SoCal CTO

MARCH 1, 2010

Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition | For Entrepreneurs , February 2, 2010 Looks at the critical equation around customer acquisition cost vs. customer lifetime value similar to what I discussed in Startup Metrics but in more depth. This relates to another great post Freemium Founders: Start Charging for Things Today!

Acquisition 150

Acquisition Cofounder Technical Cofounder Cost 150

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 22, 2021

Unfortunately, most of us don’t have enough resources to bootstrap our own startups, so we are completely dependent on investors to help turn great ideas into great businesses. These show a focus on the business elements required for success, and metrics for ensuring accountability, management control, and feedback along the way.

Intellectual Property 352

Intellectual Property Equity Bootstrapping Valuation 352

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 29, 2020

In other words, you must start bootstrapping an online startup , because the future of the global business world is online. Before we look at ways to bootstrap a startup, let’s consider a comprehensive definition of what a startup is. Ways to bootstrap a startup. Year-on-year growth metrics in unique site traffic is 7.8

Bootstrapping 85

Bootstrapping Global Startup Hungary 85

Up and Running

OCTOBER 1, 2014

” For Lindsay Nelson, CEO and co-founder of Theme Dragon, Inc that opportunity was founding a tech company. Statdragon is a Saas platform that allows businesses to access and analyze metrics about their existing videos and optimize their video marketing strategy. What about bootstrapping? How do dragons fit in here?

Bootstrapping 107

Bootstrapping Cofounder Portland Burn Rate 107

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

They might be ideas they hatch internally (via a Foundry) or a founder who just left SpaceX and raises money to search for an idea. two founders in a garage?—?(HP The most connected and high-potential founders start with wads of cash. The legends of Silicon Valley?—?two HP Style) are dead.

Pre-Money Valuation 471

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Venture Capital Early Stage 471

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 29, 2018

I usually don’t back a business unless there are founders that can build, sell, and service the new solution that is being brought to market. In this case, they could build and service it but they needed a third co-founder to sell it. Read my Lucky7 Bootstrap or VC? post for more perspective on this.

Bootstrapping 52

Bootstrapping IPO Business Model Software Review 52

SoCal CTO

APRIL 8, 2010

Granularity and Consistency of Startup Metrics - SoCal CTO , March 11, 2010 Tim Berry has a great post on Why I Hate Those Huge Market Numbers tells us that he doesn’t like to see business plans with multi-billion market numbers used as the basis for projections. The study is featured in the March issue of the Harvard Business Review.

Software Review 150

Software Review Startup PR Exit Strategy 150

ReadWriteStart

JULY 18, 2011

Clavier began his presentation at the beginning of a company's lifecycle, asking how many co-founders a startup ought to have. If you like this kind of advice, check out my coverage of a talk by Paul Palmieri, Co-Founder and CEO of mobile advertising service Millennial Media, titled " Investing in Your Influencers. ".

Investment Bankers 153

Investment Bankers Technical Review Cofounder Due Diligence 153

ConversionXL

MARCH 31, 2021

For example, here’s how we’d describe a segment of the app development agency’s audience: Existing Startup Founder: Sometimes, founders will already have an MVP or prototype. Cash flow is a matter of life or death when bootstrapped and pre-funding. What are the primary and secondary goals you’re aiming to achieve?

Audience 127

Audience Non-Compete Distribution Channel 127

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 26, 2018

As an advisor to many new venture founders, I often hear their frustration at being told by investors “I love your idea, but come back when you have more traction.” The intent is to indicate that founder passion is not a substitute for real customers buying the product. Document and initiate a multi-faceted marketing plan.

Angel Investor 147

Angel Investor Distribution Bootstrapping Viral 147

Up and Running

JULY 10, 2017

It’s critical to understand the metrics in terms of dollars per additional user, as you’ll have to spend this amount to serve thousands of your non-paying customers. I talked to Adam Hempenstall, founder and CEO at BetterProposals , who has been using freemium for three years for his SaaS product: “Honestly, I think it was a mistake.

