Étienne Garbugli's Blog, page 24

How iBwave Tackled Risk Head-On to Land its First Customers

When entrepreneur and angel investor Mike Cegelski became CEO of iBwave Solutions in 2003, the company had already started working on its core product iBwave Design. At the time, there were no clients. Cegelski knew that the company had to build a history of trust and client relationships to sign key customers. The need had […]

The Lean B2B Canvas – A Free Tool to Iterate Value Propositions

The Lean B2B Canvas is a lightweight tool to iterate value proposition assumptions and assess the likelihood that your B2B product gets purchased and implemented by businesses. The canvas was designed to be a lightweight complement to the Lean Canvas. It’s a tool I worked on, as I was putting together Lean B2B: Build Products […]

What a Market Is and Isn’t

A market or market segment is, by definition, a group of customers who share the same pain and will refer to one another for buying decisions. If we break that down, a market is made up of: A number of potential customers; People who share a pain, problem or opportunity; Channels for these people to […]

Creating a Compelling Value Proposition Using Early Hypotheses

The challenge with our first prospect interactions is finding problems and opportunities that will resonate on first contact. The wider your target customer profile is, the more problems you can come up it. However, problems are never equal in the eyes of businesses. In B2B, there are three types of solutions that matter: 1. Solutions […]

The Right and Wrong Ways to Spot Early Adopters

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 1991, Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm introduced marketers to the five customer groups that […]

Start with a Free Product to Validate a B2B Business? It’s Possible

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 could have easily launched with a paid model, the co-founders […]

Finding B2B Business Opportunities using the Money Map

Contrary to many entrepreneur’s beliefs, businesses don’t have money sitting in a safe as they wait for visionary entrepreneurs to bring new opportunities to their doorstep. Business departments typically get sign-off on a certain budget to achieve their annual objectives at the beginning of the year and they’re accountable for maximizing their investment. Budgets are […]

How B2B Startups Deal with Committed Budgets

Your pitch went well, the stakeholders were convinced and the company would love to buy, but unfortunately, the budgets are all committed for the year. Maybe the economic buyer (the person making the final buy decision) rejected the transaction or maybe there’s a freeze on expenditures. Does that mean game over? The solution Do your […]

Why SmartBear Founder Jason Cohen Decided to Focus on WP Engine

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 a marketing analytics tool he had developed at SmartBear. In […]

How to Find the Core Features of Your Product Using Kano Surveys

Your entire success will be based on one or two features, no more. – Fred Lalonde, Hopper Co-Founder and CEO Not all product features hold the same value in the eyes of customers. Some features create higher levels of customer loyalty and have a greater potential for impacting customer satisfaction than others; these are the […]