Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Why vanity metrics are dangerous In a previous post, I defined two kinds of metrics: vanity metrics and actionable metrics. In this post, Id like to talk about the perils of vanity metrics. My personal favorite vanity metrics is "hits."

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 24, 2017

One characteristic remains: the products subscription businesses can provide, ranging from magazine subscriptions to literally anything, can appear on a customer’s doorstep every day, week, month or year. Subscription business brings recurring revenue. The term itself sounds confusing, so should I even bother?

Churn Rate 149

Churn Rate eCommerce Business Model Bootstrapping 149

Up and Running

DECEMBER 9, 2014

Maybe you are wondering which metrics to track, or whether or not you should take out a loan for your business. If so, stick around—in this webinar, we featured a panel of experts to answer questions about funding your small business. Poll question number one, we’ll have four of these today during the webinar.

Small Business 95

Small Business Finance Forecast Metrics 95

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 19, 2022

I need to look after our personnel because they look after our customers. Although our in-person services were put on hold, our eCommerce products, including virtual services tripled in revenue. When the pandemic struck, it diminished the purchasing power of our original customer base, resulting in a drop in our monthly sales.

Entrepreneur 116

Entrepreneur Metrics Technical Review North America 116

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 7, 2022

Some make big mistakes, such as Webvan expanding too fast with a huge infrastructure, and Pets.com , trying to grow the business with a negative margin, under the mistaken assumption that winning customers is more important than making a profit. Actively listen to customer feedback, and don’t be a one-trick pony.

Startup 335

Startup Social Media Metrics Viral 335

Up and Running

MARCH 11, 2015

Last week, Bplans members had the opportunity to attend our free webinar, “14 Tips on How to Pitch and Get Funded.” Needless to say, the webinar was absolutely packed with great tips on what it takes to pitch your business so that investors take notice. That moves into the customer acquisition strategy.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Software Review Due Diligence Exit Strategy 60

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 24, 2024

It is a quantified metric that focuses on the speed of turning prospects into customers. Accelerating your B2B pipeline is about turning up its velocity so that it zips through stages and transforms prospects into paying customers briskly. The higher the velocity, the more predictable and scalable the revenue becomes.

B2B 126

B2B Forecast Entrepreneur Analytics 126

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 28, 2012

Dell announced years ago that it had earned $3 million in revenue from using Twitter, and other businesses report daily on increases in web traffic up to 800%. They don’t know if they should move to social networks for lead generation, branding, customer loyalty, or for direct marketing and e-commerce.

Social Media 289

Social Media Small Business Media Technical Review 289

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.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 9, 2020

Some make big mistakes, such as Webvan expanding too fast with a huge infrastructure, and Pets.com , trying to grow the business with a negative margin, under the mistaken assumption that winning customers is more important than making a profit. Actively listen to customer feedback, and don’t be a one-trick pony.

Social Media 329

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 329

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 5, 2020

And without a steady, sustainable stream of new customers, cash reserves will dwindle, revenues will dry up, and bankruptcy will inevitably ensue. Without consistent revenue streams, growth is virtually impossible, and a business’ attractiveness to investors quickly diminishes. Leads are the lifeblood of any company.

Customer 90

Customer Lead Generation Early Stage Social Media 90

ConversionXL

MARCH 6, 2019

On Facebook, an ideal customer may log on to see photos of a new nephew, not to check out a 30-second demo of your SaaS product. The strategy, according to Google, improves ad recall (and, undoubtedly, YouTube revenues). LinkedIn video ads: tech specs, targeting, metrics, and cost. LinkedIn video ad metrics.

Video 129

Video B2B Technical Review Campaign 129

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Reid Hoffman

AUGUST 6, 2020

As the Greylock team has learned after decades of partnering with early-stage founders, the best approach is establishing a core set of fundamental questions that can be tailored to each individual company, rather than looking at a rigid set of metrics. WHAT METRICS SHOULD A FOUNDER SHOW TO RAISE A SERIES A FROM A VC FIRM LIKE GREYLOCK?

Technical Review 69

Technical Review Seed Stage Software Review Early Stage 69

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 7, 2022

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is an important metric for any ecommerce business. It tells you how much you need to earn per customer to run a profitable company. Put simply, you need a healthy customer acquisition cost for your business to succeed. Table of contents What is ecommerce customer acquisition cost?

Acquisition 22

Acquisition eCommerce Cost Customer 22

ConversionXL

MAY 19, 2020

If, instead, you’re focused on increasing total leads, marketing qualified leads (MQLs), or sales qualified leads (SQLs) , your efforts should support the Evaluation stage, with content types such as: Gated case studies; Gated whitepapers; Gated lead magnets; Content upgrades; Webinars; Explainer videos. Awareness. Image source ). Ask around.

Differentiation 129

Differentiation Sales Email Metrics 129

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 14, 2009 Business ecology and the four customer currencies Lately, I’ve been rethinking the concept of “business model&# for startups, in favor of something I call “business ecology.&# Let’s begin with the four customer currencies. And this is true outside of games.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

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.

