Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 7, 2022

Others do far too little, assuming the viral effect and word-of-mouth will soon kick in, and sales will suddenly grow exponentially. There is no magic lever for growth, so several initiatives are required, with metrics to assess value returned. Ask every employee to focus on sales. Introduce automation consistent with growth rates.

Startup 335

Startup Social Media Metrics Viral 335

Occam's Razor

JULY 12, 2010

I threw out the world class tool, purchased ClickTracks for a fraction of the cost and put money into Analysts and boom! Ok not boom overnight… but over the course of a few months the org started to be more data driven, because analysts we hired produced analysis. Goes viral. Invisible Virality. More analysts.

Analytics 96

Analytics Viral Web Mobile 96

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 9, 2015

Even non-profits need revenue to cover their costs, and continue to provide services. Use metrics to measure results of marketing initiatives. Too many entrepreneurs put all their resources in one big make-or-break effort they can’t measure, or they count on word-of-mouth and viral marketing, which are totally unpredictable.

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Forecast Startup Stock Options Technical Review 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 26, 2019

There isn’t one most important SaaS metric. You’re not allocating enough costs to gross margin or the cost to acquire a customer. Being focussed on SaaS metrics is not incompatible with valuing employee fulfillment and customer happiness. Either you haven’t hired great talent, or you have but you’re disempowering them.

Restful 202

Restful Founder Revenue Acquisition 202

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 4, 2024

Learn crucial metrics for success, from open rates to the quality of subscribers. 15:09] What are some of the metrics that showcase success in Newsletter writing? [17:17] And a lot of times you can hire somebody to go do a lot of it from there. John (14:57): Let's talk about metrics. I also look at sort of the virality.

Revenue 76

Revenue Advertising Email ChatGPT 76

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 9, 2020

Others do far too little, assuming the viral effect and word-of-mouth will soon kick in, and sales will suddenly grow exponentially. There is no magic lever for growth, so several initiatives are required, with metrics to assess value returned. Ask every employee to focus on sales. Introduce automation consistent with growth rates.

Social Media 329

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 329

Brandanew

MAY 29, 2015

Copying or hiring experts who specialize in copying- not in the Picasso manner, does not work. What is Growth Hacking: A definition before we start: Growth hacking is a marketing technique developed by technology startups which uses creativity, analytical thinking, and social metrics to sell products and gain exposure.

Curation 100

Curation Social Media Viral Startup 100

Duct Tape Marketing

MAY 18, 2023

14:58] What are some of the metrics that show you’re doing things right? [17:02] And a lot of times you can hire somebody to go do a lot of it from there. Let's talk about metrics, again, going back to when I started, I remember 83, 80 4% open rates, , those days don't exist for anybody today. You know, think about it.

ChatGPT 90

ChatGPT Advertising Email Viral 90

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Blog About Log in Register Designing startup metrics to drive successful behavior Great companies are almost always run by great management teams. Good metrics should also be actionable, and drive successful behavior. In a follow up post, I will use this technique to walk through the design of a set of metrics for a SaaS company.

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Metrics Design Entrepreneur Startup 55

Occam's Razor

MAY 2, 2017

There is no golden metric for everyone, we are all unique snowflakes! :). and tell you what are the best key performance indicators (metrics) for them. In the past I’ve shared a cluster of metrics that small, medium and large businesses can use as a springboard…. If you want to play along. Don’t read what I’ve chosen.

Metrics 141

Metrics Acquisition eCommerce Analytics 141

Occam's Razor

APRIL 8, 2013

To win in business you need to follow this process: Metrics > Hypothesis > Experiment > Act. We are far too enamored with data collection and reporting the standard metrics we love because others love them because someone else said they were nice so many years ago. That metric is tied to a KPI.

Metrics 156

Metrics Analytics Lean Churn Rate 156

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

I strongly believe that the first few hires of a startup should belong to the growth department, whether they’re marketers, community managers, or salespeople (selling your product is the best way to learn how to improve it). This is when metrics come into play. See Also: The Top 10 Tools for Tracking Your Web Metrics.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 23, 2021

If they’re the kind of infinite learner who uses their past experiences to make their decision-making better, they have a huge advantage when it comes to everything from hiring to strategy to sales, making them an even better bet the second time around. The metrics from the dashboard are the key inputs for collective decisions.

Venture Capital 46

Venture Capital Metrics Investment Bankers Framework 46

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 26, 2018

Build a realistic revenue model and price, based on cost. It takes real money to sustain a business, with a margin in the 50 percent range, and some realistic milestones and metrics. Word of mouth and viral marketing alone are not adequate, and a website is not all you need for credibility.

Angel Investor 147

Angel Investor Distribution Bootstrapping Viral 147

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 29, 2016

Others do far too little, assuming the viral effect and word-of-mouth will soon kick in, and sales will suddenly grow exponentially. There is no magic lever for growth, so several initiatives are required, with metrics to assess value returned. Ask every employee to focus on sales. Introduce automation consistent with growth rates.

Social Media 120

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 120

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

We had endless arguments internally about what features it should include, how the avatars should look, and how much it should cost. Just load them all in and choose a low cost-per-click. Seems like a fairly low-cost method of gauging customer interest for a would-be product. We finally settled on a $1.99 I used to use $.05,

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

BeyondVC

OCTOBER 2, 2015

Wait, isn’t user engagement more of a consumer metric? It is, but it is equally as important to focus on this metric in the enterprise. This is especially important in the age of SaaS as switching costs are quite low for substitute solutions. My answer is the less obvious one?—?focus

Revenue 60

Revenue Customer Metrics Aggregator 60

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

They feel the money can and should be spent on ways to grow the company, so they shift into growth mode by hiring more employees, paying themselves, hiring salespeople, running paid ad campaigns, and spending on overhead. You need to nail your metrics to graduate discovery mode. Now let’s talk about the metrics.

