VC Cafe

JUNE 6, 2024

It’s not a surprise, given that entrepreneurs are obsessed with data and metrics, but in the conservative VC market of 2024, it feels even more important for founders to know what ‘good’ looks like and what investors expect. Metric Unremarkable Good Excellent Outlier ARR <$500k $500k-$1.5m $1.5m-$2.5m >$2.5m

B2B 97

B2B Burn Rate Generative AI Retention 97

Up and Running

OCTOBER 7, 2019

A data-driven approach can help you make accurate and timely business decisions to meet market demands and improve cost-efficiency. You need to use your time and resources productively by focusing on the right metrics so you can use data to help you implement improvements that matter. How To Successfully Use KPIs In Your Business.

Founder 71

Founder Retention Metrics Technical Review 71

ConversionXL

JANUARY 9, 2019

Google Analytics insights frequently end with raw counts of goal completions, leaving a yawning gap between on-site behavior and sales for companies with long sales cycles. The data-related challenges of long sales cycles are well known: Between a form fill and a sale, there may be dozens of touchpoints spanning weeks or months.

Sales Cycle 127

Sales Cycle Bootstrapping Conversion Web 127

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 3, 2016

Some of the same underlying principles apply, but because of the inherent differences in buying decisions and sales cycles, pulling B2C optimization practices straight from the book might be a bad idea. There are a few things that make optimizing for B2B a different beast: The sales cycle is usually longer.

B2B 48

B2B Conversion B2C Sales Cycle 48

Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

This math works in a normal market…. Unfortunately, it’s no longer a normal market. All your assumptions about customers, sales cycle and most importantly, revenue, burn rate and runway are no longer true. If you are selling to businesses (a B-to-B market) have your customers’ sales dropped? How do you know?

Burn Rate 436

Burn Rate Startup Valuation Sales Cycle 436

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

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 29, 2011

We did learn from the experience — we did a post-mortem and decided what evidence should have stopped us from accepting the account, and now we build that into our sales cycle. Hubspot has this down to a science, more so than almost any other company.

Technical Review 236

Technical Review Software Review Reputation Sales Cycle 236

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 18, 2017

A CTO will guide your product strategy, market validation, architectural decisions, process optimization, recruiting, and hiring. The latter are strategists and evangelists and focus on product-market fit, market trends, and product planning. They adopt, measure, and manage key product performance metrics.

Fractional CTO 54

Fractional CTO CTO Hire CTO Technical Review 54

Up and Running

DECEMBER 21, 2016

In addition to improving cash levels and earnings, cutting expenses, and reducing debt, companies seeking credit should consider focusing on improving key financial metrics that can best predict default. See Also: The 7 Key Metrics Every Business Owner Should Monitor. The 5 financial metrics you should be improving.

Metrics 60

Metrics .Net Cash Position Finance 60

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Blog About Log in Register Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition In the many thousands of articles advising entrepreneurs on what they have to focus on to build successful startups, much has been written about three key factors: team, product and market, with particular focus on the importance of product/market fit.

Acquisition 103

Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 7, 2014

Being able to charge more for a product is great, but along with higher prices come longer sales and payment cycles. Because of these nuances, startups selling to enterprise customers must be even more diligent in tracking the right growth metrics. Here are a few metrics your startup should be watching: 1. Revenue Growth.

Metrics 219

Metrics Churn Rate Startup Acquisition 219

ConversionXL

MAY 1, 2019

Trend lines aren’t impressive if they track metrics that appear distant from business goals. Client education is central to marketing messaging, too, especially for sellers with long sales cycles. The truth is less clear cut, especially for marketers. Marketers, in contrast, are charged with reducing friction.

Marketing 124

Marketing Sales Cycle Retention Differentiation 124

Gust

AUGUST 29, 2012

Somebody asked me in email what investors look for in the marketing portion of a business plan and/or business pitch. The market-defining story. It’s a story that makes product-market fit come alive. What works? What’s credible? What are investors looking for? . Caveat: generalizations are dangerous.

Marketing 119

Marketing Social Media Sales Cycle Angel Investor 119

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 26, 2016

The Hierarchy of Metrics written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. I spent this past weekend with a group of Duct Tape Marketing Consultants determined to gain a better understanding of how to use metrics to guide our own business and increase the value we bring to client engagements. Shorten sales cycle.

Metrics 28

Metrics Retention Analytics Sales Cycle 28

ConversionXL

JULY 8, 2020

Remarketing can substantially increase your conversion rate for paid search marketing. Nick Supapol from SearchEnginePeople recommends using a time lag report to match the membership duration to your sales cycle (e.g., Linkedin targeting can help you reach a director of digital marketing instead of a PPC analyst.

