Managing Startups: Best Blog Posts

by Thomas Eisenmann

Overview

If you want salient advice about your startup, you’ve hit the jackpot with this book. Harvard Business School Professor Tom Eisenmann annually compiles the best posts from many blogs on technology startup management, primarily for the benefit of his students. This book makes his latest collection available to the broader entrepreneur community.

You’ll find 72 posts from successful entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, such as Fred Wilson, Steve Blank, Ash Maurya, Joel Spolsky, and Ben Yoskovitz. They cover a wide range of topics essential to your startup’s success, including:

• Management tasks: Engineering, product management, marketing, sales, and business development
• Organizational issues: Cofounder tensions, recruiting, and career planning
• Funding: The latest developments in capital markets that affect startups

Divided into 13 areas of focus, the book’s contributors explore the metrics you need to run your startup, discuss lean prototyping techniques for hardware, identify costly outsourcing mistakes, provide practical tips on user acquisition, offer branding guidelines, and explain how a choir of angel investors often will sing different parts. And that’s just for starters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781449370497
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/01/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	452
File size:	9 MB

Table of Contents

Preface; Safari® Books Online; How to Contact Us; Foreword; Lean Startup; Chapter 1: How We Fooled Ourselves into Delaying Our Startup’s Launch; 1.1 Why Didn’t We Release an Early Prototype?; 1.2 The Excuses We Came Up With; 1.3 The Excuse I Didn’t Admit; 1.4 Lastly; Chapter 2: How to Build It: Lean Prototyping Techniques for Hardware; 2.1 The Dollar Store; 2.2 Pen and Paper; 2.3 Computer Modeling; 2.4 2D Cutting; 2.5 Additive Manufacturing; 2.6 CNC; 2.7 Molding and Fiberglass; 2.8 Welding; 2.9 Arduino; 2.10 User Feedback; 2.11 Summary; 2.12 Acknowledgments; Chapter 3: How Many Metrics Do You Need to Run Your Startup?; 3.1 What’s Your OMTM?; Chapter 4: The Lean Stack MVP—A Different Approach; 4.1 The Lean Stack Flow; Chapter 5: Software Inventory; Chapter 6: How to Get Out of the Building with the Validation Board; 6.1 1. The Exploration Method; 6.2 2. The Pitch Method; 6.3 3. The Concierge Method; Business Models; Chapter 7: MBA Mondays: Revenue Models—Commerce; Chapter 8: Freemium Pricing for SaaS: Optimizing Paid Conversion Upgrades; Chapter 9: Why Churn Is So Critical to Success in SaaS; 9.1 The Impact of Negative Churn; 9.2 How Do You Achieve Negative Churn?; 9.3 Same Sales Force for Expansion/Up-sell/Cross-sell?; 9.4 How to Track the Different Factors That Make Up Bookings; 9.5 When to Focus on Negative Churn?; 9.6 Tactics to Help Reduce Churn; 9.7 Managing Churn Is Harder if You Are Selling to Small Businesses; 9.8 How Churn Affects Valuation; Chapter 10: Achieving the Network Effect: Solving the Chicken or the Egg; 10.1 Two Versions of the Chicken or the Egg; 10.2 Solving Platform and Marketplace Issues; 10.3 Solving Community and Social Network Issues; 10.4 Don’t Be Afraid of Brute Force; Chapter 11: Reverse Network Effects: Why Scale May Be the Biggest Threat Facing Today’s Social Networks; 11.1 Network Effects and Value; 11.2 Why Network Effects Work in Reverse; 11.3 In Conclusion; Chapter 12: Business Model Canvas for Puppies (Part I); 12.1 Puppies-as-a-Service; 12.2 Find a Wall; 12.3 Customer; 