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BOTH SIDES OF THE TABLE | WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2012 It’s Morning in Venture Capital In an over-funding environment companies are encouraged to eschew revenues in a land grab to acquire eyeballs, clicks, page views or whatever other vanity metrics give VCs the false comfort that they’re sitting on a gold mine. This article originally ran on PEHub. They are frustrated by the past decade of subpar returns for the sector. -
The Origins of Polygraph Facebook Data Mining Analytics What are the right metrics? The problem was that social metrics had not "grown up" to answer basic questions about marketing and the competitive landscape. First a quick thanks to all of you who visited the blog yesterday. Our blog traffic exploded yesterday, which means I'll be writing here frequently. :-). Are we winning? -
10 Concrete Steps to Assure Business Innovation Once a new product is launched, a key metric is the ratio of new product sales to overall sales. Continuous innovation is required to survive in all businesses, beginning with a startup, and increasing in importance as your business matures. Many people have tried to define a process for innovation, but most are too abstract for me. Brands. -
CODE AS CRAFT | TUESDAY, MAY 22, 2012 Blameless PostMortems and a Just Culture Failure cares not about the architecture designs you slave over, the code you write and review, or the alerts and metrics you meticulously pore through. Last week, Owen Thomas wrote a flattering article over at Business Insider on how we handle errors and mistakes at Etsy. So: failure happens. Maybe they should be fired. Seems simple, right? -
SOCAL CTO | MONDAY, MAY 21, 2012 Startup CTO Speaking Many of the factors are not obvious and include building mystery to drive margin, why boring B2B companies often win but are challenging in other ways, how bootstrapping wins, integrating metrics from the start and many other similar lessons. Over the past several years, I've done lots of presentations around a wide variety of topics.
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ACTIVE GARAGE | MONDAY, MAY 21, 2012 Thought Readership #6: The Curse of the Fledgling Author: “Textbook Creep.” bought it only because I was developing a program that covered the metrics of strategic communications and thought it would be especially interesting to my participants to learn about how to measure social media effectiveness. Think back to your days in college or high school. You’re sitting in a lecture hall or classroom. Your mind drifts. -
6 Key Attributes of a Winning Business Culture Communicate your values often, and use values-based performance metrics to gauge your results, measure the level of implementation, leadership development, and succession planning. I’m seeing a renewed appreciation of culture and values in business these days. They drive the market, rather than the other way around. Input = output. -
ARCTICSTARTUP | FRIDAY, MAY 18, 2012 Metrify To Provide Scalable Insights & Actions For Games Metrify got its start around Christmas after Ovaska noticed that Silicon Valley startups very very data driven, but European startups still needed to catch up on their internal metrics. Built on this idea they were going in the startup metrics angle, but ironically after talking to people in different industries they found that U.S. -
DUCT TAPE MARKETING | THURSDAY, MAY 17, 2012 Who Doesn’t Need Great Free Stuff? year of Spring Metrics Analytics. copy of the Ultimate Marketing System from Duct Tape Marketing. year access to Live Plan from Palo Alto Software. year of Nimble CRM. Pro Membership to Marketing Profs. Tickets to Social Media Explore Events. bundle of books, iStockphoto credits and more. O2O Advertising. Networked networking. -
BUSINESS OF SOFTWARE BLOG | WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 2012 Peldi (@balsamiq), Balsamiq at Business of Software 2011: Interview with John Nese of Soda Pop Stop. OK, so what type of metrics do you look at? Giacomo ‘Peldi’ Guilizzoni is the founder and CEO of Balsamiq, makers of Balsamiq Mockups, the instantly-useful, forever-loveable wireframing software. Balsamiq is a tiny, nine-person multi-million dollar multinational, based out of Italy, France, New York and California. a case.” mean…. -
ARCTICSTARTUP | WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 2012 Jukka Hassinen On Why He Joined DealDash The service has been steadily acquiring new users while simultaneously focusing on user retention metrics. Hassinen was brought on board as a guru and CTO to help DealDash scale. Since DealDash’s platform is written in PHP, bringing a seasoned PHP expert like Jukka was an important strategic move for the startup. -
CROWDSPRING BLOG | TUESDAY, MAY 15, 2012 Small Business Spotlight of the Week: AppMonsta AppEverything allows users to identify the top apps in multiple countries, as well as collect social media metrics on popularity and reviews. I was recently blessed with an iPhone and have fallen into the world of apps. Lord knows all of us here at the cS offices love our apps. This week, my app honoree is AppMonsta. Overall, pretty rad. -
GABRIEL WEINBERG | TUESDAY, MAY 15, 2012 Long-tail acquirers for medium exits There might be an exception with the large media companies but the reality of these places is that they a) can't pay and b) have become a lot more sophisticated about understanding valuation metrics (in some cases being more sophisticated than your typical VC). In a comment @antrod wrote the following. Update: insightful comments on HN. - Smart Bear Live 4: Nick from PinfoB.com at AZ Disruptors
It’s just vanity metrics but they want it. We’re back in gear with the podcast! We’ll be more regular now. Here’s the deets if you’re unfamiliar with how this works. Audio attached here, downloadable on iTunes or below, and transcript below. Nick: The name of the company is PinfoB.com. Nick: Right. Right. Right? -
READWRITESTART | MONDAY, MAY 14, 2012 Stop Flying Blind: Use Big Data to Benchmark Your Startup But startups that track customer metrics have 400% more user growth. We have a number of companies that have gone through the process and tell us they used our product and realized they were falling behind on this or that metric and were able to fix those things and adjust accordingly. Most startups fail. Big Data for Small Companies. -
STEVE BLANK | MONDAY, MAY 14, 2012 9 Deadliest Start-up Sins Financial progress is tracked using metrics like income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow. The problem is, none of these metrics are very useful because they don’t track progress against your start-up’s only goal: to find a repeatable and scalable business model. . Assuming you know what the customer wants. -
BLOG.BITLY.COM | SUNDAY, MAY 13, 2012 When to Post on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler for Maximum Effect We track metrics like the main type of content being shared on a network, the geographic locations of the people sharing and viewing the content, and how the popularity of the network has risen and fallen compared to other networks. bitly blog. back to bitly. May 8, 2012. Time Is On Your Side. hours ? Recently we?ve Twitter. Facebook. Tumblr. -
WWW.LANCEGLASSER.COM | SUNDAY, MAY 13, 2012 What does a CTO do? Metrics for cyclical businesses. Business Essays, Blogs, and Musings. Lance A. Glasser. Topics. Finance and budgeting. Model for Return on Engineering Expenses. Growth, Profitability, and the Stock Price. Let the Games Begin! Stock buybacks. Investing. The Year of the Black Swan. Definitions of common financial terms. Product development. -
Daddy, What Does a Chief Technology Officer Do? Inside the development organization, this Director attends to staffing, training, workload and productivity metrics, budget, and scheduling. On the Use, and Misuse, of Software Test Metrics. skip to main | skip to sidebar. Dont Be So Analytical!!! Welcome! Enjoy this eclectic collection of essays, recipes, and fictions -. How might it? -
DUCT TAPE MARKETING | FRIDAY, MAY 11, 2012 Engaging Your Macro Metric As a True Measure of Success The trick is to set all the measurement and analysis aside for a bit and determine your own unique and overriding “macro metric” of success. The macro metric is the core measure of “who you are” or “how you want” the brand to be perceived. determined my macro metric years ago and I’ve used it as a guide for a great deal of what we do. -
3 Ways to Build Your Managers' Trust Make certain that it includes specific assignments as well as metrics and milestones, where appropriate. Trust is an essential part of strong leadership. Developing it requires time, patience--and coaching. Do you trust the people who report to you? That is, do you trust your employees to make honest and ethical decisions? Make suggestions. -
Step Away From the Business Plan Customer Development changes almost every aspect of startup behavior, performance, metrics, and, as often as not, success potential. Founders must embark on this process only once the entire team and board understand and agree that it’s interactive, necessary, and worthwhile and that it changes the benchmarks and metrics along the way. -
SEED STAGE CAPITAL | THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2012 A Better Way To Ask For Investor Intros It means that our customer acquisition and engagement metrics tell a great story (ideally, they are up-and-to-the-right), and that our demo is bug-tested and mother approved. Without meaningful customer adoption metrics, you’re likely to be lost amongst the other 1500 startups passing across their screen that week. Let me explain. -
BOTH SIDES OF THE TABLE | THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2012 Marketing Presentation from Blue Glass Conference I’ve been spending time looking at marketing conversion metrics at portfolio companies lately. Do vanity metrics matter? I recently spoke at the Blue Glass conference on the topic of marketing. I’ll write up some thoughts in a blog post format soon. How do brand pages convert relative to the Timeline. hint: remove Bit.ly -
What's Wrong With the Lean Start-up Instead, the thinking goes, start-ups should rely upon "innovation accounting," or more creative metrics. It sounds like straight forward enough advice to build a better business, but the approach has serious flaws. Talk about launching a new venture these days, and chances are someone will likely mention the principles of the lean start-up. -
READWRITESTART | WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 2012 From Founder to Alchemist, Why Titles Aren't Trivial For startups, Kumaran maintains, “mixing up titles or being less hierarchical means the company can set different metrics by which productivity and success are measured. The current technology boom is, on most fronts, quite unlike the dotcom boom of the late 1990s. Many startup entrepreneurs are returning to the creative titles of the 1990s. -
New Social Media Strategy? 5 Questions to Ask First But by keeping up with your metrics, you can change course or make tweaks while you still have money in your marketing budget A fast and focused way to make sure you get the ROI you need. If you are serious about using social media as a weapon in your marketing arsenal, then you need to come up with answers to the following five questions: 1. -
6 Tips to Managing Client Expectations We always suggest creating a scope-of-work document that outlines the program details, budgets and metrics. These tips will help you build longstanding relationships that can withstand the good times as well as the bad. We believe the Super Six will aid in this process: 1. If you don't address the client until you have an issue (i.e., - Be Sure You're Measuring the Right Data
Metrics—the numbers and measurements that help you run your business—are among the most crucial tools business leaders have at their disposal. But like any tool, metrics can be misused, and they often are. The leaders of this company had tons of metrics at their disposal. How do you develop power metrics? -
Toss Out Your Social Media Metrics So, it's not really true that you shouldn't follow the metrics in some cases. Fans, schmans! If you judge your business by its social media numbers your bottom-line may be suffering. It's obvious from the get-go that Shankman's personal brand is based on transparency, generosity, relevancy and humor; he is connected to his audience. Ask them!" -
Become More Nimble: 8 Rules Only Measure What's Relevant Most companies have all sorts of metrics, usually in the mistaken belief that the more you measure, the better decisions you'll make. Unfortunately, when you focus on metrics that don't really matter, you encourage behavior that doesn't matter either. When it comes to measurement, keep it simple. -
READWRITESTART | SUNDAY, MAY 6, 2012 6 Startup Lessons From the Complexity of Cell Phones Since pricing had six different metrics, it could take the better part of an hour to come up with a final price for customers. Back when we first started using PCs, we all wished that they would become as easy to use as a telephone. Well, we got our wish, not because computers got easier to use but because phones are now so darn complicated. -
LAUNCHING TECH VENTURES | SATURDAY, MAY 5, 2012 Entrepreneurs: Test Sequencing and Design Matters More Than You Think Research Focus : Actual user behavior, quantitative business metrics (e.g., by Mike Joslin and Brady Broadbent Today’s entrepreneurs are increasingly using hypothesis-driven lean testing methodologies to launch early, learn fast, and iterate quickly, and as a result an entire industry is rapidly developing around the movement. high to low). -
LAUNCHING TECH VENTURES | SATURDAY, MAY 5, 2012 Children’s Guide to Testing for Product Market Fit Assuming we drive the type of buyers we expect to be visiting our site, one of our most important metrics become conversion rate – how many people who land on our site buy something? Don’t get caught up trying to automate a link between Analytics and some conversion metric! Product Market Fit”. And Voila… 0.7% conversion. So what? -
LAUNCHING TECH VENTURES | SATURDAY, MAY 5, 2012 Building CrowdED: The story of three future product managers and the choices they made along the path to MVP Nevertheless, quantitative metrics were positive: of those involved in the test, 28% contributed content. by Barry Malinowski, John Phillips, and Daniel Heller When the three of us sat down to solve a complicated educational problem with a simple technical solution, we each had different goals. Here is some of what we did and learned. -
LAUNCHING TECH VENTURES | SATURDAY, MAY 5, 2012 Learnings from using customer surveys and expert interviews to build a customer profile once saw a survey that asked people to time themselves performing certain tasks on a website, while simultaneously counting clicks, pages and other metrics. learned a number of important lessons on how to gather effective survey data, many of which seem incredibly simple and obvious. limited amount of free text). -
MARK BIRCH | FRIDAY, MAY 4, 2012 Tech Startups as the Next Small Business Wave In the calculus of VC metrics*however, profitability and creating a sustainable business is not considered a win. Look deeply enough into VC metrics and you might see a Ponzi scheme appear…. Non-tech tech startups seem to be an oxymoron. Yet I am hearing that more and more these days from founders when they describe their startups. -