Metrics 55

Metrics Design Entrepreneur Startup 55

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

Women Entrepreneurs Can

AUGUST 8, 2023

Understanding and explaining the marketing funnel becomes crucial for guiding prospects through the various stages of the buyer’s journey, ultimately leading to better conversion rates and increased revenue. The focus is on converting leads into paying customers and ensuring a smooth and seamless buying process.

Marketing 52

Marketing Metrics Lead Generation Social Media 52

Duct Tape Marketing

AUGUST 23, 2023

Marketing was like me, and we bootstrapped this business to 10 million in revenue through building this traction community where we're bringing our ICP, our audience together around their aspiration and their goals. They don't have the best features, but they fall in love with their customers and sell that aspiration. It's commodity.

Community 54

Community Kuwait Cofounder Bootstrapping 54

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 9, 2015

Many blog posts have espoused this as a way to incrementally increase revenue and final conversions, but does tweaking stuff unrelated to purchase actually assist your bigger goals? Micro-conversions are actions a user completes that are either on the path to revenue-generating conversions or not directly related to revenue-generation.

Conversion 48

Conversion Metrics Revenue Matching 48

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 11, 2014

If you like this, go see his Shockwave Innovations blog ) Anyone that has taken an accounting class or learned basic business financials knows the interaction between key elements of a P&L (revenue, cost, expense) and a balance sheet (assets, liabilities, equity). At that point, you’ve recovered the cost to acquire the customer.

Churn Rate 288

Churn Rate .Net Metrics Hosting 288

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 10, 2018

Follow them on Twitter and/or other forms of social media, in order to find out about Q&A webinars they host or to contact them directly. More metrics need to be identified such as product testing, market validation, and/or customer validation in order to show that a market opportunity exists.

Programming 124

Programming Chile B2B B2C 124

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

This provides us more time to develop meaningful relationships with prospects and customers. For our content creation, we use tools such as Canva (graphic design) and GoToStage (webinars platform) to create and share content for prospects to find.”. 3) Raise capital. 6) Due diligence.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

ConversionXL

JUNE 2, 2022

In this article, you’ll learn how to define your ABM strategy so you can target the right accounts and increase your revenue. Account-based marketing is an approach where marketing and sales work together to nurture target accounts and convert or retain customers. This required more product evangelism and customer wins.

Customer 98

Customer Marketing Channel Acquisition 98

Occam's Razor

JUNE 28, 2011

Web Analysts are blessed with an immense amount of data, and an amazing amount of valuable, even sexy, metrics to understand business performance. Yet our heroic efforts to report the aforementioned sexy metrics lead to little business action. Since crappy sounds bad, let's just say you are reporting super lame metrics.

Metrics 126

Metrics Web Analytics Campaign 126

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

WordStream confirmed that seven days was plenty of trial time, and they didn’t need to waste resources chasing customers down a longer funnel. No changes were made to the customer journey, and it had nothing to do with revenue lift. It isn’t about finding quick hacks to boost short-term revenue.

Framework 102

Framework Marketing Acquisition Retention 102

Up and Running

MAY 28, 2015

We’re looking at our lean business planning is about strategy, tactics, concrete specifics including milestones, metrics, tasks and schedule, and essential numbers to run a business, all of which lead to managing cash flow. It has four components, and I’ll talk about each of them in sequence. It is a very difficult proposition.

Lean 60

Lean Business Plan Video Software Review 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said. September 11, 2008 2:06 PM Editor said.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

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. Instead, we try to accelerate with respect to validated learning about customers. There are often counter-intuitive changes in customer behavior that depend on little details.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

Longer customer journeys and drawn-out purchase decisions influenced by multiple touchpoints. The right idea should unite your mission with what your customers want to achieve. The metrics. Vanity metrics are less important. A visual learner, for example, might watch a YouTube video before signing up for a webinar.

Demand 115

Demand Affiliate Audience Leadership 115

Duct Tape Marketing

MAY 18, 2023

14:58] What are some of the metrics that show you’re doing things right? [17:02] So it's smart for them, in my opinion, to use a lead magnet offer or a webinar offer or something like that can move them into that person's email list because that person is an email reader. Your customers. And that's where HubSpot comes in.

ChatGPT 92

ChatGPT Advertising Email Viral 92

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

ConversionXL

JANUARY 31, 2014

Conduct surveys & interviews to understand your customer’s pain points. note: If you’re a startup, you’ll want to use customer development questions for your page to resonate with future traffic). Ask Peep about analytics, and he’ll tell you, “Metrics are there to provide actionable insight. image source.

Analytics 134

Analytics Video Matching Conversion 134

www.clickz.com

JANUARY 7, 2013

Actionable Analysis Analyzing Customer Data Conversion & ROI ROI Marketing Verifying Business Value. Ad Industry Metrics. Webinars Conferences & Expos. To get your 2013 marketing plans on track to increase revenues, here are seven social media tactics based on solid research that you need now. More Categories.

Social Media 86

Social Media Media B2C New York 86

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 2, 2013

Currently, social media is the least used of all customer interaction methods. Dell announced years ago that it had earned $3 million in revenue from using Twitter, and other businesses report daily on increases in web traffic up to 800%. Define relevant metrics and measure. What’s the problem?

Social Media 267

Social Media Media Social Network Viral 267