Remove Acquisition Remove Company Remove Metrics Remove Software Review
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Why Misunderstanding Startup Metrics Can Cost You Your Business

Both Sides of the Table

There has been a lot of public debate over the past several weeks about whether it’s a good thing to be “gross margin positive” or not and commentary always reminds me that some people at startups don’t quite understand financial metrics or even how to think about which ones are healthy. Customer acquisition cost. That bit is easy.

Metrics 150
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7 Key Factors Obscure Your Customer Acquisition Costs

Startup Professionals Musings

As a business consultant and angel investor, I often ask for your own assessment of marketing ROI , or customer acquisition cost (CAC). Mr. Everhart distills his leadership insights from many decades in one of the largest business-to-business marketing agencies, working with companies across the country.

Customer 100
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Some Quick Things Every Founder Should Know

Both Sides of the Table

You get to have interesting conversations with founders and review business plans and then see how these businesses evolve over the years. 1/ From vantage point of being able to see hundreds of companies, good & bad I have some advice for founders - Get to know and love "gross margin."

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Joey Flores On Earbits' Life, Death, and Resurrection

socalTECH

What is it to start up a company, and run it to the brink of shutdown�only to have it acquired and restarted immediately? We caught up with co-founder Joey Flores on the story behind the company's brush with death, and its recent acquisition by You42, which was announced last week. So, we decided to shut down the company.

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Be Honest About Whether Your Product Really Makes a Difference

Both Sides of the Table

The law of large numbers, platforms that can make your company blow up unexpectedly and the trendy nature of tech markets can be deceiving. But if users don’t come back to your product directly and often I question whether you have a sustainable product / company. Not vanity metrics. Success for many is ephemeral.

Product 150
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For Many New Ventures, Location Is The Key To Success

Startup Professionals Musings

Maxwell Wessel, in a classic article in the Harvard Business Review on this subject, points out the exception successes of Zappos in Las Vegas, Sendgrid’s massive growth in Colorado, and RightNow’s $1.5 Today, Silicon Valley is the consumer and enterprise software capital of the world. Energy is still the domain of Houston and Dubai.

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What Happens When Startups Turn from Their Innovation Stage to Operational Excellence?

Both Sides of the Table

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. How long does it take me to pay back my original customer acquisition costs?

Startup 286