ARCTICSTARTUP | FRIDAY, MAY 4, 2012 From Brink Of Bankruptcy Towards An IPO - The Evernote Story This hope was based on the metrics the service usage created. He showed some of these metrics on stage in Amsterdam. Evernote is perhaps the single most persistent program I have open on my computer each day. use it almost equally in comparison to Safari, my browser and Sparrow, my mail client. 3AM fan e-mail. The smile graph. -
500 HATS | THURSDAY, MAY 3, 2012 Congrats SlideShare + LinkedIn -- Best Wishes Rashmi, Jon, & Amit :) million people have viewed my presentations and almost 50,000 downloads of my Startup Metric for Pirates and other talks. This is a very special post for me to write, to congratulate some good friends on a job well done. To my surprise, they agreed and we've been hanging out ever since, both as partners and friends. -
How to Road-Test Your Business Model Simply put, does adding $1 in sales and marketing resources generate $2+ of revenue (or users, views, clicks, or whatever the metric may be)? Two steps that can save you precious time and resources in the early days of your start-up. Come back each week for more how-tos from this 608-page guide. Failure will happen. pivot is not a failure. -
ONSTARTUPS | WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 2012 Building It Is Not Enough: 5 Practical Tips On User Acquisition The quickest way to finding your first scalable channel with limited resources is to focus on one at a single time and iterate based on feedback (metrics) just like you would with building product. Being metrics focused is important. The following is a guest post by Brian Balfour , Co-Founder and CMO of Boundless. Don't be fooled. - 6 Timeless Sales Rules From the Experts
Source: Jack Welch One of the champions of so-called Six Sigma metrics, Jack Welch understood that the primary goal any such program needed to be an increase customer satisfaction. These key sales and marketing principles may not be trendy--but they're true. Understand their needs better than any other company." almost spit my tea. -
FELD THOUGHTS | TUESDAY, MAY 1, 2012 SEOMoz TAGFEE and Me Rand Fishkin (The Wizard of Moz) has an incredibly detailed post up titled Moz’s $18 Million Venture Financing: Our Story, Metrics and Future describing the financing process and company history in great depth. Today SEOMoz announced that Foundry Group has led an $18 million financing and I’m joining the board. ”). -
Which is better: Many customers at low price-point or few at high price? Because you get organized around marketing metrics, because your campaigns get optimized, because your landing pages and drip campaigns become stronger, because word of mouth produces sales “for free,” and so forth. The results of a serendipitous live experiment were recently published as guest posts on this blog. Riskier. -
7 Success Maxims from Savvy Business Leaders Metrics must help answer questions such as: Should you increase spending to build new and innovative products? Even though I have seen many business leaders succeed, and many that failed, I still struggle with what really makes the difference. But what does that really mean? But behind the scenes, seven critical success factors emerged. -
ENTREPREMUSINGS | SUNDAY, APRIL 29, 2012 Founder Dating And Other Interesting Links He found that those entrepreneurs with the most diverse friendships scored three times higher on a metric of innovation. I saw this hit the Bootstrap Austin list a week or so ago: Founder Dating. If you want to start a company right now but don’t know how to find the right co-founder, then this site might be for you. -
UP AND RUNNING | FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 2012 Focus on awareness and metrics are keys to success Internet entrepreneurs in the UK need to push managing metrics right to the front of their to-do lists. They need to be relentless in their pursuit of identifying and tracking metrics across all aspects of their business. Most meaningful metrics. This funnel analysis needs to be at the heart of all shopping sites metrics. -
GROWTHOLOGY | THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2012 Entrepreneurship: Economic, Social, Transformational? The metric here must be revenues versus those bullet points above, thus comparing numbers to ineffable values (of course, if revenues were the yardstick, Twitter would fall down the Y axis). I have been a huge fan of the Startup Genome project and the people behind it. Do oil and gas companies and the entire fast food sector qualify? Source. -
READWRITESTART | THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2012 Bullpen Capital's Duncan Davidson on VC Funding and "The Era of Cheap" company can validate its growth metrics, Bullpen believes, in as little as four to six months after its initial funding periods. For a technology startup company to launch an initial product and survive long enough to gauge its success, requires two-orders-of-magnitude less money today than at the start of the previous decade. Number of U.S. -
Define Startup Social Media Goals and Metrics Early But very few are talking about how to measure your results, and the right metrics for optimizing your marketing environment. Jim Sterne, who has written six books on Internet advertising, marketing, and customer service, tackled this complex world of social media metrics in his book titled " Social Media Metrics." -