12.4 Value Proposition; 12.5 Relationship; 12.6 Channel; 12.7 Minimum Viable Product; 12.8 The End?; Customer Discovery and Validation; Chapter 13: All Customers Are Not Created Equal; 13.1 Part I; 13.2 Part II; Chapter 14: You Shouldn’t Use a Survey If...; Chapter 15: A Perfect Use for Personas; 15.1 The Business Person; 15.2 The Barfly; 15.3 The Group Luncher; 15.4 And the Rest...; 15.5 Postscript; Chapter 16: Fucking Ship It Already: Just Not to Everyone at Once; 16.1 The Interactive Mockup; 16.2 The Opt In; 16.3 The Opt Out; 16.4 The n% Rollout; 16.5 The New User Rollout; Chapter 17: Stop Validating Your Product; 17.1 Validate a Problem; 17.2 Solve a Problem for a Particular Market; 17.3 The Easiest Kind of Customer Development; Chapter 18: Using Surveys to Validate Key Startup Decisions; 18.1 Introduction; 18.2 Background; 18.3 So How Do You Get Quality Feedback?; 18.4 Using a Survey and a Targeted Audience to Make Smart Decisions; 18.5 Create a Great Survey—Turning Key Objectives into Great Questions; 18.6 Uncovering Critical Insights; 18.7 Putting Results into Action; 18.8 Conclusion; Marketing: Demand Generation and Optimization; Chapter 19: Very Basic Startup Marketing; 19.1 Marketing as a Funnel; 19.2 Marketing as Understanding; 19.3 Marketing as a Cycle; Chapter 20: The Ultimate Guide to Startup Marketing; 20.1 Foundation; 20.2 Social Media; 20.3 Startup PR; 20.4 Content Creation; 20.5 Test and Iterate; 20.6 Best Practices; 20.7 Conclusion; Chapter 21: What the Highest-Converting Websites Do Differently; 21.1 1. They Make Their Unique Value Proposition(s) Clear; 21.2 2. They Test Their Calls to Action; 21.3 3. They Test Their Headlines; 21.4 4. They Tend To Have Short Forms; Chapter 22: Understanding the Customer Buying Cycle and Triggers; 22.1 The Customer Buying Cycle; 22.2 How the Buying Cycle Impacts the Sales Approach Needed; 22.3 Understanding Buying Triggers; 22.4 Encountering a Customer Too Late in the Buying Cycle; 22.5 Conclusions; Chapter 23: Building It Is Not Enough: Five Practical Tips on User Acquisition; 23.1 If You Build It, They May Not Come; Chapter 24: Introduction to A/B Testing for Landing Pages; 24.1 Improperly Segmenting Traffic; 24.2 Misunderstanding Randomness; 24.3 Mixing Experiment Factors; 24.4 Data Dredging; 24.5 Comparing the Results of Different and Unrelated Experiments; 24.6 Inconsistent or Unimportant Metrics; 24.7 Naïve Analysis of Results; 24.8 Substituting Testing for Creativity and Common Sense; 24.9 Make It Easy on Your Developers; Chapter 25: You Built It But They Didn’t Come: Eight Tricks for Marketing Your Mobile App; 25.1 Build a Great App; 25.2 Get Great Reviews; 25.3 Build in Social; 25.4 Pitch, Pitch, Pitch (and Then Pitch Some More); 25.5 SEO Your App Description; 25.6 Be Free, Freemium, Cheap...; 25.7 If All Else Fails, Advertise; 25.8 If All Else *Really* Fails, Buy Users to Get in the Top App Lists; Sales, Marketing, and PR Management; Chapter 26: At Times Not Losing Is as Important as Winning; 26.1 Customer Validation; 26.2 They Have a Problem and Know It; 26.3 A Match Made in Heaven; 26.4 The CIO; 26.5 The IT Revolt; 26.6 We’re Going to Lose; 26.7 The Third Way; 26.8 The “Take-Away” Gambit; 26.9 Lessons Learned; Chapter 27: Nine Ways to Make Your Startup Grow Virally; 27.1 ; 27.2 Conclusion; Chapter 28: Our PR Stinks: Here’s What Your Startup Can Learn from It; 28.1 The Familiar Doubt; 28.2 How Did We Solve the First Problem of Filling the Platform?; 28.3 Growth; 28.4 The Big Guys; 28.5 Our PR Still Stank; 28.6 