Startup 110

Startup Non-Compete Viral Software Review 110

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. These founders have not managed, to borrow a phrase from Steve Blank , to create a scalable and repeatable sales process.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 24, 2018

along with the contributions of dozens if not hundreds of founders, entrepreneurs and investors, to build out the canon for the startup. By contrast, the bootstrap startup wants to acquire customers that can pay enough to fund growth, or to keep the lights on while development ensues. Neither is blitzscaling at this point.

Warrant 48

Warrant Bootstrapping Framework Hiring 48

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 29, 2013

Often, in very young organizations, those people are simply the founders. Now, “lean” is often used to refer to a company’s financial situation, so it might make you think of a bootstrapped or under-funded organization. In more established places, they may have nearly any job title.

Lean 165

Lean Technical Review Startup Software Review 165

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 30, 2016

Business founders need deep pockets for this model. You need metrics to show dominant penetration of the relevant customer demographic, added value over existing media, and real customer testimonials of value. Several of the challenges already identified suggest a greater reliance may be required on bootstrapping and organic growth.

New York City 158

New York City Kansas Advertising Cash Position 158

SoCal CTO

JULY 13, 2011

This site aggregates and filters content from thought leaders who talk about topics such as Marketing , Sales , Design , Revenue , Hiring , Social Media , Business Models , Metrics , PR , Venture Capital , Angel Investors , Bootstrapping , Incubators , Agile and many others.

Intellectual Property 175

Intellectual Property Aggregator Startup IP 175

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 10, 2020

by Will Schneider, founder of insightQuote. If the world’s best known ecommerce brand is so committed to cross-selling and upselling, bootstrapped ecommerce stores cannot afford not to do the same. Remember to keep tabs on key metrics that will show the impact of each technique. Leverage Email Marketing.

eCommerce 147

eCommerce SMS Email Video 147

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 20, 2015

Even if you are bootstrapping your business, and you are the only investor, you should be asking yourself the same question. Too many founders have learned that passion and free beta products do not imply a sustainable business. No matter how good your cause, it takes real money to sustain a business.

Business Model 120

Business Model Angel Investor Startup Bootstrapping 120

entrepreMusings

APRIL 29, 2012

I saw this hit the Bootstrap Austin list a week or so ago: Founder Dating. If you want to start a company right now but don’t know how to find the right co-founder, then this site might be for you. I would definitely work for a start-up/fast growing company, but my founder status is tied to my kids for a while.

Founder 39

Founder Bootstrapping Cofounder Texas 39

Sophia Perl of Wisdom

JULY 18, 2011

Tip: Netflix is extremely well run company, very quantitative using metrics, disciplined in how much they spend. Tip: If you want to go into a market where you are unsure, bootstrap to get a sense of whether there’s a massive opportunity. Xoom and Eventbrite are extremely repetitive like/aka subscriptions.

Cofounder 49

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley San Francisco 49

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 1, 2012

This is a choice that every startup founder must make , so I’d like to dig in deeper. Why the obsession with raising money, what if you don’t want a huge company, what if you want to bootstrap, don’t you know raising money isn’t a measure of correctness or success, … I agree! That’s shitty!

Customer 320

Customer Revenue Acquisition Cofounder 320

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 29, 2010

These case studies range in size and scope: from pre-product/market fit to already exited, bootstrapped to venture-backed, solo practitioner to large organization. And do I still need to get out of the building if Ive got great metrics and surveys?" And do I still need to get out of the building if Ive got great metrics and surveys?"

San Francisco 120

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 120

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Well, that’s fine as far as it goes but when you’re a startup and you don’t have customers yet you need a way to bootstrap and that can feel awfully chaotic and wasteful. The visionary’s lament The Superbowl ad test Lo, my 57692 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Agile 111

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics. Luckily, we also discovered that certain other metrics, like LTV and CPA were much better than we initially projected. .&# I think the problem with this approach is not the presence of the spreadsheet, but how it’s used.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

As someone who has bootstrapped a software company ([link] and funded it through selling software and consulting to customers, I certainly know what it means to live lean and Ive even taken your advice ([link] I just wish I was in the Bay area and could come by "office hours". Labels: events 2comments: Andrew Meyer said.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Web Advisory Board 68

Mucker Lab

MARCH 8, 2016

Four years after founding and bootstrapping Mucker Capital , we are pleased to announce the close of a new $45 million fund, Mucker III. In reality, we are scrappy founders, just like the entrepreneurs we serve. And we aren’t afraid to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty alongside the founders in our portfolio.