FRESH INC.: THE STAFF BLOG | WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2012 9 Deadliest Start-up Sins Financial progress is tracked using metrics like income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow. The problem is, none of these metrics are very useful because they don’t track progress against your start-up’s only goal: to find a repeatable and scalable business model. where they can “launch” the product. -
FRESH INC.: THE STAFF BLOG | WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2012 When to Hire: 4 Tips Set Performance Metrics Once the decision to hire additional workers is made you must set performance benchmarks to ensure your now larger workforce is satisfying increased demand for your goods and services. Small businesses often fret over when to hire additional employees. Use this simple formula to automate the decision-making process. -
YOUNGUPSTARTS | TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 2012 Calculating Carbon And Energy On Your Website For A Brighter Planet One of our goals has always been to empower customers with environmental metrics they can use to make greener decisions. Between alternative energy, waste processing and more efficient power distribution systems, the push towards green technology has seen bigger impetus in the past decade than ever before. -
BLOG.EXPENSIFY.COM | TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 2012 CEO Friday: Why we don’t hire.NET programmers Expensify Blog. Expense Reports That Don't Suck. CEO Friday: Why we don’t hire.NET programmers. Update: The end is near, Expensify is hiring a.NET programmer! Learn more… Saturday edit: Wow, quite a response to this. Some additional comments at the end. Sunday edit : Still going! More comments at the end. Thanks ez, whoever you are! -
FRESH INC.: THE STAFF BLOG | TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 2012 Stop Working More Than 40 Hours a Week Believe it or not, his top management reportedly considered this a valid metric. In fact, now that I think about it, that's probably why he had to trot out such an absurd (and, let's face it, evil) metric. You may think you're getting more accomplished by working longer hours. You're probably wrong. to be with her kids. business world. -
Great Entrepreneurs on the Companies They Love Lastly, on virtually all metrics, they've been the industry leaders for decades and they've done so by being a low-price competitor for the consumer. It takes one to know one. So we asked a range of successful entrepreneurs to name the companies they admire most and why. asked a wide range of successful entrepreneurs from a variety of fields. -
GROWTHINK BLOG | MONDAY, APRIL 23, 2012 Is Instagram an Emerging Company? Look for them quantitatively with the key metric of operating cash flow growth. The very high profile sale of Instagram to Facebook for $1 billion after just 13 short months in business (and no revenue) of course has entrepreneurs and investors scrambling to divine lessons and wisdoms for where and how to be and find the next “big thing.” -
GROWTHINK BLOG | SUNDAY, APRIL 22, 2012 How To Sell Your Business By Treating It Like a Product In relation to your business, these features include the Financial Metrics you've achieved and Business Assets you've built. As a business owner, I encourage you to think about your business a little differently. That is, I want you to think about your business as a product. Remember, your business should work for you, not the opposite. -
UP AND RUNNING | FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2012 How to improve your business plan with one simple addition By assumptions, I mean the core underlying metrics that drive the sales forecast and expense budget. We’ve all been there. We have come up with an idea for a new product or service that we think we can sell to our customers. We have written what we think is a bullet-proof business plan. They’re not interested. How could this have happened? -
When It's Time to Throw Out Your Playbook We set explicit objectives and metrics for our new business investments. We then define metrics around those objectives (e.g., and we are prepared to cut off that investment if we do not achieve our metrics. Successfully growing your business requires regular questioning of the key elements of your plan. Don't be satisfied. -
How an Acquisition is Like a Romance Setting some metrics for what you hope to accomplish also helps according to Dietrick. Have some real clear and simple metrics which speak to whether you're successful at [your] mission or not. Kulkarni, also a fan of metrics, stresses they need to be ambitious. Turns out, many of them feel it's a lot like dating. Great! -
Best Advice I Ever Got: Catherine Cook At myYearbook, we have a metrics-driven culture and can quickly assess how a new product or feature is performing. At 15 years old, Catherine Cook co-founded myYearbook, a social network. These are the 3 pieces of advice that kept her sane--and helped make her successful. Good advice is hard to come by. Take the risk, but be sure to track it. -
