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. What does this mean for their early stage investors?

Framework 118

Framework Architecture Cleveland Early Stage 118

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

A new wave of Revenue-Based Investors are emerging who are using creative investing structures with some of the upside of traditional VC, but some of the downside protection of debt. I believe that Revenue-Based Investing (“RBI”) VCs are on the forefront of what will become a major segment of the venture ecosystem.

Revenue 60

Revenue Term Sheet Founder Technical Review 60

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. What does this mean for their early stage investors?

Framework 104

Framework Architecture Cleveland Early Stage 104

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

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

In this article, you’ll learn how to build a marketing growth strategy to increase your market penetration, market share, and revenue. Building new revenue streams in an untapped channel, like content marketing or email marketing. Design a marketing growth strategy that increases market share and revenue. New customer segments.

Marketing 115

Marketing Framework Metrics Channel 115

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

More and more startups are pursuing Revenue-Based VCs , but “RBI” doesn’t fit everyone. Flexible VC 101: Equity Meets Revenue Share. By tying payments to actual revenues, founders and investors remain aligned around the company’s real-time performance, good or bad. “Too Of the Inc. 5000 companies, only 6.5% raised from angels.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

VC Adventure

MAY 5, 2022

I’m observing that IRR is a metric that is becoming an increasing focus in venture, replacing fund return multiple as the key metric of success. I understand the draw of IRR, and – as a fund draws to a close – there’s no question it’s an important metric. Both had raised attractive up rounds.

IRR 116

IRR Metrics Valuation LP 116

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

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.” Percentages may be difficult at this early stage, but you need to get creative about slicing and dicing the market, sector, demographic, and sub-categories.

Hockey Stick 304

Hockey Stick Early Stage Metrics Acquisition 304

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 1, 2019

And given the paucity of business metrics at this point in a startup’s lifecycle, spreadsheet analysis is of little help. At this stage, the team is seeking market and customer validation metrics. But when it comes to that crucial second phase – go-to-market – entrepreneurs find themselves devoid of help and support.

Cleveland 127

Cleveland Framework Marketing Early Stage 127

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. You may be able to generate revenue, but VCs want exponential growth. Be ready when it counts.

Technical Review 118

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 118

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

As an early-stage VC I love this phase. Throughout the first year we made many fixes and saw our revenue base in these markets accelerate so we felt we were ready to attack Los Angeles, amongst the most important storage markets in the country.

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

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 118

Cofounder Burn Rate Technical Cofounder Seed Capital 118

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In his tenure as CEO of DataSift we have never missed a monthly revenue figure. He has grown our US operations from 1 employee (him) to a global organization of 75 employees that will finish the year with 8-digit revenues (90+% recurring) and more than 350% year-over-year growth. Ask for short conference calls.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 25, 2023

The expansion of e-commerce should also bring about seeing returns as a strategic lever, similar to how companies used faster delivery to drive customer experience and revenue. And that can make or break your customer retention, especially in the early stages. Thanks to Christian Piller, Pollen Returns ! #2-

eCommerce 127

eCommerce Omaha Entrepreneur SEO 127

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. They now have a cool new way to get intros to these angels: StartupList.

Acquisition 150

Acquisition Cofounder Technical Cofounder Cost 150

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. Managing business growth is more than metrics.

Mezzanine 368

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 368

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 31, 2022

This early stage is often called the idea stage, best populated by people who see the need for change early, or always have a vision for unmet opportunities, or a better way to do things. Some people are very good as defining metrics, roll-out programs, and reward systems for marketing and sales programs.

Metrics 272

Metrics Early Stage Finance Programming 272

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 14, 2012

Learning the intricacies of how an industry works, building relevant relationships and understanding the right metrics can happen only over time. If a candidate for your technical lead was a CTO at a big company, for example, but he or she says they want to manage and not code, then he or she is not the right fit for an early-stage startup].

Technical Review 159

Technical Review CTO Hire Software Review Startup 159

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

In it, I got asked a question I often hear: “What if we have a web-based business that doesn’t have revenue or paying customers? What metrics do we use to see if we learned enough in Customer Discovery ? And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” End of theory.&#

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

The Startup Magazine

MAY 22, 2018

Early stage. At this stage, the hiring of employees who are customer focused is paramount. You can start by tracking the quality and volume of requests coming in, together with revenue related metrics e.g There are three “shiny objects” that distract most startups in the early stage.

