffing is causing us all pain, and forcing new ways of thinking. Some kind of natural or man-made disaster.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 18, 2020

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.

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Custom Customer Social Media Technical Review 173