FRESH INC.: THE STAFF BLOG | WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2012 Remarks: Scott Gerber at a Roundtable Discussion Hosted by the Senate Small Business Committee Requiring young entrepreneurs to meet certain qualifying benchmarks (and ongoing goals and metrics, including revenue and job creation) is a smart, cost-effective way to extend PSLF benefits to the people who need it most: America’s young business leaders who are actively creating new jobs. Student loan debt has surpassed $1 trillion. -
FRESH INC.: THE STAFF BLOG | TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 Why It's So Hard to Get Funded When they get customers, they are told to show engagement metrics. When they show engagement metrics, they are told to run some monetization experiments. When it comes to funding young companies, the investment community is constantly raising the bar. Here's why. They were right. The entrepreneurs I speak to are feeling it every day. -
FRESH INC.: THE STAFF BLOG | TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 4 Ways to Get Out of Panic Mode Establish pertinent metrics and track them religiously Revenue and net income numbers alone are not enough to give you an early warning system for financial trouble. Each company shoul track different metrics, depending on their stage and their industry. It's way too easy to get caught up in the day-to-day craziness of a startup. -
FRESH INC.: THE STAFF BLOG | TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 7 Big Marketing Mistakes Unfortunately, this type of metric tends to disconnect marketing activity from its true purpose, which is to generate qualified sales leads. These goofs can stunt your revenue and growth, and maybe even put you out of business. I've also watched to see which companies grow, and which companies falter and fail. They can't. Which brings us to. -
ONSTARTUPS | MONDAY, APRIL 16, 2012 Don't Make Raising Angel Funding Your Plan B Even if the scenario plays out that short money leads to solid metrics, which then leads to a VC funding the next round, the way this has been pitched, it doesn't feel like there is the basis for a strong partnership. The following is a guest post by Chris Sheehan. Chris is a seed stage VC and angel investor at CommonAngels. -
When It's Better Not to Pivot “That’s the metric we look at most of all.” Customers often have their own ideas about how to build your products. That doesn't mean you should listen to them. It’s a familiar story: You come up with a new idea for a product. Sometimes that’s the right approach, and sometimes not. ” -
DUCT TAPE MARKETING | THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 2012 How and Why to Create Smarter Content To gain full access to this level of personalization you must use a tool such as Google Analytics or Spring Metrics (a client) that can allow you to access publicly available data on your visitors such as IP address and location. Adding the social layer of data allows you to put metrics to that assumption. Starts with analytics. -
SEEING BOTH SIDES | THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 2012 The Bar Has Gotten Higher When they get customers, they are told to show engagement metrics. When they show engagement metrics, they are told to run some monetization experiments. When I first entered the venture capital business 10 years ago after being an entrepereneur, my partners warned me that "my bar" for new investments would get higher over time. -
FRESH INC.: THE STAFF BLOG | WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012 5 Presentation Apps to Try Once synchronized online, slideshows can be shared through email invites, URL links or website embedding, with full back-end metrics revealing which ones resonate most with viewers. Can't find a projector? Forgot to send key files to colleagues? Solve these and other common problems with a few handy apps. -
Today Startups Can Win Customers From Big Business You need a reliable system of metrics to measure your performance here. You can’t succeed in your new startup if you can’t win customers, and the new Internet-empowered customers are tough. They are in control, and they no longer care where or from whom they buy, so here is your chance to win. Your make-or-break moment. Marty Zwilling. -
FRESH INC.: THE STAFF BLOG | TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 2012 How to Make Smarter Decisions on the Fly But cost control and hitting ship dates and meeting other performance metrics is important too. A better process to think through your choices when the stakes are high. Dear Jeff, I run a manufacturing facility. The hardest ongoing decisions I have to make regard the gray areas of quality: To ship, or not to ship? That is the question. Great. -
ARCTICSTARTUP | TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 2012 Nordic Countries Lead World In Global Information Technology Report To measure this impact effectively, we have introduced a new set of impact-oriented metrics this year that assess not just the availability of technology, but also the ways in which economies put that technology to greater use. The Nordic countries rang in high on the list , withs Sweden ranking first, followed by Singapore and Finland. -
AUSTIN STARTUP | MONDAY, APRIL 9, 2012 InfoChimps Adds Dashpot To New Platform Continue reading → Enterprise big data infochimps -
