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I have long advised startup companies that if you don’t control your messaging somebody else will and your potential customers will form impressions of you shaped by somebody else or by nobody at all. It is simply the most important way to proactively control your career development and how the market perceives you.
The following are some lessons I learned about early-stage startup marketing. Because market is such a broad topic, I’m restricting these lessons to PR marketing (as opposed SEO, SEM, product marketing, etc.). Most people totally advise against stealth. I call this “marketing futures.&#
In my years of advising startups and occasional investing, I’ve seen many great ideas start and fail, but the right team always seems to make good things happen, even without the ultimate idea. You need to have a technical genius on the team to get your startup product off the ground. Outsourcing your core competency does not work.
My role is to work as part of the team to (1) understand related technologies and technical opportunities, (2) understand and help drive alignment around a vision of where the business should go, and (3) mesh those together to help make disciplined, proactive technical decisions. Then, we come to an agreement on terms.
In my years of advising startups and occasional investing, I’ve seen many great ideas start and fail, but the right team always seems to make good things happen, even without the ultimate idea. You need to have a technical genius on the team to get your startup product off the ground. Outsourcing your core competency does not work.
If you are a passionate technologist , it’s easy to forget that marketing is required to sell even the most compelling solution, to cut through the information overload everyone sees today on the internet. Getting customer attention often takes more innovation today than solving the tough technical problems.
Assuming normal valuations at fund raising rounds you’ll be down to 6-12% after you’ve created a stock-option pool and raised capital. Research your market. I know it’s obvious but I’m always surprised how many people just start building products without thinking enough about the market.
Accelerator programs--like YCombinator in Silicon Valley, and TechStars in Colorado--have come to the forefront of the minds of entrepreneurs as a way to boost their ideas quickly into the market, find funding, and into existence. We're providing seed funding, office space, and put them through a three month, structured program.
In my years of advising startups and occasional investing, I’ve seen many great ideas start and fail, but the right team always seems to make good things happen, even without the ultimate idea. You need to have a technical genius on the team to get your startup product off the ground. Outsourcing your core competency does not work.
If you’re thinking about joining as the director of marketing, product management manager, senior architect, international business development lead, etc. I advised against the SF role because it was a bigger company and his role would be pushing paper from one side of his desk to the other. Let’s face it.
Include any empirical evidence--including market research or technical analysis, if that's appropriate--in order to bolster your case about why you believe you will succeed. If you don't have a team on staff, then a banker is going to want to hear about outsourcing and advisors. An impressive team.
In my years of advising startups and occasional investing, I’ve seen many great ideas start and fail, but the right team always seems to make good things happen, even without the ultimate idea. You need to have a technical genius on the team to get your startup product off the ground. Outsourcing your core competency does not work.
Include any empirical evidence--including market research or technical analysis, if that's appropriate--in order to bolster your case about why you believe you will succeed. If you don't have a team on staff, then a banker is going to want to hear about outsourcing and advisors. An impressive team.
I wrote this conundrum and the need to take charge of how the market define your skills in my much-read blog post on “ personal branding.” ” If you don’t create the message about yourself, the market will. And if you want to be a CEO one day you need the messaging to reflect that.
While it’s never a bad time to apply for a business grant, October is one of the busiest months in the funding calendar, so it’s definitely worth exploring what options are out there before opportunities dry up during the holiday season. While the prize fund varies per year, this year a cash sum of $2,250 is up for grabs.
In my years of advising startups and occasional investing, I’ve seen many great ideas start and fail, but the right team always seems to make good things happen, even without the ultimate idea. You need to have a technical genius on the team to get your startup product off the ground. Outsourcing your core competency does not work.
I tapped my co-founder, John Haro, who I worked for at Agency.com, and at another mobile marketing company, and we talked about the idea, ideated, and I brought him on as co-founder. He and I connected, and walked through PartySlate and what we were doing, and he immediately said he wanted to invest and become an advisor to the company.
If you are one of the thousands of entrepreneurs who need equity funding to get your startup going (no loans to repay), you are probably overwhelmed at the prospect of finding, contacting and pitching to the huge number of qualified angels and investment groups around the country. Prepare a slide deck to highlight product and business.
From visualization to conception, and actually taking the product to market, a company usually takes about 1-2 years to create. The team needed would consist of at least 1 non-technical business person (me) and 2 or more technical people—designer and developer. We had exactly 54 hours! Pitch and form teams! Pivot, Pivot, Pivot!
He could not be persuaded to commit the funds required for localization. Our own subsidiary, of a major technology company, started to repair and service competitive products in order to maintain our own technical staff and service capabilities. Thorough name searches as well as professional advice in this area is highly advised.
Most of the entrepreneurs I advise today are ready to declare success when they get that first surge of traction with a real customer. You need to find investors for funding, vendors for volume manufacturing, processes for repeatable execution, as well as marketing and distribution to attract customers far beyond your pilot rollout.
The list would include Howard Schultz, a marketer working for a Seattle coffee bean roaster when a trip to Milan convinced him to jump ship to create upscale espresso cafes that he found all over Italy; and maybe Steve Jobs, who started on the night shift at Atari. Can leverage a retirement fund or accumulated savings.
Truth be told, your only path to some serious funding is perseverance and diligence in getting meetings and being prepared. One of the biggest turn offs for investors are founders who don’t know the basics of their business, especially their market and customer. It’s validating that there is a market for their idea.
Web Development & Marketing Technology) Exit: evolved into L90 (next company) Lesson: What you dont know cant stop you. Go-to-Market 5. Venture Capital Funding 7. I decided that I was going to consult/advise a few companies and relax for a bit. So, I put him in charge of our data centers and technical operations.
Our firm has funded many of them. I was trying to tell a real story about grit and risk and determination and seeing the markets early but struggling to persuade others. The truth is that many “unicorns” have reached the status solely because the fundingmarkets have said so. That’s how markets go.
by Michael Woolf that is worth any startup founder reading to get a sense of perspective on the reality warp that is startup world during a frothy market such as 1997-1999, 2005-2007 or 2012-2014. We’re going to start aggressively spend money on marketing our product. (it is also the title of a fabulous book from Internet 1.0
Morgan Stanley then funded one of our competitors. If you remember your history the market crashed the next week. By mid September the entire market was constipated. History repeated itself in September 2008 with that market crash. I offered a second time to fund and even increased price a little bit.
I would argue that this mostly consists of consumer Internet companies (although not exclusively) and it is predominantly early-stage people who are product gurus and have a mildly technical bend to them. I funded them 8 weeks later. Something like, &# I was thinking about jumping into the demo first before discussing the market.
Web Development & Marketing Technology) Exit: evolved into L90 (next company) Lesson: What you dont know cant stop you. In fact, we probably had hundreds of competitors including seven that were either very well funded with significant venture capital or publicly held (e.g. It was just another step towards conquering our market.
The CEO weighs in with his perspectives, the head of product management disputes his conclusions and the marketing VP has a different take. If they’re not I won’t fund. Because the formation of a business is so dependent on “product / market fit&# these are the critical roles for me. What about offshoring?
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