Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. But its not really viral growth, even when its exponential.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

In a previous post , I covered the three main drivers of growth: Paid, Sticky, and Viral. A business that strives for something like this should absolutely be charging money from day one, in order to establish baselines for their two key metrics: CPA (the cost to acquire a new customer) and LTV (the lifetime value of each acquired customer).

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

andrewchenblog.com

JANUARY 28, 2010

For freemium businesses, particularly ones that are social apps, there’s often a word of mouth or viral component, which we’ll cover in a second. CPM/CPA/CPC) What do the intermediate metrics look like? At a high level, here are some of the things you’ll want to track: How are you paying for traffic?

CPA 51

CPA Retention Viral Acquisition 51