Both Sides of the Table 2x Entrepreneur turned VC. Ben's blog. PAWER. Tuneo - Organize social activities with your friends. About. 16 Ways Your Startup Needs To Be Getting Customers. Earlier this week there was a post about an entrepreneur losing 4 million dollars in sales due to his reliance upon Google as their primary sales+distribution channel.
The same problem faces Demand Media with their IPO, Zynga with diversifying beyond Facebook, and many other startups that are primarily platform plays dependent upon the mercy of the platform overlords. As an entrepreneur I find it very important to have a large diversified distribution channel for customer acquisition. The goal of this article is to outline the plethora of distribution channels that exist for startups. Public Relations Public Relations is a strong distribution channel due to its low cost and repeatable nature. Organic Search Traffic Organic search traffic is the gift that keeps on giving. Content Marketing I believe content marketing is the future of customer acquisition and a cost effective, scaleable, and brandable way to acquire customers.
Affiliate Programs Lead Gen Programs Events and Conferences APIs. If You Build It, They Won’t Come. You’ve probably heard the cliched phrase “If you build it, they will come.”
More importantly, I would like to counter that with an even more important cliched phrase “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” In the web and entrepreneurship community there’s this misconception that “launching” a product ensures long term success. It doesn’t. Launching is really just a small period of time where a lot of initial attention is drawn to the product. You should certainly be proud of getting yourself to the point of launching to the public, but the real battle is won before and most certainly continuing the marathon race for years after your initial launch.
Pre-Launch Customer development - From the very first day that you decide the idea will become a reality you should immediately start doing initial customer development. Build in viral loops from line 1 - Most startups don’t have a large custom acquisition budget, if any at all. Post Launch. Fred Wilson Dot VC. Startupper.fr. FrenchWeb.fr: Actualités internet, business, marketing, tech, design. Master of 500 Hats. Do Not Rub Me - web, web-mobile et gestion de projets. Venture Hacks - Good advice for startups. L’art de pitcher une startup – Cédric Giorgi. Startupers.fr, le réseau de convivialité entre startupers. Michel de Guilhermier's Blog. Matt Mazur » Startup Blogs To Make You a Better Entrepreneur.
As an aspiring startup founder, I’m always on the lookout for blogs that will help me become a more adept entrepreneur.
Fortunately for me and for the startup community there’s a lot of really talented entrepreneurs who write regularly about what they’ve learned so you can benefit from their experiences. The following is a list of the best startup blogs that I’ve run across, which I thought I’d share in the hope that you find something new for your collection. In no particular order… Derek Sivers – Founder of CD Baby and several other companies, the word “wise” comes to mind. His post Let pedestrians define the walkways is always in the back of my head while I’m working on my startup.Gabriel Weinberg – Ballsy Philadelphia-based founder of Duck Duck Go, an inspirational (and quite successful) one-man search engine startup.
And two non-startup blogs that you might also like: Less Wrong – Less Wrong is about how to think better–a lot of it will make you go whoa. Cheers! Like this: