Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 22, 2016

I like his set of action items, and have added a few of my own for measuring early traction leading to growth: Turn initial customer goals into measurable traction metrics. These need to go beyond the traditional revenue, cost, and volume metrics which may not yet have data, and can mislead you about real customer acceptance.

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Metrics Advisory Board Startup Lean 143

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2016

In my role as an advisory board member for several startups, I’m always excited to see that initial surge of revenue from a great rollout campaign. An initial revenue surge, or a major cash advance from investors often leads to a mentality of building a large customer base at any cost.

Advisory Board 120

Advisory Board Startup Revenue Finance 120

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 7, 2017

In what I like to call “smart ideation” there are five quick tests that you can do to get a pretty good ideal about the viability of your business idea: (1) The Customer Problem-Solution Test. It is critically important that you assess the value of the idea, from your target customer’s perspective. 4) The Market Size and Growth Test.

Advisory Board 138

Advisory Board Revenue Vertical Business Model 138

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 22, 2016

These could include customer penetration, revenue growth, budget guidelines, and industry visibility. Team members begin by working with industry experts, advisors, and customers to validate assumptions, implementation plans, and financial parameters. Marty Zwilling First published on Forbes on 07/15/2016.

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Intellectual Property Advisory Board Metrics Leadership 120

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 13, 2016

Investors want to hear about customers with money who have a painful problem that you can solve now. Investors are looking for a concise description of your product or service without technical jargon or fuzzy marketing terms with value quantified in customer terms. What are your forecasts for revenue, expenses and cash flow?

Sweat Equity 120

Sweat Equity Advisory Board Liquidity Event Startup 120

Hearpreneur

MARCH 15, 2016

Your company produces solid revenue – what advice do you have for companies struggling to keep things even revenue-wise? Once we started to grow, getting distributors etc, we had to succumb to terms, but for the first couple of years, we were able to grow the company on the revenue stream. The answer isn’t always VC’s or angels.

Advisory Board 48

Advisory Board Michigan SBIR Revenue 48

Hunter Walker

MAY 2, 2016

I’ve written before about our LP meetings – if you want to check those out before hearing about 2016’s version, here you go: Homebrew Annual Meeting 2014. Advisory Board lunch w our largest investors followed by a State of Homebrew, State of the Market, State of our Portfolio presentation. So what do we know?

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Advisory Board LP Institutional Investors Portfolio 48