Burn Rate 60

Burn Rate Limited Partner Bootstrapping Portfolio 60

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 22, 2012

Guest author Arie Abecassis is co-founder of AppStori, a crowdfunding startup for entrepreneurs of mobile apps, and a Venture Partner at DreamIt Ventures. But those metrics don't tell the whole story. Startup Exits Are Great, but There Are Other Positive Outcomes.

Startup 133

Startup Portfolio Metrics Bootstrapping 133

Board Effect

MAY 13, 2019

Cap Table Management While Bootstrapping. Managing cap tables presents much less of a challenge to founders in their “garage days”; offering up their blood, sweat, and tears in sacrifice to the startup gods. Anticipating this, founders can prepare waterfalls and what-if scenarios to model dilution in advance of investor negotiations.

Cap Table 40

Cap Table Management Liquidity Event Dilution 40

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

“If you can fix a problem for someone and do it better, quicker, and/or cheaper than your competitor, you’re off to a good start.” – Gabriel Kuperman, founder and CEO of CuePin. We created UpKeep to fill this void—a cloud-based solution that was affordable for any size business.” – Ryan Chan, founder of UpKeep.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Up and Running

OCTOBER 24, 2017

You never know—you may just get a potential investor out of it like Michael Litt , co-founder of Vidyard. As long as it contains the most important components, such as your target market, product information, financial plan, and the metrics you’ll use, the plan doesn’t have to be long—in fact, the more concise you can be, the better.

Entrepreneur 135

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Angel Investor Campaign 135

ConversionXL

MARCH 13, 2013

Traffic volume is a vanity metric. So I was a bit too caught up in vanity metrics like traffic volume and I was happy to say I was getting 10-15K visits a month but is that even good? Look I’m not going to tell you that vanity metrics are useless and you shouldn’t look at your traffic stats. What are vanity metrics?

Metrics 111

Metrics Analytics Aggregator Revenue 111

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Ash Maurya is the founder of WiredReach , a bootstrapped startup that he has been running for seven years. Ash Maurya is the founder of WiredReach , a bootstrapped startup that he has been running for seven years. This case presents a further complication: desktop software. Read on to find out. Read on to find out.

Continuous Deployment 151

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 24, 2017

by Stefan Pretty, founder of Subbly. 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 is a bootstrappable model. And a cocktail, of course.

Churn Rate 149

Churn Rate eCommerce Business Model Bootstrapping 149

The Next Web

FEBRUARY 27, 2014

Freshman are a piece of paper to beta site (bootstrap financed—raise $50K to $500K). If there are no earnings yet, with your business plowing profits into long term growth, then revenue multiples or some other metric would be used. Forecasted earnings growth is typically the #1 driver of your valuation (e.g., Rule of thumb.

Valuation 167

Valuation Forecast Seed Stage .Net 167

Up and Running

MAY 28, 2015

We recently had Tim Berry, Palo Alto Software founder and business planning expert, present our Bplans audience with his latest advice on lean business planning. All of those are tactics, and what we’re after here is something where we can track progress and metrics so we can manage. You need metrics because we’re human.

Lean 60

Lean Business Plan Video Software Review 60

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

I closed down my first business last November and I am bootstrapping the second one currently. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. Cash is tight.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

Bootstrapped startup Omnisend carved out a $19 million niche in an already saturated vertical. Take Ross Simmonds , Founder and CEO of Foundation Marketing. With a tactical understanding of two different marketing strategies: demand generation and lead generation. Thought leadership is not a synonym for thinking out loud.

Lead Generation 107

Lead Generation Demand Audience eCommerce 107