Managing Startups · Best Blog Posts by Eisenmann, Thomas -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Managing Startups: Best Blog Posts Preface

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Foreword I. Lean Startup

1. How We Fooled Ourselves into Delaying Our Startup’s Launch

Why Didn’t We Release an Early Prototype? The Excuses We Came Up With The Excuse I Didn’t Admit Lastly

2. How to Build It: Lean Prototyping Techniques for Hardware

The Dollar Store Pen and Paper Computer Modeling 2D Cutting Additive Manufacturing CNC Molding and Fiberglass Welding Arduino User Feedback

How I (Try to) Pick People for Feedback

Summary Acknowledgments

3. How Many Metrics Do You Need to Run Your Startup?

What’s Your OMTM?

4. The Lean Stack MVP—A Different Approach

The Lean Stack Flow

The Vision—Lean Canvas The Strategy—Strategy and Risks Board The Product—Validated Learning Board

Question: How does one create a card for a product prior to conducting problem and solution interviews? Question: What is a minimum viable feature (MVF)? What is the relation to MVP? How does one know which one to use? Question: Can you explain the lifecycle of a product through the four stages on the board? Question: Where do you capture product and experiment details?

The Lean Stack in Action Now It’s Your Turn

5. Software Inventory 6. How to Get Out of the Building with the Validation Board

1. The Exploration Method

Techniques (in Decreasing Order of Cost and Quality of Data) Five Bonus Tips for Customer Development Interviews Bad Questions Good Questions Recording Data and Scoring Avoid a False Negative/Positive

2. The Pitch Method

Forms of Pitch Forms of Currency

3. The Concierge Method

Concierge Tools

II. Business Models

7. MBA Mondays: Revenue Models—Commerce 8. Freemium Pricing for SaaS: Optimizing Paid Conversion Upgrades 9. Why Churn Is So Critical to Success in SaaS

The Impact of Negative Churn How Do You Achieve Negative Churn? Same Sales Force for Expansion/Up-sell/Cross-sell? How to Track the Different Factors That Make Up Bookings When to Focus on Negative Churn? Tactics to Help Reduce Churn Managing Churn Is Harder if You Are Selling to Small Businesses How Churn Affects Valuation

10. Achieving the Network Effect: Solving the Chicken or the Egg

Two Versions of the Chicken or the Egg

Type #1: Platforms/Marketplaces Type #2: Communities/Social Networks

Solving Platform and Marketplace Issues Solving Community and Social Network Issues Don’t Be Afraid of Brute Force

11. Reverse Network Effects: Why Scale May Be the Biggest Threat Facing Today’s Social Networks

Network Effects and Value Why Network Effects Work in Reverse

Reverse Network Effects: Connection Reverse Network Effects: Content

Curation Personalization

Reverse Network Effects: Clout

In Conclusion

12. Business Model Canvas for Puppies (Part I)

Puppies-as-a-Service Find a Wall Customer Value Proposition Relationship Channel Minimum Viable Product The End?

III. Customer Discovery and Validation

13. All Customers Are Not Created Equal

Part I

Consumers Small and Mid-Sized Non-Technology Businesses Technology Startups

Part II

Large Enterprise Customers Existing Customers

14. You Shouldn’t Use a Survey If... 15. A Perfect Use for Personas

The Business Person The Barfly The Group Luncher And the Rest... Postscript

16. Fucking Ship It Already: Just Not to Everyone at Once

The Interactive Mockup The Opt In The Opt Out The n% Rollout The New User Rollout

17. Stop Validating Your Product

Validate a Problem Solve a Problem for a Particular Market The Easiest Kind of Customer Development

18. Using Surveys to Validate Key Startup Decisions

Introduction Background So How Do You Get Quality Feedback?

Learning About Your Own Customers Learning About Potential Customers

Using a Survey and a Targeted Audience to Make Smart Decisions

Create Clear Objectives Determine Your Target Audience—Who Do You Want to Survey?

