VC Cafe

JULY 15, 2021

So while ads can be an effective way to grow, spending on user acquisition before figuring out monetisation is a sure way to shorten runway for early stage startups. are trying to automate the process of content creation with GPT-3, but in the early days, there’s no substitution to creating your own voice.

Mobile 190

Mobile Social Media Distribution PR 190

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 8, 2009

This is a great presentation and one that I'm going to point out to startup / early stage company CEOs. We'll need to look at different customer acquisition channels, figure out how they are converting, and the expected lifetime value of customers acquired through those channels, and apply cost to those channels. Great stuff.

Metrics 225

Metrics Startup Retention Acquisition 225

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

Your customer acquisition cost and lifetime value are the two magical numbers you need to calculate for each one of your campaigns. Cost of Acquisition (CAC): The total cost of acquiring a user through a given channel. Using this approach, we’ve been able to identify a number of profitable customer acquisition channels for Slidebean.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Business Model Affects Metrics and Exit Criteria Web-based Business Model Exit Criteria In a web-business model you’re looking for traffic, users, conversion, virality, etc – not revenue. This a hard concept and even harder to implement.

Customer Development 227

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 227

VC Cafe

NOVEMBER 2, 2019

One question that keeps coming up when speaking with early stage entrepreneurs when it comes to funding, is what metrics the company needs to hit to raise seed/series A/B etc: What’s a good conversion rate? Deep tech is harder to measure/compare, especially in the early stage. What should our MRR growth be?

B2C 141

B2C Technical Review Startup Retention 141

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

View from Seed

JANUARY 11, 2017

I was an early employee at PayPal and back in the 2000-2001 timeframe, and we ended up taking a fairly significant amount of strategic investment (tens of millions of $) from various banks in the US, Europe, and Asia. All things being equal, seed and early stage startups are not usually well suited to take strategic investments.

Strategic Investors 120

Strategic Investors Post-Money Valuation Seed Stage Cofounder 120

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. It''s a good measurement because it captures both satisfaction and virality. That''s why the most critical attribute of early-stage product development is the ability to learn quickly.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Vision for B2C, virality-driven community. In an early stage deal, you check the numbers to avoid getting exploited, but you make your decision based on the investors. The former means your friends won’t hear about your company until the acquisition. Highly experienced, top-tier angels. Requires team relocation.

Term Sheet 31

Term Sheet Dilution Participating Preferred B2C 31

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 13, 2011

When people ask me what areas I’m interested in, I often say “early” Taking meetings with entrepreneurs at these early stages means that you have to view these meetings in the right context. Sometimes, technology changes and old ideas that were before their time can be successful.

Viral 110

Viral Social Network Startup Early Stage 110

The Next Web

JANUARY 26, 2014

Rely on cheaper forms of marketing : Blogging, email, viral tactics etc. PayPal famously offered a $20 2-way reward in their early stages of growth. But compared to other paid acquisition channels such as PPC, a referral program like this can require less ongoing maintenance and result in more high quality users.

Thailand 167

Thailand Social Network PPC Singapore 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? Do you have any thoughts on scalable customer acquisition in cases where a decent bit of knowledge work has to be invested into each customer?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Vision for B2C, virality-driven community. In an early stage deal, you check the numbers to avoid getting exploited, but you make your decision based on the investors. The former means your friends won’t hear about your company until the acquisition. Highly experienced, top-tier angels. Requires team relocation.

Term Sheet 20

Term Sheet Dilution Participating Preferred B2C 20

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

Genuine VC

APRIL 30, 2008

However, for the past couple years, the metrics of “success” with early-stage digital media startups (especially consumer-facing ones) have clearly focused on distribution, as opposed to monetization. Now the new plan for distribution is facilitation through low-cost viral strategies via Facebook and other social media.

Distribution 103

Distribution Widget Viral Social Media 103

Genuine VC

APRIL 30, 2008

However, for the past couple years, the metrics of “success” with early-stage digital media startups (especially consumer-facing ones) have clearly focused on distribution, as opposed to monetization. Now the new plan for distribution is facilitation through low-cost viral strategies via Facebook and other social media.

Distribution 100

Distribution Widget Viral Social Media 100

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Here are some example metrics that are important at this overall level: CAC – total cost to acquire a customer (see previous blog post Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition to understand why this is so important.) VC Venture capital Viral growth Plugin by wpburn.com wordpress themes Copyright © David Skok 2009, 2010.

Metrics 55

Metrics Design Entrepreneur Startup 55

Hippoland

OCTOBER 16, 2016

In this post, I’m going to very *simplistically* dive into some high level categories and talk about how early stage investors consider each. Do you have virality built into the product? If your startup is in this category, you’ll need to craft a story around: Hypergrowth How this hyper growth is happening organically?

Startup 48

Startup Vertical Early Stage Bootstrapping 48

View from Seed

MARCH 22, 2016

This is for the early-stage companies — the entrepreneurs with great ideas and tireless work ethics who feel like they’ve emailed half of the country’s news outlets with nothing but the rare “thanks, but not interested” reply to show for it. The irony hurts. And don’t pitch a Boston newspaper on your San Francisco startup. Pitch late.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage San Francisco Startup CTO Hire 120

Cracking the Code

DECEMBER 11, 2015

When Elon Musk received $200 million from the proceeds of the PayPal acquisition in 2002, he re-invested everything to build the next big thing: $100 million in SpaceX and $100 million in Tesla. . #6 Passion While everyone wants to make money, good VCs look for more in an entrepreneur than the desire to cash out.

