Both Sides of the Table

JULY 17, 2018

." Revenue doesn't pay your bills, GM does  —  @msuster 2/ Founders obsess with revenue as a vanity metric. Payback periods on customer acquisition way more important to you in the near-term. Some even grow "bad" revenue just to show growth. Ultimately it matters a great deal.

Software Review 242

Software Review Technical Review Pricing Metrics 242

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

The most obvious way to explain this is with sales people. If you hire 6 sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business for 4-6 months. “COGS” represents the amount that each sale costs you.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Often board members themselves don’t do the work to say “what metrics would we like to see.” Any great board member should tell you, “please don’t create any performance metrics or materials that analyze the business that you’re not already creating for your own management’s use.” Sometimes they don’t even know.

Startup 226

Startup Slides Metrics News 226

SoCal CTO

MARCH 12, 2007

Maybe its because Im 66", but I think most clothes shopping really stinks and when was the last time that a sales person was actually helpful. Technology Advisor Technology Roles in Startups Pricing Customer Acquisition Sunk Costs and More -. Clothes are very personal and its really a pain to find stuff thats going to look good on you.

MyShape 150

MyShape CTO Coach Southern California CTO Hire 150

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

We raised a seed round of capital in 1999 and our first venture capital round was the first week of March 2000 (e.g. I stayed up late every night after a day of meetings doing email until 3am so that I didn’t feel out of touch with our product and sales pipelines. We were based in London.

Entrepreneur 308

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Conference 308

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

As a startup in this phase you often raise capital, get press, hire staff and everything feels possible. As an early-stage VC I love this phase. How long does it take me to pay back my original customer acquisition costs? I truly enjoy working with innovators who dare to take on the system and I embrace the unknown with them.

Startup 286

Startup Technical Review Custom Customer 286

Tech Zulu Event

AUGUST 31, 2015

In this approach, you build your financial projections from the ground up by developing detailed spending plans based on your sales targets, anticipated hiring needs, and budgets for rent, product development, and other major cost categories. The best way to arrive at realistic numbers is by building a bottom-up financial model.

Seed Funding 40

Seed Funding Course Metrics Invest 40

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

The questions that a VC mulls before writing a check are precisely the questions you should be asking yourself. But this isn’t likely to be a VC-backable business (which to be clear is totally ok). Marketing with long payback is precisely what requires venture capital. Market Size.

Startup 150

Startup Marketing Study SEO 150

InfoChachkie

AUGUST 24, 2010

For instance, when a venture capital partner votes for a follow-on investment in exchange for the future support of one of her investments, idea cronyism is at work. Evaluate each of the following metrics on a scale of 1 – 10. For instance, a particular idea might be scored as follows: Speed : 8 – relatively fast.

Ideas 187

Ideas Resource Technical Review Startup 187

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 17, 2010

Especially with DVD sales declining, we offer an interesting way to help studios. Our metrics show that when people watch chips, they increase their tendency to want to watch that feature length film. From there, I did a couple of internships in the venture capital world, including with Hummer Winblad in San Francisco.

Startup 190

Startup Los Angeles Content Hollywood 190

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 25, 2008

I just went out to a VC conference out in New York, and what I'll say is -- it was just too damn easy. There were companies at the VC conference starving for money, but I think we could have raised $20M like nothing. But, we're not focused on an exit--we're focused on profitability, which is a key metric for management.

Startup 113

Startup CTO Hire Resource Venture Capital 113

SoCal Delicious

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

First, let me recommend reading a previous blog, called omg I’m just a startup, I can’t do those fancy metrics. Once you create a small list of these queries, then you can start to formalize the ideas into specific metrics that you track daily. User acquisition via each method you use. Aggregate metrics.

Startup 29

Startup IP Email Report 29