Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 23, 2016

Smart entrepreneurs overtly plan every month to re-sync their vision and objectives with newly-learned market realities. This means regular updates are required to your business plan, marketing message, social media, and website content. Initiate new strategic partnerships and investigate acquisitions versus in-house changes.

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Up and Running

MAY 10, 2021

What is your customer acquisition cost? What metrics are you tracking? As always, you should add these questions and categories in your business plan to develop a holistic picture. What has your revenue been for the last 1-3 years? 1-2 months? Can you replicate the cost structure of other applications? Operations.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2019

Image via Pixabay As a mentor to many small business owners, I always caution them that you can never relax completely, just because your initial solution or product set appears to be getting traction, and the market buzz is positive. Document processes and metrics for economies of scale.

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Up and Running

MARCH 14, 2017

In this article, I’ll give a quick overview of the best practices for validating your business idea in use today. Ideally, you will be able to use the results for your business plan and your pitch deck to convince investors and other business plan recipients that your idea is worthy of investment.

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OnlyOnce

JULY 9, 2013

The book is part of the Startup Revolution series that Brad has been working on for a couple years now, including Do More (Even) Faster , Venture Deals , Startup Communities , and Startup Life (with two more to come, Startup Boards and Startup Metrics). Chapter 3: Telling the Story to Your Investors…The Business Plan is Dead.

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Up and Running

AUGUST 21, 2014

In this webinar, we take time to discuss the different metrics that startups—and established businesses—should be tracking. You need to track pre-purchase, post-purchase, and then overall business analytics. In terms of pre-purchase, traffic and content metrics.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

But now, as the business model is repeatable and scalable, most employees take the business model as a given, and instead focus on the execution of the model – what is it they are supposed to do every day when they come to work. They measure their success on metrics that reflect success in execution, and they reward execution.

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Up and Running

APRIL 27, 2012

These students are typically attracted to Internet and technology start-ups, given that these share favourable industry characteristics such as significant addressable markets, low barriers to entry, modest initial capital requirements and relatively low costs of customer acquisition. Who needs a business plan when there is work to be done?”

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Up and Running

NOVEMBER 12, 2018

There are several different types of business plans that can help you stay on track. If you’re seeking a bank loan or outside investment, you probably need a traditional business plan. But if you’re writing a plan as an internal guide for strategic growth, you should consider a lighter version— a Lean Plan.

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Hearpreneur

JANUARY 4, 2019

Generally, when we talk about our goals with regard to our business, the first thing that springs forward to most thinking is all about dollars and cents. I too have my business plan mapped out with goals of transactions, dollars and cents. 19- Metric accountability. Thanks to Nancy MacIntyre, Fingerprint ! . #19-

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Up and Running

JULY 31, 2014

Then I always mention CAC, customer acquisition cost. Peter Thorsson: I think we got one question for you both if you don’t mind on the customer acquisition cost points. In terms of calculating customer acquisition cost, our question is, should they include sales, salary, sales commission in that cost or other sort of overhead.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 14, 2015

That does work once in a while, usually with some serious collateral damage, but a less painful approach is to prepare and plan for each step along the way. One preparation example is the value of building a business plan before you start. Define metrics to keep on track for the journey.

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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. There are financial metrics (Return on Investment, Hurdle Rate, etc.) Lessons Learned.

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Women Entrepreneurs Can

DECEMBER 7, 2021

Do Create a Business Plan. A solid business plan is more than just a mere document. It is a blueprint that will help you outline and meet your business goals. You can use it to assess results, put together strategic goals and provide guidelines for how your business will operate and grow. Not only that.

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Up and Running

OCTOBER 3, 2018

What they don’t usually show on screen on shows like Flip or Flop is that writing a business plan is a must. If you’re thinking about starting a business that buys up homes, fixes them up and then re-sells them at a profit, the first step is to write a business plan. It serves as a mini version of your entire plan.

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Many entrepreneurship courses focus on teaching students “how to write a business plan.” are what make it a business, 2) business plans are fine for large companies where there is an existing market, existing product and existing customers. . This class is not about how to write a business plan.

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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. In terms of acquisition, they ask more specifically: “How can we trade balance sheet assets (cash, equity) in exchange for executing our strategy better?”.

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ConversionXL

AUGUST 11, 2021

This is basically a business plan—and snapshot of the benefits of your property [assets]. It contains the story of your property, mission statement, sponsor benefits, demographics, marketing plan, goals, media opportunities, advisory board, and the sponsor fees.”. This will demonstrate brand awareness. Source ).

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

As we prepared for the new Hacking for Defense class at Stanford, we had to stop and ask ourselves: How do we use the Business Model Canvas if the primary goal is not to earn money, but to fulfill a mission? In other words, how can we adapt the Business Model Canvas when the metrics of success for an organization is not revenue?

