Understanding The Technology Behind Your Product
Building a business is a serious feat. You may frequently feel like you are being pulled in 12 different directions, and this can be especially true when your business is built around a software product. Custom SaaS products, mobile apps and enterprise solutions all come with serious technical pieces. And, most of the time, your
Before Building A Product, Build Your Product Roadmap
A few years ago, an image began making the rounds of the internet—a piece of notebook paper in landscape orientation, marked up heavily in blue ballpoint ink. The thirteen rows and ten columns laid out critical plot points and interconnections for a portion of one of the highest-selling books of all time—Harry Potter and the
5 Personality Traits Of Successful Startup Employees
On the Entrepreneurial Talent Team at JumpStart, we pride ourselves on being able to identify those unique individuals who will thrive in the startup environment. Early-stage companies aren’t the right fit for everyone, and it’s important to know what you’re looking for when you’re thinking about adding new team members. Below, you’ll find the five
How to Refine Your Pitch Deck for the Next Fund Raise
You’ve managed to come this far. You have a compelling product in the market, a good sense of who wants to buy it and how to reach them. You’ve hit some impressive milestones and decided it’s time to press hard on the accelerator and raise the next round of capital. Time to refine your pitch
4 Steps To Developing Your Financial Model
Once you have validated and sized the market for your idea, your next step will be to determine whether this will be a venture or lifestyle business. Financial models can quickly become very complicated, but all models rest on these four main pieces: Customer Acquisition Sales Mix Revenue Expenses The following steps will show you
The Nuts and Bolts of Building a Customer Success Team
As you launch your product, you’ll need to think long and hard about the role of Customer Success in your business. A general rule of thumb; your business model should determine your Customer Success demands. In turn, these demands will determine the staffing model while being governed by your pricing structure. In this blog, we will outline the broad-brush strokes of setting up a Customer
Work Smarter, Not Harder: Implementing & Enhancing Your Internal Tools
No one is born with the innate knowledge of what it takes to start and run a company. It is a learned experience that cannot be taught in a book. In that vein, there is no magical list of internal tools, processes and software that you would know of or have used that let you
Growth, Retention & Relationships Make the Dollars Flow
If you are following the Entrepreneur Roadmap as laid out, you’ve developed a launched a product, and are reaping the fruits of your hard work. New customers are rolling in, and you are getting great feedback on your product. You are keeping a close eye on all your KPIs, and you’ve had some great conversations
5 Things To Think About When Expanding Your MVP’s Features
You’ve launched your MVP and its working like you expected. You’re satisfying a need for your users, collecting tons of data and analytics and likely generating some revenue. How do you capitalize to get the most of this data and your early-stage traction? If you have dedicated users for your product, they are likely willing
Securing Your First Pilot: Where The Rubber Meets The Road
You have arrived at that fateful moment when you need customers (prospects actually) to try your product. You have been developing, started marketing and selling, and now you need to get someone to commit to putting your product into active use in a real-world setting. The question is: How do you get someone to do
Engagement Is A Trip, Plan Wisely
As you move from the Development stage of product build into the Launch stage of the Entrepreneur Roadmap, you are going to find yourself making the sharp turn from inwardly-focused activities to rapid dives into marketing and demand generation. You’ll know you’re making this turn on your path when you find yourself caught up in
Wireframes or Prototypes… Worth the Investment?
Imagine explaining all of Facebook’s features to someone who has never used it. How would they remember how it all worked? Even if they could remember, what if their interpretation was different than what you said? The functionality of web and mobile applications, much simpler than Facebook, gets lost in translation often. There are plenty