Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 22, 2016

That should make you wonder - how do you measure traction in a metric? While thinking about the parameters of traction, and how to measure it, I was impressed with a new book, “ Scaling Lean: Mastering the Key Metrics for Startup Growth ” by Ash Maurya, a serial entrepreneur, and creator of the one-page business modelling tool Lean Canvas.

Metrics 57

Metrics Funding Startup Customer 57

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 21, 2014

It’s when the noise stops and you can actually get customer attention, press articles and VC meetings. People attending marquee conferences with rock bands, prominent speakers, Gartner Group prognosticators and lots of other happy customers. Create company measures for success that go beyond financial metrics.

Marketing 354

Marketing Case Study Metrics Sales 354

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 18, 2020

I agree with the classic book by Ros Taylor, “ Creativity at Work: Supercharge Your Brain and Make Your Ideas Stick ,” which outlines some key psychological impediments to creative business thinking and change: Just use the data metrics. Even good decisions today will require adjustments as the environment or customers change.

Metrics 157

Metrics Demand Statistics Sales 157

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 10, 2021

Make sure that metrics and goals are set up front, and not modified as the project progresses. If you demand accountability, but expect to make every decision, both of you will fail. Unfortunately, I often see goal misalignments with teams, such as marketing measured on sales volume, or sales measured on customer retention.

Startup 132

Startup Training Metrics Examples 132

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2019

Don’t get me wrong, it’s always great to see that first surge of customers, but that’s just the beginning of your work. With the real data from that surge, you need to take a hard look at business model realities, cost of customer acquisition, inventory costs, and other key metrics.

Metrics 86

Metrics Startup Training Customer 86

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 28, 2020

In business vernacular, targets are usually called metrics. A good metric has to be easily measurable, and directly correlated to results, rather than hours worked. For example, for a sales person, this metric number would likely measure new revenue or new customers.

Metrics 124

Metrics Entrepreneur Satisfaction Study 124

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2019

Switch your attention from product development to sales. Second-stage growth usually requires a formal sales model, an experienced and disciplined sales team, and a well-defined process to meet your new goals and demands. These only come with the proper training, investment in tools, and focus on customer relationships.

Startup 97

Startup Sales Metrics Guide 97

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 3, 2021

To keep you on a positive track with potential investors, I recommend the following logic principles, to balance your passion in presenting your vision of a new business: Make sure your plan includes some business metrics. For example, if you have ever watched the Shark Tank show on TV, they always ask about the cost of customer acquisition.

Entrepreneur 162

Entrepreneur Social Media Examples Metrics 162

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2021

Look for validation from your mainstream customers. No matter how passionately you believe that everyone needs one, and positive feedback from friends and early adopters (false positives), before you invest in scaling the business, make sure you set and meet good metrics in cost of customer acquisition, recurring sales, and margin.

Technical Review 131

Technical Review Case Study Mentor Software Review 131

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 27, 2019

My simple answer is that they keep their focus on customers, rather than technology. Jeff Bezos has kept his focus on customers. In my view, every startup in today’s world would do well to adopt a management system with the same key objectives: Start with a customer-obsessed business model.

Marketing 123

Marketing Technical Review Customer Custom 123

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 22, 2014

I agree with the book by Ros Taylor, “ Creativity at Work: Supercharge Your Brain and Make Your Ideas Stick ,” which outlines some key psychological impediments to creative business thinking and change: Just use the data metrics. Sales people tend to remember the latest product when selling to clients, not the one best for that customer.

Entrepreneur 113

Entrepreneur Metrics Demand Statistics 113

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 4, 2015

Switch your attention from product development to sales. Second-stage growth usually requires a formal sales model, an experienced and disciplined sales team, and a well-defined process to meet your new goals and demands. These only come with the proper training, investment in tools, and focus on customer relationships.

Startup 108

Startup Sales Metrics Entrepreneur 108

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 8, 2018

As a long-time advisor to entrepreneurs and business owners, I rarely find someone who doesn’t proclaim that the business world is changing rapidly, with new technology, new customer expectations, and new cultures. Others still routinely have phone hold queues for customer contact that can last up to an hour, with no alternative options.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Customer Custom Startup 84

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

socalTECH

JANUARY 14, 2011

Its primary goal is to focus on identifying what is truly driving demand, analytically, so that our customers can optimize their activities. We have a very sophisticated, analytics and software platform that over half the Fortune 50 are now using, to help guide how they invest in marketing and sales activities and investments.

Social Media 235

Social Media Demand Activity Marketing 235

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 27, 2013

I agree with the new book by Ros Taylor, “ Creativity at Work: Supercharge Your Brain and Make Your Ideas Stick ,” which outlines some key psychological impediments to creative business thinking and change: Just use the data metrics. Sales people tend to remember the latest product when selling to clients, not the one best for that customer.

Metrics 110

Metrics Entrepreneur Demand Statistics 110

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2017

Switch your attention from product development to sales. Second-stage growth usually requires a formal sales model, an experienced and disciplined sales team, and a well-defined process to meet your new goals and demands. These only come with the proper training, investment in tools, and focus on customer relationships.

Startup 56

Startup Sales Metrics Guide 56

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 3, 2013

Switch your attention from product development to sales. Second-stage growth usually requires a formal sales model, an experienced and disciplined sales team, and a well-defined process to meet your new goals and demands. These only come with the proper training, investment in tools, and focus on customer relationships.