Pull Investors to Your Business Plan With a Summary That’s your metric to see if you have their attention. Modern investors love to first read a two-page summary of your business plan, formatted like a glossy marketing collateral sheet, with text well laid out in columns and sidebars, and a couple of relevant graphics. This one had better grab their attention, or they won’t look further. -
Getting More out of Social Media Engagement can be measured by metrics as disparate as page views, unique visitors, time on site, and referrals, for starters. There are plenty of startups that offer to help your social media efforts. How can you tell if they're worth your time and money? Once upon a time, a company was ‘online’ if it had a basic website. -
VC DEAL LAWYER | SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 2012 Why Start-Up Entrepreneurs Never Hit Their Numbers, and What They Can Do About It Start by doing some research on your industry’s metrics. [guest post] By Frederick J. Beste, III. There is a dichotomy in the world of entrepreneurship which is almost beyond belief: Every start-up entrepreneur believes that he is going to exceed his projections, yet. None of them even reach them. How can this be?! Employee theft? -
ARCTICSTARTUP | FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 2012 The Google Effect On Media Business This week has been a good week for ArcticStartup if you would quantify it over the traditional media metrics - pageviews and visits. Secondly, if search engines like Google validate the quality of earlier content based on current traffic it really pushes metrics for bigger, search-engine-optimised sites higher. It was interesting. -
STARTUPCFO | WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4, 2012 Saas Math: Customer vs. Revenue Churn As I’ve mentioned many times before: churn (the rate at which customers cancel their subscription) is the most important metric for any recurring revenue business. Growing Big Metrics SaaS SaaS MathThis should make sense. The longer a customer keeps paying you, the more valuable that customer is. How many of those did we lose? -
Profiting With Pinterest Take the time needed to create quality boards and link your pins with a service, like LinkTrackr , that tracks metrics, allowing you to monitor clicks and conversion. Who doesn’t love pinning things on Pinterest? It’s highly addictive and it’s predominantly populated by an abundance of women with a mindset to shop. Nobody likes a spammer. -
True Job Security: It's Still Possible Those are BS metrics. If all you are is what you do, you have no job security. Zilch. Here's what really matters. In the past, job security came from working for a company that rewarded employee loyalty. No longer. Today, job security comes from two, and only two, sources: Who you are, and who trusts you. Who Are You? Zilch. Who Trusts You? -
Make Room for the Chief Customer Officer At Voxeo, one of Bowman's first priorities was to develop specific initiatives, along with metrics, for each of the company's key constituent groups: employees, customers, and end users (essentially, the customers of its resellers). Make room at the top of your team: Behind the rise of the chief customer officer. What does a CCO look like? -
17 Game-Changing Health Start-ups For instance, a clinical operations director can use Comprehend to look across all his or her trials, splicing and dicing it by trial phase, therapeutic category, or other operational metric to see how trials are moving along and where bottlenecks may exist. Unfit citizens. Underinformed doctors. Inefficient processes. In the U.S. -
Prepare Your Exit Strategy Now – Just in Case We periodically check qualitative and quantitative metrics against a scorecard or budget to ensure that the business is running according to plan. Here are four things you can do now to increase the value of your business-and give you a smoother transition out when the time is right. Keep the Competitive Advantage. Know Your Potential Buyers. -
STEVE BLANK | THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 2012 Nail the Customer Development Manifesto to the Wall Startup Metrics are Different from Existing Companies. When Bob Dorf and I wrote the Startup Owners Manual we listed a series of Customer Development principles. thought they might be worth enumerating here: A Startup Is a Temporary Organization Designed to Search. for A Repeatable and Scalable Business Model. Not All Startups Are Alike. -
THE STARTUP TOOLKIT | MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2012 Re-think in orders of magnitude Their site was spectacular and metrics were strong. How many sales calls can you make a day? You prep for each one, take notes afterwards. That last one was stressful and the guy yelled at you, so maybe you get a cup of coffee. You’re You’re barely break even, and you’re paying yourself peanuts. That would be a nightmare. -
Turn Your Worst Employee Into a Top Asset Are the right assessments and metrics in place to help predict problems before they take the organization down? You can't save your weakest staffers. But you can use them as an way to upgrade your whole team's performance. You've heard the adage, "Hire the right people, and everything else is easy." What a gift that can be! The list goes on. -
