How to Find Early Advocates for Your B2B Startup

Early adopters are great for opinions, but they’re lousy for growth. The best early adopters are early advocates or champions for your startup (“earlyvangelists” in the words of Steve Blank). Advocates want to be first using a product and they like to brag about their

How to Appear Like an Industry Expert by Conducting Secondary Research

Total immersion in the market is extremely important. Read everything you can to understand what you can do better than the competition. – Martin Huard, Ex-Admetric Co-Founder and CEO With so many magazines, reports, surveys, whitepapers and blogs available online, it’s very hard to justify

How Strong Are Your Startup’s Competitive Advantages?

The only real competitive advantage is that which cannot be copied and cannot be bought. – Jason Cohen, WP Engine Founder and CTO Since the market is global, competitors are quick to copy features, ideas and products. Nowadays, the only competitive advantages that still stand

How Taleo Landed a Fortune 20 Company as an Early Adopter

The story of how talent management startup Taleo landed Hewlett-Packard as an early client is inspiring. It’s a modern David and Goliath story. The CEO of a small Canadian startup goes to Silicon Valley armed only with a vision and wins over an enterprise giant.

The 18 Best Quotes from Lean B2B: Build Products Businesses Want

One of the best things about writing a book like Lean B2B: Build Products Businesses Want is getting to speak with dozens of entrepreneurs trying to understand what challenges they had to overcome, and what made them successful. Writing Lean B2B was life-changing. The research

How to Target Early Adopters for Your B2B Startup

Startups are often selling too low… they get to people who live the pain they solve, get lots of feedback, but the people they try to sell to don’t understand the needs of the whole department and don’t end up buying. Try to target top