Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 10, 2016

The right channel for marketing and distribution is one of the basic “four Ps” of business (product, promotion, price and placement). For growing revenue and market share, it’s a key element of your overall strategy, and one that can make or break you. In many product areas, especially retail, the channel is the market.

Pricing 54

Pricing Customer Custom Sales 54

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 13, 2016

Investors are looking for a concise description of your product or service without technical jargon or fuzzy marketing terms with value quantified in customer terms. How big and growing is the total market and your target segment? They like billion-dollar markets with double-digit growth rates.

Invest 108

Invest Startup Slides Equity 108

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 14, 2014

All the data actually suggests with the growth of mobile, inbound sales calls will double from 30 billion to 60 billion in 3 years (source: Kelsey). It’s why opt-in marketing databases can be so incredibly valuable for companies like Gilt Groupe, One King’s Lane and AdoreMe. Calls are changing but not dying. Home alarms.

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Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 18, 2016

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. In today’s information overload, marketing is everything. Use every marketing channel available.

Product 95

Product Case Study Customer Custom 95

Inverted Software

SEPTEMBER 5, 2017

Millennials are more educated about healthy choices, are price sensitive and environmentally friendly. So which companies are ones seeing the most change in their sales as a result of Millennials making more educated choices? sales falling 3.9 percent in 2016. Overall, the company’s ecommerce sales totaled $2.01

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Company Companies Sales Education 48

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

Lately I’ve been having to say things I thought I’d never have to remind people, like, “getting to positive gross margin in several territories is a very low bar to claim success” or “profitable excluding marketing costs” is not actually a real thing. Market Size. MakeSpace provides physical storage.

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Startup Marketing Study SEO 150

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 5, 2016

For example, the old assumption that lower prices will drive volumes, may give way to higher prices and exclusivity implying more value to discerning customers. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 11/17/2016. This forces you to change the way you look at alternatives, and suddenly the alternatives you look at change.

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Ideas Competition Customer Custom 103

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 8, 2016

By profit, I simply mean offering a product or service to customers for a price that exceeds the total costs associated with the solution, thus providing some basis for recovering sunk costs and generating a return for stakeholders. Investors look for sales at full price, to people you don’t know, to validate demand, price, and margin.

Entrepreneur 58

Entrepreneur Ideas Pricing Customer 58

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

Target market sizing higher than $10 billion. It’s true that investors like large markets, preferably in the billion dollar range and growing, but sizing a startup market greater than the GNP of many countries is just not credible. Sales projections are less than one percent market penetration. Skip the hype.

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Funding Startup Innocal Entrepreneur 98

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 14, 2016

When top tier investors compete for a piece of the action, the price can go up exponentially. If you don’t yet have a hundred investors knocking on your door, it’s time to put more focus on viral marketing, closing customers, and exponential growth. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 09/29/2016.

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Company Companies Startup Statistics 100

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 18, 2016

It’s like trying to sell a home still being built at next year’s dream market price. If you have a proven business model with some sales, it’s credible to apply a multiplier of five to 10 times this number for the first element of valuation. Get premium for billion-dollar markets with double-digit growth rates.

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Startup Patents Invest Blogging 71

Tech Zulu Event

OCTOBER 29, 2015

That includes e-commerce retailers, which continue to claim a growing slice of overall retail sales. Last year alone, online holiday sales rose 15% over 2013 figures, including increases of 32% on Thanksgiving, 26% on Black Friday, and 17% on Cyber Monday. Plus, holiday e-commerce sales are widely expected to continue rising in 2015.

Commerce 40

Commerce Sales Pricing Study 40

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 22, 2016

Use experiments to test every element of your business model – cost, price, marketing, sales channel, customer acquisition cost, lead conversion rate, and lifetime value. Growth constraints would include staffing shortages, funding needs, quality problems, and sales coverage. Traction and growth are not about emotion.

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Metrics Funding Startup Customer 57

Xconomy

AUGUST 26, 2016

Mylan bumped up the price of the EpiPen 400 percent, presidential nominee Hillary Clinton responded with a tirade against drug price hikes, and—much like when Clinton railed against drug pricing last year—biotech indexes promptly plummeted more than 3 percent. It was the tweet heard around the biotech world, again.

Pricing 40

Pricing Thousand Oaks Startup Research 40

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2016

Prices need to be reviewed to cover total costs and margin. With new disciples come the new pitfalls listed above, which can undo all the initial market acceptance. Marty Zwilling First published on Forbes on 08/13/2016. On the other end of the transaction, customer support, returns, and transportation can add up.

Startup 57

Startup Training Entrepreneur Customer 57

Xconomy

JULY 19, 2016

For 2015, there were 133 information security M&A deals, according to 451 Research’s Tech M&A Outlook 2016. In general, M&A is a natural part of the IT security market. It’s why this market segment is so attractive to venture investors. What we’ve also seen is the increase in M&A. Why is this happening?

Symantec 40

Symantec IBM IBM Acquisition 40

Xconomy

JULY 21, 2016

After a year in which Biogen’s share price has fallen by more than a third and one of its top drug prospects failed, Scangos, who has led the company since 2010, has announced plans to step down. It’s currently Biogen’s top-selling product, generating close to $2 billion in sales during the first half of 2016.

San Diego 40

San Diego Conference Pricing Acquisition 40

Xconomy

AUGUST 19, 2016

. —The FDA last summer approved two new cholesterol fighting drugs known as PCSK9 inhibitors, but so far the market has rejected them, resulting in paltry sales. Data from the other three trials should come in late 2016 or early 2017.

Technical Review 40

Technical Review Patents .Net Study 40

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2016

It is an heroic accomplishment in a brutal fund-raising market in which only market leaders can bring in that sort of money. forward sales with some as high as 12x sales. Every VC who’s been the business for a long time realized first hand that the VC markets were changing rapidly as early as Q3 of 2015.

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Funding Startup SaaS Venture Capital 150

Tech Zulu Event

APRIL 18, 2016

However, this year many brands still won’t deliver a full mobile experience, which is to say that, in 2016, many retailers still won’t have apps. Many retailers report $100,000 is the minimum price of entry. The price of a retail app varies depending on the developer and features; nevertheless, it’s a big number.

Mobile 40

Mobile Sites Customer Custom 40

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 8, 2016

As we noted in our survey of more than 150 VCs we know in the industry, many saw drops in Q4 valuations last year with nearly all of them projecting decreases in 2016. Deflationary economics are well understood – in a market when prices are dropping one prefers to wait a few months to see if prices stabilizes before committing.

Startup 150

Startup Pricing Venture Capital Statistics 150