Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 18, 2023

Customer service has traditionally been focused on the resolution of complaints , primarily after a transaction. In this context, even “satisfied” is only a “meets-minimum,” and does not put you ahead of your competition. Great customer service now must be proactive, rather than reactive.

Competition 109

Competition Services Customer Custom 109

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 22, 2023

Most leaders agree that poor customer service is a business killer today, in terms of lost customers, reduced profits, and low morale. Young entrepreneurs and startups, in particular, often remain naively unfocused, despite their passion, of what it takes to provide the high-quality service expected. Train and coach continuously.

Competition 99

Competition Services Startup Training 99

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 18, 2022

Don’t bash the competition. Every investor knows how vulnerable a new startup is to competitors, so investors always ask about your sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. That says you are competitive today, have a real barrier to entry, and the potential to remain ahead of the competition for a long time.

Competition 133

Competition Patents Resource Invest 133

Berkonomics

JULY 6, 2017

Know your market and competition, or don’t spend a dime on anything else. That year, some of you will recall, the first digital cell phones were released to the market, smaller, cheaper and priced with roaming plans that made it no premium cost to carry these digital phones to cities far from home. There is no competition.”

Competition 266

Competition Research Summary Pricing 266

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 2, 2010

Some objections are real and they end up becoming changes to your product, your service plan or your pricing / bundling. As a founder, when you’ve been dealing with these kinds of objections for a couple of years it becomes natural and you easily handle objections on price, product & competition without much thought.

Sales 289

Sales Startup Training Pricing 289

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 2, 2021

In case you hadn’t noticed, the key elements of a competitive advantage for your business have changed as businesses move online, and your domain is instantly global. As a business advisor, I have to recommend even to established companies that they review and revamp their competitive strategy now, even if it appears to be working today.

Competition 142

Competition Software Review Social Media Customer 142

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

I call this “arming & aiming&# your sales teams where you need to standardize both the assignment of territories, industries & accounts (aiming) as well as the process of selling, the collateral, the legal agreements & pricing. We moved toward more standardized pricing (e.g. Ditto the CFO.

Sales 296

Sales Pricing Startup Customer 296

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 17, 2010

Know your market and competition, or don’t spend a dime on anything else. I have stated previously that I love absolutes – statements with no wiggle room for gray-area responses. Merely adapting the switches to new digital phones would not work, since guests no longer needed the service itself, being instantly self-sufficient.

Marketing 247

Marketing Competition Research Summary 247

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 14, 2019

Don’t bash the competition. Every investor knows how vulnerable a new startup is to competitors, so investors always ask about your sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. That says you are competitive today, have a real barrier to entry, and the potential to remain ahead of the competition for a long time.

Competition 120

Competition Patents Resource Invest 120

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 23, 2013

One of the toughest decisions for a startup is how to price their product or service. The alternatives range from giving it away for free, to pricing based on costs, to charging what the market will bear (premium pricing). Product is free, but you pay for services. Freemium” model. Cost-based model.

Pricing 116

Pricing Product Customer Custom 116

Berkonomics

JULY 19, 2018

Dell’s response would be something like “Quality custom computers more quickly than the competition.” And in this company example, both quality and speed are the critical factors in competitive advantage. Its reputation is based upon fast food in a minute, with quality that is acceptable but not discernibly above the competition.

Competition 226

Competition Examples Customer Custom 226

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

Once this new service became popular then the media companies could control the rules of distribution & advertising. The philosophy of OPEC has been that if they can limit the amount of oil supplied to the world they can maintain high prices in a world where demand and competition should naturally have downward pressure on oil prices.

Hulu 292

Hulu Technical Review Content Advertising 292

Berkonomics

JUNE 30, 2011

Dell’s response would be something like “Quality custom computers more quickly than the competition.” And in this company example, both quality and speed are the critical factors in competitive advantage. Think of McDonalds. We will soon examine the entire gamut of pricing structures, but start with this one.

Competition 197

Competition Examples Pricing Customer 197

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

He had an idea for a startup that would help consumers better book service jobs and would take on Service Magic, which he believed had a business model that could be disrupted. In the same year they won Business Insider’s Startup competition. .” So Ethan went to work as a product manager at Google Video. Nice sweep!

CTO Coach 359

CTO Coach Google CTO Hire Yammer 359

socalTECH

MAY 2, 2011

We are an offer-based platform that allows users to negotiate the price they buy and sell tickets for, on the secondary market. Wes Brodsky: The ticketing industry, since its inception, has been on a fixed price model. For example, at an event, say at the Staples Center, of the 20,000 seats they might have four or five price groups.

Ticketmaster 253

Ticketmaster Pricing Sales Activity 253

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 26, 2023

Every one of you business owners I know periodically introduces new products and services to sustain growth, fight off competitors, or take advantage of new technologies. Target audience may be limited or new due to price. Also fears can be mitigated by warranties provided, complementary service options, or money back guarantees.

Product 141

Product Services Technical Review Artificial Inteligence 141

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 10, 2011

Irvine-based Kelley Blue Book , the provider of used car pricing information, said today that it has launched a new effort to provide more granular used car values, with the launch of pricing specific to 51 regions in the U.S. READ MORE>>.

Truecar 145

Truecar Santa Monica Pricing Competition 145

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2014

It’s building a product that is substantially differentiated, and, as Bill Gross, one of the most prolific tech entrepreneurs of our era says, “ It needs to be 10x better than the competition ” (because if you shoot for that then in competitive markets you might achieve 3x. But many people benefitted. But it works.

Marketing 379

Marketing Startup SEM SEO 379

socalTECH

MARCH 19, 2012

It's a smart move for the firm, which has been battling some in the auto industry over its service, which have made automotive pricing much more transparent--and far more competitive--for auto dealers. READ MORE>>.