Create a Great Survey—Turning Key Objectives into Great Questions

Modify Survey Questions:

Uncovering Critical Insights

Actionable Insights for Modify

Objective: Understand pricing Objective: Identify demographics of Modify’s target customers

Key demographic insights

Objective: Understand if a subscription option is viable Objective: Understand market sizing

Putting Results into Action

Pricing Brand Recognition Demographics Subscription Viability Market Sizing

Conclusion

IV. Marketing: Demand Generation and Optimization

19. Very Basic Startup Marketing

Marketing as a Funnel

Awareness: How People First Hear About Your Company Conversion: Getting People Who Are Aware to Take Action Raving Fans: Getting Customers to Love You and Be Evangelists

Marketing as Understanding Marketing as a Cycle

20. The Ultimate Guide to Startup Marketing

Foundation

1. Choosing a Market 2. Defining Keywords 3. Defining Success 4. Setting Core Metrics 5. Estimating a Conversion Rate 6. Setting a Budget

Social Media

1. Choosing the Right Social Media Networks 2. Defining the Best Times to Post 3. Using a Keyword List 4. Creating and Using an Influencer List 5. Setting Up a Blog

Startup PR

1. Craft Meaningful Positioning Statements 2. Define Your Startup Sensitivities 3. Identifying the Right Writers for a Media List 4. Creating a Press Kit 5. Reaching Out to Journalists

Content Creation

1. Creating a Topic List 2. Knowing What Types of Content to Publish 3. Guest Blogging 4. Capturing Emails

Test and Iterate

1. Setting Up Analytics Tools 2. Measuring Against Benchmarks 3. Brainstorming Creative New Ideas

Best Practices

1. Sell the Solution 2. Have a Compelling Story 3. Use All Your Resources

Conclusion

21. What the Highest-Converting Websites Do Differently

1. They Make Their Unique Value Proposition(s) Clear 2. They Test Their Calls to Action

How Do You Find Out What Questions Your Customers Have?

3. They Test Their Headlines 4. They Tend To Have Short Forms

Test the Number of Form Fields Other Techniques to Try

22. Understanding the Customer Buying Cycle and Triggers

The Customer Buying Cycle How the Buying Cycle Impacts the Sales Approach Needed

What’s the Difference? How Do You Adapt Marketing to a Buyer’s Stage in the Cycle? What Do You Do with Visitors That Are Not Ready to Buy? (Lead Nurturing) How Online Lead Sources Relate to the Customer Buying Cycle

Understanding Buying Triggers

Working with Triggers to Improve Marketing

1 & 2. Identify the Personas that buy, and their specific triggers 3. Build trigger-specific messaging and content 4. Look to see if you can create the trigger, or help a customer realize a trigger has happened

Encountering a Customer Too Late in the Buying Cycle Conclusions

23. Building It Is Not Enough: Five Practical Tips on User Acquisition

If You Build It, They May Not Come

1. Do Not Test a Lot of Channels at Once 2. Diversity of Channels Is Not Important in the Early Stage 3. Paying for Users Is Okay 4. You Only Need Three Tools to Test Your Customer Acquisition Channels 5. Avoid the Button Color A/B Testing Rabbit Hole

24. Introduction to A/B Testing for Landing Pages

Improperly Segmenting Traffic Misunderstanding Randomness Mixing Experiment Factors Data Dredging Comparing the Results of Different and Unrelated Experiments Inconsistent or Unimportant Metrics Naïve Analysis of Results Substituting Testing for Creativity and Common Sense Make It Easy on Your Developers

25. You Built It But They Didn’t Come: Eight Tricks for Marketing Your Mobile App

Build a Great App Get Great Reviews Build in Social Pitch, Pitch, Pitch (and Then Pitch Some More) SEO Your App Description Be Free, Freemium, Cheap... If All Else Fails, Advertise If All Else *Really* Fails, Buy Users to Get in the Top App Lists

V. Sales, Marketing, and PR Management

26. At Times Not Losing Is as Important as Winning

Customer Validation They Have a Problem and Know It A Match Made in Heaven The CIO The IT Revolt We’re Going to Lose The Third Way The “Take-Away” Gambit Lessons Learned

