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Inside the Marketing Playbooks of Unicorn Entrepreneurs: Lessons for Your Startup

In today’s competitive business landscape, startups must prioritise their marketing strategies to create a lasting impact and establish a strong foothold in their respective industries. And one way to learn about creating a lasting impact is to look at how successful entrepreneurs have achieved that goal already. That’s why, in this article, I will explore five key factors that have driven the marketing success of renowned entrepreneurs, such as Alexis Ohanian, Steve Huffman, Garrett Gafke, Joe Procopio, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman and Brian Chesky. Many of whom sat down with our CMO & Partner, Rui, to share their advice. By delving into their experiences and insights, I’ll share their marketing lessons on building authentic customer relationships, focusing on product benefits, crafting captivating brand stories, leveraging networking and collaboration, and mastering distribution strategies. Starting with taking the time to build real relationships with your customers. Contents 1. Take the Time Build a Real Relationship with Your Potential Customers Fostering authentic relationships with potential customers is a critical aspect of marketing success. If you want to build a successful startup, it’s vital that you delve deeper than superficial interactions and genuinely connect with your target audience. This approach has the […]

Jamie Russell-Curtis

Launching a Tech Startup in a Market Downturn: 6 Key Elements to Consider

The tech industry is known for its fast-paced and constantly evolving landscape. In this environment, startups are often in a race against time to gain traction, secure funding and establish themselves in the market. However, when a market downturn hits, these challenges become even more daunting. The funding dries up, customers become more hesitant to adopt new products, and competition intensifies. Startups that don’t address these challenges can quickly find themselves in trouble. A report by CB Insights found that 66% of startups that raised seed or Series A funding during the last major global financial crisis, between 2008 and 2010, failed within four years. Similarly, data from the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s and early 2000s showed that startup failure rates increased after the bubble burst. According to a study by the University of Maryland, during this time, the failure rate of dot-com startups was already quite high at around 50% to 60% between 1996 and 2001. However, during the peak of the bubble between 2000 and 2001, the failure rate skyrocketed to around 90%. Kozmo.com was one of that 90%. Kozmo.com promised to deliver a wide range of products, including movies, snacks, and other items, to customers’ doors within an hour of […]

The Ultimate Guide to Hiring a Product Manager for Your Startup

Since me and my co-founders launched Altar in 2015, we’ve helped over 80 entrepreneurs bring their startup visions to life by helping them with both their software development and product rationale. Many of them have gone on to hire a Product Manager of their own once they’ve worked with us to validate their product in the market with an MVP. A task which is no small feat. The role of the Startup Product Manager is still relatively new in Europe – at least when compared with other markets like the US. Firstly, this makes the pool of talent available smaller right out of the gate – especially those relevant to your specific industry. More than that, a good product manager requires a number of qualities that are hard to find in one person. They need to be able to communicate and understand the technical aspects of a product, while at the same time thinking about the user experience implications of those tech decisions, all while weighing up both of these aspects from a business perspective. They also need to be creative, analytical and great communicators to succeed in their role. Not only is this role not easy to fill, the person you put in […]

What Founders Must Know Before Spending Time Creating a Business Plan

Since I started my career in Marketing over a decade ago, I’ve seen my fair share of go-to-market strategies, marketing and business plans. First, having started in a marketing agency, I got very well acquainted with business plans from companies ranging from some of the biggest public companies in Portugal all the way down to entrepreneurs who were selling vineyard tours in the Douro Valley. Then, since I joined Altar over three years ago, I had the chance to analyse, discuss and often help dozens of founders and business leaders build their products with us, with their go-to-market plans. From all of this experience, I’ve noticed one common theme – too many of them spend way too much time on their business plans, thinking that it’s a crucial part of their journey. It’s not. It can actually be detrimental. Quick story moment: a while back, I was working with an entrepreneur that was perfectly positioned to transform his industry. Super smart, had experience in his vertical, was dedicated, and found a gap where a traditional industry could greatly improve its efficiency by leveraging technology. More than that, he went about building his product the right way. He created a blueprint for […]

Our 10 Best Entrepreneurship Articles of 2022 [Rated by Over 150k Entrepreneurs]

With another year over, we wanted to do a quick roundup of the best articles we published in 2022. As you may know, if you’re a regular visitor of this blog, I’m part of Altar.io, a product and software company that helps entrepreneurs bring their startup visions to life. Because we work with Founders, our entire marketing strategy revolves around helping entrepreneurs with valuable resources on everything to do with their startup journey. From technical content leveraging our expertise on building an MVP and finding technical stakeholders (like a CTO or tech co-founder) to interviews with successful entrepreneurs that are at the top of their industry. Like serial entrepreneur Garret Gafke, a Silicon Valley veteran with over 25 years of experience. Nelly Yusupova, a CTO and startup tech advisor with over 20 years of experience in the industry. Or Wade Eyerly, a unicorn founder who pioneered subscription-based flying and is now tackling the student loan crisis in the US. Out of all of the articles we created, there were 10 that our 150k+ strong community of entrepreneurs thought were the cream of the crop. So we dug into the data to find out which they were. I’ve listed them below and I can […]

The List of Most Active 150 Fintech Investors

Looking for investors in Fintech? Pick up our list of 150 Fintech investors we've met, with all the meaningful information you need to go to battle.