Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

I break the answer to that question down into three engines: Viral - this is the business model identified in the presentation as "Get Users." Here, the key metrics are Acquisition and Referral, combined into the now-famous viral coefficient. If the coefficient is > 1.0 , you generally have a viral hit on your hands.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 25, 2017

Every time I challenge a business plan with little or no budget for marketing, I get the answer that they will be using “viral” marketing, which costs nothing. First of all, Seth Godin pointed out a long time ago that viral marketing does not equal word-of-mouth. Develop viral content. Seed viral activity.

Campaign 167

Campaign Cost Viral Marketing 167

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 4, 2011

How many through SEM? Measuring viral adoption is obviously important. per click on an SEM basis this is NOT your cost to acquire a customer – you need to add conversion rate. How many people would we need to hire? If you can break this down by channel that you’ve acquired them from this is obviously better.

Metrics 346

Metrics Startup Acquisition SEM 346

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Dont worry about selecting particularly good keywords, if youre new to SEM. SEM only gets at one segment of users, and for a brand new product, you presumably need some skill at marketing in general and adsense in particular to get any useful info. Just put in your credit card. Just load them all in and choose a low cost-per-click.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

As I ask questions to understand the thinking, what usually comes out is something vague along the lines of web marketing, and/or viral growth with no numbers attached. A quick look around all the B2C startups shows that, although viral growth is often hoped for, in reality it is extremely rare.

Acquisition 103

Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103

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. If you sell an online service that solves a defined problem, you can compete in SEO or SEM. There are other models, in other distribution channels.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

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. How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

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). SEM on five dollars a day Andrew Chen: Growing renewable audiences Marc Prensky's Weblog: Cell Phones in Class A new version of the Joel Test (draft) Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your c.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

ConversionXL

APRIL 4, 2017

SEM is great because you can capture people as they’re searching for a solution, which is often some of the highest intent traffic you can find. Virality and Referral. Virality is the key lever of many of the most famous growth examples: Dropbox, Uber, Facebook, Hotmail. If you sell shoes, would virality work for you?

Channel 118

Channel Marketing Viral SEO 118

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

If the viral coefficient is 0.9, Start with a five-dollar-a-day SEM campaign. the most sensible SEM advice Ive read - discussed in the context of a real situation. Pay attention to your fundamental driver of growth. keep iterating until its 1.1 before you launch. Spend your time with renewable sources of customers and iterate.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 7, 2014

Two 28-year old founders, a friend they hired to come work for them fulltime and one intern in a nice but small office in Amsterdam. Automating processes with APIs, creating a large e-mail subscriber base, SEO and viral strategies are of course extremely valuable to any start-up. I started out working for Imbull almost four years ago.

SEM 244

SEM Lean PR Startup 244

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Revenue is always my preferred measure, but you can use anything that is important to your business: retention, activation, viral invites, or even customer satisfaction in the form of something like net promoter score. If an optimization has an effect at the micro level that doesnt translate into the macro level - who cares?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 15, 2023

Like it's not about, you know, going viral and reaching masses. I don't think enough people say that, unfortunately when you one of the things I think particularly marketers are bad at is when they get hired by agencies, particularly when they get hired by a company it's like, what do you need us to do? It's super to the point.

Channel 92

Channel Acquisition Framework B2B 92

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

I strongly believe that the first few hires of a startup should belong to the growth department, whether they’re marketers, community managers, or salespeople (selling your product is the best way to learn how to improve it). Google AdWords or SEM (expensive). 1x hacker in charge of product/development. Display ads (cheap).

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 10, 2008

Only after reaching $1M in CMRR should you consider hiring European sales and services execs behind customer demand. To understand when the business has started to climb the sales learning curve and is in a position to hire more reps profitably, you have to think in terms of CMRR instead of bookings.

Software Review 48

Software Review North America Europe Metrics 48

Occam's Razor

AUGUST 22, 2011

PPC / SEM Analytics: 5 Actionable Tips To Improve ROI. Tip#4: Make Your Analysis/Reports "Connectable" Tip#3: Turbocharge Your SEM/PPC Analysis. Viral, Social, Sentiment, Mobile: 4 Delightful Web Analytics Solutions. Hiring a Senior Web Analyst? Leverage Custom Reports For Better Insights! Find Love (/Insights).

Analytics 125

Analytics Metrics SEM Web 125

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral. If your app has strong word-of-mouth or viral components, your retention drives new acquisition, and its not so important to have good placement in the store. Or if your lifetime value is high enough, you can just keep spending on SEM.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean SEM Retention 68