View from Seed

MARCH 29, 2016

This desperate need for employees often leads to an equally desperate, ad-hoc approach to recruiting without any relevant recruiting metrics being tracked. The resume-to-interview metric is simply a measurement of how many resumes startups review for each person interviewed. Applicant source quality: Resumes-to-interviews.

Metrics 120

Metrics Founder CTO Hire Technical Review 120

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 4, 2011

Having a set of metrics that you watch & that you feel are the key drivers of your success helps keep clarity. And the more public you can make your goals for these key metrics the better. I was recently talking with a startup company who wanted me to try their product. In our next meeting I asked them how often it crashed.

Metrics 346

Metrics Startup Acquisition SEM 346

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 15, 2020

For early-stage startups, the goodwill component can easily exceed the size of all the financial elements together, or can just as easily mark a company with good financials as not investable. Research has confirmed that culture is a primary driver for financial performance, customer experience, and team productivity.

Valuation 311

Valuation Technical Review Due Diligence Leadership 311

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 4, 2019

At Wildcat, we recommend benchmarking your startup against the four core architectural pillars of the Traction Gap Framework: product , revenue , team and systems. Each has specific requirements linked to each stage and value inflection point of the Traction Gap journey. Product Architecture. Revenue Architecture.

Framework 127

Framework Architecture Cleveland Early Stage 127

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

Hopefully, by bringing on strong partners early, you will get great advice and support to minimize your overall dilution down the road. They find weak pre-seed investors or angels who are almost predatory in their early stage pricing and add no value. Experienced founders: B2B. Experienced founders: Consumer.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

YoungUpstarts

MAY 24, 2019

At Wildcat, we recommend benchmarking your startup against the four core architectural pillars of the Traction Gap Framework: product , revenue , team and systems. Each has specific requirements linked to each stage and value inflection point of the Traction Gap journey. Product Architecture. Revenue Architecture.

Framework 113

Framework Architecture Cleveland Early Stage 113

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 5, 2024

Paul Graham’s recent essay, Founder Mode , describes the mindset that founders need to adopt to navigate the early stages of building a startup, and how they’re different than ‘manager mode’ which is traditional management/corporate best practices.

Management 103

Management Technical Review Venture Capital Generative AI 103

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 2, 2022

This may vary from fund to fund, but in general here is the top level criteria VCs would use to check initial fit: Stage – is the startup raising a round which is within the range of the fund (pre seed, seed, series A, early stage, growth, etc.). Problem Solution/ Product – show don’t tell if possible Why now?

Technical Review 166

Technical Review Early Stage Cofounder Portfolio 166

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

Among these opportunities, the chance to pitch an investor and secure funding is perhaps the greatest of all — at least in the early stages of your startup career — as it can ultimately determine the long-term fate of your company. Do you lack the skills needed to develop a viable product? Do you have glaring cash-flow problems?

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 1, 2019

Go-to-Product. In the go-to-product phase, you can get help from a plethora of incubators, accelerators and angel investors. And given the paucity of business metrics at this point in a startup’s lifecycle, spreadsheet analysis is of little help. Initial Product Release (IPR). Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

Cleveland 150

Cleveland Framework Marketing Early Stage 150

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

He has a really interesting background as a product manager and now an entrepreneur. Like many product managers, my background is fairly eclectic. That's where I learned I enjoyed interacting with customers and working with development teams to build and launch products. Tell me a bit about your background. How did it help you?

Management 150

Management Product Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 150

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

It outlines four major growth strategies: market penetration , market development , product development , and diversification. The goal of market penetration is to leverage new tactics to increase product sales , including existing customers and new customers within existing markets. Product development. Market penetration.

Marketing 115

Marketing Framework Metrics Channel 115

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 19, 2012

I was talking with an early-stage founder who has a product vision and wants to get it built. He wanted to get input from me on what he's doing, and he wants to begin to ask developers what it would take to build his product. Me : Product definition, use cases, feature list, wireframes, comps, really whatever you have.

Developer 354

Developer Technical Review Fractional CTO Software Review 354

David Teten

DECEMBER 16, 2015

I review a lot of board decks with a beautifully hand-crafted page with metrics for the company. Good metrics are comparable across industries; comparative ; readily understandable; and help drive decisions. Comparative means that you can compare a metric across time periods, groups of users, or competitors. So how do you do it?

Metrics 60

Metrics Analytics Balance Sheet .Net 60

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 25, 2023

As soon as you have 2-3 months' worth of sales data to work with, use a formula to calculate stock reorder levels to ensure you always have stock ready to go, especially if you're promoting your products on platforms known for viral content, like TikTok. And that can make or break your customer retention, especially in the early stages.

eCommerce 143

eCommerce Omaha Entrepreneur SEO 143

SoCal CTO

MAY 21, 2012

Many of the factors are not obvious and include building mystery to drive margin, why boring B2B companies often win but are challenging in other ways, how bootstrapping wins, integrating metrics from the start and many other similar lessons. What parts Agile addresses and the big problems with Agile for early-stage startups?

Fractional CTO 175

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Startup Social Network 175

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 4, 2011

Almost every day I'm talking to early stage startup founders (see Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions ) about what they plan to do. What are your key Startup Metrics ? Major Phases / Major Features - What are the major features in the major phases for the product? Who are the other stakeholders involved? Administrators?

Developer 396

Developer Founder Viral Oauth 396

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 4, 2011

Almost every day I'm talking to early stage startup founders (see Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions ) about what they plan to do. What are your key Startup Metrics ? Major Phases / Major Features - What are the major features in the major phases for the product? Who are the other stakeholders involved? Administrators?

