A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 16, 2014

Still… Now Slack has been valued at over a billion dollars, less than a year after launch, every month adding more than a million dollars of annual recurring revenue. What does it actually mean that metric X is better than average and metric Y is below? “It’s not fair,” we all said to ourselves.

Metrics 246

Metrics Retention Early Stage Revenue 246

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 23, 2013

Marketo filed for IPO with impressive 80% year-over-year growth in 2012, with almost $60m in revenue. of revenue, force-feeding sales pipelines with an unprofitable product. SaaS companies earn their revenue over time. time to earn back the revenue to cover all your customer acquisition expenses) 75% annual retention.

Business Model 335

Business Model .Net Revenue IPO 335

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 11, 2014

If you like this, go see his Shockwave Innovations blog ) Anyone that has taken an accounting class or learned basic business financials knows the interaction between key elements of a P&L (revenue, cost, expense) and a balance sheet (assets, liabilities, equity). Basic Concepts The concept of the graphic shown below is very simple.

Churn Rate 288

Churn Rate .Net Metrics Hosting 288

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 29, 2011

Hubspot has this down to a science, more so than almost any other company. Even the one you turn away could become a fan. Let’s continue giving ideas and stories in the comments about saving (or not saving) problematic customers, how you identify them, and when this advice is applicable.

Technical Review 236

Technical Review Software Review Reputation Sales Cycle 236

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 20, 2013

This is the third article in a series on novel ideas for SaaS metrics, which started with The unprofitable SaaS business model trap and COC: a new metric for cancellations. You can’t read an article about SaaS metrics without running into LTV — The L ife t ime V alue of a customer.

Retention 262

Retention Metrics Revenue Bandwidth 262

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 3, 2011

He said: “ A startup can focus on only one metric. I’ll explain it here using WP Engine as the foil rather than revealing secrets about AppSumo because, although AppSumo internal metrics are both impressive and instructive, it isn’t my place to reveal them. Or: How many customers do we need to produce $10m in revenue?

Metrics 273

Metrics Startup Revenue Engineer 273

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 1, 2012

Sacha demonstrated the benefits of selling many copies of an eBook at a low price, while Jarrod pointed out the advantages of higher prices, bringing in more revenue with 1/6th the number of units sold. In that case, A can’t keep growing forever, so its revenue is limited, which is a bad spot. maximizing per-unit profitability).

Customer 320

Customer Revenue Acquisition Cofounder 320

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 13, 2011

I’ve chronicled the eye-melting design work that punished potential customers in the evolution of the Smart Bear website, and yet with all that cringe-worthyness, here is a company that doubled in revenue and profit like clockwork for half a decade — a stat any startup would be proud to match.

Design 253

Design Lean Database Cofounder 253

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 21, 2017

Revenue multiples, profit multiples, premium over the previous financing — these are metrics used by sellers to help determine a minimum acceptable price. Even for startups, it takes years for a new product to become good enough to demand many millions of dollars in revenue.). Yet mobile advertising revenues were paltry.

Balance Sheet 242

Balance Sheet Vertical Acquisition Revenue 242

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 21, 2010

Thus you reap the straightforward benefits of incremental improvements while also searching for something that could radically improve your revenue. Tags: Essays branding lead-gen metrics positioning testing. Maybe your idea of what the market wants should shift. What strategies do you use for tests?

Metrics 233

Metrics Austin Global Audience 233

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 13, 2015

Often your best estimate of any metric or market behavior or business model component is at best accurate within a power of ten, for example “expected conversion rate between 0.5% and 5%” or “cost to acquire a customer between $50 and $500″ or “average monthly revenue per customer between $20 and $200.”

Business Model 120

Business Model Affiliate Startup Bootstrapping 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 17, 2011

As a preamble to the metrics, it’s useful to know what you’re measuring and why it’s vital. We had a spike in this metric in February at WP Engine when our Internet provider themselves had a datacenter-wide catastrophe which brought us down for twelve hours; of course not all spikes will have such obvious causes.

Business Model 245

Business Model Metrics Engineer Technical Review 245

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 4, 2013

Mantras prevail that amount to “guess and check,” because it’s easier for advisors and investors to drive by metrics rather than by insight, by funnels rather than by a strong point of view. But I worry that the pendulum can swing too far. So what’s the answer?

