Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Ben's Blog

MARCH 24, 2011

To find out whether or not today’s public technology companies have hit bubble valuations, let’s compare some companies that survived the great bubble with their bubble era valuations: The Enterprise Value-to-Revenue multiple (EV/Rev) and Price-to-Earnings multiple (PE) are commonly used metrics to tell the valuation:value story.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Venture Capital Valuation Database 78

View from Seed

MAY 16, 2019

I have friends who are execs or shareholders of the company, but I have no stake in Slack nor intent to invest in the IPO. If you haven’t seen these already, here are some of the headline figures about Slack’s business: $400M in GAAP revenue in the most recent year (fiscal year ’19 ended 1/31/19). 10M+ daily active users (DAUs).

Lock-up Period 168

Lock-up Period Retention Azure .Net 168

Cracking the Code

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. On the IPO front, LogMeIn made the news, being one of the few tech IPO on the NASDAAQ in 2009. Congrats to Jim Kelliher, CFO and Michael Simon, CEO, for a successful IPO! Cloud Computing. (1).

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Software Review Technical Review IPO Cloud 48

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

Agile VC

MAY 16, 2019

I have friends who are execs or shareholders of the company, but I have no stake in Slack nor intent to invest in the IPO. A somewhat unique thing about the Slack IPO is that they’re pursuing a direct listing on the NYSE. Slack’s net dollar retention rate is an incredibly impressive 143%. So Slack generated $1.43

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Lock-up Period Retention Azure .Net 100

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

This slinging of whatever against the wall to see what sticks does not a market make, is to me a sign of too much capital in the wrong hands, and it's already the most over invested area in recent years- in both human and financial capital- particularly relative to revenue. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

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Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Behind this analysis is a spreadsheet model, complete with detailed metrics for a set of customer behaviors that show just how valuable the new product will be. They are on-schedule and on-budget, but their gross metrics are way off. Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Cracking the Code

MARCH 10, 2008

Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. From our private investor experience, a breakeven in 1-2 year seems reasonable and if we look at Salesforce.com CAC ratio since its IPO, it is indeed within this 0.5-1 Cracking The Code. Monday, March 10, 2008.

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Sales Software Review Marketing Technical Review 79

Cracking the Code

FEBRUARY 4, 2008

Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. 2007 was a turning point for the SaaS industry with the successful IPOs of NetSuite, SuccessFactors, DemandTec, Salary.com, Aprimo and Constant Contact. What metrics should I be using to drive a saas business?

Software Review 48

Software Review South Korea IPO Portfolio 48

ConversionXL

JUNE 2, 2022

How do you sustain growth that precedes the highest IPO in history for a software company? For cloud-based data warehouse Snowflake , that was ABM. Results from Snowflake’s ABM efforts post-IPO. Granular tracking of the right metrics helped sales reps prioritize prospects soon after receiving their watch.

Marketing 105

Marketing Campaign Artificial Inteligence Sales Cycle 105

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

We were even more embarrassed by the pathetically small number of customers we had, and the pathetically low amount of revenue we had earned so far. We’d always cringe as we admitted that, no, we really only had a few thousand customers and a few thousand dollars in monthly revenue. Retention cohort analysis. I am chugging along.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target. No matter how low we make the revenue projections for this new product, it’s extremely unlikely that they are achievable. In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

At least, not in the traditional sense of trying to squeeze every tenth of a point out of a conversion metric or landing page. Even if it shows improvement in some micro metric, does that invalidate the overall design? That was evident in the metrics and in the in-person usability tests. No one feature is to blame.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 10, 2008

Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. Save Asia for post-IPO Single instance, multi-tenant, single datacenter - Have only one version of the code in production. Effectively measuring and understanding your CAC and CLTV metrics are key to future success.

Software Review 48

Software Review North America Europe Metrics 48

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

And one day a remarkable thing happened: we started making more than five dollars a day in revenue. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

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SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Growth - when you have existing customers, the pressure is on to grow your key metrics day-in day-out. If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on. Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Cracking the Code

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. because all your costs are up front, and your revenue is over a five year period, the more you sell, the more you lose. Cloud Computing. (1). Cracking The Code. Tuesday, September 02, 2008. for Lawson? anecdotes. (13).

