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 Custom 57

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2022

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. Managing business growth is more than metrics. Optimize the total customer experience.

Sales 147

Sales Metrics Guide Startup 147

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 21, 2014

The problem with shelfware is that if you have great sales people, you have raised tons of VC money from prominent investors, you have some marquee clients and you thus likely have some great press about you it can be hard to tell true success from that which is ephemeral. 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. It is possible to be creative on demand, and to demand creativity in your startup.

Metrics 157

Metrics Demand Sales Statistics 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

FEBRUARY 6, 2021

I see entrepreneurs every day who are trying to change the world with a new idea, and startups that are trying to survive their hyper-growth phase by changing processes to meet demand. Define hard (data) and soft (anecdotal) metrics on the change, as well as on the quality of your leadership. Just because Google sales hit $1.5

Startup 155

Startup Metrics Resource Technical Review 155

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. Provide incentives to focus everyone on real results.

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. Managing business growth is more than metrics. Optimize the total customer experience.

Startup 97

Startup Sales Metrics Guide 97

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2019

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. Document processes and metrics for economies of scale. Key metrics for scaling, such as customer loyalty, are very important after initial rollout.

Metrics 86

Metrics Startup Training Customer 86

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 Statistics Demand 113

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. Every startup demands logical changes along the way. Don’t forget to focus on the value of you and your team.

Entrepreneur 162

Entrepreneur Social Media Examples Metrics 162

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2021

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. Mergers and acquisitions also require new skills.

Technical Review 131

Technical Review Case Study Mentor Software Review 131

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 Statistics Demand 110

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. Managing business growth is more than metrics. Optimize the total customer experience.

Startup 108

Startup Sales Metrics Entrepreneur 108

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 5, 2012

He met with the editors of the three Mac magazines that his customers read and showed them metrics that confirmed that SuperMac's boards were the fastest on the market. "I The team failed to understand that marketing's primary role at a startup is to drive sales. the VP of Sales the richest person in the company.

Marketing 271

Marketing Startup Sales Custom 271

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

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. It is possible to be creative on demand, and to demand creativity in your startup.

Metrics 60

Metrics Statistics Demand Sales 60

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. Managing business growth is more than metrics. Optimize the total customer experience.

Startup 56

Startup Sales Metrics Guide 56

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

AUGUST 30, 2017

I can't imagine starting a service, like Airbnb, Uber, and other now famous marketplaces, and starting with zero users on either the supply or demand side. We did not start from scratch on that side, either. It's tremendously hard. I think we've got an advantage, to kickstart this, and move faster than they were in the early days.

Startup 150

Startup Offshore Metrics Sites 150

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. Managing business growth is more than metrics. Optimize the total customer experience.

Sales 96

Sales Metrics Startup Guide 96

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 27, 2019

At Amazon, Jeff Bezos leads a relentless drive to invent dramatic new ways to delight customers, not waiting for customer demands or competitors to show the way. For example, when delivery costs and delays were still a major online sales hurdle, Amazon Prime membership was invented to offer free next day shipping.

Marketing 123

Marketing Technical Review Custom Customer 123

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 25, 2014

I see entrepreneurs every day who are trying to change the world with a new idea, and startups that are trying to survive their hyper-growth phase by changing processes to meet demand. Define hard (data) and soft (anecdotal) metrics on the change, as well as on the quality of your leadership. Just because Google sales hit $1.5

Startup 108

Startup Resource Metrics Technical Review 108

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

OCTOBER 8, 2018

They have to be energized and able to adapt as the market and competitors demand. You need to communicate quantified and updates goals quarterly, including the metrics to assess progress and success. These are your eyes and ears, in daily contact with customers, who are as committed to delighting customers as you are.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Customer Custom Startup 84

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2019

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. This is the point where you must manage to metrics, work on the culture of the organization, and look for partner-based growth.

Ideas 94

Ideas Slides Technical Review Patents 94

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 20, 2013

I see entrepreneurs every day who are trying to change the world with a new idea, and startups that are trying to survive their hyper-growth phase by changing processes to meet demand. Define hard (data) and soft (anecdotal) metrics on the change, as well as on the quality of your leadership. Just because Google sales hit $1.5

Startup 101

Startup Resource Metrics Technical Review 101

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. You can’t demand total loyalty from all, so you have to learn to accept criticism without being defensive.

Social Network 59

Social Network Startup Demand Entrepreneur 59

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. Perfection is not an affordable target in product development, sales or customer support.

Training 105

Training Entrepreneur Tool Metrics 105

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 8, 2016

Investors look for sales at full price, to people you don’t know, to validate demand, price, and margin. Show an aggressive marketing and sales plan. The smart ones identify and budget innovative approaches, and use metrics to tools to monitor effectiveness. Every business requires spending money to make money.

Entrepreneur 58

Entrepreneur Ideas Pricing Customer 58

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

And finally, Scott demonstrated his internal management tool for managing the metrics of his business. Company plans to use the capital to build out sales and marketing and r&d. -a Spread through word-of-mouth as the company has no sales team, all engineers. It’s awesome. The deals we quickly went through are: 1.

Zag 248

Zag Truecar Venture Capital CarsDirect 248

socalTECH

JULY 10, 2019

What we learned, is there is so much more demand from existing retailers and platforms that sell directly to consumers, and discovery platforms like Foursquare, who wanted to user our IP as a layer, versus a standalone product. In every pilot or evaluation so far, our tests have placed first among other recommendation vendors.

Pricing 113

Pricing Startup North Hollywood Platform 113

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

and we were met with weak demand, slow growth and high costs. It wasn’t just front-end processes like sales tools, marketing funnels, dynamic pricing, driver routes and so forth but we also had to build comprehensive systems to manage numerous warehouses across four different cities.

Startup 286

Startup Technical Review Custom Customer 286

Tech Zulu Event

JANUARY 22, 2016

Costs for advertising on Facebook are increasing, due to high demand, and their profits continue to soar. Adoption of Automation Tools – The more you work with social media sites like Facebook, the more you realize how time-intensive it can be to manage comments, post status updates, create sales campaigns, and grow your friend’s list.

Marketing 40

Marketing Social Media Social Network Technical Review 40

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 10, 2011

Metrics-Guided. Iterate until validated (through sales or tangible exchange). Lean Approach. Model-Focused. Vision-Driven (You’re definitely going to need a strong vision when those sleepless nights, crying kids, and angry spouse enter the picture).

Startup 86

Startup Santa Monica Los Angeles Custom Development 86

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

Then you can do a little bit of research and find out that very few companies ever achieve this valuation in a trade sale so you’re clearly gunning for an IPO. Another firm we saw tried to raise $15 million at a $60 million pre-money with similar metrics. The risk wouldn’t be appropriate. Here’s the problem.

Startup 336

Startup Pricing Technical Review Marketing 336

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

billion in sales and thus controls less than 10% of the market. The metrics were good but we wondered how much better they would be when we expanded our product. If you look at the storage market I referenced above, the largest player – Public Storage – does about $2.4 What are the customer’s alternatives?

Startup 150

Startup Marketing Study SEO 150