Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Cashflow is a basic survival metric for every startup. Deferred payments start with stretching the payables period but, more importantly, include giving employee equity in lieu of a higher salaries and negotiating vendor deferred payments out of future revenues. Desperate entrepreneurs lose their leverage and die young.

Burn Rate 262

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Salary 262

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 7, 2022

There is no magic lever for growth, so several initiatives are required, with metrics to assess value returned. Resist the urge to delegate accounting decisions, under the assumption that incoming revenue takes the pressure off. Some startups hire more people to delay automation, or spend money wildly on new tools for the future.

Startup 335

Startup Social Media Metrics Viral 335

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2022

By definition, second-stage ventures generally have 10 to 99 employees and/or $750,000 to $50 million in revenue, and see that as just the beginning. Growth is more than simply repackaging existing products, and adding bells and whistles or slick incentives. Hire more help than helpers. Keep delivering something new and fresh.

Mezzanine 368

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 368

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Cash flow is a basic survival metric for every startup. Deferred payments start with stretching the payables period but, more importantly, include giving employee equity in lieu of a higher salaries and negotiating vendor deferred payments out of future revenues. Desperate entrepreneurs lose their leverage and die young.

Burn Rate 120

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 120

Gust

APRIL 27, 2014

This will include the first version of many critical processes that can be split out later, including market opportunity, requirements, product definition, business model, sales process, and organization. Product development process. Billing and revenue collection. Manage human resources.

Startup 187

Startup Institutional Investors Angel Investor Bootstrapping 187

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. 1x hacker in charge of product/development. 1x hipster working with both product and growth.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 9, 2020

There is no magic lever for growth, so several initiatives are required, with metrics to assess value returned. Resist the urge to delegate accounting decisions, under the assumption that incoming revenue takes the pressure off. Some startups hire more people to delay automation, or spend money wildly on new tools for the future.

Social Media 329

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 329

Occam's Razor

APRIL 23, 2012

While there is a great deal of appreciation for the power of metrics/data, I've come to realize that Sr. Leaders don't quite appreciate the deep, and often corrosive, consequences of choosing metric x over metric y as a key performance indicator (KPI). It is a standard metric. Revenue vs. Economic Value.

Metrics 152

Metrics Analytics Search Channel 152

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.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Most startups don’t have the luxury of hiring an experienced PM early in their journey. Many founders have to turn to brute force to figure it out, even when they themselves don’t have practitioner product management experience. they can range from customer acquisition, product engagement/stickiness, or business model.

Hiring 120

Hiring Bandwidth Product Early Stage 120

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2018

Amazon has hired more people for their Alexa division than Google has for the entire company – it’s not hunch, this is going to be the focus. Hire & fire – tools to do a job. mobile is ~50% of revenue, shorter form works better. Work hard to define meaningful product metrics – enabler of team success.

Retention 106

Retention Artificial Inteligence Channel Email 106

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.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 10, 2010

Today, brands are hiring social media specialists for customer support, crowdsourced product development, promotions and even leads generation. Internal resistance, non-standardized metrics, multiple (and confusing) platforms and lack of resources prove great obstacles to planning. The Proof Is In The Revenue.

Social Media 134

Social Media Media Programming Viral 134

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2019

By definition, second-stage ventures generally have 10 to 99 employees and/or $750,000 to $50 million in revenue, and see that as just the beginning. Growth is more than simply repackaging existing products, and adding bells and whistles or slick incentives. Hire more help than helpers. Keep delivering something new and fresh.

Mezzanine 244

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 244

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. The business model.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

These founders specify, design, and build a fully featured product using classic product development methods without ever leaving their building. Executives look at that date and the calendar, working backward to ignite fireworks on the day the product is launched. Executing on a sales and marketing plan.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

View from Seed

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Team: Hires, fires, departures, responsibility changes, major promotions, and your org chart. Hiring is also essential and may appear regularly, though it will fluctuate in volume and urgency. A seed-stage mobile startup’s housekeeping section might look something like this: Section 3: Core Metrics.

Seed Stage 331

Seed Stage Cap Table Metrics Burn Rate 331

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

At least, not in the traditional sense of trying to squeeze every tenth of a point out of a conversion metric or landing page. In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. For example, I’m a big believer in split-testing.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2014

This will include the first version of many critical processes that can be split out later, including market opportunity, requirements, product definition, business model, sales process, and organization. Product development process. Billing and revenue collection. Manage human resources.