27. Nine Ways to Make Your Startup Grow Virally

Get Your Users to Spread the Word Increasing Conversion

Conclusion

28. Our PR Stinks: Here’s What Your Startup Can Learn from It

The Familiar Doubt How Did We Solve the First Problem of Filling the Platform? Growth The Big Guys Our PR Still Stank How, Exactly, Did We Manage to Grow? What Were Our End Results with PR? What Were Our End Results with Content Marketing? At This Point in Time, Our PR Still Sucks The Fate of Your Brand

29. Some Tips for Interacting with the Press 30. Startup Branding: A Practical Guide for Entrepreneurs

1. What does startup branding really mean for an early-stage company? Is it just picking a name and a logo? 2. Any favorite startup examples that you think are particularly clueful about brand and drawing out the right emotional response? 3. Speaking of names, how do I pick a great name for my startup? Does it really matter all that much? 4. What about logos? Can I just hack something together? Use a crowdsourcing service like 99designs? Or is that a waste of time? 5. Any tips on where to find a great freelance designer for a startup logo? And what would you consider reasonably priced? 6. How do I decide what category my startup falls into? Is it better to find an existing category, or blaze the trail of a new one? 7. How much does good branding matter when trying to raise capital? Is smart money really fooled by that kind of thing? Will I look foolish for having invested in branding?

VI. Product Management/Product Design

31. Sometimes It’s Not the Change They Hate

Did You Do Any Sort of User Testing Before Launch? Did You Test with Current Users or Just New Ones? Did You Add Something Useful to Users? Really? Do You Mind Losing a Portion of Your Users? Have You Honestly Listened to Your Users’ Complaints? Have You “Fixed” the Problem by Letting Users Change Settings?

32. What You Will/Won’t Learn from Usability Testing 33. Product Marketing Contribution

The Problem The Job Product Marketing Responsibilities What to Do?

34. Time-Boxing Product Discovery 35. Product Management Then and Now

Organization: Education: Spends days: Learns about customer behavior: Makes case for project funding based on: Reads: Deep knowledge in: Loves: Sits with: When things don’t go well: Strives to please: Makes decisions based on: Communicates with stakeholders: Attitude: Worries about: Secret weapon: Strives to create:

36. Live-Data Prototypes Versus Production 37. Continuous Discovery 38. The Role of Product Managers 39. Why Companies Should Have Product Editors, Not Product Managers

Product Manager: One of the Toughest and Worst-Defined Jobs in Tech Bad Ideas Are Often Good Ideas That Don’t Fit Jack Dorsey in His Own Words Lead with Product

40. Five Outsourcing Mistakes That Will Kill Your Startup

Mistake #1: Outsourcing Something That Shouldn’t Be Outsourced Mistake #2: Not Sufficiently Vetting Your Staff Mistake #3: Hiring Based on Technical Skills Rather than English Proficiency Mistake #4: Insufficient Management Mistake #5: Failure to Award Responsibility and Reward Good Work Conclusion

VII. Business Development and Scaling

41. Who You Gonna Call? Partnering with Goliath: A Tale of Two Announcements

Time to Find a Partner

The Right Partner Mission Clarity Behind the Headlines—A Deal with Teeth Goliath Delivers... ... With a Little Help from His Friend

In Summary

42. A Recipe for Growth: Adding Layers to the Cake

VIII. Funding Strategy

43. Micro-VCs and Super Angels Two Years Later: Looking Back and Some Predictions for the Future

The Dedicated Seed Strategy Continues to Have Strong Benefits Evolving and Converging Strategies A New Normal? A Few Predictions

44. Why Do VCs Have Ownership Targets? And Why 20%? 45. How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC Syndicate 46. A Choir of Angel Investors Sing Different Parts 47. Super Pro-Rata Rights Aren’t Super

IX. Company Culture, Organizational Structure, Recruiting, and Other HR Issues

48. Getting Promoted Too Quickly 49. Recruiting Developers? Create an Awesome Candidate Experience

Ideas for Creating an Awesome Candidate Experience (CX)

