Guide to Business Development and Partnerships. Learn More Section 1: What is Business Development?
When you ask 10 people to define “Business Development”, chances are that you will get 10 different answers. Here are some of my favorite articles that try to answer this question: Section 2: Why Should Companies Invest in Business Development? Thought leaders agree that every company should invest in business development, as it can help the company achieve tactical goals (like accelerate revenue growth) and/or strategic goals (like an acquisition). Section 3: When Should Companies Invest in Business Development? Thought leaders agree that early-stage start-ups should avoid investing in BD until the company has achieved a degree of Product / Market fit.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Secrets to Raising Venture Capital. A mile wide, an inch deep. The problem with time, though, is it’s not actually measuring value.
Welcome To The Unicorn Club: Learning From Billion-Dollar Startups. Editor’s note: Aileen Lee is founder of Cowboy Ventures, a seed-stage fund that backs entrepreneurs reinventing work and personal life through software.
Previously, she joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1999 and was also founding CEO of digital media company RMG Networks, backed by KPCB. Follow her on Twitter @aileenlee. “How will they make money?” is the wrong question — I.M.H.O. Seems like every year we hear about a few new consumer networks raising large amounts of money at high valuations.
And right on cue, we hear cynics asking, “But how will they ever make money?” Let alone “enough money to justify the valuation.” Just this weekend, the rumors (and doubts — for example, read the comments) were all about Snapchat. Startup = Growth. September 2012.
Do Things that Don't Scale. July 2013 One of the most common types of advice we give at Y Combinator is to do things that don't scale.
How to make Europe work for your startup, from day one. This is a guest post by Ifeelgoods co-founder and CEO Michael Amar.
For too many American technology start-ups, Europe is a dirty word. Classically, US start-ups have pursued the European market after their Series B or C funding rounds, or even later. Many companies only consider Europe when their US growth begins slowing down. Then, they might target Europe by either hiring a European industry visionary, or by transferring a top sales person to London and hoping for the best.
The experience economy. Before World War 2, the middle-class in the developed world struggled to afford basic needs.
In the post-war boom, standards of living rose dramatically, and people consumed far beyond what they needed. It was the age of conspicuous consumption: a race to own bigger cars and houses, and accumulate more stuff. The mean income in the developed world became sufficient to provide for a comfortable life. Today, people increasingly realize they own more than enough stuff, and don’t want to pay for feature-rich versions of that stuff. Four blades in your razors are enough. Are Typosquatters Hijacking Your Brand? - Advertising Age - Digi. Finding And Buying A Domain Name. I believe that a good domain name is an important success factor in building and launching consumer web services.
It's not in my top ten but it could be. It's certainly something we think about a lot when making investments and working with companies post investment. A number of our portfolio companies have acquired their domain names in connection with or shortly after our investment. Del.icio.us purchased Delicious.com with some of the proceeds of our investment.
Foursquare purchased Foursquare.com with some of the proceeds of our investment (they launched with playfoursquare.com). A good domain name is short and memorable. I remember walking home one afternoon from the office on the phone with Mark Pincus. That conversation with Mark was in the summer/fall of 2007. Dr. Evil’s 7 Tips for Achieving Worldwide Marketing Domination. 5 Tips To Transition From A Free To A Paid Service. Editor’s Note: This post is written by Dave Schappell, Founder and CEO of TeachStreet.
In it, he talks about his company’s transition from a free to a paid service, and shares five tips that may help other startups make the leap as well. Over the course of the last two-plus years, I’ve worked with a team that has lived the web service transition from free to paid, as TeachStreet has evolved from a place to find local classes in Seattle, to a global supplier of online and local classes (I’ve included a high-level timeline of our full 2-year transition, at the bottom of this post). The discussions around freemium and the like are numerous — I won’t bore you with additional words on those topics.
How To Make Your Product Stand Out Without Going Broke. The Yin And Yang Of Product And Engineering. The 6 Keys To Real Sustainable Competitive Advantage. Challenges of Getting Early Adopters, Acquiring Customers & Monetizing. I’ve gotten some requests recently to write a post on how we’ve gotten early adopters at my startup BizeeBee and how we got them at Mint. I hate to burst everyone’s tech bubble but there is no secret for getting early adopters. I also want to address two concepts in this posts getting early adopters vs. methods for customer acquisition. The reason for the dichotomy is that an early adopter is essentially a product tester and product evangelist. They will stick around forever and are highly critical to the success of your business because they promote your product, but to me they are not really customers.
Why? Why do you want early adopters? Because early adopters actually prove product/market fit. From Business Models to "Betterness" Models - Umair Haque - Harv. Accelerate Your Startup: Get the Right Product/Market Fit: Tech News « Should Startups Focus on Profitability or Not? There are certain topics that even some of the best journalists can’t fully grok. One of them is profitability.
I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” I mention journalists here because they perpetuate the myth that focusing on profits is ALWAYS the right answer and then I hear many entrepreneurs (and certainly many “normals”) repeating the same mantra.