Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 16, 2023

Of course, that’s both the good news and the bad news for aspiring entrepreneurs, since it means more competition, and the business landscape is changing faster than ever. Building a minimum viable product, with customer validation. Who would not want to join the unicorns (recent startups with a current valuation of over $1 billion)?

Entrepreneur 104

Entrepreneur Startup Social Media News 104

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 16, 2018

The market is changing so fast these days, and if you are not planning a solution today for tomorrow’s customers, you may be setting yourself up for failure and don’t even realize it. There are many free generalized tools, including Google Trends , which can be used to track customer behavior in looking for things that don’t exist yet.

Customer 57

Customer Custom Technical Review Software Review 57

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 15, 2022

It’s enough to drown any business which tries to fight it or ignore it, and it’s an opportunity to ride higher and faster than even the successes of Google and Facebook, for those startups that use it as their driving force. This gives rise to the personalization and customization that we all want. Big data:” learning from the flood.

Startup 126

Startup Social Media Entertainment Metrics 126

Xconomy

JUNE 23, 2016

Google Fiber plans to acquire Webpass in a deal that trims the ranks of independent Internet service providers—an industry already maligned for its lack of competition—but ultimately could boost consumer access to high-speed Internet. Six-year-old Google Fiber has had its own set of challenges.

Google 45

Google San Diego Resource Blogging 45

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 22, 2022

Customers pay for solutions, but there is no market for ideas. A related “red flag” in a business plan is a missing competitive analysis section, or a short paragraph that essentially says, “this product has no competition.” This is the traditional realm of computers.

Ideas 145

Ideas Startup Tips Competition 145

TechCrunch LA

SEPTEMBER 7, 2021

“They demonstrate best-in-class expertise with Facebook and Google paid ad platforms. In today’s highly competitive ad environment, both content and data are kings. At this point, we’re a little over 400 people, and we manage upward of $500 million in spend on Facebook and Google, including Instagram and YouTube.

Commerce 211

Commerce Content Marketing Startup 211

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 2, 2022

Many risks can be managed or calculated to improve growth or provide a competitive edge, while others, like skipping quality checks to save money, are recipes for failure. Investors hate technology solutions looking for a problem, due to the high risk of no customers. Customers like leaders, not followers.

Resource 121

Resource Metrics Entrepreneur Customer 121

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 25, 2023

Google reached $1B in revenue within five years of incorporation, and now has a market capitalization of over $1 trillion. A healthy business, ready to scale, has been doing this for a year or more, with an existing customer set generating a non-trivial and growing revenue stream. High customer loyalty and high team passion.

Organization 94

Organization Invest Customer Custom 94

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 21, 2020

Google reached $1B in revenue within five years of incorporation, and now has a market capitalization of over $1 trillion. A healthy business, ready to scale, has been doing this for a year or more, with an existing customer set generating a non-trivial and growing revenue stream. High customer loyalty and high team passion.

Organization 173

Organization Invest Customer Custom 173

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 28, 2020

Of course, that’s both the good news and the bad news for aspiring entrepreneurs, since it means more competition, and the business landscape is changing faster than ever. Building a minimum viable product, with customer validation. Over 600,000 new businesses were created in the last year, or over one per minute of every day.

Tips 161

Tips Startup Social Media News 161

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 16, 2023

Projecting financials is a natural extension of the homework every entrepreneur needs to do on customer opportunity size, product costs, pricing, competition and customer value. Investors want entrepreneurs to be aggressive, but don’t make projections that make you look like the next Google. Marty Zwilling

Startup 116

Startup Pricing Sales Statistics 116

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 4, 2021

SEO is not placing ads, but tuning your website so that it is more highly ranked by Google, and featured in the first page of results, not in an ad beside the results. For Google, this is pay per impression (PPI), or pay per mille (PPM) per thousand impressions. This is NOT the same as or better than Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

PPC 154

PPC SEO Paid Search Search Engine Optimization 154

socalTECH

OCTOBER 19, 2018

Patrick Ip: My background is I spent the last three years at Google, working on advertiser retention for small and medium businesses. There, I learned that there is a lot of top level churn from small businesses because Google ads cost too much. To bundle all of these components requires you to have customers with similar needs.

