How do you know that you are on track for large aggressive goals? This article from Joy Fairbanks will help you measure traction on tough goals. Founders, if you are asked to set 2-3 milestones for your startup within a 6-12 month timeframe, what would they be?  Customer targets?  Revenue levels?  Geographic expansion?  Capital raise?  How would you know if you are on track on a monthly or weekly basis?  Would you use the same targets allocated in smaller achievable…

In this article, Joy Fairbanks shares a conversation with Michael Michael Margolis, UX Research Partner at GV (Google Ventures), on using UX research to mitigate risk on new ventures. How can you find your TAM and validate your product-market fit if you don’t know who your bulls eye customers are?  UX research is a way to accelerate the learning curve of startups and derisk the investment. This week my student founders and I had the pleasure of welcoming Michael Margolis,…

Joy Fairbanks shares an article based on a chat with Michael Margolis on user experience research to discover your product-market fit.  How can you find your TAM and validate your product-market fit if you don’t know who your bulls eye customers are?  UX research is a way to accelerate the learning curve of startups and derisk the investment. This week my student founders and I had the pleasure of welcoming Michael Margolis, UX Research Partner at GV (Google Ventures), to…

Joy Fairbanks shares an article that offers a few key tips for ventures to improve their pitch. 15 minutes are so over. Founders, you have thirty seconds to explain why the venture you work on day and night is worth someone’s attention.  You are innovative, your technology sizzles, and you have a talented team.  You even have traction.  You get so excited that you dive right into the technology.  Time’s up.  You didn’t clearly identify a problem, you didn’t mention…

Joy Fairbanks shares a post that reviews the Lean Launchpad framework for business development. A timeless framework for testing product/market fit is open to everyone.  The creators of the Lean LaunchPad movement have been doing this for a while.  Steve Blank is a successful serial founder who launched his academic career and Lean LaunchPad class at UC Berkeley at the request of Jerry Engel, the founding Executive Director of Cal’s Lester Center of Entrepreneurship.  A decade after its launch at…

  Joy Fairbanks provides an article that offers guidance for founders and investors evaluating market opportunities. There are three tiers of scale commonly used to calculate the market opportunity for a startup’s product or service offering:  TAM, SAM, and SOM.  These are acronyms for Total Addressable Market, Serviceable Available Market, and Serviceable Obtainable Market.  The purpose of these market assessments is to determine not what is, but what could be.  Founders, you may be struggling with calculating and interpreting these…

  Joy Fairbanks provides a reminder on the importance of understanding and applying SEO in today’s online, digital world where algorithms decide what gets seen by whom. And while keywords play an integral role, SEO doesn’t stop there.  Does SEO matter for an early stage company focusing on building social media connections first?  It does.  Founders, how do you think you get visibility in the sea of social media posts?  The strategy that goes into social media optimization is at…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Joy Fairbanks with Fairbanks Venture Advisors. Joy is an experienced founder, investment evaluator, and advisor to high growth, innovative companies across sectors. Prior to forming her own boutique advisory, she served clients at LEK Consulting and Mitchell Madison Group where she was an engagement manager. Joy has extensive experience advising companies across geographies from M&A and strategic planning to process improvement and supply chain management. She advises on business modeling, customer discovery, MVPs/prototyping, product/market fit,…