SoCal CTO

MARCH 11, 2013

Yesterday, I was talking to a startup founder about their MVP and they said something that finally got me to write this post: "I have a few investors interested but they want to see a product." If you do build the MVP and show it to them, they will ask you about your metrics. They really want metrics, not a product.

Algorithm 264

Algorithm Metrics Viral Venture Capital 264

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

That last bit should sound familiar if you follow theories of Startup Laws & Metrics. Similarly, we hold up “viral growth” as the best sort of growth, because exponential curves overwhelm all others, thus once the mechanism is stable and the company gets large enough to be noticed, it’s neigh-impossible for competitors to catch up.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Viral Metrics Salary 120

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

Your business has a high viral co-efficient (or perhaps even a network effect) that lets you amass users cheaply without worrying too much about the monetization per user or spending money on paid acquisition. As a VC, the biggest challenge in evaluating LTV models is that metrics can dramatically change at scale.

Churn Rate 168

Churn Rate Viral Acquisition Cofounder 168

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

GrowthHackers founder and former Head of Growth at Dropbox, Sean Ellis , coined the term: “A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth. In his course on Growth Mindset (part of CXL’s Growth Marketing Minidegree ), WeTheFuture.org founder John McBride describes three key components of a successful growth marketer: 1.

Retention 113

Retention Marketing Acquisition Channel 113

Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 31, 2016

More than 75 marketplace founders and investors attended the event – coming from as far as South Africa and Nova Scotia. As an investor and former founder, I know that scalable growth (and the pretty hockey stick graph) is the holy grail for every startup. Virality and marketplaces: generally low, but….

Software Review 60

Software Review South Africa Hockey Stick Viral 60

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Enter “ The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses “, a New York Times bestseller by founder of IMVU (creator of 3D avatars) Eric Ries. This reduces guesswork, time, money and effort. Validated learning should be the goal of all entrepreneurs.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 13, 2021

Successful people look for complementary co-founders, and hire a multi-faceted team. In the startup world, even the best-laid plans are probably wrong, so there is a need to be able to launch fast, have metrics in place to measure progress, learn from real customer feedback, and pivot as required.

Stealth 406

Stealth Startup Metrics Viral 406

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 8, 2009

A post by Fred Wilson pointed me to Dave McClure's Startup Metrics presentation. Normally, when I am talking to the founder of any startup trying to figure out what they need to do, one of the things I always try to do is understand their business at its core. Define what you need from a metrics and reporting standpoint.

Metrics 225

Metrics Startup Retention Acquisition 225

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 4, 2024

As the founder of The Clikk, Russell has witnessed the evolving landscape of newsletters, recognizing them as a powerful intersection of content marketing and direct response promotion. Learn crucial metrics for success, from open rates to the quality of subscribers. John (14:57): Let's talk about metrics. This is John Jantsch.

Revenue 78

Revenue Advertising Email ChatGPT 78

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 26, 2019

Founders almost never have a real strategy. Founders explain failures with things like “our two main competitors did [thing] to us” or “customers didn’t understand [our point of view].” The 10,000th biggest company in the world is a very successful company, as is the two-person company where the founders each take home $300k/year.

Restful 202

Restful Founder Revenue Acquisition 202

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

You must use self-promotion early and often through viral videos, blogging, and industry leadership, to establish credibility with your customers. Proactively use metrics and customer feedback before a crisis hits, to recognize when a pivot or product adjustment is required. Allocate resources to handle bumps along the way.

Marketing 333

Marketing Revenue Matching Viral 333

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

The Next Web

DECEMBER 4, 2013

Metrics on keywords, follower profiles and competitors all help define your target listener. Initially, your staff (even if that’s just you and a co-founder) will be your greatest asset in locating and connecting with your audience. With an innovative product in the consumer payment space, the company had viral-ready content.

Social Media 158

Social Media Media Viral Startup 158

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 25, 2007

Part of the discussion around this is the talk about the founder who only got $83M (as compared to $3xxM for the other founders) who bailed out early and choose to go back to school. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO? The poor guy. What a bad $200M decision.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

What metrics do we use to see if we learned enough in Customer Discovery ? I gave my boilerplate answer, “I’m a product guy and I tend to invest and look at deals that have measurable revenue metrics. Dave McClure has some great metrics…” It was an honest but vaguely unsatisfying answer.

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

ConversionXL

MARCH 31, 2021

For this article, let’s consider just two metrics—an engagement metric—social shares and an SEO metric—keyword rank. Shares are often considered a ‘vanity metric’ in the sense they don’t always directly help a business generate more revenue. – Joel Klettke, Founder, CaseStudyBuddy. Shares and rank are vanity.