Customer 81

Customer Early Stage Churn Rate Startup 81

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. R : Revenue - can you monetize any of this behavior?

Metrics 225

Metrics Startup Retention Acquisition 225

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

Between January 2015 and January 2016, we grew our platform Slidebean from $1K to $20K in monthly recurring revenue. Getting the first tracks of revenue is one of the toughest processes of building a startup. This is when metrics come into play. See Also: The Top 10 Tools for Tracking Your Web Metrics.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

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

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 25, 2023

Define key metrics to measure progress and success. Set milestones and targets for revenue, profitability, and market share, and use these to manage the business, as opposed to hours worked and gut instinct. Use comparable metrics for managing team member results.

Intellectual Property 245

Intellectual Property Social Media Angel Investor Metrics 245

Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

Next, take a look at your actual revenue each month – not forecast, but real revenue coming in each month. If you’re an early stage company, that number may be zero. Subtract your monthly gross burn rate from your monthly revenue to get your net burn rate. What are the new financial metrics? How do you know?

Burn Rate 436

Burn Rate Startup Valuation Sales Cycle 436

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 16, 2015

Working with our summer fellows recently on a “preparing a fundraising pitch” exercise, I had them define success for the next 18 months by setting milestones in three broad categories: product/engineering functionality, customer/user numbers, and, if applicable, sales (revenue) targets.

Valuation 100

Valuation Dilution Chicago Technical Review 100

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Blog About Log in Register Designing startup metrics to drive successful behavior Great companies are almost always run by great management teams. Good metrics should also be actionable, and drive successful behavior. In a follow up post, I will use this technique to walk through the design of a set of metrics for a SaaS company.

Metrics 55

Metrics Design Entrepreneur Startup 55

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 20, 2007

Ive personally been involved in the start-up world in Los Angeles for about 15 years, and have had the opportunity to work on many early-stage companies (e.g., Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouh. eHarmongy) as an acting CTO. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO?

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

An investor had few hard metrics other than the actual financials, and little technology to make the process scaleable. Over the past few decades, better metrics became available, and investors could take a more analytical, data-driven approach. FounderSuite * helps early-stage companies in their fundraising process. .

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

NZ Entrepreneur

SEPTEMBER 29, 2021

Addressing real world problems, they thrive in uncertainty, generating new jobs and new revenue streams in new markets. Remuneration will reflect the stage of the startup but it’s generally at a rate of about $500-1000 a meeting or directors might be paid in equity at about 0.5-0.75% Startup founders are our ambitious problem solvers.

Technical Review 88

Technical Review Software Review New Zealand Due Diligence 88

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal. More on that in a moment.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

Early-stage investors in technology startups are only looking for growth-oriented companies that can achieve an “exit&# someday – either via selling your company to a larger company or via an IPO. million post-money valuation with no revenue. It was early 2000. I raised my A round at a $31.5 That was market.

Pre-Money Valuation 336

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Silicon Valley Stock 336

SoCal CTO

MARCH 5, 2007

However, Elgg could power 100,000 networks and it would make no difference - there is no revenue stream as we give everything away under a GPL license. Common revenue streams are consulting, training, support, customization, upgraded versions for corporate applications, etc. Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouh.

Open Source 150

Open Source Business Model Technical Cofounder Southern California 150

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 16, 2014

Still… Now Slack has been valued at over a billion dollars, less than a year after launch, every month adding more than a million dollars of annual recurring revenue. What does it actually mean that metric X is better than average and metric Y is below? “It’s not fair,” we all said to ourselves.

Metrics 246

Metrics Early Stage Retention Revenue 246

SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouh. Technology Advisor Technology Roles in Startups Pricing Customer Acquisition Sunk Costs and More -. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO? User Interface Beyond the Web Site ► November (7) Negative Customer Acquisition Costs - Creative Sta.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 9, 2007

Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouh. Technology Advisor Technology Roles in Startups Pricing Customer Acquisition Sunk Costs and More -. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO? User Interface Beyond the Web Site ► November (7) Negative Customer Acquisition Costs - Creative Sta.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150