A technical CEO learning marketing is the equivalent of a sales/marketing CEO learning development engineering.
Not.
I am not a developer. If push comes to shove, I can code in PHP, or develop shell scripts, and truth be told, I did take a couple of ECE courses in college; courses which inexorably told me I was not going to be a developer.
My path to becoming a marketer was unusual, I think, which has had both its advantages and disadvantages. I like to think I’m a “technical marketer,” rather than what I call a “Madison Ave” marketer; not to dis the later, since they have their role to play in the grand scheme of marketing. By technical marketer, I don’t mean one who only markets technical products, or who does only “product marketing” in the industry vernacular, but rather a marketer who uses processes and actionable metrics to achieve near term business objectives that lead to realizing company vision.
IMO, development is harder than marketing. Continue reading 'The Truth About Evil Marketers'»
Unlike my classmates who headed to Silicon Valley from UC Davis upon graduation, I moved to Washington DC to work for a defense consulting firm. After a couple of years, “I dropped out” to write a novel, which I subsequently finished, explored the country for 3 months, finally landing in San Francisco and beginning my career in technology.
My book was (is) trite and sophomoric. After all, what insights do most 20-somethings have worth sharing? A lack of experience — a lack of failure — makes pontification shallow. One of my younger brothers, who was trying to make a living as a painter at the time, had a great comment. He said that he felt my book, like his art, was merely trying to say too much. That it wasn’t that we didn’t have good things to say, but that there was lack of discipline in focusing and examining in greater depth a few ideas, rather than “letting it all hang out.”
I think young entrepreneurs suffer from a similar malady. Continue reading 'Customer Development Presentation'»
The toughest part about practicing customer development is getting started. You already know that customers are not going to magically find you because you have a great product, work hard and are good looking. Now that you’ve realized how big the world is and that using a megaphone from your roof top is a poor method of user acquisition, what’s next?
Presumably if you are committed to the principles of customer development, you are already committed to “getting out of the building.” Before you can interview potential customers, however, you have to find potential customers to interview. Unfortunately, there are no magic bullets. This is painstaking work. Just as with other portions of the customer development model, to find early adopters you make assumptions, test, and iterate. If you are having trouble getting started, try these steps: Continue reading 'How to find early adopters'»
I am sensing marked uptake on the concept of conducting serious customer research in order to jump start high tech start-ups. It’s about time. There’s definitely buzz building around Steve Blank’s customer development methodology. Ego dictates that whatever you’re thinking about must be what the world is thinking about and to that, I plead guilty.
But I wrote a post about an iterative, process-oriented approach to high-tech sales and marketing on 2.9.9. Shortly thereafter, Andrew Beinbrink, CEO of the interesting San Diego start-up SportsTV, introduced me to Seal Ellis who introduced me to Steven Blank’s book The Four Steps to the Epiphany, which sounded an awful lot like what I had blogged about. Whew. Oh, and Steve’s even got a new blog.
Continue reading 'Customer Development and Start-up Models'»
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