SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 8, 2009

A post by Fred Wilson pointed me to Dave McClure's Startup Metrics presentation. Normally, when I am talking to the founder of any startup trying to figure out what they need to do, one of the things I always try to do is understand their business at its core. Define what you need from a metrics and reporting standpoint.

Metrics 225

Metrics Startup Retention Acquisition 225

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. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

What metrics do we use to see if we learned enough in Customer Discovery ? I gave my boilerplate answer, “I’m a product guy and I tend to invest and look at deals that have measurable revenue metrics. Dave McClure has some great metrics…” It was an honest but vaguely unsatisfying answer.

Customer Development 228

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 228

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 26, 2018

As an advisor to many new venture founders, I often hear their frustration at being told by investors “I love your idea, but come back when you have more traction.” The intent is to indicate that founder passion is not a substitute for real customers buying the product. Document and initiate a multi-faceted marketing plan.

Angel Investor 147

Angel Investor Distribution Bootstrapping Viral 147

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

Stage 1: Target the right metrics for an effective long game. Metrics for your demand generation funnel. Your number one metric for any marketing initiative should be revenue. Build a picture over time that tells you which metrics lead to revenue versus those that just make you feel good (i.e. This uncovers more themes).

Demand 124

Demand B2B Distribution Channel 124

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Putting together a financial model and having the founders understand the interrelationships of the variables that can make or break a business is a worthwhile exercise. As a founder you are testing a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? What’s the distribution channel?

Balance Sheet 304

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 304

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

It provides a basic introduction to analytics as they apply to Lean Startup, including sections on what metrics to use and how to interpret them. For instance, Ben lists out the worst of the “vanity metrics,” a term that describes appealing but meaningless or misleading numbers. Alistair: There are plenty. Consider a restaurant.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Brandanew

JUNE 15, 2015

Storytelling as a Content Marketing technique that was introduced in 2012 by the co-founder of Contently, Shane Snow. It is a marketing technique developed by startups using creativity, analytical thinking and social metrics to sell products and gain exposure. Viral marketing. Storytelling. Snackable content. Owned media.

Viral 100

Viral Marketing Social Media SEO 100

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

If its part of a viral loop, its probably trying to get them to invite more friends (on average). Focus on the output metrics of that part of the product, and you make the problem a lot more clear. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. These founders have not managed, to borrow a phrase from Steve Blank , to create a scalable and repeatable sales process.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 13, 2018

by Rachel Strella, founder of Strella Social Media. Content doesn’t have to “go viral” to benefit your business. Invest in producing and distributing content; it pays off! Rachel Strella is the founder of Strella Social Media , a social media management company serving dozens of clients nationally. It’s personal, too.

Social Media 113

Social Media Sales Cycle Media Audience 113

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

vs. sustainable: Compare this to the renewable strategies, like viral marketing, SEO, widgets, and ads, which can scale into 10s of millions of users but are primarily centered around tough, non-user centric work. Problem is, you inevitably become yesterday’s old news. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

This is what our hiring landscape looked like over the past year: Pre-2015, we hired three founders: 1x hustler in charge of strategic growth hacking. This is when metrics come into play. There are a number of other variables here like virality (the chances of a user referring another user), but I don’t want to overcomplicate things.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

View from Seed

JUNE 30, 2015

The cliff notes behind the idea is that what used to be considered a series A is now actually a seed round because… Capital efficiency allows founders to get further with less. Very experienced founders and founders working on really audacious companies can get funded earlier. Institutional seed rounds are getting bigger.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Syndicate Syndication Dilution 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, September 18, 2008 How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone I have had the opportunity to meet a lot of iPhone-related companies lately. There are other models, in other distribution channels. On Facebook, viral distribution has proved decisive. I havent found any yet.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 29, 2020

There has never been a viral outbreak of such magnitude before. Eric Ries, the founder of theleanstartup.com , states that the lean startup philosophy“provides a scientific approach to creating and managing startups and get the desired product to customers’ hands faster.”. Year-on-year growth metrics in unique site traffic is 7.8

Bootstrapping 85

Bootstrapping Global Startup Hungary 85

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 28, 2015

Common failures I see along these lines include: solutions that are "nice to have" but don't address painful problems; a business model that lacks a means for bringing in revenue; and a founder who has turned a blind eye toward his or her competitors. Product distribution or service delivery. An innovative marketing plan.