SEO 163

SEO Metrics Social Media Audience 163

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

The Next Web

DECEMBER 12, 2013

“In the early days of e-commerce, sales were typically the most important metric for success. But now that we’ve entered a mobile, social era, commerce companies have to find engaging ways to keep customers involved and coming back to get the most bang for their buck,” says Manish Chandra , founder and CEO of Poshmark. “So

Mobile 136

Mobile Silicon Valley Viral Technical Review 136

Duct Tape Marketing

MAY 18, 2023

He’s the Founder of theCLIKK, an email newsletter about digital marketing. 14:58] What are some of the metrics that show you’re doing things right? [17:02] He's the founder of theCLIKK an email newsletter about digital marketing. John Jantsch (16:48): A viral referral tool. This is John Jantsch. 16:13): Yeah, yeah.

ChatGPT 92

ChatGPT Advertising Email Viral 92

Cracking the Code

MARCH 23, 2007

Popular Media: the key to viral marketing. Geoffrey Arone , the founder of FLock, who is now an Entrepreneur-In-Residence in our Menlo Park office, mentioned this company to me and I thought it was worth writting a post about it. SaaS business metrics: why are they different? Popular Media: the key to viral marketing.

Software Review 48

Software Review Viral Media Marketing 48

Occam's Razor

APRIL 8, 2013

To win in business you need to follow this process: Metrics > Hypothesis > Experiment > Act. We are far too enamored with data collection and reporting the standard metrics we love because others love them because someone else said they were nice so many years ago. That metric is tied to a KPI.

Metrics 156

Metrics Analytics Lean Churn Rate 156

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

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 13, 2018

Google Analytics switched its default metric from “sessions” to “users” in 2018, mirroring Mixpanel’s emphasis on users over pageviews. Google Analytics is definitely better at measuring traffic,” noted Dan McGaw, the founder and CMO of Effin Amazing. Most businesses, even Mixpanel’s paying customers, retain Google Analytics.

Analytics 119

Analytics Technical Review Acquisition Retention 119

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 13, 2013

I did a presentation this week at Coloft that looked at how Non-Technical Founders can go about getting their MVP built. Once you build it, they will now ask you about the key metrics that they need proven in order to see if you really are a good investment. " Once you have the metrics defined, it focuses your effort.

Technical Cofounder 338

Technical Cofounder Technical Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO 338

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

From there, I became the first non-founder employee at an e-commerce startup called BITSource, which was the first electronic software distributor delivering electronic volume software licenses to corporations. Tell me a bit about the Founder's Institute. You mention social / viral aspects at both Google Photos and United Online.

Management 150

Management Product Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 150

Cracking the Code

MARCH 24, 2015

Successful on your platform but not sticking to guidelines, can also affect the rest of your customers - you need to help developers become more successful - can you outsource support in an authentic way?

API 48

API Fractional CTO CTO Hire San Francisco 48

Up and Running

AUGUST 2, 2017

As the founder of a publishing company focused specifically on serving entrepreneurs, I see the same problem over and over: When a business owner decides they want to write a book (or do anything else, for that matter), their goal is to be the best. How does a book get you attention?

Viral 88

Viral Video Metrics Non-Compete 88

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 26, 2022

TikTok has evolved from a platform known for viral dance moves to a place of rapid product discovery. The New York Times named this urge to buy something the “TikTok Feta Effect,” after a viral recipe for baked feta pasta resulted in the cheese selling out nationwide in the U.S. There’s no telling what will go viral.

Sales 115

Sales Customer Viral Marketing 115

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

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Putting together a financial model and having the founders understand the interrelationships of the variables that can make or break a business is a worthwhile exercise. As a founder you are testing a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? Startup Metrics. Web Metrics.

Balance Sheet 298

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 298

ConversionXL

MARCH 28, 2014

Even though the video may contain some of these elements, an explainer video is NOT specifically: A Viral video. ” The visitor/view metric is one you should only be competing against yourself on. ” metric for featured products & +28.0 A Tutorial. A Company Overview. Or A Product Demonstration.

Video 122

Video Software Review Cofounder Metrics 122

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. Alistair: There are plenty. Consider a restaurant.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 17, 2020

We’ve all heard the anecdotes—the famous founder who pitched 1000 investors before any of them said yes. Most founders I know who are in this mode simply haven’t done enough homework and planning on the idea. 8) Have you made significant changes to the product or business model that improved key metrics over time?

Startup 110

Startup Viral Venture Capital .Net 110

www.iubenda.com

OCTOBER 25, 2011

Dissection of a viral launch. Many of you asked, so I decided to write this blog post, dissecting the launch of iubenda and the viral system we invented. The viral system. We built our custom viral system based on the best examples out there, adding some further fresh ideas we had during the process. iubenda blog.

Viral 47

Viral Bootstrapping Email Web 47

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

Many assume it was a cakewalk, based on the success LinkedIn has enjoyed over time and the current stature of our founder/CEO Reid Hoffman (now Chairman). Yes… he was a very successful PayPal exec and previously co-founder & VP Product of SocialNet. But keep in mind at this point Reid’s a first-time CEO. Thanks Lee.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

Stage 1: Target the right metrics for an effective long game. Metrics for your demand generation funnel. Your number one metric for any marketing initiative should be revenue. Build a picture over time that tells you which metrics lead to revenue versus those that just make you feel good (i.e. This uncovers more themes).

Demand 124

Demand B2B Distribution Channel 124

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