50. Startups: Stop Trying to Hire Ninja-Rockstar Engineers 51. How to Hire Hackers: A Realistic Guide for Startups

You’re a Startup—Have the Founders Make the First Contact Interviewing: It’s Not Just About the Role, It’s Also About Who They Will Have Lunch With Interviewing: Choose Carefully Which Opportunity to Pitch Signing: How to Make Candidates Sign an Employment Agreement More Quickly

How to Hear “No” and How to Say “No”

52. MBA Mondays: Best Hiring Practices 53. How to Design a Successful Interview Process for Hiring Top Talent

1. Reviewing Resumes 2. Screening Candidates 3. First In-Person Interview (with me) 4. Second In-Person Interview (with Fred) 5. Third In-Person Interview (with the team) 6. The Practical 7. The Post-Practical Conclusions

54. Snake-Oil Startup Recruiting 55. Recruiting and Culture (MBA Mondays Guest Post)

Make Recruiting a Top Priority at the CEO Level Communicate the Company Vision Broadly and Directly Challenge Traditional Notions of Corporate Transparency Be Patient: “Slow Recruiting” Open-Source Your Culture: Generosity of Spirit Cultivate the Spirit of the Organization

56. Firing 57. MBA Mondays: Asking an Employee to Leave the Company 58. The Board of Directors—Selecting, Electing, and Evolving

X. Startup Failure

59. What Goes Wrong

Determination Variety of Problems Cofounder Disputes Investors Distractions HR Acquisitions Making Something People Want Is Hard Roller Coaster Hard, But Not Impossible

60. Why Startups Die

Post Mortems How to Survive

XI. Exiting by Selling Your Company

61. The Economic Logic Behind Tech and Talent Acquisitions 62. Knowing Where the Exits Are

Taking the Exit “Your Best Exit May Be Behind You” Stepping Back from the Fray: November 2005 Stepping Back from the Fray: February 2007

XII. The Startup Mindset and Coping with Startup Pressures

63. What It’s Like to Be the CEO: Revelations and Reflections

What It Feels Like to Be the CEO of a Startup Epilogue

64. How We Fight—Cofounders in Love and War

Introduction How We Fight

Taking Time Simulating Real Life What Are You Fighting About?

65. Vision Versus Hallucination—Founders and Pivots

A Pivot a Week Pivot as an Excuse Sit on It for Awhile Change the Value Proposition Last Find a Brainstorm Buddy Lessons Learned

66. 50 Startup Lessons Learned in 12 Months 67. Advice I Wish I Could Have Given Myself Five Years Ago 68. The Only Two Questions Founders Need to Answer

Do You Need to Pass These Tests to Succeed? When I Passed These Tests and When I Failed

69. Once You Take Money, the Clock Starts Ticking 70. The Series A Crunch Survivor’s Guide

1. Your Team Lacks a Track Record 2. Your Product Execution Is Not Competitive with Other Products Investors Are Seeing 3. You Lack Product Traction 4. The Market You’re Addressing Is Not Big or “Important” Enough 5. You’re Fishing in a Recently Poisoned Pond (e.g., the Deal Space Pioneered by Groupon) 6. Your Valuation Doesn’t Match Reality 7. Your Burn Is Unjustified, Scary, or Lacks Discipline 8. You Lack Clients

XIII. Management and Career Advice

71. Selling or Funding a Startup? Tips on Surviving Technical Due Diligence

Be Better Prepared for Technical Due Diligence Vitality Scalability Maintainability Continuity In Conclusion

72. Playbook for Incoming MBAs to Start a Company out of School 73. Manage Your Tech Career

How to Use the Tool Find the Right Company (or Pie) Get What’s Fair, but Don’t Negotiate Too Much The Bottom Line

74. Hey Entrepreneur—Please Get an MBA

1. What You Actually Learn 2. Tuition Costs 3. Time Commitment 4. The Wrong Network 5. Many MBAs Choose Not to Start Businesses (and Who Gives a Shit?) My Suggestion

75. Why I Left Consulting and Joined a Startup

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