Beta testers for your product are key. You’ve spent weeks, months, perhaps even years slogging behind your keyboard writing the lines of code that are bringing your techno-baby into the world. You may have raised money based on the idea or an MVP alone, you may have a...
customer discovery
How to Find Your Real Competitors: Competitive Whitespace Exercise
Whether you are the competitive type or not, if you’ve staked out your place in the world as an entrepreneur, you must become a competitive person. The core function of business is in fact competition: competition for customers, price competition, resource...
Start a Tech Company: A How-to Manual
If a great idea was all that was needed to start a successful tech company, everyone would be a millionaire. Most people have had one or many novel ideas in their lifetime for how to make something better, work faster, fix common pain points caused by the current...
The Mindset of an Entrepreneur
What is an entrepreneur, and what mindset is required for a successful one to accomplish what they set out to do amidst a sea of competition, troubles, and turbulent business environments? The initial question seems simple enough, given the definition of an...
Growth Loops: Rethinking Funnels to Drive Growth
Most folks in business are familiar with the concept of a funnel. You put something in the top and, through a progressive series of steps that all include some amount of churning out of the funnel, you (hopefully) end up with something useful that falls out of the...
What is a freemium revenue model?
Before committing to a new product or service, consumers want to know the value they'd get from it. Businesses spend time, effort, and money on marketing campaigns. If those efforts don't make consumers feel confident buying a product or service, what is the best...
What Is A Two-Sided Marketplace Model And Why Does It Work
Two-Sided Market Place Technological advancement is rapidly changing how the global economy functions. The credit for this goes to the widespread use of the two-sided marketplace. Companies like Amazon and Uber are just a few examples. What is a two-sided marketplace?...
Model Behavior: What is a SaaS Business Model?
Turning your idea into a business means selecting a service model. The cloud-based choices are IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. An important thing to know is that the level of control for each of the three services is different. One of the most significant decisions that you...
Model Behavior: What is a Business Model and How to Create One
You have an idea for your start-up and now you are ready to move forward. One of the first tasks will be to determine your business model. What is a Business Model? Remember when you were in chemistry and your teacher asked you to create a hypothesis for your...
How to Grow an Idea with Conversations
Founders frequently come to AppThink with an idea that's been percolating in their heads for a while. Our Foundations course is designed to help first-time founders grow an idea and move it into the real world, test it, iterate on it, and refine it into something that...