Venturehacks
Venturehack team is Nivi and Naval. They have founded companies like Epinions; helped start companies backed by Sequoia, Benchmark, Kleiner Perkins, and Atlas; worked at funds like Bessemer; invested $20M in companies like Twitter; and advised many others.
Recent Posts
Sell it before you build it
Fliggo does it right:
Fliggo Pro is a minimum viable product in action. MVPs reduce time to market. It’s a good sign when people sign up to be notified. And if nobody signs up, you build the next iteration and see if that’s the minimum viable product.
How would you modify this MVP to collect credit card numbers? Could you promise to not charge customers until Fliggo Pro is delivered? Could you give customers a … Continue Reading
It’s very easy to underprice your product
What’s the right price for your product? According to Steve Blank, it’s apparently $0. And it’s also $1 million. What?
Listen to this wonderful story to learn how Steve uses these two prices to create a bounding box around the highest price customers will pay for a product. And see why he thinks “It’s very easy to underprice your product… particularly if you’re an engineer.”
Audio: It’s very easy to underprice your product (mp3)
Steve’s … Continue Reading
We teach entrepreneurship like every vertical market has the same set of rules
Steve Blank: “What I began to realize is that we teach entrepreneurship like every vertical market and industry has the same set of rules. So the first heuristic I want to offer is that — even in this class — there really is no common ‘these rules work’ for all vertical markets and industries.”
Listen to this excerpt from the second class of Steve’s customer development course for the rest of this wonderful lesson.
Audio: … Continue Reading
How we encourage word of mouth for Pitching Hacks
We released Pitching Hacks about 30 days ago. Since then, we’ve sold 280 copies, brought in $4272 of revenue (including almost $1000 from beta testers), and received lots of positive reviews on Twitter. Thanks to everyone who bought the book and spread the word!
Encouraging word-of-mouth
We give everyone who buys the book a $5 discount code to encourage them to tell their friends about Pitching Hacks. It works: you can see people sharing the … Continue Reading
Opening board meetings to the entire company
In the second part of my interview with Eric Ries, we discuss (1) acquiring customers without launching and (2) opening up board meetings to the entire company.
At IMVU, Eric and the management opened up board meetings to the entire company. Why?
To give people the information they need to do their jobs.
To teach everyone in the company to think like the CEO.
To prevent employees from gossiping about board meetings.
And more!
I’ve … Continue Reading
What is the minimum viable product?
Eric Ries and I recently sat down to talk about minimum viable products: the product with just the necessary features to get money and feedback from early adopters.
The minimum viable product (MVP) is often an ad on Google. Or a PowerPoint slide. Or a dialog box. Or a landing page. You can often build it in a day or a week.
I recorded the interview and synchronized it with some simple slides below. That’s … Continue Reading
The king of customer development starts a blog (and tweets too)
Steve Blank, the king of customer development, has started a blog at steveblank.com. And he’s on Twitter too: @sgblank. Steve is one of the great startup mentors of all time and he is using his blog to share 30 years of Silicon Valley war stories. Start at the beginning, and read every word he writes.
According to his book, Four Steps to the Epiphany, Steve is a “retired entrepreneur who… has been in 8 startups … Continue Reading