San Francisco 48

San Francisco Churn Rate Silicon Valley Engineer 48

Ben's Blog

MAY 15, 2020

Finally, we’ll zoom out and assess the big picture: how various categories of company may be impacted long-term, how this crisis compares to 2008 (and what that means for early-stage founders), and the industries and business models that are now prime for growth. Same thing for engagement, as well.

Founder 36

Founder Conversion Technical Review Cash Position 36

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

It bears repeating: an early-stage startup must focus on making one customer group excited by a mission-aligned product. There are two viable growth engines for tech companies: Viral, or “inherently viral” growth: Customers either intentionally or unintentionally recruit new customers by using your product.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

The numbers of potential buyers had decreased dramatically both because large companies were shedding jobs and because many past buyers simply lacked resources to make acquisitions. Look at the rapid adoption of Groupon, LivingSocial or Instagram as proof of how rapidly businesses can grow through viral means.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Mobile 347

The Next Web

AUGUST 19, 2013

Being an engineer, I built myself a kind of algorithm that helps determine an early-­stage startup’s sales channels, and that’s what I’m sharing with you today. Customer Acquisition Cost or CAC is how much money you can spend to get someone to become a customer. Well, then you’ve got to go viral. LTV ­ CAC = ROI.

Belarus 137

Belarus Viral Channel Startup 137

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Data companies focused on early-stage startups include Aingel , fundsUP , Preseries , PredictLeads , and Sploda. The Pocket Negotiator is very early-stage attempt to aid in the negotiating process itself. ExitRound helps early stage companies identify buyers in smaller exits. . What’s Your VC Tech Stack?

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

Growth Hacking isn’t viral marketing (although viral marketing is part of it). and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. If a startup is pre-product/market fit, growth hackers can make sure virality is embedded at the core of a product.

API 167

API Viral Startup Retention 167

Reid Hoffman

JANUARY 26, 2021

Even relatively early stage boards should be thinking about diversity, because they face particular challenges on this issue. And even if you can’t achieve board diversity during the early stages, you should be planning how to achieve it with your independent board members.

Startup 36

Startup Equity Early Stage Green 36

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

When you’re talking with an investor, I’d say in general, he/she has biases towards the customer acquisition methods that has made him/her money before. I know nothing about viral marketing. I.e. it might be difficult to raise money at the early stages, because most investors in the seed space have smaller funds (esp pre-seed funds).

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

When you’re talking with an investor, I’d say in general, he/she has biases towards the customer acquisition methods that has made him/her money before. I know nothing about viral marketing. I.e. it might be difficult to raise money at the early stages, because most investors in the seed space have smaller funds (esp pre-seed funds).

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

Reid Hoffman

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

For example, if you’re an early-stage SaaS provider that is shifting from a horizontal solution to a vertical focus, your mission, culture, and competencies can stay the same and the pivot transition will probably go smoothly. It’s easier (but still hard) when you’re running a small, early-stage organization.

Startup 36

Startup Silicon Valley Business Model Mobile 36

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 21, 2013

If you're working on the Sticky Engine of Growth , you're focused on very different metrics from those that you care about in the Viral Engine of Growth. In the early days of a SaaS business, churn really doesn’t matter that much. Similarly, a two-sided marketplace cares about different things from a traditional e-commerce product.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Metrics Churn Rate 167

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

For startups the early stage funding landscape looks like this: Step 1: The Pre-seed round – you raise $100-$750K. You need to begin to “instrument” your customer acquisition process with analytics. Still, there are some benchmarks to keep in mind. Here’s the first 2½ years of a startup journey. The Startup Investment Landscape.

Cofounder 431

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 431

The Next Web

OCTOBER 17, 2013

Carlos Eduardo Espinal is a partner at Seedcamp , an early stage mentoring and investment program that engages startups through monthly Seedcamp Events, where entrepreneurs present their companies, network, receive mentoring, and compete for investment by Seedcamp. Seedcamp invests in approximately 20 companies annually.

Customer 128

Customer B2C Startup Early Stage 128

Rob Go

JULY 11, 2013

I was asked recently how NextView evaluates such early stage companies for investment. Some products have what look like great viral loops, but aren’t very successful. The reality is that pretty much all investors looks for the same core things. It’s some combination of great teams , attractive markets , and promising products.

Distribution 66

Distribution Vertical Viral B2B 66

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 10, 2008

The top performing SaaS companies typically achieve annual customer renewal rates above 90% - with most of the churn due to death (bankruptcies) or marriage (acquisitions) - and over 100% renewals on a dollar value basis due to up-sells into this installed base. upfront acquisition cost, making the CLTV equal to $2.5-$0.7= means a $0.7

Software Review 48

Software Review North America Europe Metrics 48

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Building a scalable, profitable, customer acquisition engine. As a developer, I feel that design/creative is undervalued in the early stages of product development. Notwithstanding examples like Plentyofish, people respond to well designed, well branded products, and that can be important in getting traction early on.

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2011

We’re co-leading the $6 million investment with Roger Ehrenberg at IA Ventures in NY and one of the most respected early-stage investors in the country in “big data&# companies. Viral – One of the most important value drivers of any social network is the degree to which it makes content go viral. is hot right now.

Viral 307

Viral Las Vegas Tunisia Syndicate 307