YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

by Lu Zhang, founder and managing partner of Fusion Fund. On the other hand, if you arrive at a VC pitch without a comprehensive understanding of the industry you’re hoping to compete in, or without a clear path to profitability or a thoughtful product-development road map, you’ll likely leave empty-handed.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2016

Investors and partners now look only for a framework of your business essentials, within the context of your opportunity, solution, and financials. Minimum viable products (MVPs) are recommended for validating the market, with iterative enhancement to quickly meet market feedback. Just make sure you can fill in all the details.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Groups Social Media 120

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 9, 2020

Continually add new marketing and distribution partners. There is no magic lever for growth, so several initiatives are required, with metrics to assess value returned. Resist the urge to delegate accounting decisions, under the assumption that incoming revenue takes the pressure off. Real growth always requires real marketing.

Social Media 329

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 329

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 24, 2019

When you’re trying to grow your subscription business, you need to understand the key metrics that drive your growth. While you always want to focus on improving your product or service to help retain customers, there are a few things you can do to help reduce churn that aren’t related to product development and building out new features.

Revenue 73

Revenue Churn Rate Analytics Metrics 73

The Equity Kicker

JANUARY 10, 2020

See below for a good description of what we like to see in deals at Forward Partners and what makes us different from other VCs. An interview with Nic Brisbourne, Forward Partners. They find a niche in the market where they can grow some revenues and then they raise some more money. And what are the metrics for customer love?

Partner 68

Partner Early Stage Portfolio Metrics 68

Genuine VC

MARCH 24, 2014

A couple years ago, my partner Lee penned a blog post about the milestone benchmarks for startups raising a Series A round of financing. The strategy here is to foster product development and marketing which creates overall (semi-)organic user momentum. Generate Real Revenue.

Seed Capital 212

Seed Capital Metrics Cofounder Revenue 212

Up and Running

JULY 27, 2016

When you’re trying to grow your subscription business, you need to understand the key metrics that drive your growth. While you always want to focus on improving your product or service to help retain customers, there are a few things you can do to help reduce churn that aren’t related to product development and building out new features.

Revenue 60

Revenue Churn Rate Metrics Analytics 60

View from Seed

OCTOBER 15, 2014

This is pulled from NextView’s board deck resource, which was compiled using a combination of real startup board decks and input from NextView’s founding partners: Rob Go , David Beisel , and Lee Hower. A seed-stage mobile startup’s housekeeping section might look something like this: Section 3: Core Metrics.

Seed Stage 331

Seed Stage Cap Table Metrics Burn Rate 331

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And worse, even if someone does manage to start something new, our management structure has so many financial, legal and HR hurdles that every initiative needs to match our existing business financial metrics, processes and procedures. They’ve learned the best distribution channel to get the product from their company to the customer.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 29, 2016

Continually add new marketing and distribution partners. There is no magic lever for growth, so several initiatives are required, with metrics to assess value returned. Resist the urge to delegate accounting decisions, under the assumption that incoming revenue takes the pressure off. Real growth always requires real marketing.

Social Media 120

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 120

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

Then they increased their revenue from $2M to $6M in six months. In this article, you’ll learn how to build a demand generation funnel that fuels the pipeline, shortens the sale cycle, and generates revenue. Stage 1: Target the right metrics for an effective long game. Metrics for your demand generation funnel.

Demand 124

Demand B2B Distribution Channel 124

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 14, 2013

Starting on the evening of December 11 and running through December 13—for VIP pass holders only—we’re partnering with UP Global’s Startup Weekend to offer a two-day Lean Startup immersion program , specially designed to teach you how to put Lean Startup theory directly into practice.

Continuous Deployment 162

Continuous Deployment Norway Lean Analytics 162

ConversionXL

JANUARY 24, 2017

Everyone has railed against these practices ( including us , many times), but it still seems that much of the industry is focused on short term metrics and surface level changes. With the overlapping areas of marketing or product with optimization, it helps to be skillful at one of the former areas. How do you do that?

Conversion 48

Conversion Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Analytics 48

Steve Blank

JANUARY 10, 2011

The VP of an operating division had run into trouble in product development; the product was late and getting later. The revenue plan had the new product baked into the numbers and it was clear that this division General Manager was going to crater his forecast (happens all the time, nothing new here.)

Forecast 268

Forecast Agile Revenue Founder 268

Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

More importantly, we’d witnessed Customer Development’s massive success at another local startup. We bought Steve’s book , started product development and began reaching out to customers ins search of our first earlyvangelists. Focus on revenue from day one. It’s the only reliable metric for success.

Customer Development 231

Customer Development Developer Customer California 231

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. List key partners and resources you will need, and then list your core team as well as their roles. If you want a slice of the pie, there isn’t a better time to get involved.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 29, 2020

It means relying on your own savings and revenue to operate and expand.”. Partner with a professional business services company. It is an agile principle, with an iterative method that gets a product or service to market without spending months or years in product development without consumer approval or disapproval.

Bootstrapping 85

Bootstrapping Global Startup Hungary 85

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 12, 2022

Just don’t invest the time in creating a lengthy version of your business plan with overly detailed metrics and milestones for the next five-plus years. It’s also the easiest to update and share with business partners. Sorry if that offends some people, but it’s true. However, there is still real value in looking at the long term.

