Étienne Garbugli's Blog, page 25

Why Marketo Spent a Year Looking for the Biggest Pain of Marketers

Phil Fernandez, Jon Miller and David Morandi started Marketo — now the world’s leading independent supplier of marketing software — 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 CMOs asking them which problems […]

The 7 Endorsements Business Buyers Will Give You

The only credibility that is needed is knowing that other customers are satisfied. – Michael Wolfe, Startup Advisor and Investor In larger companies, often the people you deal with are constrained in what they can do publicly. Even the best-intentioned customers might have their hands tied by legal or marketing constraints. There are many kinds […]

How to Deal with your First Customer Purchase in B2B

If prospects bought too fast, it means it wasn’t expensive enough. If prospects didn’t want to buy, it might mean it was too expensive. – Andre Gilbert, B2B Sales Veteran Great — you were able to convince the stakeholders to sign on. Now, you need to agree on the terms and write the agreement. How […]

The Importance of Focus in B2B Startups

You can’t be everything for everyone. – Gary Swart, oDesk CEO It’s a common problem. Because entrepreneurs collect data on ten or fifteen problems during the problem interviews, and because a lot of these problems seem solvable, they try to fix two, three or more problems at a time. B2B startups need to focus on […]

Is “Bottom-Up” the New Standard for Getting Products in the Enterprise?

This bottom-up purchasing model makes it difficult for legacy systems to embrace and protect their “own turf ” when businesses are generating value from these smaller SaaS companies — all it needs is a credit card. – Peter Levine, Andreessen Horowitz Venture Partner In the last few years, products like Dropbox, Yammer or Apple’s iPhones […]

How Outsiders Can Innovate and Disrupt Stagnant Industries

Earlier this week, we talked about how starting with domain or industry expertise can help reduce the risk of starting up. However, as Martin Ouellet, co-founder of Taleo demonstrated, sometimes not being an industry expert can help bring new innovation to a market. Taleo → Disruption through not being an expert As director of engineering […]

Introducing The B2B Startup Risk Scale

Startups are risky. As a founder, you decide the level of risk you’re willing to take. Startup founders with domain expertise (functional or industry expertise) and the skills to create quality solutions (solution expertise) can capitalize on business opportunities much faster than entrepreneurs with only the ability to execute on a solution. They’re also much […]

How Optimizely Stayed Lean by Selling Vaporware

Pete Koomen joined Google as an Associate Product Manager in 2006. At Google, he had the chance to work on many large projects and meet Dan Siroker who, at the time, also served as the Director of Analytics for the Barack Obama presidential campaign. Together, they would found B2C education startup CarrotSticks in 2009 to […]

How to Find your Prospects’ Most Painful Problems

If the problem is real, people are dealing with it somehow. Maybe they’re doing something manually, because they don’t have a better way. The current solution, whatever it is, will be your biggest competitor at first, because it’s the path of least resistance for people. – Ben Yoskovitz and Alistair Croll, Lean Analytics Authors People […]

How a Failed ERP Implementation Took Down a $5 Billion Pharma Company

FoxMeyer Drugs was a $5 billion company and the United States’ fourth largest distributor of pharmaceuticals. In 1993, with the support of the company’s CIO and CEO, the large company began a $100M project to implement SAP’s R/3 ERP software. To implement the software, FoxMeyer chose Andersen Consulting, a proven SAP integrator. When the ERP […]