ConversionXL

MARCH 19, 2020

The best drivers apply the brakes just ahead of the curve (they take out excess costs), turn hard toward the apex of the curve (identify the short list of projects that will form the next business model), and accelerate hard out of the curve (spend and hire before markets have rebounded). And, short term, that may be the only option.

Marketing 121

Marketing Campaign Non-Compete Lean 121

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 4, 2015

By definition, second-stage ventures generally have 10 to 99 employees and/or $750,000 to $50 million in revenue, and see that as just the beginning. Hire more help than helpers. You don’t have the bandwidth to keep filling positions with more helpers. Managing business growth is more than metrics.

Mezzanine 120

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

— Unremarked and unheralded, the balance of power between startup CEOs and their investors has radically changed: IPOs/M&A without a profit (or at times revenue) have become the norm. Typically, this caliber of bankers wouldn’t talk to you unless your company had five profitable quarters of increasing revenue.

Founder 245

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 245

The Next Web

JULY 13, 2013

The firm was one person, me, analyzing web metrics and writing copy for clients. When I hired my first temporary employee, I couldn’t communicate about it. I have no problem sharing our real revenue with interested VC’s. It frees up mental bandwidth not having to juggle with different stories.

Bandwidth 122

Bandwidth Employee Analytics Metrics 122

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Most startups don’t have the luxury of hiring an experienced PM early in their journey. So, what are the things founders can learn to do well BEFORE they can hire a great first product hire to make sure the company stays focused and iterates fast? growth/revenue target) to get to the next stage/financing round.

Hiring 120

Hiring Bandwidth Product Early Stage 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 17, 2011

As a preamble to the metrics, it’s useful to know what you’re measuring and why it’s vital. We had a spike in this metric in February at WP Engine when our Internet provider themselves had a datacenter-wide catastrophe which brought us down for twelve hours; of course not all spikes will have such obvious causes.

Business Model 245

Business Model Metrics Engineer Technical Review 245

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2018

Amazon has hired more people for their Alexa division than Google has for the entire company – it’s not hunch, this is going to be the focus. Hire & fire – tools to do a job. mobile is ~50% of revenue, shorter form works better. Work hard to define meaningful product metrics – enabler of team success.

Retention 106

Retention Artificial Inteligence Channel Email 106

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

I was hired to level-up the marketing team. Then, I evolved it into a growth team by hiring a designer and two engineers. Two of the teams focused on the two main sources of revenue, one team on inbound leads, and the last team on site conversion rates. Suddenly, our revenue from these campaigns dropped by 50%.

Conversion 133

Conversion Technical Review Channel Engineer 133

om.co

FEBRUARY 5, 2013

called The Rise of a Insta-Company, which theorized that open source, cheap bandwidth and increasingly falling cost of infrastructure would result in companies being built at a dramatically lower cost than ever before. But that is the real metric of success as far as I am concerned. Back to the top. ARE YOU WINNING AS A FOUNDER?

Founder 80

Founder Conversion Distribution Silicon Valley 80

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Totally automate all that so it doesn’t bring me down all the time and instead I can sign all the revenue, because that’s fun. Like the ability to spend X dollars on advertising and gain Y dollars in revenue or something like that. Patrick: How close did he get? Ryan: 50%, sort of. Patrick: All right.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208