Exit Strategy 120

Exit Strategy Technical Review Distribution Viral 120

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

“If you can fix a problem for someone and do it better, quicker, and/or cheaper than your competitor, you’re off to a good start.” – Gabriel Kuperman, founder and CEO of CuePin. We created UpKeep to fill this void—a cloud-based solution that was affordable for any size business.” – Ryan Chan, founder of UpKeep.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Tim Friedman, Founder, PE Stack , said, “If I could offer one piece of advice to today’s managers, it would be to take the time to understand the demands of the modern institutional LP. Russell Rothstein, Founder and CEO, IT Central Station , a product review site, said, “We see VCs on our site very often. 3) Raise capital.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

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., In other words, there are universal metrics that smart investors require to make investing decisions. You get the idea.

San Francisco 48

San Francisco Churn Rate Silicon Valley Engineer 48

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, October 7, 2008 The App Store after the gold rush I wrote earlier about the issue of distribution advantage on the iPhone. I think its helpful to think about two kinds of competition for distribution: acquisition competition and retention competition. So what can you do? I am a little curious here.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

ConversionXL

MAY 29, 2019

For the SaaS 250, the strongest correlation (0.87) between subscribers and any other key metric (videos, views, channel age) was with the quantity of videos published. Ultimately, the primary success metric for a YouTube channel is subscribers, not views. Briggs narrows the long list down to one key metric: watch time.

Channel 106

Channel Video Audience Software Review 106

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

I had just enough data to optimize the main funnel, found a bunch of wins, then hit a hard wall and needed to rebuild the entire distribution strategy from scratch to keep growing. Otherwise, consider using those marketing dollars to scale up your core distribution channel first. But the exceptions are rare and tend to be founders.

Conversion 133

Conversion Technical Review Channel Engineer 133

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

What most founders don’t realize is: Every stage of a startup requires a different set of metrics and milestones and founder skills. Knowing these will help a founder position her pitch to get investors’ attention. Founders need to keep their eye on the prize — not just the next funding round. Business Model.

Cofounder 431

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 431

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 21, 2013

The book has been a year in the making, and authors Ben Yoskovitz and Alistair Croll —themselves successful founders with several exits under their belts—spent much of that time speaking with founders, investors, and analysts to understand a really basic, but seldom-asked, question: What's normal? to 3% a month.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Metrics Churn Rate 167

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

Duct Tape Marketing

MARCH 30, 2023

She is the founder and CEO of JAM a multi-million dollar global business that has connected millions of people through play since its inception as one of the largest adult recreational sports leagues in the world. In a recent episode, they talked with Kevin Perry about how he goes viral on every single platform.

Retention 72

Retention Canada Channel Pay to Play 72

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

MAY 11, 2020

There's a good enough vaccine to get the virality rate below one. I just saw a friend of mine who's a finance person temporarily pause his job and volunteer to be the CFO or investor, whatever investor relations person for a startup was trying to work on a cure so that the founders could have more time to do the science.

Silicon Valley 68

Silicon Valley Technical Review Government .Net 68

ConversionXL

MARCH 16, 2016

Net Promoter Score is a customer loyalty metric developed by (and a trademark of) Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company, and Satmetrix. Instead of distributing bulky customer satisfaction surveys, where even your managers don’t know what to do with the results, you have only one question, one metric to deal with. Image Source.

.Net 48

.Net Metrics Retention Aggregator 48