Business Plan 83

Business Plan Lean Forecast Exit Strategy 83

Software By Rob

APRIL 2, 2014

With SaaS businesses the majority of revenue will be through monthly, quarterly or annual billing recurring payment plans. This is a common issue and the best mitigation strategy is to source an affordable, reliable, independent third party to work on the product for 3-6 months before the sale. Choose your payment processor carefully.

Affiliate 67

Affiliate Valuation Reputation Sales 67

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

It should go without saying that this post is not advice, nor is it recommendation of what you should do, it’s simply my observation of how companies using Customer Development positioned themselves to successfully raise money from venture investors. Did the partner have a good or bad day, etc. Is there a profitable business model?

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

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 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Software By Rob

APRIL 2, 2014

With SaaS businesses the majority of revenue will be through monthly, quarterly or annual billing recurring payment plans. This is a common issue and the best mitigation strategy is to source an affordable, reliable, independent third party to work on the product for 3-6 months before the sale. Choose your payment processor carefully.

Affiliate 27

Affiliate Valuation Reputation Sales 27

Tim Keane

JUNE 13, 2006

In general, the first part of the discussion runs to whether or not your numbers are tied to metrics with an underlying set of assumptions, or if they are simply a function of a mathematically applied growth rate. In our first startup, my partners and I built a customer acquisition model and tested it. What can possibly go wrong; 3.

Wisconsin 60

Wisconsin Entrepreneur Startup Angel Investor 60

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 27, 2022

Are there ways that you’ve seen local businesses use this in a way that might effectively drive revenue? [19:23] And I think that's why we have a large ecosystem of partners that, that help you. One is, you know, potentially revenue. One of our, our partners is, is a young woman called DEHA Kennedy.

Community 67

Community New York Small Business New York City 67

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

Written By Dan Martell on February 2nd, 2012 | Category: Hiring LeanStartup Marketing Metrics Startup Life | 6 Comments. What is the best advice you can give for finding a business partner? Don’t quickly choose any business partner. Building Product 2. Building Metrics / Usage Reports / KPI 3. Why do I do it?

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

BeyondVC

JANUARY 2, 2006

I remember when I first got into this business over 10 years ago and one of my partners told me that the secret to success is about the people, not about the technology. As far as bonuses are concerned, it is really important to have clearly defined goals and metrics to measure performance and subsequently pay out cash.

Management 60

Management Equity Forecast Salary 60

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 21, 2013

If you're working on the Sticky Engine of Growth , you're focused on very different metrics from those that you care about in the Viral Engine of Growth. Similarly, a two-sided marketplace cares about different things from a traditional e-commerce product. Finding your One Metric That Matters But it's not enough just to know "normal".

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Metrics Churn Rate 167

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 5, 2019

Because they used the magic term ‘personas,‘ development teams were discouraged from developing their own, not realising that a market segment might contain multiple personas. Development teams couldn’t use marketing personas to make design decisions, so they decided personas weren’t that useful. (It

Software Review 115

Software Review Design Agile Analytics 115

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

You have your general management meeting and in your general management meeting you talk about product development, about marketing and about finance. So again, none of this is me trying to say what you should do for product development, in fact, or what you should write in code in fact. Why not get a partner?

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them. Each of these four currencies represents a way for a customer to “pay&# for services from a company.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

ConversionXL

MARCH 7, 2017

Because they used the magic term ‘personas’, development teams were discouraged from developing their own, not realising that a market segment might contain multiple personas. Development teams couldn’t use marketing personas to make design decisions, so they decided personas weren’t that useful. (It

Software Review 102

Software Review Design Agile Analytics 102

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

This past week while I was in Tokyo for meetings with potential partners for Fab, I was invited to participate in a panel discussion on startups. million registered users, 7500 supplier partners, 600 team members, and a run-rate of more than $150M in sales in just 15 months. The discussion quickly turned to those 57 things.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

VC Cafe

APRIL 22, 2020

A sales plan often includes overarching targets, specific revenue, and performance goals for a given period. We had to triple our revenue. Now, after going through our second year, every bolt sits in place, ready for the extra triple in revenue. Build an initial sales plan. After the GTM, we started formulating our sales plan.

Sales 113

Sales Cofounder Channel Revenue 113

ConversionXL

DECEMBER 11, 2018

Or look at MailChimp, a startup-turned-$400-million-revenue-machine that is always creating viral campaigns that set them above their competition, like this recent “Did You Mean Mailchimp” one. Product development is iterative—rapid prototyping, fast changes, continual improvement. Even if it means sacrificing everything.

Campaign 134

Campaign Marketing Design Differentiation 134

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2015

Evangelos has spent the last 15 years as a Venture Capitalist, first at Apax Partners and later at Trident Capital. By the 1920’s, in the Age of the Automobile and Oil, large companies sought to control the new product development process. Companies built corporate venture capital and business development groups.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Venture Capital United States Technical Review 120

mashable.com

MAY 24, 2011

Sourcebits offers design and development services for iOS, Android, Mobile and Web platforms. Mobile commerce revenues may still pale in comparison to their ecommerce brothers, but we’re already seeing signs of mobile commerce’s potential. Have an account? Follow Sourcebits on Twitter for recent news and updates.

Mobile 90

Mobile Web Social Media Software Review 90

ConversionXL

DECEMBER 3, 2018

Most businesses have a handful of target accounts they dream of closing—big, prestigious companies that could generate a whole lot of revenue in a single deal. Partner with industry publications to reach hundreds of decision-makers. But, ultimately, it generates paying customers—and that’s the only metric that really matters.

B2B 133

B2B Marketing SEO Search 133