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Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2010

Students formed 5-person teams, came up with a business idea then got out of the building to validate their business model. Our goal was not to teach the students to write a business plan nor were we trying to teach them how to give a pitch to VC’s. A Startup is a Search For A Business Model. Customer Discovery.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

It provides a basic introduction to analytics as they apply to Lean Startup, including sections on what metrics to use and how to interpret them. For instance, Ben lists out the worst of the “vanity metrics,” a term that describes appealing but meaningless or misleading numbers. We often tell founders that a business plan is nonsense.

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Business Plan Blog

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

For example, when reporting on marketing consider the following metrics: • Number of Suspects (Website Visits / Direct Mail Letters Sent). Acquisition Cost 1 (per Lead). Acquisition Cost 2 (per Opportunity). Acquisition Cost 3 (per Customer). Acquisition Cost 2 (per Opportunity). Acquisition Cost 3 (per Customer).

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Up and Running

JULY 22, 2019

Engaging investors early on gives companies greater access to the capital funds they need for hiring key staff, developing new technologies, expanding internationally, and accelerating the business plan. . Well Health Technologies, for instance, was able to continue expanding through a scalable acquisition model.

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The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

The Founder’s gut wrongly tells them their business plan has been validated because they received an investment. You’re learning what the metrics that matter are, what your funnel looks like, and what actions you want your prospects to take. You have to execute the business plan without executing yourself.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 17, 2018

One thing that comes with being a venture capitalist is you see hundreds and hundreds of businesses. You get to have interesting conversations with founders and review business plans and then see how these businesses evolve over the years. Payback periods on customer acquisition way more important to you in the near-term.

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Up and Running

MARCH 9, 2022

And there will be financial and business roadblocks that detour your path to success. There are numerous instances where an in-depth view of your business finances can help avoid risks. There’s no room for gut feelings and leaps of faith in business.

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Growthink Blog

APRIL 15, 2015

Now given that the company has yet to even come close to breaking even, this can be viewed as either a great validation of Domo''s business model, or as more evidence of the “Bubble Mania” of the current technology financing landscape and a screaming signal to get out while you still can.

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Up and Running

JANUARY 23, 2018

Many professionals place emphasis on having a business plan, and this is a good thing. However, if your business is going to be selling tangible goods, a smart sales plan is equally important. What are the best strategies for a working sales plan? This means you have full control of the entire activity.

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SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

You are writing about the essentials of business. Any thoughts on my recent post Startup Metrics ? The Startup Metrics post is a good example of what I call “holocognics.” In my case, I am breaking down “business” to its fundamentals, which begins with a definition of what, exactly, is a “business.”

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YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 24, 2017

More importantly, a subscription business model enables you to manage the cash flow, upgrade your business planning and optimize metrics such as churn rates, the lifetime value of a customer, expansion, and more. It’s clear why positive cash flow is a holy grail of lifestyle businesses, but is there more to it?

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Up and Running

OCTOBER 1, 2014

Statdragon is a Saas platform that allows businesses to access and analyze metrics about their existing videos and optimize their video marketing strategy. Plan ahead. Business planning has been a big factor for Theme Dragon since the beginning, and in any smart business, you want to know where you’re headed.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

It’s hard to imagine, but in the 20th century there were no startup blogs or books on startups to read, and business schools (the only places teaching entrepreneurship) believed the best thing they could teach startups was how to write a business plan. 4. Founder-friendly VCs.

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Occam's Razor

DECEMBER 9, 2013

More often than not, magnificent success results from executing a business plan that is rooted in a strong understanding of the landscape of possibilities, and a deep self-awareness of business capabilities. Bonus: Facebook Marketing: Best Metrics, ROI, Business Value ]. Entertain Me 2. Inform Me. Provide Utility.

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Gust

DECEMBER 27, 2012

You should know EVERYTHING about your business, product, customers and competition. You should know every metric regarding customer acquisition, conversion and retention. You should have a crystal clear understanding of your business model and your financials.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

We still have some collective scar tissue: the idea conjures up the hordes of dot-com hopefuls that descended on VC’s and angel investors with little more than a business plan. But who do you think makes those acquisition decisions? Far too many of these acquisitions go nowhere.

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David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Technographics vendors such as Builtwith , Datanyze , HG Data , Stackshare, and Stacklist help CEOs identify the right tech platform on which to build their business; they’re also helpful for investors to due diligence a company’s tech stack choices. Similarly, Corsis uses benchmarking data to understand technology spend patterns.

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Seeing Both Sides

OCTOBER 24, 2015

And are you sure your gross margin calculation is factoring in all variable costs not related to customer acquisition or are some costs sneaking "below the line" into, say, SG&A? If you have a business with strong network effects, there can be a reason to believe that your metrics will meaningfully improve over time.

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