Posts Tagged ‘startup strategy’

Dec

Great interview with Mint.com CEO Aaron Patzer – Lots of insights into startup success

written by Scott Olson

If you are thinking about starting a company or are fully into startup mode, it is worth you time to watch this video of Aaron Patzer where he describes the process for his success at Mint.com. This is a tremendous walkthrough of how he bootstrapped his company, planned for success and ultimately sold his company for $170 million to Intuit.

Mint CEO Aaron Patzer on Startups from Techcrunch on Vimeo.

Aaron walks through his early business plan, revenue expectations, funding and ultimate acquisition with lots of numbers. I found it particularly humorous when he talked about how VCs value early stage companies; $500k for every coder/engineer, -$100k for every business person.

His instincts are on the money though. Focus on your product, building value, proving out your business model. Understand your market and you will gradually build for success. You can add sales, marketing, and executive leadership through advisors at first, consultants and part time employees next and ultimately will bring on full time executives as needed. We had a great discussion on this topic on my own site a few weeks ago in the post “Do startups need VPs?”

Hope you enjoy the video.

Sep

Financing your startup – 7 problems with too much capital

written by Scott Olson

Financing your startup - 7 problems with taking too much money I have been talking with a couple of contacts recently who are looking at moving their bootstrapped business into the world of a funded startup. In the process of working with different VCs and angel groups, they of course get the question “How much money are you looking for?”

A piece of advice for every entrepreneur out there – don’t raise too much capital. It is critical for you to understand the difference between what you “need” and what you “want.” This basic guideline that us parents so often explain to our children will serve you well as an entrepreneur looking for money. It is so tempting to pad your funding requests to give yourself a safety net and provide additional opportunities to hire new employees with the intention of expanding your business faster. It is all the more tempting because VCs often are part of the problem here. They often will have minimum investments to even be interested. In addition their requirements for the return on their investment will often push you toward a business plan that has unrealistic growth expectations. (more…)

Tags: entrepreneur, startup marketing, startup strategy
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Aug

Five key marketing priorities for startups – Latest VentureBeat article up

written by Scott Olson

As a follow up to my first VentureBeat article – Five Marketing Time Wasters, I have a second article up on VentureBeat – Five Key Marketing Priorities for Startups.

If you are new to my blog and are an entrepreneur or technology professional, be sure to take part in my win/loss analysis survey launched last week. I will be wrapping up that survey and publishing the results this week.

Tags: marketing strategy, startup marketing, startup strategy
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Jul

A Crisis is an Opportunity to Excel at Customer Service

written by Scott Olson

Yesterday I wrote about Amazon’s failure to address their customer service crisis with the Kindle and their deletion of e-books that was reported in the NY Times. Today I came across a good entry from Seth Godin’s blog titled “Winning on the uphills” identifying that it is in the difficult times that companies define themselves and can excel above their competition. I couldn’t agree more.

One of my business mentors, Craig Tysdal who was the CEO of NetSolve, made this a primary focus of a customer service class that he required every employee to take. He emphasized that your customers remember how you respond to problems, difficulties and crisis more than anything because so few companies do that well. It is the opportunity to turn a negative situation into a positive that can not only solidify customer loyalty, but also create significant positive word of mouth and customer references. (more…)

Tags: crisis management, marketing strategy, startup marketing, startup strategy
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Jul

Startup Marketing: Exit Strategy Guides Business Decisions

written by Scott Olson

I came across a blog post yesterday that advocated planning for an exit strategy early and I couldn’t agree more. Martin, in this post (POST NO LONGER EXISTS), highlights two reasons why you would want to do this. First, because outside investors want to collect their return, and second, because entrepreneurs love the art of the start. I would add a third, which I feel is of paramount importance, and that is your exit strategy helps guide difficult business decisions.

Understanding your exit strategy can significantly change your plans across all aspects of your business from marketing and product strategy to business development and HR. To illustrate this I wanted to see how a particular exit strategy might change some of the priorities you have for your business. (more…)