Help 133

Help IP Content Google 133

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 26, 2023

Thus they are blindsided and try to react quickly when a new competitor starts stealing customers. For example, we all remember when Blockbuster realized too late that Netflix was stealing customers by offering videos online rather than via DVDs, but even then they were unable to adapt their processes and their thinking.

Metrics 71

Metrics Training Netflix Resource 71

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

Often, we joke together as managers of companies or of people that our goal is “world domination” or “to crush the competition.” Microsoft, Google, Amazon and other great firms generate billions of revenues and profits and even have a high ROI and high net profit percentage. The three measures of progress.

Company 156

Company Companies .Net Google 156

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 15, 2020

As an angel investor, I see plenty of startups focusing on building an innovative product, but I’m looking for the few who are also leading with an exponential growth strategy, to put them in the category of the next Amazon or Google. Let your highly motivated customers be your best marketing advocates for new customers.

Marketing 170

Marketing Startup Examples Customer 170

Tech.Co

MAY 31, 2023

But while competition remains fierce, the advancement and accessibility of smart solutions are making it easy than ever for startups to find their feet. Business tools — from customer relationship management ( CRM ) platforms to accounting software — help to save startups time and money by automating key processes and maximizing efficiency.

Tool 128

Tool Startup Software Review Technical Review 128

TechCrunch LA

AUGUST 9, 2022

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but when it comes to getting ahold of an appointment for your hair or another treatment…that’s a different story: The bespoke nature of a lot of the work has meant that a large swathe of the professionals providing these services have stayed offline when it comes to interfacing with customers.

Help 195

Help Startup UCLA Tool 195

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 24, 2020

The price of entry can be less than $10,000, so the competition is huge and growing rapidly. The ideal business model is to establish a direct-to-consumer service that enables you to bill the customer directly. Just getting an app accepted into the Store won’t get it found and downloaded by your targeted customers.

Mobile 126

Mobile Develop Development Platform 126

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 13, 2009

Yesterday, Google announced that it was shutting down its Google Audio efforts--the search engine giant's efforts to try to sell radio advertising. What are your thoughts on the Google announcement? Moreover, I honestly believe that buyers for scheduled radio buys need to be custom crafted to meet the needs of an advertisers.

Google 124

Google Advertising Media Startup 124

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 17, 2022

A good overall example is the synergy between Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, as well as long-time Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. The passion has to be in the business context – meaning results oriented, customer oriented, and sensitive to competition. Conflicting visions won’t work.

Software Review 154

Software Review CTO Hire Outsource Development Startup 154

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 25, 2011

But the reality is that sellers are no longer in charge of the customer buying process. Kristin Zhivago, in her new book “ Roadmap to Revenue ,” makes the point that the selling system is broken, since sellers no longer sell the way customers are buying. The best way to do this is with real customer interviews.

Customer 96

Customer Custom Search Engine Optimization Summary 96

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 10, 2023

Investor due diligence on a startup is not a mysterious black art, but is nothing more than a final integrity check on all aspects of your business model, team, product, customers, and plan. Do research on investor visibility via Google and social media.

Technical Review 138

Technical Review Startup Innocal Offshore 138

socalTECH

JULY 27, 2020

Oftentimes that will be Google, sometimes that will be Apple, sometimes it will be another network. A lot of them looked at what software to get rid of, and what software to keep, and every single one of our customers put us on the keep list. Google triangulates a lot of information. It's a pretty complex exercise.

Google 113

Google Santa Monica Networking Software 113

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 5, 2018

As a self-made entrepreneur and former chairman of Diamond Resorts International, he asserts that the five biggest companies by market value today, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple, aren’t really tech, but hospitality companies. Customer needs and expectations are changing faster than ever these days.

