by Brant | Dec 23, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Economy, Startups
The Innovator’s Dilemma not only forms the foundation of Lean Startups and Customer Development, but has brilliant analysis on the role of disruptive vs sustaining innovation in large successful businesses. In a nutshell, big successful companies successfully adopt sustaining technologies that maintain a steady trajectory of performance/cost improvements. These same companies, however, fail to adopt disruptive technologies that radically change performance/cost trajectories. The success of the former dictates the level of success of that business as long as the adopted trajectory is dominant in the marketplace. These businesses tend naturally to move “up market” to maintain or increase margins as the (IMO) traverse into late majority adoption in the technology adoption curve. If and when, however, the disruptive trajectories become dominant (for whatever reason) these same businesses fail, because they are unable to respond to the startups eating up their core business.
by Brant | Nov 11, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Economy, Lean Startup
If you follow high tech startups at all, it was virtually impossible to have missed all the discussions this summer regarding disruptions occurring in the startup environment, including the role of investors, the wisdom of “Lean startups,” and bemoaning...
by Brant | Oct 19, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Metrics-Driven Marketing, Startup Marketing, Startups
Here’s an example of a market segmentation exercise in “opportunity matrix” form. Even if you do this on the “back of a napkin,” using educated guesses and no weighting it will help you think through your priorities. (Hopefully, I have...
by Brant | Sep 13, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Process-Oriented Marketing, Sales and Marketing Roadmap, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development
Welcome to the maze of complex B2B sales. Did you think B2B sales was going to be straightforward; based solely on rational, business-savvy calculations? Based on the bottom-line? Most everyone recognizes that the B2C sales process requires appealing to consumer’s emotions. But believe it or not, business buyers, influencers and users are human, too, and thus are not-exempt from emotional decision making. Ego, hierarchy, competitiveness, fear, grandstanding, sycophantry join budget, market share, revenue, profits, risk, time, resources in the sale.
The “Status Quo Coefficient” represents that which you must overcome above and beyond the pain your product solves, in order to make a sale.
by Brant | Sep 2, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Marketing Help, Sales and Marketing Roadmap
Generally speaking:
Pre-Problem-Solution Fit, you concentrate on learning as much as you can about the problem, who are the real customers (user? buyer? boss?), and possible solutions.
Pre-Minimum Viable Product, you concentrate of learning, developing and testing the minimum features and functionality required o solve the problem to a degree the customer will buy.
Pre-Product-Market Fit, you concentrate on learning about funnels, testing messaging and positioning, and likely iterating on product and market segment in search of P-M fit.
by Brant | Jul 28, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup
Now a couple of days away from the Lean Startup Machine startup weekend, I wanted to get down some initial thoughts on the event. When approached about participating in the event, I was immediately intrigued by the idea, as long as it took the lean startup principles...
by Brant | Jul 19, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Marketing Help
I’ve written about market segmentation before both on this blog and as an important concept to understand in The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development. I think it is vital to grasp because it’s fundamental to achieving Product-Market fit and building a scalable business. I’m writing about it again because it has come to my attention that I have perhaps not explained one of its primary precepts well enough.
As I wrote before, Geoffrey Moore in Crossing the Chasm defined a market segment as:
* a set of actual or potential customers
* for a given set of products or services
* who have a common set of needs or wants, and
* who reference each other when making a buying decision.
Most of this is pretty intuitive. In a nutshell, a market segment is comprised of like buyers who share the same pain. But there’s more to it. The reference part trips some people up. The key point to understand is that the customers and potential buyers must be willing AND able to reference each other.
by Brant | Jun 14, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Startups, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development
Last December, I created the first version of this image, depicting how you might think through your customer acquisition and conversion funnel. In January, I modified the image and added tooltips. In April, a newer, tighter version was released in The...
by Brant | May 26, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Sales and Marketing Roadmap, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development
The consultants came out in droves to weigh in on Steve Blank’s recent post, “Consultants Don’t Pivot, Founders Do.” (Myself included.) Generally, all were in agreement with Blank’s primary point: Founders get out of the building (physically...
by CustDevGuy | May 17, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Pricing, Uncategorized
Diaspora is now a certifiable Black Swan. As of this post, they have raised $176,165 from 4,860 backers and still have 15 days to go. I maintain that aside from tapping into the current anti-Facebook zeitgeist among the tech elite, their success is partially fueled...
