Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 21, 2013

This might mean helping customers buy traffic, arb’ing deals, helping with RTB pricing or trading, etc. Minimize Any Custom Work That Will Not Feed Back Into Your R&D. While I’d like to say that you should never do custom work that changes the scope of your product that’s not wholly realistic.

Software Review 321

Software Review Software Services Company 321

InfoChachkie

MAY 16, 2011

Thus, you must first create the playbook by which an independent sales rep can readily sell your product, including: identifying objections and developing strategies to overcome them, creating reference accounts and establishing meaningful customer adoption. 2) Secure Your Intellectual Property Too Early.

Startup 242

Startup Outsource Development Outsource Sales 242

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 22, 2014

If one of your core values is exceeding your customer expectations for quality and service, and your potential partner ascribes to the low cost, high profit mantra, a successful partnership is highly unlikely over the long-term. Look at the big picture first of development, finance, and marketing/sales. Similar values and goals.

Software Review 107

Software Review Entrepreneur CTO Hire Outsource Development 107

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 8, 2013

If one of your core values is exceeding your customer expectations for quality and service, and your potential partner ascribes to the low cost, high profit mantra, a successful partnership is highly unlikely over the long-term. Look at the big picture first of development, finance, and marketing/sales. Similar values and goals.

Software Review 103

Software Review Equity CTO Hire Outsource Development 103

socalTECH

OCTOBER 19, 2018

Earlier this month, Los Angeles-based Catalog (www.catalog.cc), a startup developing artificial intelligence software to help independent visual artists scale their content production efforts, announced it raised $1.5M in a seed funding round. The funding was led by Moonshots Capital, and also included Techstars and Luma Launch.

Help 133

Help IP Content Google 133

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 16, 2017

If one of your core values is exceeding your customer expectations for quality and service, and your potential partner ascribes to the low cost, high profit mantra, a successful partnership is highly unlikely over the long-term. Look at the big picture first of development, finance, and marketing/sales. Conflicting visions won’t work.

Software Review 56

Software Review CTO Hire Outsource Development CTO Coach 56

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

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 like a solid product, well defined pricing, good references to sell against, a clear quota and well defined competitors. Customers buy solutions to solve their problems.

Sales 316

Sales Startup Pricing Customer 316

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 29, 2011

If one of your core values is exceeding your customer expectations for quality and service, and your potential partner ascribes to the low cost, high profit mantra, a successful partnership is highly unlikely over the long-term. Look at the big picture first of development, finance, and marketing/sales. Similar values and goals.

Software Review 96

Software Review CTO Hire Startup Outsource Development 96

InfoChachkie

APRIL 13, 2015

However, habitual discounting at a startup is self-defeating, as it reinforces your customers'' proclivity to delay their purchases, patiently waiting for you to reduce your prices. Some of these tactics include: Total Cost Of Ownership – Price is only one element that determines the total cost incurred by customers to deploy your solution.

Pricing 100

Pricing Startup Sales SaaS 100

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 13, 2009

For children with a proclivity toward business, a newspaper route provided an invaluable opportunity to develop the following entrepreneurial skills: Punctuality – Newspapers had to be delivered on time, irrespective of the weather, the fact that Sunday papers can weigh several pounds each or the requirement to wake up at the crack of dawn.

Web 2.0 222

Web 2.0 Web Sales Outsource Development 222

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 24, 2010

If one of your core values is exceeding your customer expectations for quality and service, and your potential partner ascribes to the low cost, high profit mantra, a successful partnership is highly unlikely over the long-term. Look at the big picture first of development, finance, and marketing/sales. Similar values and goals.

Software Review 92

Software Review CTO Hire Outsource Development Startup 92

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 31, 2012

Obviously we can find many critical success factors, like finding and retaining high-value customers, which apply to companies that are product centric or services centric. Customers don’t like people who don’t show their passion and love for the job. Customers don’t like to see you learning on the job or outsourcing.

Satisfaction 91

Satisfaction Patents Outsource Development Services 91

socalTECH

DECEMBER 6, 2019

Every contractor in our network goes through a very thorough vetting process, and we meet with every one of them in person, speak to their references, to make sure they are hardworking, reliable, and trustworthy. He's been doing contracting for the past ten years, and I have been watching from the side.