Marketing 259

Marketing Early Stage Lean Metrics 259

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 25, 2017

What the single most important metric the consort should be moving for the next 6-12 months? How could we all impact that metric? Suppose that between now and revenue doubling (any timeframe) no new hires are allowed. What if we had to double revenue in the next six months, but 100% of us are allowed to work on *nothing* else.

Software Review 154

Software Review Metrics Hiring Revenue 154

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 21, 2011

What I’m challenged with as a small business owner is, I don’t know if it’s the press, or if it’s just the culture in general, but there’s this pressing vanity metric of, How much capital have you raised? We would rather chase revenue. Of course you should chase revenue. Jason: Oh, good.

Widget 204

Widget Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 204

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

What I mean by that is startups nowadays that raise money have absolutely ludicrous metrics. So in other words, the bottom line is you’re not prepared right now in terms of the market, the product, the metrics anyway for VC, and it doesn’t sound like you’d be happy with VC. How do you split revenue?

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

I'm a great example of someone who wasn't an authority on anything , but built that authority over time to the point where now my company (Smart Bear) is untouchable as the leader in both revenue and ideas in the area of peer code review. But how does authority convert to revenue? Yes of course I'll share details!).

Software Review 325

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Algorithm 325

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

Maybe you should be spending your time getting revenue instead of ruminating on the philosophy of startups with strangers in the comment section of some blog. Of course as you improve your profitability — hopefully through more revenue but possibly through lower expenses — this date will change. Maybe you could get v1.0

Exit Strategy 247

Exit Strategy Startup Bandwidth Revenue 247

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 28, 2011

In other words, we’re always so focused on top-line revenue the BITA, that we forget like, but if you’re making a good living and you’re happy every day, isn’t that the point? And it’s not one of these things you can A-B test, watch some metrics and decide. Jason: Right. And it’s not fun.

Cofounder 223

Cofounder New York Conversion Entrepreneur 223

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 9, 2013

It turns out that the cost of customer acquisition for consumers was too high compared to the revenue being generated. “In This is a very metrics-focused approach, but you can ask yourself some higher level questions as well. Metrics and lines in the sand. Those are horrible economics.

Lean 284

Lean Analytics Metrics Viral 284

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 29, 2010

Because you collect data about your business all the time — web traffic, revenue sources, expenses, customer behavior — and make decisions based on your (mis)understanding of that data. Take "average time-on-site," a typical web analytics metric. Metrics and statistics "rules" cannot be applied blindly.

Metrics 257

Metrics Analytics Conversion Ratio Texas 257

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 4, 2012

Ask a very specific question around a metric or a financial model or how to validate a specific idea or how to price something or whether to hire a first employee or anything like that is likely to pique my interest and make it possible for me to help. Finally, one of the best kinds of calls-to-action are specific questions.

Internet 270

Internet Email Engineer Web 270

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Totally automate all that so it doesn’t bring me down all the time and instead I can sign all the revenue, because that’s fun. Like the ability to spend X dollars on advertising and gain Y dollars in revenue or something like that. Patrick: How close did he get? Ryan: 50%, sort of. Patrick: All right.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 2, 2013

to maximize the long-term value of those shares through solid financials, healthy SaaS metrics, and growing as fast as possible (but not faster). You’re optimizing for your own freedom, not for highest-growth or even highest-total-revenue. But the real life of a startup founder isn’t that at all. One final word of caution.

Cofounder 312

Cofounder Startup Founder Engineer 312

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 25, 2016

We’ve talked about this before in the context of SaaS metrics. As a real-life example, in the six products we had at Smart Bear, it turned out just one of them generated 100x the revenue of all the others put together , and thus focussing on any priority other than the one product, was a waste of time.

Differentiation 120

Differentiation Framework Restful Software Review 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 6, 2013

This is the second article in a series on novel ideas for SaaS metrics, which started with The unprofitable SaaS business model trap. The cost to earn a dollar of MRR What does it cost a SaaS company to add $1 of new monthly recurring revenue? Thus, MRR = R / N, where R is your total revenue, and N is your total number of customers.

Metrics 270

Metrics Business Model .Net Revenue 270