Entrepreneur, Metrics, Product Development and Viral

8 Strategies To Drive Your Startup To Profitability

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 7, 2022

Too many entrepreneurs don’t know what to do at this point, largely accounting for a disappointing 50 percent of startups that fail in the first five years, according to InvoiceTracker. Others do far too little, assuming the viral effect and word-of-mouth will soon kick in, and sales will suddenly grow exponentially.

Startup

Startup Social Media Metrics Viral

[Review] The Lean Startup

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Enter “ The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses “, a New York Times bestseller by founder of IMVU (creator of 3D avatars) Eric Ries. Validated learning should be the goal of all entrepreneurs. This reduces guesswork, time, money and effort.

Lean

Lean Technical Review North America Startup

Lessons Learned: The three drivers of growth for your business.

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

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire

8 Keys To Scaling The Business After Initial Traction

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 9, 2020

Too many entrepreneurs don’t know what to do at this point, largely accounting for that disappointing 50 percent of startups that fail in the first five years, according to Gallup. Others do far too little, assuming the viral effect and word-of-mouth will soon kick in, and sales will suddenly grow exponentially.

Social Media

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel

8 Initiatives To Increase Your Business Growth Curve

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 29, 2016

Too many entrepreneurs don’t know what to do at this point, largely accounting for that disappointing 50 percent of startups that fail in the first five years, according to Gallup. Others do far too little, assuming the viral effect and word-of-mouth will soon kick in, and sales will suddenly grow exponentially.

Social Media

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel

Lessons Learned: The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time

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. You just constantly test little micro-changes and follow a hill-climbing algorithm to build your product.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. I have counseled innumerable entrepreneurs to change their focus to revenue, and many companies who refuse this advice get themselves into trouble by running out of iterations. And what of the product development team?

Customer

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick

Andrew Chen: Growing renewable audiences

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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Audience

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean

Lean Analytics: The Best Numbers for Non-Tech Companies

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

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics

Lessons Learned: Using AdWords to assess demand for your new.

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

I too would be concerned about false negatives, but perhaps this strategy could be integrated into a broader market research strategy that included user engagement, viral marketing, etc which would all be quantifiable under the Google analytics. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Demand

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

How to Use Growth Hacking to Increase Revenue 20x in Just 12 Months

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

1x hacker in charge of product/development. 1x hipster working with both product and growth. 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. Successful and failed experiments.

Revenue

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign

This Week in VC – Scott Painter, CEO of Zag & TrueCar

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

He didn’t tell it in the video but, ever the entrepreneur, Scott started a business to take couples up on a “mile high club&# flight on airplanes as a way of getting all of his miles logged to get his next class of airplane license that required a certain number of hours logged. It’s part of what makes him so likable.

San Francisco

San Francisco Venture Capital Analytics Government

Lessons Learned: The metrics and levers of engagement.

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The metrics and levers of engagement, presentation on Engagement Loops for Facebook Developer Garage SF Ill be presenting a talk at the Facebook Developer Garage SF Wednesday evening. This is a common problem that results from viral-loop optimization.

Metrics

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral

Crisis versus Opportunity: 6 Ways to Bootstrap a Startup in a Post-COVID-19 World While Navigating the New Normal

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. Many experts in this field have developed tried and trusted methods and mechanisms to succeed at an entrepreneurial venture. Product development also occurs in small iterations or changes.

Bootstrapping

Bootstrapping Global Startup Hungary

The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Software Company

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

To give you a better idea of what entrepreneurs in this industry are thinking about during each phase of the startup process, I interviewed SaaS entrepreneurs from all over the world, including our own COO Noah Parsons. Noah has been a key figure in the making of LivePlan, our own SaaS product. Keep core development in-house.

Software Review

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast

Lessons Learned: Three freemium strategies

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

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? Is it that they act as free advertising for our premium product? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

Business ecology and the four customer currencies

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).

Customer

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean

Lessons Learned: CPI > CPC

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 11, 2009

If you ask an expert in Facebook apps to come help build yours, youll usually hear the same advice: build your app for virality. Thats sensible advice; most people who have made a business on Facebook rely on the viral driver of growth. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco

San Francisco Social Network Lean Continuous Deployment

Engagement loops: beyond viral

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.

Viral

Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Common Growth Hacking Myths (and How Growth Actually Works)

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

” April, 2012 – Andrew Chen writes Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing , which goes viral (2.4K In the article, Andrew describes growth hackers as a cross between marketers and coders. . “Growth hackers have a passion for tracking and moving a metric. 6 Growth Hack Techniques You Can Try Today by Entrepreneur.

