Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Behind this analysis is a spreadsheet model, complete with detailed metrics for a set of customer behaviors that show just how valuable the new product will be. They are on-schedule and on-budget, but their gross metrics are way off. They are on-schedule and on-budget, but their gross metrics are way off.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 31, 2016

As an investor and former founder, I know that scalable growth (and the pretty hockey stick graph) is the holy grail for every startup. That’s because every company has its own strategy and metrics that mean something to one company won’t necessarily mean anything to another.

Software Review 60

Software Review South Africa Hockey Stick Viral 60

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 26, 2013

Traction is evidence that your product or service has started that “hockey- stick” adoption rate which implies a large market, a valid business model, and sustainable growth. A graph that shows a hockey-stick “up and to the right” curve with at least three data points per key indicator is a great visual assist.

Hockey Stick 266

Hockey Stick Early Stage Metrics Acquisition 266

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

This structure allows for alignment on the front end, and real-time flexibility for performance metrics,” says Samira Salman , a family office investor and advisor. . Flexible VCs have created structures based on other company performance metrics than revenues, such as profits or founder salaries. Flexible VC 102: Variations.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

Up and Running

APRIL 19, 2017

Here, you’ll learn what not to do when forecasting sales, and how to build a forecast on realistic sales projections—rather than the dreaded “hockey stick” forecast. You’ll also learn more about which SaaS metrics you should be keeping an eye on during the forecasting process. Industry-specific forecasting guides.

Forecast 85

Forecast Curation Sales Hockey Stick 85

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. This wasn’t very impressive, but we had two things going for us: A hockey stick shaped growth curve. People often forget the most important part of the hockey stick: the long flat part. And yet, their investors are frustrated.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Reid Hoffman

DECEMBER 10, 2020

it took years for Airbnb’s metrics to really start accelerating. For a long time, when you looked at the graph, it was almost like a classic exponential “hockey stick” curve, where it’s flat for a long time, then hits the bend and takes off. So I got the license to put a term sheet down, and we made the investment.

Hosting 69

Hosting Hockey Stick IPO Silicon Valley 69

Ben's Blog

JULY 20, 2011

When I ran Opsware, we had the non-linear quarter problem also known affectionately as the hockey stick. The hockey stick refers to the shape of the revenue graph over the course of a quarter. Our hockey stick was so bad that one quarter, we booked 90% of our new bookings on the last day of the quarter.

Hockey Stick 74

Hockey Stick Management Employee Retention 74

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

Most important slide: hockey stick Micro-scale results Key questions: who is the customer, and how do you know? Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. what is the potential market size?

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

ConversionXL

APRIL 10, 2020

Hockey-stick growth requires being ahead of, not in line with, conventional wisdom: The most impactful ideas won’t be found in “best practices.” He recalls an epic battle over a homepage redesign that, while crushing key metrics, struggled to gain support: Multiple executives hated this page. Mailchimp’s Willie Tran agrees.

Hockey Stick 68

Hockey Stick Analytics Channel Sales Cycle 68

Rob Go

AUGUST 12, 2013

These companies did have some solid metrics, but they did not see hockey-stick like momentum and there were still a hundred reasons why they could fail. Honestly, I think the answer is that while these companies had a lot of good things going for them, many data-miners would have been relatively unimpressed early on.

Hockey Stick 69

Hockey Stick Early Stage Later Stage Portfolio 69

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 19, 2016

You get more traffic, more conversions, more money – in an endless hockey stick shaped cycle. You know all about vanity metrics , and how you shouldn’t be obsessed with them. Therefore, the more you test and improve your site, the higher it should appear in the rankings. Of course, it’s not so simple.

SEO 48

SEO Technical Review Algorithm Jacksonville 48

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 30, 2015

Instead of paid acquisition fueling an up and to the right hockey stick, these companies would grow organically. They might even find themselves operating more efficiently than they ever had been--newly focused on core metrics. That would actually be pretty good for the talent market--it would bring salaries back down to normal.

Hockey Stick 60

Hockey Stick Valuation Startup Maryland 60

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

A startup in a New Market (enabling customers to do something they never could before,) might be unprofitable for 5 or more years, (hopefully with the traditional hockey stick revenue curve,) while one in an Existing Market might be generating cash in 12-18 months. Even more serious, startups can have radically different cash needs.

Customer Development 221

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 221

Professor VC

AUGUST 26, 2011

The objections range from "its hard", "nobody believes them" to "all hockey sticks look alike". What are the key drivers and metrics? Byron Deeter has a good blog post on SAAS metrics. I like to have one tab with assumptions and one tab with summary financials and key metrics. How do you think?

Silicon Valley 35

Silicon Valley San Jose Hockey Stick Venture Capital 35

Up and Running

OCTOBER 8, 2014

At Palo Alto Software, we use our own product – LivePlan – to manage and keep track of key business metrics. When you play unicycle hockey, you typically use a unicycle, an ice-hockey stick and a tennis ball. James Shields uses an ice hockey stick during a serious unicycle hockey competition.

Hockey Stick 144

Hockey Stick South Africa Africa Cambodia 144

Up and Running

MARCH 11, 2015

Food, technology, bioscience, services, you need to know the metrics for your model. I’m going to share what the metrics are for a SAS business, which is software as a service, and that’s what we are here at LivePlan, so these are the things that we track on a daily basis. You want to explain those inflection points.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Software Review Due Diligence Exit Strategy 60

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2019

There are tons of metrics you can monitor: Conversion rate; Bounce rate ; Click-through rate ; Pageviews; Lead captures; Purchase conversion rate. Setting up your experiments for success: Define success metrics. Statistical ghost: When you think your test has impacted your metric, but in reality there’s no impact.

Artificial Inteligence 114

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Metrics SEO 114