Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 26, 2013

Traction is evidence that your product or service has started that “hockey- stick” adoption rate which implies a large market, a valid business model, and sustainable growth. A graph that shows a hockey-stick “up and to the right” curve with at least three data points per key indicator is a great visual assist.

Hockey Stick 266

Hockey Stick Early Stage Metrics Acquisition 266

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 26, 2014

Every entrepreneur thinks he can relax a bit after his business model is proven, funding is in place, and revenues are scaling as projected up that hockey-stick curve. Marketing costs and time go up, and the growth curve flattens. Customer acquisition gets harder and more expensive. Competitors see the same opportunity.

Hockey Stick 263

Hockey Stick Guerilla Acquisition Revenue 263

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 26, 2010

The only concern was that they didn’t know what their cost of customer acquisition was, nor did they which channels would be most effective, or how much they could acquire out of each channel. The good thing is that customer acquisition is a pretty easily testable thing. How important is it to an investor? It should be critical.

Acquisition 128

Acquisition Hockey Stick Customer SEM 128

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 3, 2018

Every entrepreneur thinks he can relax a bit after his business model is proven, funding is in place, and revenues are scaling as projected up that hockey-stick curve. Marketing costs and time go up, and the growth curve flattens. Customer acquisition gets harder and more expensive. Competitors see the same opportunity.

Hockey Stick 130

Hockey Stick Guerilla Acquisition Revenue 130

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 1, 2015

Every entrepreneur thinks he can relax a bit after his business model is proven, funding is in place, and revenues are scaling as projected up that hockey-stick curve. Marketing costs and time go up, and the growth curve flattens. Customer acquisition gets harder and more expensive. Competitors see the same opportunity.

Hockey Stick 120

Hockey Stick Guerilla Startup Acquisition 120

Up and Running

AUGUST 21, 2014

It’s hard to understand how many people will you actually attract, what is it going to cost, what’s your conversion rate, how long will people stay. You’re going to want to really think about how you’re going to drive traffic and what’s most cost effective. Those things are all really hard to just get.

Metrics 84

Metrics Startup Churn Rate Forecast 84

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 19, 2016

You get more traffic, more conversions, more money – in an endless hockey stick shaped cycle. How do you balance traffic acquisition with conversion optimization? You can usually tell this is the case when your SEO traffic converts well below other acquisition channels. Of course, it’s not so simple.

SEO 48

SEO Technical Review Algorithm Jacksonville 48

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 31, 2010

For startups targeting consumers, "investors want to see 'hockey stick' adoption rates which imply consistent or increasing growth rates on a percentage basis," says Davis. The marketing equation is defined as the relationship between the customer lifetime value and the cost of acquisition," says Davis.

Hockey Stick 130

Hockey Stick Startup Curation Vertical 130

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

They know how much it costs to bring in a customer and they know how much money they can expect to make on each one. This wasn’t very impressive, but we had two things going for us: A hockey stick shaped growth curve. People often forget the most important part of the hockey stick: the long flat part.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Forget about traction and hockey stick growth. Very simply, your cost to acquire a customer needs to be lower than the value of that customer (lifetime value).

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Forget about traction and hockey stick growth. Very simply, your cost to acquire a customer needs to be lower than the value of that customer (lifetime value).

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Up and Running

MARCH 11, 2015

That moves into the customer acquisition strategy. This includes again another acronym I’m going to share, CAC, the cost to acquire a customer, the customer acquisition cost. You want to make sure that you understand, does it cost $10 to get a customer? I don’t know what it’s going to cost.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Software Review Due Diligence Exit Strategy 60

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2019

Invites went up 50%; 35% lift in referral acquisition. Always consider the impact of your winning tests on your growth and cost. The cost of experimentation—you hope the upside outweighs the cost. Learn to reframe loss: “ A/B tests are our cost of tuition. It costs money to learn. Why does it hurt to lose?

Artificial Inteligence 114

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Metrics SEO 114