How, Exactly, Did We Manage to Grow?; 28.7 What Were Our End Results with PR?; 28.8 What Were Our End Results with Content Marketing?; 28.9 At This Point in Time, Our PR Still Sucks; 28.10 The Fate of Your Brand; Chapter 29: Some Tips for Interacting with the Press; Chapter 30: Startup Branding: A Practical Guide for Entrepreneurs; 30.1 ; Product Management/Product Design; Chapter 31: Sometimes It’s Not the Change They Hate; 31.1 Did You Do Any Sort of User Testing Before Launch?; 31.2 Did You Test with Current Users or Just New Ones?; 31.3 Did You Add Something Useful to Users? Really?; 31.4 Do You Mind Losing a Portion of Your Users?; 31.5 Have You Honestly Listened to Your Users' Complaints?; 31.6 Have You "Fixed" the Problem by Letting Users Change Settings?; Chapter 32: What You Will/Won’t Learn from Usability Testing; Chapter 33: Product Marketing Contribution; 33.1 The Problem; 33.2 The Job; 33.3 Product Marketing Responsibilities; 33.4 What to Do?; Chapter 34: Time-Boxing Product Discovery; Chapter 35: Product Management Then and Now; 35.1 ; Chapter 36: Live-Data Prototypes Versus Production; Chapter 37: Continuous Discovery; Chapter 38: The Role of Product Managers; Chapter 39: Why Companies Should Have Product Editors, Not Product Managers; 39.1 Product Manager: One of the Toughest and Worst-Defined Jobs in Tech; 39.2 Bad Ideas Are Often Good Ideas That Don’t Fit; 39.3 Jack Dorsey in His Own Words; 39.4 Lead with Product; Chapter 40: Five Outsourcing Mistakes That Will Kill Your Startup; 40.1 Mistake #1: Outsourcing Something That Shouldn’t Be Outsourced; 40.2 Mistake #2: Not Sufficiently Vetting Your Staff; 40.3 Mistake #3: Hiring Based on Technical Skills Rather than English Proficiency; 40.4 Mistake #4: Insufficient Management; 40.5 Mistake #5: Failure to Award Responsibility and Reward Good Work; 40.6 Conclusion; Business Development and Scaling; Chapter 41: Who You Gonna Call? Partnering with Goliath: A Tale of Two Announcements; 41.1 Time to Find a Partner; 41.2 In Summary; Chapter 42: A Recipe for Growth: Adding Layers to the Cake; Funding Strategy; Chapter 43: Micro-VCs and Super Angels Two Years Later: Looking Back and Some Predictions for the Future; 43.1 The Dedicated Seed Strategy Continues to Have Strong Benefits; 43.2 Evolving and Converging Strategies; 43.3 A New Normal?; 43.4 A Few Predictions; Chapter 44: Why Do VCs Have Ownership Targets? And Why 20%?; Chapter 45: How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC Syndicate; Chapter 46: A Choir of Angel Investors Sing Different Parts; Chapter 47: Super Pro-Rata Rights Aren’t Super; Company Culture, Organizational Structure, Recruiting, and Other HR Issues; Chapter 48: Getting Promoted Too Quickly; Chapter 49: Recruiting Developers? Create an Awesome Candidate Experience; 49.1 Ideas for Creating an Awesome Candidate Experience (CX); Chapter 50: Startups: Stop Trying to Hire Ninja-Rockstar Engineers; Chapter 51: How to Hire Hackers: A Realistic Guide for Startups; 51.1 You’re a Startup—Have the Founders Make the First Contact; 51.2 Interviewing: It’s Not Just About the Role, It’s Also About Who They Will Have Lunch With; 51.3 Interviewing: Choose Carefully Which Opportunity to Pitch; 51.4 Signing: How to Make Candidates Sign an Employment Agreement More Quickly; Chapter 52: MBA Mondays: Best Hiring Practices; Chapter 53: How to Design a Successful Interview Process for Hiring Top Talent; 53.1 1. Reviewing Resumes; 53.2 2. Screening Candidates; 53.3 3. First In-Person Interview (with me); 53.4 4. Second In-Person