Startup 100

Startup Encino Los Angeles Ventura 100

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

Ask your customer why you lost. I had been competing to win a contract at Thames Water, the largest water company in the UK. They were looking for a collaboration tool to manage all of their large water development projects. I was to tell noone until the contract was signed. Make sure you learn your lessons from losses.

Outsource Development 333

Outsource Development Software Review Technical Review News 333

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

Obviously we can find many critical success factors, like finding and retaining high-value customers, which apply to companies that are product centric or services centric. Customers don’t like people who don’t show their passion and love for the job. Customers don’t like to see you learning on the job or outsourcing.

Product 91

Product Services Satisfaction Patents 91

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

Ask your customer why you lost. I had been competing to win a contract at Thames Water, the largest water company in the UK. They were looking for a collaboration tool to manage all of their large water development projects. I was to tell noone until the contract was signed. Make sure you learn your lessons from losses.

Outsource Development 328

Outsource Development Software Review Technical Review News 328

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 15, 2009

I had been competing to win a contract at Thames Water, the largest water company in the UK. They were looking for a collaboration tool to manage all of their large water development projects. The initial contract was worth about $500,000 and the whole value of the contract would have been worth a couple of million over the years.

Startup 151

Startup Outsource Development Software Review Technical Review 151

Tech Zulu Event

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

Don’t outsource the job. Keep your focus on the customer problem (s) you’re trying to solve and why you, your team, and your product (s) are the best place to solve it (or them) now. It will also provide the crucial supporting reference to your executive summary. Here’s what not to do when crafting your executive summary.

Summary 40

Summary Outsource Development Writing Outsource 40

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

One of the readers asked my opinion around sharing your startup concept: My first question has always been - how do you protect your idea while shopping around for feedback, partners, developers, etc.? Beyond that, I want lots of conversations with experts, users, customers, VCs, partners, etc. Lots of thoughts here.

Startup 211

Startup IP Ideas Patents 211

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

One of the readers asked my opinion around sharing your startup concept: My first question has always been - how do you protect your idea while shopping around for feedback, partners, developers, etc.? Beyond that, I want lots of conversations with experts, users, customers, VCs, partners, etc. Lots of thoughts here.

Startup 198

Startup IP Ideas Patents 198

Tech Zulu Event

JANUARY 8, 2014

” It’s a compelling thought – especially when you consider the alternative: 2 year contracts, overage charges, hours of dealing with customer service reps. Sell it as needed and remove the need for long term contracts. Their main goal is to create a long-term sustainable customer base. ” What?

Mobile 86

Mobile Startup Customer Custom 86

SoCal CTO

JULY 23, 2012

While I do fill that role at the moment, I'm a little hesitant to refer to myself as a CTO as we still haven't launched a product, acquired a single user, or turned or a penny in profit. I've previously addressed the role of a CTO in early-stages in my post Startup CTO or Developer. What do we build in-house or outsource?

CTO Coach 231

CTO Coach CTO Hire Outsource Development Develop 231

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 29, 2010

Chandler Williamson: The technology we have is generally referred to as a high speed, flywheel system. It's a fairly straightforward system design, and is essentially what Urenco developed. In the New York Power Authority contract, the use was halfway between two substations. This was deployed at some customer sites, was it not?

Design 138

Design Training Southern California Outsource Development 138

InfoChachkie

MAY 23, 2011

As noted in Contract Traps Entrepreneurs Should Avoid , exclusivity can kill a small company. Exclusivity excludes your startup from taking full advantage of future customer, partner and market opportunities. Once you establish a non-exclusive partnership, you can reference it when other BDCs ask for excludesivity.

Technical Review 183

Technical Review Marketing Sales Competition 183

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

TechEmpower

FEBRUARY 14, 2017

If you don't want to use Guava, then wrap the modifiable Enum{Set,Map} instances in Collections.unmodifiableSet(set) or Collections.unmodifiableMap(map) and throw away the direct references to the modifiable collections. Some developers don't know these classes exist. That's a topic for another discussion, though.) forEachRemaining(.).

Java 330

Java Class Ideas Writing 330

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2011

Today I’m announcing that GRP Partners is doubling down on the Twitter ecosystem by investing in DataSift , a company who provides a real-time data platform and tools to third-party developers and corporations. DataSift is one of only two companies today that has the rights to re-syndicate the way it does. Let me quickly take these in turn.

Platform 307

Platform News Startup Invest 307