Cash is King: 8 tips to Optimize Fundraising Strategy
Introduction
This post aims to help startup CEOs optimize their funding strategy by examining how investors value startups, and explaining how to avoid the common cash management pitfalls.…
Slides on Building a Sales & Marketing Machine
Here is the slide deck that I presented last night at the Boston Lean Startup Circle.
The slide deck describes how to build a Sales & Marketing Machine that is predictable, scalable, automated, well instrumented, and cost efficient.
…A Case Study: Up Close and Personal for Product/Market Fit
Many entrepreneurs have a strong suspicion that there is an opportunity in a particular market, but lack the detailed understanding of customer pain needed to design an appropriate solution. The following guest post by John Raguin, ex-CEO, and co-founder of …
How Investors Validate Your Bookings Forecast
We have just gone through the time of year when startups present their 2011 plans to their boards for approval. In many ways, these meetings are very similar to the meetings we have with new startups that have projections for …
Customer Acquisition: Maximizing your Funnel
This blog post focuses on how B2B companies can optimize their customer acquisition funnels using a customer-centric methodology to analyze and remove blockage points.
Acquiring customers in the B2B world involves using a variety of marketing and sales steps with …
Designing Metrics for Success
Great companies are almost always run by great management teams. And great management teams know that the only way to improve a process is to start by measuring it. Good metrics should also be actionable, and drive successful behavior. In …
Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition
In the many thousands of articles advising entrepreneurs on what they have to focus on to build successful startups, much has been written about three key factors: team, product and market, with particular focus on the importance of product/market fit. …
Lessons Learned – Viral Marketing
A short study of this web site reveals that a hugely important factor for success in startup companies is finding ways to acquire customers at a low cost. In the Business Models section, we looked at the perfect business model: …
Is Your Startup Idea Viable?
As a serial entrepreneur, I learned a lot of lessons from things that didn’t work. These lessons later on shaped my ideas on what would be needed to build a successful startup company. When I became a VC, I realized …
Viral Acquisition? Great if You Can Monetize
This post is part of my series An Analysis of 5 Business Models.
Many businesses talk about Viral marketing, but in reality, only a few are actually able to pull off true viral marketing. The effect of viral marketing …
