Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

What matters is proving the viability of the company’s business model, what investors call “traction.&# Of course this is not at all true of many profitable small businesses, but they are not what I mean by startups.) For a startup, having great sales DNA is a wonderful asset. They are closing orders.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

Forget about traction and hockey stick growth. In other words, if you can get 1000 people to come to your website consistently for under $5, then this business model works for you. For example, if you are running affiliate ads for hotels, you might get 3-5% on a sale. Sales cycles matter though.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

Forget about traction and hockey stick growth. In other words, if you can get 1000 people to come to your website consistently for under $5, then this business model works for you. For example, if you are running affiliate ads for hotels, you might get 3-5% on a sale. Sales cycles matter though.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Up and Running

MARCH 11, 2015

Are you landing a big sale? If you say in year one I’m going to do one hundred thousand in sales or, a million in sales or whatever it might be. These are the metrics for the SaaS model that we have. How much is going to sales? Are you bringing on some investment capital? Are you doing an acquisition?

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Software Review Due Diligence Exit Strategy 60

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2019

Go beyond standard sources of voice of customer data ; better options are: Interview founders (the original “customers”); Thank-you page surveys; Usertesting.com; Mine sales calls; Mine support tickets; Mine Facebook comments ; Mine online reviews. Do not talk about disruptive business models; the ones who disrupt don’t talk about it.

Artificial Inteligence 114

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Metrics SEO 114