Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 10, 2014

Some analysts argue that revenue drives growth, while others say user growth drives revenue. Both have worked.Google reached $1 billion in revenue within five years of incorporation, and now has a market capitalization of over $400 billion. Long-term stability requires revenue growth and profit.

Revenue 246

Revenue Entrepreneur Valuation Viral 246

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

Between January 2015 and January 2016, we grew our platform Slidebean from $1K to $20K in monthly recurring revenue. Getting the first tracks of revenue is one of the toughest processes of building a startup. Cost of Acquisition (CAC): The total cost of acquiring a user through a given channel.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 27, 2016

Similarly, mentioning viral marketing without specifics won’t assure fundability. Even social entrepreneurs need milestones, quantifiable results, and revenue to sustain their value. Investors expect to hear annual revenues, average margins, customer acquisition costs and sales pipelines. Focus on customer needs.

Technical Review 134

Technical Review Intellectual Property Due Diligence Angel Investor 134

ConversionXL

APRIL 4, 2017

Paid Acquisition. You’re undoubtedly familiar with paid acquisition, as it’s the digital equivalent of traditional advertising. Here are some resources to learn more about paid acquisition: Customer Acquisition Master Course (includes SEO). When Does Paid Acquisition Work for SaaS Startups?

Channel 118

Channel Marketing Viral SEO 118

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 13, 2018

Google Analytics is the standard for measuring acquisition—identifying the sources of traffic to your website or app. You’ll be able to see which acquisition channels are best for long-term retention or lifetime value, not simply those that drive initial conversions. Acquisition. Anything else is merely a list of data points.

Analytics 119

Analytics Technical Review Acquisition Retention 119

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 26, 2019

Instead, watch payback period for acquisition efficiency, watch retention for product/market fit, watch expansion revenue for long-term growth, and watch gross margin for long-term profitability. You’re not allocating enough costs to gross margin or the cost to acquire a customer. Priority depends on your goals (e.g.

Restful 202

Restful Founder Revenue Acquisition 202

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2016

Some analysts argue that revenue drives growth, while others say user growth drives revenue. Google reached $1B in revenue within five years of incorporation, and now has a market capitalization of over $400B. Long-term stability requires revenue growth and profit. Both have worked. Traditionally, it was simple.

Revenue 145

Revenue Valuation Startup Viral 145

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 4, 2022

Since 2015, clothing brand ASOS has grown revenue by an average of 22% year over year. For example, you may run the same ad on both Instagram and TikTok to measure which platform performs best in lead acquisition. Every improvement that you make to retention also improves all of these other things — virality, LTV, payback period.

eCommerce 129

eCommerce Marketing Social Media Retention 129

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2014

We spend a lot of time trying to get people focused on building products that have viral components and why that has to be measured and constantly tested. The more the supply of dollars spent in your channel the higher the cost-to-acquire new customers.

Technical Review 384

Technical Review Hockey Stick SEM Channel 384

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

In my daily work with ecommerce brands, I see two types of companies: The first type focuses on acquisition and conversion. Overall acquisition costs for both B2C and B2B have gone up by 50% in the past five years. To offset these costs, you need to earn more repeat purchases from existing customers.

Retention 126

Retention Analytics Campaign eCommerce 126

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 25, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Sunday, February 25, 2007 Challenge of Predicting Winners I just read a bit on the payout to YouTube from the Google Acquisition ( Internet News , CNN ). Technology Advisor Technology Roles in Startups Pricing Customer Acquisition Sunk Costs and More -.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 23, 2013

Marketo filed for IPO with impressive 80% year-over-year growth in 2012, with almost $60m in revenue. of revenue, force-feeding sales pipelines with an unprofitable product. I know the argument: The pay-back period on sales, marketing, and up-start costs is long, but there’s a profitable result at the end of the tunnel.

Business Model 335

Business Model .Net Revenue IPO 335

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 25, 2020

At the eight minute mark, YouTube allows for creators to put extra ads in the content so they’ve got an incentive to show those longer videos and generate more ad revenue. For viral growth, you want most of your traffic coming from “Browse features,” which consist of YouTube’s home screen, subscriptions, and other browsing features.

Channel 129

Channel Metrics Algorithm Video 129

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Another plus: It costs almost nothing to produce. While those acquisition efforts worked well, not all do. Cheap acquisition is (too) cheap. Growth does require large-scale acquisition, but a product launch may not be the best time to do it. But cheap acquisition meant cheap leads. It’s not efficient.”. Conclusion.

Product 110

Product Campaign Acquisition Social Media 110

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

In it, I got asked a question I often hear: “What if we have a web-based business that doesn’t have revenue or paying customers? And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” They’re putting money into web services/business – most without early revenue. End of theory.&#

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

ConversionXL

MARCH 6, 2019

They also come with higher costs and LinkedIn-specific platform limitations. That means that there’s plenty of business to be won—even if LinkedIn views come at a higher cost (more later). The strategy, according to Google, improves ad recall (and, undoubtedly, YouTube revenues). Stay on brand. Plan it out. Image source ).

Video 129

Video B2B Technical Review Campaign 129

Cracking the Code

FEBRUARY 23, 2011

It would have been easy to explain the difference by changes in the 2010/2011 revenue growth projections but unfortunately that is not the case. revenues while large caps are trading at 6.4x. Popular Media: the key to viral marketing. McKinsey highlight #1: the art of cost cutting or. Wednesday, February 23, 2011.

Software Review 101

Software Review Technical Review Valuation Europe 101

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

I had been confused for years why I had to update an income statement each board meeting that said zero for 18 months before we had any revenue. An early indication that you’ve found the right business model is when you believe the cost of getting customers will be less than the revenues the customers will generate. Financials.