Startup 268

Startup Institutional Investors Angel Investor Bootstrapping 268

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2017

By definition, second-stage ventures generally have 10 to 99 employees and/or $750,000 to $50 million in revenue, and see that as just the beginning. Growth is more than simply repackaging existing products, and adding bells and whistles or slick incentives. Hire more help than helpers. Keep delivering something new and fresh.

Mezzanine 141

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 141

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 3, 2013

By definition, second-stage ventures generally have 10 to 99 employees and/or $750,000 to $50 million in revenue, and see that as just the beginning. Growth is more than simply repackaging existing products, and adding bells and whistles or slick incentives. Hire more help than helpers. Keep delivering something new and fresh.

Mezzanine 240

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 240

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Behind this analysis is a spreadsheet model, complete with detailed metrics for a set of customer behaviors that show just how valuable the new product will be. They are long-term bets on the development of a new line of business, a new technology platform, or the creation of a new market.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 29, 2016

There is no magic lever for growth, so several initiatives are required, with metrics to assess value returned. Resist the urge to delegate accounting decisions, under the assumption that incoming revenue takes the pressure off. Some startups hire more people to delay automation, or spend money wildly on new tools for the future.

Social Media 120

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 120

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 31, 2013

This will include the first version of many critical processes that can be split out later, including market opportunity, requirements, product definition, business model, sales process, and organization. Product development process. Billing and revenue collection. Manage human resources.

Institutional Investors 230

Institutional Investors Angel Investor Bootstrapping Database 230

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

September, 2012 – Andrew Chen, who currently does growth at Uber , writes You don’t need a growth hacker , which encourages companies to really consider whether they have product-market fit before hiring a growth hacker. Without metrics or data, a growth hacker can feel out of place and uncomfortably exposed.

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

We were even more embarrassed by the pathetically small number of customers we had, and the pathetically low amount of revenue we had earned so far. We’d always cringe as we admitted that, no, we really only had a few thousand customers and a few thousand dollars in monthly revenue. Retention cohort analysis. I am chugging along.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Still, theyre not really hitting it out of the park, because their product isnt growing new users as fast as theyd like, and they arent making any money from the current users. Because, unless you are working in an extremely static environment, your product development team is learning and getting better all the time.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Luckily, I now have the benefit of a forthcoming book, The Principles of Product Development Flow. Labels: five whys root cause analysis , product development 11comments: Peter Severin said. Its really helped me articulate my thinking on this topic, and includes an entire chapter on the topic of reducing batch size.)

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always. This development philosophy created a culture around rapid prototyping of features, followed by testing them against large numbers of actual customers. It would be hard to argue against this product development strategy, in general.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2011

This will include the first version of many critical processes that can be split out later, including market opportunity, requirements, product definition, business model, sales process, and organization. Product development process. Billing and revenue collection. Manage human resources.

Startup 255

Startup Institutional Investors Angel Investor Bootstrapping 255

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target. No matter how low we make the revenue projections for this new product, it’s extremely unlikely that they are achievable. In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 4, 2015

By definition, second-stage ventures generally have 10 to 99 employees and/or $750,000 to $50 million in revenue, and see that as just the beginning. Growth is more than simply repackaging existing products, and adding bells and whistles or slick incentives. Hire more help than helpers. Keep delivering something new and fresh.

Mezzanine 120

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 120

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 21, 2013

If you're working on the Sticky Engine of Growth , you're focused on very different metrics from those that you care about in the Viral Engine of Growth. Similarly, a two-sided marketplace cares about different things from a traditional e-commerce product. Finding your One Metric That Matters But it's not enough just to know "normal".

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Metrics Churn Rate 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

Thats a perfectly reasonable reaction, given that most releases of most products are bad news. Even worse, the sad state of product development generally means that the new "features" are as likely to be ones that make the product worse, not better. Monitoring of real-world metrics.

Continuous Deployment 122

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

www.lanceglasser.com

MAY 13, 2012

Metrics for cyclical businesses. Product development. Queuing theory and product development. The Essential Product Investigation Phase Gate. The CFO is not responsible for making revenue every quarter, but if there is a big surprise, fire him. A Model for Return on Engineering Expenses.

CTO 40

CTO CTO Hire Technical Review Architecture 40

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Strategy - startups first encounter this when they have the beginnings of a product, and theyve achieved some amount of product/market fit. Growth - when you have existing customers, the pressure is on to grow your key metrics day-in day-out. And if you neglect maintenance, you may not have a business left at all.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88