View from Seed

MARCH 3, 2015

Ellie Mirman was the first marketer hired by the CMO of HubSpot, the Boston-based marketing software startup that IPOed in 2014. It’s also important to match the marketer to the company. EM: My rule of thumb is to look at the length of the sales cycle. Some startups have really long sales cycles.

Marketing 120

Marketing Sales Cycle Startup CTO Hire 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

All your assumptions about customers, sales cycle and most importantly, revenue, burn rate and runway are no longer true. If so, whatever revenue forecast and sales cycle estimates you had are no longer valid. What are the new financial metrics? This math works in a normal market…. The World Turned Upside Down.

Burn Rate 436

Burn Rate Startup Valuation Sales Cycle 436

ConversionXL

JUNE 2, 2022

This shift in focus results in more efficient use of your marketing budget, shorter sales cycles, and a better customer experience. Does your company clearly understand current CAC , LTV, CAC payback period, and other core growth metrics? How do they match up to the competition ? What matters is the individual.

Customer 98

Customer Marketing Channel Acquisition 98

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 18, 2017

A CTO will guide your product strategy, market validation, architectural decisions, process optimization, recruiting, and hiring. They adopt, measure, and manage key product performance metrics. A CTO is in the business of scale, for whatever an organization has as its core metrics.

Fractional CTO 54

Fractional CTO CTO Hire CTO Technical Review 54

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2018

Amazon has hired more people for their Alexa division than Google has for the entire company – it’s not hunch, this is going to be the focus. Hire & fire – tools to do a job. match the brand ethos, congruent with the website. Work hard to define meaningful product metrics – enabler of team success.

Retention 106

Retention Artificial Inteligence Channel Email 106

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Time-to-complete-a-sale is not a bad metric for validated learning at this stage. Perhaps they’ll be able to hire someone especially skilled in the marketing skills needed to find this positioning. And yet, their investors are frustrated. Fantastic post.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

There usually is some other operational metric more readily available out there where you can back into a sales range (square footage of their building, number of employees, sales figures from a key customer, import trade data, etc.). Share a sentence or two of your go-to-market strategy.

Business Plan 124

Business Plan Elevator Pitch Equity Private Equity 124