Browsing Tag
product market fit
15 posts
What is Product-Market Fit? How to Leverage Customer Development to Move Your Business Forward
So, you've got a startup idea. The first major challenge you'll need to overcome is achieving product-market fit. So why do so many entrepreneurs leave this up to chance? Creating a product that solves a real problem starts even before you launch your business. This is the process of customer development; and too few entrepreneurs...
Here’s Why Market Timing is Everything When it Comes to Startup Success
The following is excerpted from “SUPER FOUNDERS: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups” by Ali Tamaseb. Copyright © 2021. Available from PublicAffairs, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. In 1995, General Magic, the startup company where Tony Fadell worked, built an early version of a smartphone. The hybrid telephone-computer was unlike anything the industry had seen before....
What Many SaaS Startups Get Wrong About Freemium
Freemium is an extremely popular pricing model for software products, and on paper it looks ideal. The theory is that you’ll entice new customers with a free subscription and withhold certain features for the paid version. Ideally, your free users will love your product so much that they’ll sign up for the paid version. What...
3 Types of Design Your Early-Stage Company Should Focus on
We’ve learned a lot at Aesthetic about how early stage companies can best leverage design to become more valuable, and we’re excited to share our learnings from working with more than 100 companies over the last 18 months. We hope this will be helpful to the entire startup community, especially founders that are just getting...
How to Choose the Ideal Side Hustle to Start at Home During Quarantine
There’s no time like the present to start a side hustle, especially since many of us have extra time on our hands while being stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. A side hustle can expand your skill set, give you room to explore business ideas, and help supplement precarious incomes. Don’t know where to...
9 Business Moguls on How to Break Into a New Industry and Make it to the Top
Looking to blaze into a new industry? We asked some of the world's smartest business people and Advisors in The Oracles for their best tips for breaking into a new field, from tech to real estate to day trading. StartupNation exclusive savings on the Dell products that power your business: Save Now Get in the game Jump...
4 Steps to Scale Your Business by Fine-Tuning Your Product-Market Fit
In the exciting rush of developing a product and creating a company, founders don’t always remember a critical ingredient for starting a business: your audience. Unfortunately, not every business finds the right audience to fit their offering. They get so excited to build a solution that they don’t consider the problems they should solve for...
6 Performance Metrics Your Startup Should Track for Success
Revenue is an exciting and vital performance metric to track when starting a new business, but it’s not the only one an entrepreneur should be concerned with. While there are myriad metrics that experts across the board will argue will justify your fantastic idea to potential investors, here are six time-tested metrics you should pay...
4 Simple Ways to Implement Customer Research on a Budget
As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to get swept up in the allure of branding. If something is cool and pretty and makes us swoon, won't that same logo and color scheme draw in customers like flies to honey? The answer is… maybe, maybe not. And you'd be wise to find out before fully investing in...
How to Scale Your Digital Marketing Efforts While You’re in the First Year of Business
You’ve got a great idea, enough funding to hire an expert team and a developed product ready for customers. You also have some marketing strategies in mind, and now it’s time to validate them, grow your business and scale up to the next phase. But, before all of that… there’s a lot of work to...
Lessons Learned From Scaling an Early Stage Startup Internationally
Many companies that have their eyes on unicorn status first have humble beginnings. When launching your product or scaling your business, building the team is just as important as bringing your service or brand to market. I’ve seen firsthand what it’s like to grow a team from a handful of passionate visionaries to over 30...
3 Things Entrepreneurs Must Do to Increase Their Startup’s Chance of Survival
Entrepreneurship is often idealized — you can “be your own boss,” attain “financial freedom” and work a “four hour workweek” — right? Well, yes, those things are possible, especially in the long run. At least in the beginning, startup founders often enjoy an incredible amount of control over their day-to-day. And yes, entrepreneurship can lead...
Entrepreneurs, is Your Product Fit For the Market?
As an entrepreneur, you may think that some of your ideas are pure gold. In these scenarios, it's easy to jump the gun and start planning your product's name, marketing campaigns, various features, etc. But before putting in any of this work, there's a crucial step that needs to be taken: determining whether there's a...
5 User Testing Mistakes That Even Experienced Startups Make
"We had a big idea and we freaking went for it," Kash Shaikh, Besomebody CEO, wistfully told the company's community earlier this year. The Boston-based business, Shaikh continued, would then shut its doors the very next day. It's a story that no startup wants to hear. After appearing last November on ABC's "Shark Tank," Besomebody briefly gained fame...
Growth Hacker Raymond Fong on Taking Your Startup From Zero to 60
Raymond Fong is co-author of “Growth Hacking: Silicon Valley's Best Kept Secret” and co-founder of Deviate Labs, a marketing agency that has consulted for companies including Dollar Shave Club, HelloGiggles, Shoedazzle and several businesses that have appeared on “Shark Tank.” We recently caught up with Fong to find out how startup founders can maximize their...