Developer 384

Developer Founder Viral Oauth 384

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 11, 2021

Almost every early-stage startup who has approached investors for funding has heard the innocuous sounding rejection “I love your idea, but come back when you have more traction.” Free and freemium products need a solid base. What does traction really mean to investors, and how much is enough? First of all, a definition.

Hockey Stick 304

Hockey Stick Early Stage Metrics Acquisition 304

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

There are very few people in Silicon Valley who have such a precise grasp on what defines success of early-stage startup companies than Eric Ries. functional workgroups vs. product workgroups). 8:17 How did you decide to go with either shrinkwrap or web only product? 48:30 Vanity metrics. 52:00 Actionable metrics.

Silicon Valley 301

Silicon Valley Lean Social Media PR 301

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

An alternate outcome that I also unfortunately observe in some cases are companies who had extreme early success with an initial product adoption but failed in key areas that limited the growth and therefore the ultimate financial outcomes. As an early-stage VC I love this phase. How profitable is my product or service?

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Max and his partners interviewed and analyzed over 650 early-stage Internet startups. Today they released the first Startup Genome Report — a 67 page in-depth analysis on what makes early-stage Internet startups successful. Founders overestimate the value of IP before product market fit by 255%. .

Technical Cofounder 335

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 335

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 25, 2018

Today, Mark Attanasio gets to flex his full range of expertise and interests as co-founder and Managing Partner of Hillcrest Merchant Partners, a Toronto-based merchant bank focused on early stage and mid market growth companies. Second, we want to know what’s different in, say, your product or your process or your price or your niche.

Partner 113

Partner Technical Review Management Due Diligence 113

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 31, 2019

Building a lean business with lean products ensures you don’t pigeon-hole yourself into a situation where you’re unable to back your way out. This is the critically important metric that tells you how much of your cash you’re spending on a monthly basis.). As tempting as it can be to do everything at once, be patient and start lean. .

Burn Rate 176

Burn Rate Startup Lean Early Stage 176

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 26, 2010

I’ve been having discussions with several people recently about the role of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in very early stage companies. However, I’ve now begun questioning how and what an early-stage / startup CTO should be. That’s why Roger Smith puts the focus of the CTO on programming for the earliest stage.

CTO 225

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 225

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2022

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. Switch your attention from product development to sales.

Mezzanine 368

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 368

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 2, 2015

What I love about my job is getting to see teams of super-early-stage companies develop ideas that while raw have potential to make an impact on the market. I can’t tell you how many people have thanked me for this advice and say their productivity increased exponentially. It literally can put you out of business.

Operations 150

Operations Metrics Early Stage Non-Compete 150

The Startup Magazine

MAY 22, 2018

The primary focus at this stage is how the product fits the market. Everyone meets with customers, and thinks about how to build a product that suits the market needs. The fast-growing startups at this stage meet frequently to review the issues that customers have and come up with solutions to the roadmap of the product.

Customer 81

Customer Early Stage Churn Rate Startup 81

David Teten

MAY 20, 2016

Engineers, product managers, and platform managers building tech solutions for private market investing. Totem is a tool that centralizes all the data about our companies’ management, metrics, investment history, co-investors and cap table tracking. who use tech solutions in their day-to-day process.

Private Equity 113

Private Equity Equity Cap Table Venture Capital 113

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 31, 2022

Trying to do everything is a sure way to maximize stress, lower job satisfaction, and minimize productivity. If you are a genius at invention, for example, then that is the role you should seek to keep you motivated and productive. We all need to play to our strengths, and team with others for complementary needs.

Metrics 272

Metrics Early Stage Finance Programming 272

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 8, 2009

A post by Fred Wilson pointed me to Dave McClure's Startup Metrics presentation. This is a great presentation and one that I'm going to point out to startup / early stage company CEOs. Define what you need from a metrics and reporting standpoint. You only build what you need to prove that model.

Metrics 225

Metrics Startup Retention Acquisition 225

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. Great stuff. where Tony Wright suggests charging right now. How Unique Is A Unique Visitor? -

Acquisition 150

Acquisition Cofounder Technical Cofounder Cost 150

YoungUpstarts

JULY 31, 2019

Billions of dollars are being poured into companies that have yet to clear the value chasm, as entrepreneurs use early traction that isn’t necessarily financially-oriented, but shows a certain level of uptick or success, to raise capital and convince early stage investors that their horse is the one to bet on.

Cofounder 127

Cofounder Burn Rate Technical Cofounder Seed Capital 127

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2015

For early-stage startups, the goodwill component can easily exceed the size of all the financial elements together, or can just as easily mark a company with good financials as not investable. Research has confirmed that culture is a primary driver for financial performance, customer experience, and team productivity.

Leadership 120

Leadership Technical Review Due Diligence Valuation 120

VC Cafe

JUNE 6, 2024

It’s not a surprise, given that entrepreneurs are obsessed with data and metrics, but in the conservative VC market of 2024, it feels even more important for founders to know what ‘good’ looks like and what investors expect. Metric Unremarkable Good Excellent Outlier ARR <$500k $500k-$1.5m $1.5m-$2.5m >$2.5m

B2B 97

B2B Burn Rate Generative AI Retention 97

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

This structure allows for alignment on the front end, and real-time flexibility for performance metrics,” says Samira Salman , a family office investor and advisor. . Flexible VCs have created structures based on other company performance metrics than revenues, such as profits or founder salaries. Flexible VC 102: Variations.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2007

Most often I'm being brought in the early stage, Start-up or Expansion (as the company looks at new product lines). My focus in this post is on the Early and Start-up stages - expansion is more of a consulting, focused project role and it acts different. Roger Smith ) This helps explain where I normally play.

Fractional CTO 231

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review Early Stage 231