TechCrunch LA

JULY 19, 2022

The process for retailers and brands to liquidate excess inventory hasn’t changed very much, if at all, and while some retailers were able to build operational infrastructure to service the off-price channels, it continues to be a constant pain point. to develop some sweet inventory-planning software. Syrup Tech bags $6.3M

Product 191

Product Funding Technical Review Equity 191

socalTECH

DECEMBER 17, 2008

Aliso Viejo-based Buy.com is continuing to report good sales this holiday season, saying today that it has seen its revenues grow over 40 percent for the first 15 days of December, compared with 2007. Buy.com also reported that average customer orders are up by over 20 percent due to bigger purchases. READ MORE>>

Sales 100

Sales Software Review Report Sites 100

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

There is nothing more pure than building a product, putting it out in the world and seeing paying customers using your product and in some cases loving it. He came to work in our offices at Upfront Ventures as an EIR and immediately began building software to improve how storage was picked up, photographed, scanned and routed to a warehouse.

Startup 286

Startup Technical Review Customer Custom 286

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2016

profitable and companies like Amazon who chose to focus on growth > profitability were not losing money on each book sale (ie they were gross margin positive). If you acquire 10 customers a month at $100 per customer and this scales to 100 customers at the same price you may make assumptions about 1,000 customers that don’t hold.

Metrics 150

Metrics Startup SaaS Course 150

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2022

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. Apply for contests and business grants.

Startup 136

Startup Technical Review Equity Incubator 136

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

The most obvious way to explain this is with sales people. If you hire 6 sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business for 4-6 months. million in revenue three years later is, “So effing what?”

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 26, 2012

” The post talked about how to find the lowest acceptable price & terms in a deal through testing. You’ve got to have some wiggle room on price and on terms. Your IT Reviewer. She got you to drop price and include more licenses for free. I think most of us feel this way, really. Wants their pound of flesh.

Development Team Review 293

Development Team Review Software Review Pricing Startup 293

InfoChachkie

DECEMBER 2, 2009

As noted in Pour and Stir Part I , the key to the successful execution of this strategy is managing the following equation: The cost to acquire a customer < lifetime value of a customer. Decreasing Your Customer Acquisition Costs. This is equivalent to being handed a free customer for every ten customers you acquire.

Customer 164

Customer Custom Advertising SEM 164

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 27, 2014

As noted on the label, each bottle of beer, "includes the full length album" in the form of a download code displayed under each cork. More recently, Dogfish Head continued this beer / music alliance by paying homage to Miles Davis'' B **s Brew album with a custom brew. I am sure these figures are even smaller today.

Marketing 187

Marketing Software Review Startup Ideas 187

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2021

I recommend a trial run with an experiment or MVP (minimum viable product), at full price and cost, before the big bang launch, risking your investment money and a major time commitment. Look for validation from your mainstream customers. Growing too fast kills many new ventures, due to staffing costs, inventory, and funding delays.

Technical Review 131

Technical Review Case Study Mentor Software Review 131

Tech Zulu Event

DECEMBER 29, 2011

This Black Friday we reached record retail sales at traditional brick-and-mortar stores, yet the merging Cyber Monday is proving to be a fighting younger brother. As customers shift online, retailers have no choice, to not only follow suit, but to adapt to their changing demands.

Customer 74

Customer Custom Advertising Demand 74

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 4, 2022

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. Apply for contests and business grants.

Tips 104

Tips Startup Technical Review Equity 104

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 12, 2019

Image via Flickr by Phil Gyford Starting a new venture still costs real money, even though the entry price has come down dramatically in last few decades. For example, I come from a software background, and back in the early PC days, it could easily cost half a million dollars for a team of professionals to produce a commercial product.

Startup 105

Startup Software Review Technical Review Social Media 105

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 15, 2011

Now, more than ever, government agencies in the US and abroad are lousy startup customers. Government customers abundantly waste both of these assets by negatively impacting a startup’s cash flows while causing it to spend unnecessary time participating in laborious approval processes and elongated sales cycles.

Startup 207

Startup Outsource Development Software Review Sales 207

Tech Zulu Event

DECEMBER 26, 2011

This Black Friday we reached record retail sales at traditional brick-and-mortar stores, yet the merging Cyber Monday is proving to be a fighting younger brother. As customers shift online, retailers have no choice, to not only follow suit, but to adapt to their changing demands.

Customer 72

Customer Custom Demand Advertising 72

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 6, 2019

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. Apply for contests and business grants.

Startup 128

Startup Technical Review Equity Incubator 128

InfoChachkie

MARCH 16, 2016

I learned the hard way that during a startup’s early days, entrepreneurs should give slightly greater emphasis on developing buyer features, in order to reduce the friction of the sales cycle. In the early 2000’s, SaaS was a nascent concept and most companies were reticent to rent software. Car Door Slam Features.