CROWDSPRING BLOG | SUNDAY, MARCH 25, 2012 Lean Marketing Tips: Hyperlocal Marketing Channels QR code marketing has brought outdoor advertising into the 21st century by tying together the ancient art of cave painting with the modern art of website metrics. We write often about marketing strategies and tactics for small business and startups. Today I want to focus on tactics with a local flavor. Yellow pages. Daily deals. Mobile. -
Made in USA (Again): Why Manufacturing Is Coming Home Supply chain managers, who are incentivized to find the cheapest way to manufacture, use a calculation called price variance--the standard accounting metric that reveals the cost-effectiveness of production--to inform their decisions. Mismanaged supply chain decisions sent manufacturing overseas. But the industry has changed direction. -
7 Smart Tricks for Using Google Analytics It's time once again to focus on metrics: Better analysis and measurement tools can help you get more out of your digital marketing. While these metrics are important, there are other key pieces of information you can glean if you know what’s available and where to find it. Here are a few items you are probably missing. Language. -
Maybe = A Culture of Caution & No Innovation Creative Problem Solving (CPS) Idea Management Innovation Leadership CEO experimentation failure ideas innovation culture assessment learning Marjorie Scardino Maybe metrics No Pearson possibilities reward risk YesI had an interesting conversation recently about innovation culture. ” The answer is telling. Morale can take a beating. -
FRESH INC.: THE STAFF BLOG | THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2012 6 Traits of Great Leaders They don’t play Monday morning quarterback: Rather, they ask the tough questions up front, scope out both the upside and the risks; and then make a decision with two points in mind: Who is responsible for overseeing it What are the metrics of success or failure. The best entrepreneurs are passionate, innovative, demanding and caring. -
VENTUREWOODS | THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2012 Missing Link - the HR plan How difficult is it to give one week of think time to top management and put together clearly aligned operating plans that include people plan (numbers, roles, goals, metrics, reports, rythms, huddles, key programs, training runs, content and cheer)? Cheers. Feel free to comment here or write to me at prashant@plugHR.com. -
FRESH INC.: THE STAFF BLOG | THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2012 4 Big Ideas to Boost Productivity I'd advocate applying the traditional R&D investment success metric to your training program: 20% of each year's revenue should come from employee's application of skills they've gained from training they've received in the last two years. You should spend up to the level where you achieve that 20% metric. Got that? -
FRESH INC.: THE STAFF BLOG | THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2012 Google’s Search Changes: Should You Care? with an eye on your website and ad metrics and the number of your SEO service provider. Google's adding more semantic features to its search engine. Here's a reality check on what it might mean for your business. Google is in the middle of a long-term search engine rework that left some of the press positively breathless. Just in case -
FRESH INC.: THE STAFF BLOG | THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2012 5 New Apps & Tech Tools to Try Reviewers can even segment results by gender, operating system, Web browser, and other metrics Dozens of new gadgets and Web services promise to boost your business. Here are five that just might deliver. Dozens of new apps, gadgets, and online services are vying for your attention. Plans start at $39.95/month. YouEye Need website testers? - What You Think You Know About Business Planning Can Hurt Your Business
It sets objectives that can be measured, and then, for the monthly meetings, metrics are tracked and reviewed. (Note: I posted this yesterday as a guest post on Howard Lewinter’s Talk Business With Howard blog, part of getting ready for a radio chat with Howard on Blogtalkradio tomorrow morning. It starts at 8 am Pacific time. -
ARCTICSTARTUP | TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 2012 Muxlim Debate A Great Reminder - Startups Far From Mainstream This meant that while we tried to communicate and explain all the intricate details of our metrics, etc. The main purpose of this metric was to show that the Muxlim ad network amounts to approx. Also as an example, Unanimis in the UK uses a similar metric: [link]. We've covered Muxlim in the past as well. Below are his answers. -
FRESH INC.: THE STAFF BLOG | TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 2012 Take Control of Your Outsourcing Now Build in performance metrics to you arrangement. Concentrate on the key performance factors when developing your performance metrics. Here's how to maintain performance even when you don't have complete control. Many of us in start-ups or turnarounds have a strong desire for control. Here are some steps that can really help. | |