View from Seed

JANUARY 13, 2015

When you are thinking about joining an early stage company, how should you be evaluating the risk of the overall company? How should you be weighing the presence of a great founding team versus early signs of traction? Great teams fail to build a product and get early distribution all the time.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage B2B Distribution Early Stage 120

Occam's Razor

MAY 2, 2017

Since email is so important as an acquisition channel (and since likely nothing else works for them), I choose one of my three favorite email marketing metrics , CTDR. I have a massive bias against the current click-bait, let’s go viral , “hot story of the moment” traffic. It is not hard to pick New Subscriptions.

Metrics 141

Metrics Acquisition eCommerce Analytics 141

mashable.com

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

No doubt early-stage companies can be started on a shoestring by low-paid entrepreneurs, but when financing a scalable, sustainable product, a free application server won’t make much of a difference. In fact, it’s barely even the beginning for most companies in their seed stage financings.

Startup 79

Startup Social Media RSS Social Network 79

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.

Metrics 225

Metrics Startup Retention Acquisition 225

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’ve built detailed analytics tracking into your product and you should be seeing organic and viral growth; and can provide Daily/Weekly/Monthly Active Users, 30d/90d/120d retention. 2M in 18 months.

Cofounder 431

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 431

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

As I ask questions to understand the thinking, what usually comes out is something vague along the lines of web marketing, and/or viral growth with no numbers attached. A quick look around all the B2C startups shows that, although viral growth is often hoped for, in reality it is extremely rare.

Acquisition 103

Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103

View from Seed

MAY 27, 2015

But we noticed that while the information in these podcasts is interesting, many are often far removed from the actual day-to-day challenges of very early stage founders that are just trying to go from nothing to something. We find that these are great, and I personally listen to many of them.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Non-Compete Early Stage Silicon Valley 120

The Next Web

JANUARY 26, 2014

If a big corporation is pushing a new product, you might expect them to take out TV ads, online ads, maybe hire a PR agency and set up big distribution partnerships. 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.

Thailand 167

Thailand Social Network PPC Singapore 167

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

Cost of Acquisition (CAC): The total cost of acquiring a user through a given channel. If you are measuring these two correctly, you can make simple rules/decisions based on your results: If the CAC is over twice the LTV don’t even bother—this channel is likely not going to work. The cornerstone of any business is that LTV > CAC.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products. If you’re working closely with partners who are helping you distribute your product, it’s especially important to make sure they understand who you are, how you speak, and who you serve. The Definitive Guide to Building a Brand.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

The Next Web

AUGUST 21, 2013

Bubba is an early stage investor in consumer internet and mobile technology companies for @DFJvc. It constricted their distribution channel to the app store and the device itself, and users just don’t have enough opportunity for discovering and trying new apps in those environments. Attracting and growing a user base.

Mobile 137

Mobile Design Differentiation Startup 137

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

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? Because they have no presence in the market, they have to find distribution channels to bring in customers.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

VC Cafe

NOVEMBER 2, 2010

B y definition, early stage startups don’t have lots of money and resources. They hope to raise awareness through viral marketing and word of mouth, since participating in professional industry events can be a pretty expensive ordeal when you take into account hotels, flights, tickets, etc.

Finder 128

Finder Startup Social Network Mobile 128

Rob Go

MAY 27, 2015

But we noticed that while the information in these podcasts is interesting, many are often far removed from the actual day-to-day challenges of very early stage founders that are just trying to go from nothing to something. We find that these are great, and I personally listen to many of them.

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Non-Compete Early Stage Silicon Valley 28

Rob Go

MAY 27, 2015

But we noticed that while the information in these podcasts is interesting, many are often far removed from the actual day-to-day challenges of very early stage founders that are just trying to go from nothing to something. We find that these are great, and I personally listen to many of them.

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Non-Compete Early Stage Silicon Valley 28

Cracking the Code

DECEMBER 11, 2015

I like to understand for these models how many sales people are quota carrying, what is the distribution of quota attainment, and what is the profile of an ideal sales person Inbound model (e.g., Here are a few typical models and some of the points I would find interesting to highlight: Enterprise sales (e.g.,

San Francisco 48

San Francisco Churn Rate Silicon Valley Engineer 48