The challenge with the first prospect interactions is finding a problem or opportunity that will resonate on first contact. The wider your target customer profile is, the more problems you can come up with and the weaker your value proposition will be. However, problems are
Steve Jobs famously said that people don’t know what they want until you show it to them. But, if no one knew what they wanted until others started using it, how would new solutions get traction in the first place? In 1962, Everett Rogers, a
After the success of YouSendIt (now Hightail), Ranjith Kumaran and Mehdi Ait Oufkir co-founded PunchTab, a loyalty and engagement platform for brands, agencies, blogs and businesses. When it came time to validate PunchTab, Ranjith and Mehdi decided to focus on distribution before monetization. Although they
Contrary to many entrepreneur’s beliefs, businesses don’t have money sitting in a safe as they wait for visionary entrepreneurs to bring new B2B business opportunities to their doorstep. Business departments typically get sign-off on a certain budget to achieve their annual objectives at the beginning
In 2007, Jason Cohen sold SmartBear Software, a company he had founded to create peer code review tool Code Collaborator. When the entrepreneurial bug hit again, Jason had a few ideas he wanted to explore. One of these ideas was to create a spin-off of
Your entire success will be based on one or two features, no more. – Fred Lalonde, Hopper Co-Founder and CEO Product features don’t all hold the same value in the eyes of customers. Some features create higher levels of customer loyalty and have a greater
Phil Fernandez, Jon Miller and David Morandi started Marketo — now part of Adobe — in 2006. Before writing a single line of code, the partners spent the first year interviewing senior marketers about their needs and pain points. They started the company cold calling
