Occam's Razor

JULY 12, 2010

Ok not boom overnight… but over the course of a few months the org started to be more data driven, because analysts we hired produced analysis. Let's go look at some tools… Measuring "Invisible Virality": Tynt. Goes viral. Invisible Virality. That fed a virtuous cycle. More analysts. Cool right?

Analytics 97

Analytics Viral Web Mobile 97

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The metrics and levers of engagement, presentation on Engagement Loops for Facebook Developer Garage SF Ill be presenting a talk at the Facebook Developer Garage SF Wednesday evening. Unfortunately, its easy to lose track of positioning effects when optimizing for a single metric.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 17, 2018

Use metrics to measure results of marketing initiatives. Too many entrepreneurs put all their resources in one big make-or-break effort they can’t measure, or they count on word-of-mouth and viral marketing, which are totally unpredictable. Trying to save money by recruiting family members, or hiring only interns, is a bad risk.

Forecast 161

Forecast Stock Options Technical Review Metrics 161

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Business model viability, in the majority of startups, will come down to balancing two variables: Cost to Acquire Customers (CAC) The ability to monetize those customers, or LTV (which stands for Lifetime Value of a Customer) Successful web businesses have long understood these metrics as they have such an easy way to measure them.

Acquisition 103

Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

In a previous post , I covered the three main drivers of growth: Paid, Sticky, and Viral. A business that strives for something like this should absolutely be charging money from day one, in order to establish baselines for their two key metrics: CPA (the cost to acquire a new customer) and LTV (the lifetime value of each acquired customer).

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

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. Hiring The Right Candidate.

Social Media 134

Social Media Media Programming Viral 134

leananalyticsbook.com

AUGUST 19, 2012

The One Metric That Matters. One of the things Ben and I have been discussing a lot is the concept of the One Metric That Matters (OMTM) and how to focus on it. That doesn’t mean there’s only one metric you care about from the day you wake up with an idea to the day you sell your company. Lean Analytics Book.

Metrics 58

Metrics Clickthrough Lean Analytics 58

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

If its part of a viral loop, its probably trying to get them to invite more friends (on average). Focus on the output metrics of that part of the product, and you make the problem a lot more clear. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 25, 2023

As soon as you have 2-3 months' worth of sales data to work with, use a formula to calculate stock reorder levels to ensure you always have stock ready to go, especially if you're promoting your products on platforms known for viral content, like TikTok. Thanks to Dani Mechlowitz, Delta Fulfilment ! #6-

eCommerce 143

eCommerce Omaha Entrepreneur SEO 143

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 9, 2015

Use metrics to measure results of marketing initiatives. Too many entrepreneurs put all their resources in one big make-or-break effort they can’t measure, or they count on word-of-mouth and viral marketing, which are totally unpredictable. Trying to save money by recruiting family members, or hiring only interns, is a bad risk.

Startup 120

Startup Forecast Stock Options Technical Review 120

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

I too would be concerned about false negatives, but perhaps this strategy could be integrated into a broader market research strategy that included user engagement, viral marketing, etc which would all be quantifiable under the Google analytics. A very interesting strategy. Im defiantly going to give it a shot on my next project!

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

reidhoffman.org

NOVEMBER 12, 2013

We are the leader in the professional domain with viral growth. What I knew that many didn’t was that a combination of curiosity and a viral game mechanic would slowly get to a million people, at which point the network becomes valuable. Here, we argue that we have a viral product that creates a network that possesses network effects.

Entrepreneur 111

Entrepreneur Viral Revenue Networking 111

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 26, 2019

There isn’t one most important SaaS metric. Being focussed on SaaS metrics is not incompatible with valuing employee fulfillment and customer happiness. It’s boring and doesn’t make you famous and doesn’t play into the false but common narrative that SEO and viral content will launch your startup into the market with almost no money.

Restful 202

Restful Founder Revenue Acquisition 202

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. Even if it shows improvement in some micro metric, does that invalidate the overall design? That was evident in the metrics and in the in-person usability tests. No one feature is to blame.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Brandanew

MAY 29, 2015

Copying or hiring experts who specialize in copying- not in the Picasso manner, does not work. What is Growth Hacking: A definition before we start: Growth hacking is a marketing technique developed by technology startups which uses creativity, analytical thinking, and social metrics to sell products and gain exposure.

Curation 100

Curation Social Media Viral Startup 100

Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 31, 2016

When is the right time to hire a growth person? And usually by Series B, startups start hiring a growth team. That’s because every company has its own strategy and metrics that mean something to one company won’t necessarily mean anything to another. Virality and marketplaces: generally low, but….

Software Review 60

Software Review South Africa Hockey Stick Viral 60

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Blog About Log in Register Designing startup metrics to drive successful behavior Great companies are almost always run by great management teams. Good metrics should also be actionable, and drive successful behavior. In a follow up post, I will use this technique to walk through the design of a set of metrics for a SaaS company.

Metrics 55

Metrics Design Entrepreneur Startup 55

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. Work hard to define meaningful product metrics – enabler of team success. Dropbox: first achieved growth through virality.

Retention 106

Retention Artificial Inteligence Channel Email 106

crowdSPRING Blog

MAY 31, 2013

The image above is a mosaic of the most interesting photos from Flickr, based on Flickr’s mysterious “interesting” metric. 7 Tips On How Your Small Business Or Startup Can Hire A Good Lawyer And Control Legal Costs – [link]. Here’s the original , interactive version.

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Media 94

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Products can find sources of validation with impressive stats along a number of dimensions, such as high engagement, viral coefficient, or long-term retention. Time-to-complete-a-sale is not a bad metric for validated learning at this stage.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

vs. sustainable: Compare this to the renewable strategies, like viral marketing, SEO, widgets, and ads, which can scale into 10s of millions of users but are primarily centered around tough, non-user centric work. Problem is, you inevitably become yesterday’s old news. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 13, 2021

Successful people look for complementary co-founders, and hire a multi-faceted team. In the startup world, even the best-laid plans are probably wrong, so there is a need to be able to launch fast, have metrics in place to measure progress, learn from real customer feedback, and pivot as required.

Startup 406

Startup Stealth Metrics Viral 406

ConversionXL

MARCH 28, 2014

Even though the video may contain some of these elements, an explainer video is NOT specifically: A Viral video. ” The visitor/view metric is one you should only be competing against yourself on. If you’re doing animation: hire a professional. ” metric for featured products & +28.0 A Tutorial.

Video 122

Video Software Review Cofounder Metrics 122

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

On Facebook, viral distribution has proved decisive. Those companies who have learned to build apps that optimize the viral loop dominate in every category where they compete. So far, I dont see any apps that have much in the way of viral distribution. We're leading the charge in enabling viral distribution for iPhone apps.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

And we cant hire new engineers any faster, because you cant be interviewing and debugging and fixing all at the same time! Even with the highest standards imaginable, theres no way to hire just genius hackers. Hire a CTO or VP Engineering. Worst of all, your teammates are constantly wanting to have meetings. Just change it.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Part-Time VPE 94

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Engagement loops: beyond viral Theres a great and growing corpus of writing about viral loops, the step-by-step optimizations you can use to encourage maximum growth of online products by having customers invite each other to join. This is essentially a version of the viral loop.

Viral 140

Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 140

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

It has been awesome, flattering, and humbling to see that post went viral and has been seen by so many thousands of people — mainly aspiring entrepreneurs — and has been translated into many languages. The most important hiring criteria for your executives is cultural fit. As CEO, you are responsible for every hire.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 7, 2022

Others do far too little, assuming the viral effect and word-of-mouth will soon kick in, and sales will suddenly grow exponentially. There is no magic lever for growth, so several initiatives are required, with metrics to assess value returned. Ask every employee to focus on sales. Introduce automation consistent with growth rates.

Startup 335

Startup Social Media Metrics Viral 335

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 9, 2020

Others do far too little, assuming the viral effect and word-of-mouth will soon kick in, and sales will suddenly grow exponentially. There is no magic lever for growth, so several initiatives are required, with metrics to assess value returned. Ask every employee to focus on sales. Introduce automation consistent with growth rates.

Social Media 329

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 329

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

If the viral coefficient is 0.9, Know what the success metrics are for the launch. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Pay attention to your fundamental driver of growth. before you launch.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 30, 2008 Assessing fit with the Wisdom of Crowds When I wrote earlier about how to conduct a good technical interview , I had only a few things to say about how to assess if the candidate fits in with the team, including this: This responsibility falls squarely to the hiring manager.

San Francisco 83

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 83

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

I was hired to level-up the marketing team. Then, I evolved it into a growth team by hiring a designer and two engineers. For that year, the metrics look amazing. Their growth came from users, and they had true virality. Just remember that true virality is really rare. I Will Teach You to Be Rich. Leads are up.

Conversion 133

Conversion Technical Review Channel Engineer 133

ConversionXL

APRIL 13, 2017

Call it whatever you like, but when businesses are hiring for any of those titles they simply want somebody who can generate lots of quality leads for as little cash as possible.”. There’s lot of overlap, but what it comes down to is metrics and goals. When you’re starting a growth team, who do you hire first? SEO-focused?

Analytics 99

Analytics Engineer SEO Channel 99

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 4, 2024

Learn crucial metrics for success, from open rates to the quality of subscribers. 15:09] What are some of the metrics that showcase success in Newsletter writing? [17:17] And a lot of times you can hire somebody to go do a lot of it from there. John (14:57): Let's talk about metrics. I also look at sort of the virality.

Revenue 96

Revenue Advertising Email ChatGPT 96

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

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. However, if you have the option of working and hiring remotely (not necessarily freelancing or outsourcing), do it. Step 8: Track your metrics. The benefits of tracking key metrics.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Occam's Razor

APRIL 8, 2013

To win in business you need to follow this process: Metrics > Hypothesis > Experiment > Act. We are far too enamored with data collection and reporting the standard metrics we love because others love them because someone else said they were nice so many years ago. That metric is tied to a KPI.

Metrics 157

Metrics Analytics Lean Churn Rate 157