Truecar 154

Truecar Santa Monica Pricing Competition 154

Berkonomics

JULY 4, 2013

But for most, the true sign of success and potential for even more is in the landing of a major account, one that validates the pricing, quality and competitive advantages of a company’s offering. For this reason alone, it makes sense for most of us to aim high once we have worked the kinks out of our offering with smaller customers.

.Net 235

.Net Resource Competition Customer 235

InfoChachkie

APRIL 13, 2015

Avoid a simple pricing mistake which could sink your startup. Vendors often respond by discounting their prices at the 11th hour, in the hopes a lower price will spur a purchase. However, if you never offer price discounts to anyone, you can resist all such requests by deferring to your company “policy.”

Pricing 100

Pricing Startup Sales SaaS 100

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 14, 2023

Porter proposed his Five Forces framework for analyzing the competitive environment which I think makes even more sense today. Every existing business, as well as every startup, needs to reassess their product or service in the context of these five forces: Intensity of competitive rivalry. Way back in 1979, Michael E.

Competition 88

Competition Startup Framework Pricing 88

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 14, 2014

In their passion and excitement about a new product or service, entrepreneurs tend to continually narrow the scope of potential competitors, and often claim to have no direct competitors. Competition for your new hydrogen fuel auto engine is not limited to other hydrogen auto engine offerings, or even other autos.

Competition 93

Competition Startup Patents Slides 93

socalTECH

DECEMBER 5, 2010

comScore said that larger retailers have benefited most this season, due to offering the "most competitive" pricing on goods and services. Shoppers spent $911M on Tuesday, $868M on Wednesday, and $850M on Thursday online.

Commerce 169

Commerce Sales Competition Pricing 169

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 5, 2015

In his premier film appearance in the blaxploitation send-up “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka,” Chris Rock inadvertently addresses a key pricing challenge faced by most entrepreneurs. Watch this 93-second clip and see if you can identify the pricing pitfall addressed in this humorous snippet. Price = Value. How Much For A Rib?

Pricing 100

Pricing Product Startup Customer 100

TechCrunch LA

DECEMBER 10, 2019

ProducePay’s pitch to farmers is the company’s centralized marketplace, which the company says offers growers higher pricing and certain payment from distributors along with better pricing for supplies and services like seed, equipment and logistics services.

Pricing 192

Pricing Los Angeles Equity Services 192

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I spoke about how Amazon Web Services deserves far more credit for the last 5 years of innovation than it gets credit for and how I believe they spawned the micro-VC category. But that doesn’t mean that people are paying rational prices as investors based on intrinsic value. That’s fine. And so on down then line.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 4, 2010

Let me start with Professor Christensen’s definition: “An innovation that is disruptive allows a whole new population of consumers access to a product or service that was historically only accessible to consumers with a lot of money or a lot of skill.&#. They are radically lower in price. So what did happen?

Startup 376

Startup Framework Marketing Customer 376

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 27, 2014

If your forte is a service, like consulting or web site design, it’s harder to find guidance on what will get you funded, and how you can scale your business. With services, scaling the business often implies cloning yourself, since you are the intellectual property and the competitive advantage. Capture your “secret sauce.”

Services 105

Services Startup Training Writing 105

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. Young entrepreneurs and startups, in particular, often remain naively unfocused, despite their passion, of what it takes to provide the high-quality service expected. Train and coach continuously.

Startup 154

Startup Training Customer Custom 154

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 1, 2014

The second is that the retailers were constrained by their high costs of local real estate and service staff relative to the costs of centralized warehouses where goods could be stacked high, sorted by robots, managed by RFIDs and then shipped via overnight to eager, cost-conscious customers across the US. .” 10x the experience.

Technical Review 380

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire Startup 380

socalTECH

MAY 8, 2015

The two have now turned their attentions to Serviz, which offers up on-demand home services, such as plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and other areas. Our vision is really to become the premier provider of on-demand home services. We also set pricing, and are pioneering getting pricing upfront, and have a low price guarantee.

Services 100

Services ReachLocal Demand Startup 100

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 3, 2020

If your forte is a service, like consulting or web site design, it’s harder to find guidance on what will get you funded, and how you can scale your business. With services, scaling the business often implies cloning yourself, since you are the intellectual property and the competitive advantage. Capture your “secret sauce.”

Startup 174

Startup Training Services Writing 174

socalTECH

JULY 7, 2011

With the proliferation of social networks, communications clients and VoIP phone services, users often find they need to use multiple ways--Twitter, Facebook, phone, FAX, and more--to communicate with their contacts. To try to understand the service's strategy, we spoke with Bryan Hertz,CEO of Telcentris, the parent firm of VoxOx.

Social Network 259

Social Network Platform Networking Google 259

Berkonomics

JULY 9, 2011

Is your product or service one that responds to a customer need, real or perceived? In general, there are three types of products or services: those a customer needs, those a customer wants, and those a customer believes he does not want or need. Can you, your sales people and your marketing staff answer this succinctly?

Sales 222

Sales Customer Custom Pricing 222

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 3, 2010

Mobile gifting service. Provides electronic book services for content publishers; services include digital scanning and conversion, distribution to leading e-book retailers, monetization and royalty management. Competition: Pingg, MyPunchbowl, TinyPrints , PaperlessPost. Competition: Apple iPhone App Store Genius.

Venture Capital 214

Venture Capital Startup Design S3 214

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2016

As a starting point I have to believe the founder has the attributes of an entrepreneur that matter most to me : Tenacity, resiliency, inspiration, perspiration, attention-to-detail, competitiveness, decisiveness, risk tolerance and integrity. I am much more attracted to technical product teams than to new business concepts or commerce types.

Invest 254

Invest Writing Pricing Metrics 254