SaaS 100

SaaS Startup Software Review Development Team Review 100

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

You are particularly vulnerable if: You have revenue concentration (few customers each providing a large total of percentage of your revenue). You have a large number of startup customers (because when markets crash they have a funny way of going bankrupt quickly or cutting burn precipitously).

Startup 383

Startup Company Companies .Net 383

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2018

As the Global Customer Growth Evangelist at Salesforce, with implementation roles at many other companies, she makes a host of relevant observations for every business owner. These days, customers remember the total experience with a company longer than they remember the price they paid. Find ways to work with your competition.

Examples 67

Examples Customer Custom Software Review 67

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

That died with waterfall software development. It should talk about how many customers you think you will acquire and how much you’ll charge for your product. Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small? Do so at your peril.

Web 2.0 334

Web 2.0 Venture Capital Web Technical Review 334

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 30, 2019

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. Apply for contests and business grants.

Startup 87

Startup Technical Review Equity Incubator 87

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

Ask your customer why you lost. Looong Appendix (only for those interested in reading another story about losing a sale & key lessons): A personal story of losing a sale that haunted me for years. Winning the contract meant that we would hit our quarterly revenue figure and be in good position for our annual sales target.

Outsource Development 333

Outsource Development Software Review Technical Review News 333

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

Ask your customer why you lost. Looong Appendix (only for those interested in reading another story about losing a sale & key lessons): A personal story of losing a sale that haunted me for years. Winning the contract meant that we would hit our quarterly revenue figure and be in good position for our annual sales target.

Outsource Development 328

Outsource Development Software Review Technical Review News 328

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

It says that selling an airplane ticket for $500 and getting paid a $5 fees by the airlines (1% gross margin) is not the same thing as selling $500 of software that you built (>90% gross margin). billion in sales and thus controls less than 10% of the market. The US market is worth more than $25 billion and Europe is the same.

Startup 150

Startup Marketing Study SEO 150

InfoChachkie

JUNE 30, 2014

For this reason, Rincon Venture Partners looks for companies which are scaling sales, despite the absence of a marketing budget. For instance, at the time we invested in The Resumator , purveyor of software which facilitates the hiring process, the company had spent less than $10,000 on marketing.

Marketing 193

Marketing Software Review Product Social Media 193

Tech Zulu Event

FEBRUARY 18, 2016

Much effort and study has been expended to determine how a web site can better convert its visitors to paying customers. The good news is there are more than a few ways to improve the chances a visitor will become a customer. . This is a great way to engage customers on a first visit and start working towards a sales follow-up. .

Sites 40

Sites Search Engine Optimization Technical Review Web Development 40

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

I spent nearly a decade building software for large companies and then advising companies on the same. Most of them are completely mundane such as choosing which: bank, office space, 1-year lease vs. 2-year lease, logo, URL, pricing structure or which VC. Your head of sales thinks she should fire somebody.

Entrepreneur 414

Entrepreneur Technical Review Slides CTO Coach 414

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 21, 2011

Of course, you both need to have compatible smart phones with the software already downloaded. Here is the old standby low-end hardware-based solution, a simple business card scanner for $150, with software to synchronize the data with Outlook, Windows mobile devices and smartphones. Commercial software. CardScan Personal.

Technical Review 83

Technical Review Technology Software Review Social Network 83

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

But that doesn’t mean that people are paying rational prices as investors based on intrinsic value. Rational people can disagree and some may argue that today’s prices are rational and under-pinned by economic drivers. All of that might be true, but the 2006 price might still be over-valued. That’s fine.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2015

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. Apply for contests and business grants.

Entrepreneur 105

Entrepreneur Startup Technical Review Equity 105

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

I’ll publish the final post in this series this week and then move on to my next series – sales & marketing. I’ll be covering my PUCCKA sales methodology. When I first met the team in San Diego they had only been working on their software for 5 months. It will be controversial – I know.

Entrepreneur 267

Entrepreneur Startup SaaS San Diego 267

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 14, 2014

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. Apply for contests and business grants.

Entrepreneur 113

Entrepreneur Funding Startup Technical Review 113

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 1, 2017

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. Apply for contests and business grants.

Develop 70

Develop Development Product Startup 70

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 28, 2009

We went through the euphoria of massive exposure at the time of our launch due to an article that ran in the Financial Times. Our software wasn’t fully baked. We hadn’t even thought about having a customer support line or who would staff it. We had one of the largest US software companies talk about buying us.

Startup 331

Startup Press Customer Custom 331

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. Apply for contests and business grants.

Startup 123

Startup Technical Review Equity Incubator 123

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

However, what happened as we worked with clients on AdBook, we got deep into the trenches with online ad sales and learning the operational nuances--there are plenty--we realized that there were a couple of big gaps in the market. Because of that, the sales team is left with a data entry problem. It's an automatic proposal builder.

Advertising 127

Advertising Startup Sales Tool 127

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2018

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. Apply for contests and business grants.

Startup 53

Startup Technical Review Equity Incubator 53