Technical Advisors 82

Technical Advisors Artificial Inteligence Customer Custom 82

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 8, 2020

Many risks can be managed or calculated to improve growth or provide a competitive edge, while others, like skipping quality checks to save money, are recipes for failure. Investors hate technology solutions looking for a problem, due to the high risk of no customers. Customers like leaders, not followers.

Entrepreneur 129

Entrepreneur Resource Metrics Customer 129

Tech.Co

APRIL 24, 2018

Being one small company amongst the sea of thousands of startups vying for customers, capital, and talent, the way to get noticed above the crowd, connect with that next big partner, and raise some capital is to throw your hat in the ring to compete at Startup of the Year. A Strong Alumni Network.

Startup 70

Startup Competition Google Capital 70

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

For Ethan it came down to two companies – BuildOnline or Google. ” I proclaimed to Ethan, “Google is at $400 / share. ” So Ethan went to work as a product manager at Google Video. When Ethan was considering leaving Google we talked about it. “No choice at all!” Nice sweep!

CTO Coach 359

CTO Coach Google CTO Hire Yammer 359

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. No human or paper tracking systems are a competitive alternative.

Artificial Inteligence 84

Artificial Inteligence Metrics Commerce Software 84

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2022

I see that model changing today to one of team collaboration and decision making, per companies such as Amazon, Google, and Zoom. Discourage internal team competition and silos. In this age of world-wide markets, you need all the help you can get to attract loyal customers. Simplify the feedback sharing process for you and them.

Organization 105

Organization Mentor Startup Training 105

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 11, 2019

It’s enough to drown any business which tries to fight it or ignore it, and it’s an opportunity to ride higher and faster than even the successes of Google and Facebook, for those startups that use it as their driving force. This gives rise to the personalization and customization that we all want. Big data:” learning from the flood.

Technology 97

Technology Social Media Startup Entertainment 97

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

If you don’t have a destination, don’t waste your money trying to get there, and don’t expect anyone to support you along the way Projecting financials is a natural extension of the homework every entrepreneur needs to do on customer opportunity size, product costs, pricing, competition and customer value. Marty Zwilling.

Startup 147

Startup Pricing Sales Statistics 147

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 19, 2021

Most entrepreneurs dream of achieving the exponential expansion of a Google or Amazon, but few investor pitches I see outline any strategy beyond simple marketing to make this happen. Incent friendly competition with prizes. To build a startup, entrepreneurs need a laser focus on providing an innovative solution to a real problem.

Search Engine Optimization 158

Search Engine Optimization Artificial Inteligence Organization Social Media 158

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2015

Almost every online business I know (eCommerce, online software, mobile games) invests heavily in “customer acquisition” This includes investments often not properly measured (SEO, PR, Social) as well as costs that people measure more precisely (advertising, SEM, FB CPA/CPI ads). Take for example, an eCommerce company.

SEM 150

SEM Content Platform Acquisition 150

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 11, 2018

Unfortunately, innovation means change, and most business professionals and existing customers, by default, hate change. This takes leadership from the top, and an ongoing focus on market change, customer feedback, and internal measurement and rewards. Let customer value be the driver, rather than cost savings.

Satisfaction 53

Satisfaction Startup Competition Customer 53

Tech Coast Venture Network

AUGUST 11, 2015

Great benefits and a workplace that is fun and dedicated to making customers happy all fit in with the Zappos approach to company culture — when you get the company culture right, great customer service and a great brand will happen on its own. Portions of the budget are dedicated to employee team building and culture promotion.

Examples 100

Examples Company Companies Google 100

Tech Coast Venture Network

AUGUST 11, 2015

Great benefits and a workplace that is fun and dedicated to making customers happy all fit in with the Zappos approach to company culture — when you get the company culture right, great customer service and a great brand will happen on its own. Portions of the budget are dedicated to employee team building and culture promotion.

Examples 100

Examples Company Companies Google 100