Retention

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion

Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem)

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. In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. For example, I’m a big believer in split-testing.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design

7 lessons we learned from the bankruptcy of Whatser

The Next Web

AUGUST 26, 2012

We are currently in the middle of a restart and would like to share our seven lessons learned in the hopes that other entrepreneurs can benefit from our experiences and increase their chances for success. The metrics that matter the most are returning customers (user retention), turnover per customer and viral growth (k-factor).

Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy Technical Review Intellectual Property Due Diligence

Lessons Learned: The App Store after the gold rush

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral. If your app has strong word-of-mouth or viral components, your retention drives new acquisition, and its not so important to have good placement in the store. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM

Innovation inside the box

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

Every experiment has to be evaluated based on a single standard report of 5-10 (no more) key metrics. Any team that creates an experiment must monitor the metrics and customer reactions (support calls, forum threads, etc) while the experiment is in-progress, and abort if something catastrophic happens. It promotes rapid iteration.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment

How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

On Facebook, viral distribution has proved decisive. Those companies who have learned to build apps that optimize the viral loop dominate in every category where they compete. So far, I dont see any apps that have much in the way of viral distribution. We're leading the charge in enabling viral distribution for iPhone apps.

Distribution

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: Q&A with an actual reader

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Turns out, what customers really meant was "let me use IMVU with somebody I dont know" so they could get a feel for the social features of the product without incurring the social risk of recommending it to their friend. Luckily, the metrics helped us figure out the difference. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

Lessons Learned: Don't launch

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Figuring this out takes time, and few entrepreneurs have the patience to wait it out, because the business plan does such a good job of explaining what customers are going to think. If the product needs to be tweaked just a little bit in order to convert users into customers, you want to figure that out before the launch.

San Francisco

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage

The Superbowl ad test

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 13, 2010 The Superbowl ad test I am a firm believer in the danger of vanity metrics , numbers that give the illusion of progress but often mask the true relationship between cause and effect. Vanity metrics are generally bigger. Vanity metrics. The solution? Is that really news?

San Francisco

San Francisco Metrics Lean PR

Lessons Learned: Continuous integration step-by-step

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

Software Review

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: The hacker's lament

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Sometimes, a great hacker has the potential to grow into the CTO of a company, and in those cases all you need is an outside mentor who can work with them to develop those skills. At the end of the day, the product development team of a startup (large or small) is a service organization. Does this sound familiar?

Software Review

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco

Assessing fit with the Wisdom of Crowds

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part three

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 6, 2008

I see that as an important producer of "energy" and can push up productivity. Perhaps you should think of putting these posts, when they have grown, together into an ebook, a manifesto for growing entrepreneurs? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment

90 Things I've Learned From Founding 4 Technology Companies

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

It has been awesome, flattering, and humbling to see that post went viral and has been seen by so many thousands of people — mainly aspiring entrepreneurs — and has been translated into many languages. I write this stuff in hope that it helps other entrepreneurs. Jason is a product guy. But, change the world.

Technical Review

Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation

Lessons Learned: Getting started with split-testing

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

StartUpRoar

8 Strategies To Drive Your Startup To Profitability

[Review] The Lean Startup

Trending Sources

Lessons Learned: The three drivers of growth for your business.

8 Keys To Scaling The Business After Initial Traction

8 Initiatives To Increase Your Business Growth Curve

Lessons Learned: The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time

Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers

Andrew Chen: Growing renewable audiences

Lean Analytics: The Best Numbers for Non-Tech Companies

Lessons Learned: Using AdWords to assess demand for your new.

How to Use Growth Hacking to Increase Revenue 20x in Just 12 Months

This Week in VC – Scott Painter, CEO of Zag & TrueCar

Lessons Learned: The metrics and levers of engagement.

Crisis versus Opportunity: 6 Ways to Bootstrap a Startup in a Post-COVID-19 World While Navigating the New Normal

The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Software Company

Lessons Learned: Three freemium strategies

Business ecology and the four customer currencies

Lessons Learned: CPI > CPC

Engagement loops: beyond viral

Common Growth Hacking Myths (and How Growth Actually Works)

Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem)

7 lessons we learned from the bankruptcy of Whatser

Lessons Learned: The App Store after the gold rush

Innovation inside the box

How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone

Lessons Learned: Q&A with an actual reader

Lessons Learned: Don't launch

The Superbowl ad test

Lessons Learned: Continuous integration step-by-step

Lessons Learned: The hacker's lament

Assessing fit with the Wisdom of Crowds

The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part three

90 Things I've Learned From Founding 4 Technology Companies

Lessons Learned: Getting started with split-testing

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