Sales 96

Sales Metrics Startup Entrepreneur 96

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

There is nothing more pure than building a product, putting it out in the world and seeing paying customers using your product and in some cases loving it. As companies get this initial customer feedback on their product they start to have to ask harder questions about unit economics: How much does it cost us to acquire a new customer?

Startup 286

Startup Technical Review Customer Custom 286

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 31, 2016

I agree with the classic book by Ros Taylor, “ Creativity at Work: Supercharge Your Brain and Make Your Ideas Stick ,” which outlines some key psychological impediments to creative business thinking and change: Just use the data metrics. Even good decisions today will require adjustments as the environment or customers change.

Metrics 60

Metrics Demand Statistics Sales 60

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2019

In my experience, the key steps I look for always include the following: Testing the idea against customers who have money to spend. I suggest you use social media, blogging, crowdfunding, or documented research to quantify a real demand from people who can afford it, and don’t have a better alternative already out there.

Ideas 94

Ideas Slides Technical Review Patents 94

Tech Zulu Event

JANUARY 29, 2014

Personalize ads using sales data. Using transactional business data like simple website traffic, sales metrics, social interactions, ad conversions, and employee performance statistics, Freshplum helps firms forecast demand, optimize the timing of supply shipments, and cut prizes among others resulting into revenue growth.

Sales 77

Sales Statistics IBM IBM 77

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 9, 2016

Most begin by doing the product development, marketing and sales alone, but struggle making the transition to hiring and coaching others, defining repeatable processes and focusing on future strategy. Now you have real customers who can quickly turn off hundreds of potential customers if you ignore their feedback.

Social Network 59

Social Network Startup Demand Entrepreneur 59

Tech Zulu Event

MARCH 22, 2016

Less than a month ago, Snapchat opened custom on-demand geofilters to everyone. Industry news was excited, but for how amazing of a product they are, custom Snapchat geofilters have remained stunningly under the radar. Well, Snapchat has made it so that anyone can create and upload a custom filter to any area they want.

Customer 40

Customer Custom Snapchat Design 40

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 8, 2016

By profit, I simply mean offering a product or service to customers for a price that exceeds the total costs associated with the solution, thus providing some basis for recovering sunk costs and generating a return for stakeholders. Solve a painful problem for customers who have money to spend.

Entrepreneur 58

Entrepreneur Ideas Pricing Customer 58

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 18, 2015

Based on my own many years of experience as both an employee and an executive, here are my key recommendations to improve your business productivity, traction and momentum: Implement business metrics, and tie incentives to results. In most businesses, 80 percent of the revenue comes from 20 percent of the customers.

Training 105

Training Entrepreneur Tool Metrics 105

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

billion in sales and thus controls less than 10% of the market. After a year in the market, MakeSpace was growing rapidly and our biggest issue was CAC (customer acquisition costs) relative to payback period (when we get our marketing investment back) and relative to LTV (lifetime value). That is how great businesses are built.

Startup 150

Startup Marketing Study SEO 150

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 10, 2011

Metrics-Guided. He went on to explain a bit about the customer development model from Blanks: State business model assumptions. Iterate until validated (through sales or tangible exchange). Lean Approach. Model-Focused. If not validated, re-state assumptions.

Startup 86

Startup Santa Monica Los Angeles Custom Development 86

InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 23, 2013

Indecisive prospects diffuse a startup''s focus and slow down its sales velocity. Thus, startups must quickly determine which prospects are most likely to purchase in the near term and focus their energy on delivering these prospective customers an incredible experience. product, geography, customer segment, etc.).

Sales 215

Sales Outsource Development Metrics Resource 215

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 6, 2021

Every new business I know dreams of building momentum in their business, where growth continues to increase, customers become your best advocates, and employee motivation is high. Unfortunately, with limited resources, this isn’t possible, and it frustrates customers and the team. Focus first on finding more of the right customers.

Technical Review 160

Technical Review Technical Advisors Startup Mentor 160

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 5, 2012

Steve's first question was, “Who are our customers?" I) took the 300 latest cards, personally wrote a questionnaire and called 300 customers. SuperMac's main customer base were color desktop professionals. All of a sudden I now had customers telling what market, how to reach them and what applications are important.

Marketing 271

Marketing Startup Sales Customer 271

socalTECH

JULY 10, 2019

At the end of the day, we help retailers make smarter recommendations to their customers, which leads to better business. Spencer Price: The customer experience with e-commerce has become less and less human, as algorithms on digital platform replace human interaction. The customer is really struggling to regain their lost humanity.

Pricing 113

Pricing Startup North Hollywood Platform 113

InfoChachkie

MARCH 2, 2010

We were happy to accommodate his request, as the money derived from the sale of the sets allowed us to purchase vintage cards via our weekly newspaper ads. Many collectors, whose primary goal was to complete their collections, were content to have an Excellent or even a Very Good card, which ensured broader demand for lesser grade cards.

Pricing 138

Pricing Advertising Marketing Startup 138

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2011

That, plus I love the space of high-customer-service, focused eCommerce for moms worried about what their kids eat & wear.&#. Starting with exclusive rights to sell celebrity chef, Tyler Florence’s, line of baby food online, SproutBaby began seeing initial traction from customer interest as physical distribution spread.

Startup 292

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Summary 292

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 13, 2021

There is no substitute for talking to customers, analyzing your competition, and honing your solution to meet a target market segment. The ready-fire-aim approach makes sense here, but it should be combined with metrics to learn from feedback, and make pivots as required. You already have a large and loyal customer base.

Marketing 138

Marketing Demand IBM IBM 138