Metrics 136

Metrics Cofounder Cram Down Liquidity Event 136

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. They know how much it costs to bring in a customer and they know how much money they can expect to make on each one. Products can find sources of validation with impressive stats along a number of dimensions, such as high engagement, viral coefficient, or long-term retention.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 13, 2013

Once you build it, they will now ask you about the key metrics that they need proven in order to see if you really are a good investment. The real reason to build an MVP is to do early tests of key Startup Metrics for the business. " Once you have the metrics defined, it focuses your effort. To prove/disprove a hypothesis.

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Technical Cofounder Technical Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO 338

Cracking the Code

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

This drop in public valuations basically means that private companies lost half of their value in a comparable way and therefore the cost of capital doubled in the past month, pushing much higher the hurdle for any additional investment, be it in sales, marketing or R&D. SaaS business metrics: why are they different? Software 2.0:

Software Review 48

Software Review Technical Review Valuation Portfolio 48

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

And finally, Scott demonstrated his internal management tool for managing the metrics of his business. Money to be used for hiring and additional product development. Offers virality optimization tools and A/B testing inside Facebook. They raised around $350 million to try and sell cars direct over the Internet. Foursquare. -A

San Francisco 248

San Francisco Venture Capital Analytics Government 248

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 15, 2023

17:30] How deep into financials and metrics do you get before taking a client on? [19:01] And when I present it to them in terms of a cost analysis, [00:05:00] in terms of what you would. Like it's not about, you know, going viral and reaching masses. Is like acquisition metrics. Or what they've been paying.

Channel 63

Channel Acquisition Framework B2B 63

Spencer Fry

JUNE 29, 2011

The Viral Strategy. We're all familiar with the idea of viral user acquisition: Your current users invite other users to use your service. Foursquare and similar viral success stories (Instagram, etc.) You want to be able to track how new viral users are coming into your system. Another issue is server growing pains.

Philippines 77

Philippines Viral Bootstrapping Europe 77

crowdSPRING Blog

JANUARY 13, 2016

From developing products and services to hiring to payroll, owners have a lot on their plates! At crowdSPRING , we rely on a number of mobile and online tools to help us be more efficient and to reduce costs. Buffer provides daily and weekly reports on reach, clicks, time optimization, and other metrics.

Small Business 48

Small Business Non-disclosure Agreement Social Media Startup 48

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 29, 2020

There has never been a viral outbreak of such magnitude before. A solopreneur is essentially an entrepreneur who does not hire any staff. And, drawing up a budget that contains all of your fixed expenses, will help you keep a handle on your finances and assist in stripping out any non-essential costs.

Bootstrapping 85

Bootstrapping Global Startup Hungary 85

leananalyticsbook.com

AUGUST 19, 2012

The One Metric That Matters. One of the things Ben and I have been discussing a lot is the concept of the One Metric That Matters (OMTM) and how to focus on it. That doesn’t mean there’s only one metric you care about from the day you wake up with an idea to the day you sell your company. Lean Analytics Book.

Metrics 58

Metrics Clickthrough Lean Analytics 58

reidhoffman.org

NOVEMBER 12, 2013

We are the leader in the professional domain with viral growth. What I knew that many didn’t was that a combination of curiosity and a viral game mechanic would slowly get to a million people, at which point the network becomes valuable. Here, we argue that we have a viral product that creates a network that possesses network effects.

Entrepreneur 111

Entrepreneur Revenue Viral Networking 111

Cracking the Code

DECEMBER 11, 2015

Mastering your pitch to a VC, prospective customers, new hires or partners is part art and part science. It occurred to him that he should try and find one of the drivers going his way and offer to share petrol costs in exchange for use of an empty seat. The roads, too, were full of people driving home, alone in their car.

San Francisco 48

San Francisco Churn Rate Silicon Valley Engineer 48

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

The software was sold based on installation cost running on local servers for enterprises—which was very, very expensive. If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. Estimating Realistic Startup Costs. The business model.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

Here the key is for your free customers to get value from the site that is greater than the costs they perceive by the fact that youre selling access to them. At a high level, anything that drives virality should be free. To take your specific example about virality - why do we want to have more users sign up?

San Francisco 148

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 11, 2009

Those apps are generating even more page views, making it quite affordable to buy application installs (which is a cost-per-action ad that requires the user to install the app before the action is considered complete). These cost-per-install ads are a reasonable way to jumpstart traffic to a new app, which is what theyve been used for so far.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Social Network Lean Continuous Deployment 68

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Lean Case provides standard business models & metrics, so you can apply a standard approach to business planning, modeling, and profitability tracking. Capital has built a free online tool for founders to calculate their cost of capital. Lighter Capital, a Revenue Based Investing VC, offers a Cost of Capital Calculator.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

In a previous post , I covered the three main drivers of growth: Paid, Sticky, and Viral. 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).

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Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Engagement loops: beyond viral Theres a great and growing corpus of writing about viral loops, the step-by-step optimizations you can use to encourage maximum growth of online products by having customers invite each other to join. This is essentially a version of the viral loop.

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Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 140

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. Even if you recruit in lower-cost areas and look for more junior folks, you’re looking at $150K each, fully loaded. For that year, the metrics look amazing. I Will Teach You to Be Rich. Leads are up.

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Conversion Technical Review Channel Engineer 133

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

” April, 2012 – Andrew Chen writes Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing , which goes viral (2.4K September, 2012 – Andrew Chen, who currently does growth at Uber , writes You don’t need a growth hacker , which encourages companies to really consider whether they have product-market fit before hiring a growth hacker.

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Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48