Software Review 48

Software Review Software Technical Review Cloud 48

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Despite all the energy invested in talking to authors about the size of their platform, very few gatekeepers have a rigorous set of metrics for measuring it. The problem is that there are no other metrics they can look at to judge the content of a book to know if it’s worth reviewing. What is the right revenue model?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Luckily, the metrics helped us figure out the difference. Question 2: If your product has areas where people read and then different areas where people interact, are there ways to do metrics to determine where people spend their time? Were looking to metrics to determine how users interact with our product.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

They asked for my advice, and we went through a number of recommendations that readers of this blog will already be able to guess: adding revenue opportunities, engagement loop optimization, and some immediate split-testing to figure out whats working and whats not. And we all know what the success rates of rewrites are! Homer said.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

If you can start getting ROI on a feature in month one of a twelve month project versus waiting until the end, youve comparatively reduced the cost of development by the revenue generated by that feature over 11 months. Small batches also help deliver value earlier in the project. February 25, 2009 8:12 PM Anonymoussaid. Small is beautiful.

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San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

To increase the number of iterations you have left, you can either increase cash on hand (by raising money or increasing revenues), reduce burn rate, or increase the speed of each iteration. The key is to be able to refute as many major hypotheses as you can. Were talking PayPal -sized variations. Take a look and let me know what you think.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

Monitoring of real-world metrics. In order to make continuous deployment work, teams have to get good at automated monitoring and reacting to business and customer-centric metrics, not just technical metrics. No automated test is going to catch that, but it still will drive revenue to zero.

Continuous Deployment 122

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

A business that strives for something like this should absolutely be charging money from day one, in order to establish baselines for their two key metrics: CPA (the cost to acquire a new customer) and LTV (the lifetime value of each acquired customer). This is the simplest ecosystem and simplest driver of growth.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Austin Startup

OCTOBER 6, 2018

To prepare for our IPO at Bazaarvoice, I leveraged three additional coaches?—?one All metrics were revealed. I was very influenced by Marc Benioff’s book, Behind the Cloud , where he discusses his V2MOM model. For example, we recently hired Ryan Cush as our Chief Revenue Officer and he has been a game-changer for us.

Founder 51

Founder Cofounder Software Review San Francisco 51

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. The visionary’s lament The Superbowl ad test Lo, my 57692 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

In fact, in the early days, when IMVU would experience unexpected surges of revenue or traffic, it was inevitable that every person in the company was convinced that their project was responsible. When something works, its too easy to invent a story about how that was your intention all along. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

There are a whole range of valid reasons why non-developers would want to dictate the production release schedule (Seasonal/timing issues, marketing, fulfillment concerns, documentation/training, revenue controls, legal/regulatory. " Actually this process works really well in a financial company.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Not even if its generating revenue. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. Heres hoping Steve will share those techniques with us someday.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

We just add up the revenue we've made in the past few months from Win98 users, and compare to the pain that Win98 has caused as identified in 5Ys. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Not just about expenses, about increasing revenue. Make sure for planned revenues you have "leading indicators" to know if you will hit it. This can take the form of a traditional sales pipeline or a registration-activation-revenue chart. And its hard to know if youre truly succeeding without a focus on revenue.

Lean 121

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

Designed for large businesses, the channels let a company share several types of documents, brand the channel with their own design elements, and then include display advertising, contest promotions, blog aggregation, social media integration and metrics reporting. The idea seemed to SlideShare to be a natural direction.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

San Francisco 148

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

The whole episode cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. In fact, it was the revenue trends that eventually alerted us to the magnitude of the problem. Unfortunately, revenue a trailing indicator. Its a great time to increase revenues without spending money on acquiring new customers.

.Net 158

.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

We were focused on revenue, but we didnt understand that revenue is not important for its own sake in an early stage company. Almost all of them got scooped up by pre-IPO Google this time. That year, right before the IPO, those months mattered a great deal in terms of financial outcomes.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94