Interview (with Fred); 53.5 5. Third In-Person Interview (with the team); 53.6 6. The Practical; 53.7 7. The Post-Practical; 53.8 Conclusions; Chapter 54: Snake-Oil Startup Recruiting; Chapter 55: Recruiting and Culture (MBA Mondays Guest Post); 55.1 Make Recruiting a Top Priority at the CEO Level; 55.2 Communicate the Company Vision Broadly and Directly; 55.3 Challenge Traditional Notions of Corporate Transparency; 55.4 Be Patient: "Slow Recruiting"; 55.5 Open-Source Your Culture: Generosity of Spirit; 55.6 Cultivate the Spirit of the Organization; Chapter 56: Firing; Chapter 57: MBA Mondays: Asking an Employee to Leave the Company; Chapter 58: The Board of Directors—Selecting, Electing, and Evolving; Startup Failure; Chapter 59: What Goes Wrong; 59.1 Determination; 59.2 Variety of Problems; 59.3 Cofounder Disputes; 59.4 Investors; 59.5 Distractions; 59.6 HR Acquisitions; 59.7 Making Something People Want Is Hard; 59.8 Roller Coaster; 59.9 Hard, But Not Impossible; Chapter 60: Why Startups Die; 60.1 Post Mortems; 60.2 How to Survive; Exiting by Selling Your Company; Chapter 61: The Economic Logic Behind Tech and Talent Acquisitions; Chapter 62: Knowing Where the Exits Are; 62.1 Taking the Exit; 62.2 “Your Best Exit May Be Behind You”; 62.3 Stepping Back from the Fray: November 2005; 62.4 Stepping Back from the Fray: February 2007; The Startup Mindset and Coping with Startup Pressures; Chapter 63: What It’s Like to Be the CEO: Revelations and Reflections; 63.1 What It Feels Like to Be the CEO of a Startup; 63.2 Epilogue; Chapter 64: How We Fight—Cofounders in Love and War; 64.1 Introduction; 64.2 How We Fight; Chapter 65: Vision Versus Hallucination—Founders and Pivots; 65.1 A Pivot a Week; 65.2 Pivot as an Excuse; 65.3 Sit on It for Awhile; 65.4 Change the Value Proposition Last; 65.5 Find a Brainstorm Buddy; 65.6 Lessons Learned; Chapter 66: 50 Startup Lessons Learned in 12 Months; Chapter 67: Advice I Wish I Could Have Given Myself Five Years Ago; Chapter 68: The Only Two Questions Founders Need to Answer; 68.1 Do You Need to Pass These Tests to Succeed?; 68.2 When I Passed These Tests and When I Failed; Chapter 69: Once You Take Money, the Clock Starts Ticking; Chapter 70: The Series A Crunch Survivor’s Guide; 70.1 1. Your Team Lacks a Track Record; 70.2 2. Your Product Execution Is Not Competitive with Other Products Investors Are Seeing; 70.3 3. You Lack Product Traction; 70.4 4. The Market You're Addressing Is Not Big or “Important” Enough; 70.5 5. You're Fishing in a Recently Poisoned Pond (e.g., the Deal Space Pioneered by Groupon); 70.6 6. Your Valuation Doesn't Match Reality; 70.7 7. Your Burn Is Unjustified, Scary, or Lacks Discipline; 70.8 8. You Lack Clients; Management and Career Advice; Chapter 71: Selling or Funding a Startup? Tips on Surviving Technical Due Diligence; 71.1 Be Better Prepared for Technical Due Diligence; 71.2 Vitality; 71.3 Scalability; 71.4 Maintainability; 71.5 Continuity; 71.6 In Conclusion; Chapter 72: Playbook for Incoming MBAs to Start a Company out of School; Chapter 73: Manage Your Tech Career; 73.1 How to Use the Tool; 73.2 Find the Right Company (or Pie); 73.3 Get What’s Fair, but Don’t Negotiate Too Much; 73.4 The Bottom Line; Chapter 74: Hey Entrepreneur—Please Get an MBA; 74.1 1. What You Actually Learn; 74.2 2. Tuition Costs; 74.3 3. Time Commitment; 74.4 4. The Wrong Network; 74.5 5. Many MBAs Choose Not to Start Businesses (and Who Gives a Shit?); 74.6 My Suggestion; Chapter 75: Why I Left Consulting and Joined a Startup; Colophon;