Balance Sheet 298

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 298

Occam's Razor

SEPTEMBER 24, 2012

Increased investment in Facebook as an engagement/acquisition channel has translated into requests from CEOs, CMOs and other CxOs about the return on that investment. Compute ROI: (cost of Facebook campaigns + salary of people running campaigns + agency creative costs) vs. profit from incremental product sales.

Metrics 165

Metrics Advertising Marketing Social Media 165

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2020

For example, “We just patented a new battery technology that will cut your smartphone charge time and cost in half.” If possible, quantify these in non-technical business terms, such as dollars saved or replacement costs over time. They want to see revenue to share in the return. Use non-fuzzy terms to quantify customer value.

Business Plan 423

Business Plan Product Intellectual Property Elevator Pitch 423

Cracking the Code

MARCH 12, 2010

Given the predictability of SaaS GAAP revenues on a quarterly basis, the fact that the 08/09 projections were unchanged is not a surprise. Given that the revenues are not growing very fast, this means that most of the companies have reduced their sales force and focused on productivity improvement. Software 2.0: ► 2006. (7).

Software Review 63

Software Review Technical Review Cloud Forecast 63

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 8, 2009

In many cases, I can break it down into: Customer Acquisition Cost – how will you reach prospects, how will you convert them and how much will it cost to convert them Customer Lifetime Value – how much will you make off of each converted customer This very simple model works for a surprising number of business models.

Metrics 225

Metrics Startup Retention Acquisition 225

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 23, 2021

For example, if you haven’t achieved product-market fit, instrumenting every aspect of customer acquisition is overkill. I’ve seen entrepreneurs make the mistake of focusing all their efforts on customer acquisition when they also needed to fix a leaky funnel or customer churn. Just track metrics that help you improve the product.

Venture Capital 46

Venture Capital Metrics Investment Bankers Framework 46

venturedig.com

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

In social networking, they’re ever-changing, backed by eye-opening revenue and have very little documentation. The two major forms of this are CPC (cost per click) and CPA (cost per action or acquisition). Total Estimated Revenue For Year: $200 million. Total Estimated Revenue For Year: $75 million.

Social Network 55

Social Network Business Model Networking CPA 55

Software By Rob

NOVEMBER 15, 2011

I received the following question from a reader: I was wondering if you had any thoughts on cost of customer acquisition for freemium businesses. quite hard, but I don’t think paid acquisition could possibly work here. Have you seen paid acquisition work for freemium businesses? Photo by stevendepolo. My Thoughts.

Acquisition 56

Acquisition Customer Bootstrapping Viral 56

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses, with increasing revenue and consistent profitability – quarter after quarter. With Netscape’s IPO , there was suddenly a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit. 1970 – 1995: The Golden Age. Thus began the 5-year dot-com bubble.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

What are your hypotheses around customer acquisition costs? Actually engage in “search engine marketing” (SEM)spend $20 as a team to test customer acquisition cost. change messaging on site during the week to get costs lower, team that gets lowest delta costs wins. Get real costs from suppliers.

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal. More on that in a moment.

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. Very simply, your cost to acquire a customer needs to be lower than the value of that customer (lifetime value). Ads can also be cost-per-click or cost-per-action ads.

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. Very simply, your cost to acquire a customer needs to be lower than the value of that customer (lifetime value). Ads can also be cost-per-click or cost-per-action ads.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

Then they increased their revenue from $2M to $6M in six months. In this article, you’ll learn how to build a demand generation funnel that fuels the pipeline, shortens the sale cycle, and generates revenue. Your number one metric for any marketing initiative should be revenue. Like SEO, demand generation is a long game.

Demand 124

Demand B2B Distribution Channel 124

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

In the Udemy course, Alistair and Ben expand these basics into a description of how to create empathy, stickiness, virality, revenue, and scale. LSC: What''s an example of one metric, other than revenue, that you might look at for a non-tech product? It''s a good measurement because it captures both satisfaction and virality.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Cracking the Code

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

While poised with a limited number of transactions this year, the world of public Cloud Computing and SaaS companies has been marked by two events in the past few months: the acquisition of Omniture by Adobe and the high profile IPO of LogMeIn, a leading provider of PC remote access and support with a very interesting freemium model.

Software Review 48

Software Review Technical Review IPO Cloud 48

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

The company has just missed its quarterly revenue forecast. Lets take an example, and look at how they might do this: They will be able to tell you that revenue is composed of deals. To compute revenue, you multiply average deal size by number of deals. Bookings is the pre-cursor to Revenue. Obvious, isn’t it?

Metrics 55

Metrics Design Entrepreneur Startup 55

ConversionXL

MARCH 31, 2021

Shares are often considered a ‘vanity metric’ in the sense they don’t always directly help a business generate more revenue. The more shares a piece of content gets, the higher the chance of it ‘going viral. According to the Experts: The best metric is EPV (earnings per visitor) > CPV (cost per visitor). “Shares = meh.

SEO 163

SEO Metrics Social Media Audience 163

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

We’re at 70 people, and we’ll do $40 million in revenue this year and should get to cash flow breakeven this quarter. ” You’ll realize you’re ready to exit the Search step when you have customer validation: You’ve found a sales channel that matches how the customer wants to buy and the costs of using that channel are understood.

Startup 120

Startup Lean Venture Capital Advisory Board 120

Occam's Razor

MAY 2, 2017

#tearsofpain One way of removing silos and focusing on the entire business is to leverage Acquisition, Behavior and Outcome metrics. A small change I’ll make in this post is that when I recommend the metrics, I’ll follow the Outcomes | Behavior | Acquisition structure throughout this post. Hence that’s the macro-outcome.

Metrics 141

Metrics Acquisition eCommerce Analytics 141