PPC 100

PPC Matching Software Review Campaign 100

Cracking the Code

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

As the first segment to emerge in scale and the most application oriented, SaaS has lead the market to date with the largest market size, highest gross margins, and highest per-seat pricing. 2 comments: Peter Cohen Managing Partner, SaaS Marketing Strategy Advisors. SaaS companies use different metrics to calculate renewals.

Software Review 48

Software Review Cloud Technical Review Sales Cycle 48

ConversionXL

JUNE 2, 2022

Ask 10 people what account-based marketing (ABM) is and you’ll get 10 different answers. Some see it as a sales tactic, while others view it as a content marketing strategy. What is account-based marketing? In his account-based marketing course , Watt goes on to unpack each of the adjectives in his definition: Sustained.

Customer 98

Customer Marketing Channel Acquisition 98

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 13, 2015

Did one group see one marketing message that the other didn’t? Customers that converted in the last year that came in through a bottom-of-the-funnel marketing campaign. Customers that converted in the last year that had a sales cycle of less than x weeks. How did that effect their average order value? Expansion Potential.

Conversion 48

Conversion Retention Acquisition Metrics 48

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 9, 2009

Impact of the recession on SaaS Sales&Marketing productivity. However, if the SaaS & Cloud computing industry is doing relatively well in this downturn, the recession has severely impacted the sales&marketing productivity of these companies, with longer sales cycle, smaller deal size and limited upsells opportunity.

Software Review 48

Software Review Technical Review Cloud Europe 48

ConversionXL

APRIL 7, 2021

Account-based marketing plays a critical role in the growth of many businesses across a variety of industries. However, many marketers often rely on ABM when it may not be the best fit. In addition, what worked for account-based marketing even just a few months ago, may not be the most optimal strategy for marketing today.

IP 98

IP Marketing Technical Review Software Review 98

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

In this article, you’ll learn how to build a demand generation funnel that fuels the pipeline, shortens the sale cycle, and generates revenue. Stage 1: Target the right metrics for an effective long game. an ebook); Then you blast them with sales messaging (e.g., Metrics for your demand generation funnel.

Demand 124

Demand B2B Distribution Channel 124

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 7, 2022

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is an important metric for any ecommerce business. This calculation goes beyond marketing costs and advertising dollars to include product costs, labor costs, shipping costs, and any other expenses that contribute to attracting and securing customers. What is ecommerce customer acquisition cost?

Acquisition 22

Acquisition eCommerce Cost Customer 22

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Because they have no presence in the market, they have to find distribution channels to bring in customers. Over time, they have found a formula for acquiring, qualifying, and selling customers in the market segments they have targeted. What’s the total available market?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

VC Cafe

MARCH 15, 2016

After spending months and maybe years looking for product-market fit, you now proudly got a product and are ready to go to market. You have to invest time and money into building a sales and marketing team to acquire customers beyond early adopters. Online chat. Another way connect with customers is online chat.

Sales 60

Sales Marketing Sales Cycle B2C 60

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 13, 2018

Although it would be great to see sales cycles much shorter, it’s understandable about the care some organizations take in choosing a partner that will represent their brand on the very visible social media front. Often, there are multiple levels of vetting and approval before contractual decisions are made.

Social Media 113

Social Media Sales Cycle Media Audience 113

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

Very few, if any, of these interactions are with a sales rep. This behavior has marketers pledging to up their demand generation budgets. Because if people are making up their own minds, without coercion from sales, creating demand is the best way to get them to choose you. But isn’t that the role of any marketer?

Demand 95

Demand Management B2B Campaign 95

YoungUpstarts

MAY 9, 2013

By Crystal Wells, Product Marketing at Vendio. When you don’t know exactly what inventory you have available, where it is located, or where it is for sale, it’s going to be difficult to manage your inventory effectively and can lead to an ever-increasing number of problem areas. Sell on Multiple Channels. Don’t hold onto the past.

Distribution 160

Distribution Sales Cycle Stock Channel 160

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

Segment your potential market. One of my pet peeves is seeing an obnoxiously large hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars sized market identified for a company starting up with no further breakdown. You have to trim that down and show what segment of the market you can realistically hope to commandeer within five years.

Business Plan 124

Business Plan Elevator Pitch Equity Private Equity 124

David Teten

APRIL 6, 2015

It also shows market white space for the smart entrepreneur. The industry standard metric for tracking the severity of disease is disability-adjusted life years ( DALYs ), i.e., the number of healthy life years lost due to the disease or risk. They’re not usually trained in psychology, marketing, business, or economics.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Technical Review Non-Compete Philadelphia 60

ConversionXL

APRIL 28, 2020

I got one of those in 2018, mere months after I started at data.world as their first growth marketing and demand generation hire. We had built the world’s largest open-data community but—like so many startups—didn’t have a clear product-market fit. . Do you do account-based marketing? How long is your sales process?

Demand 101

Demand Revenue SQL B2B 101

Guy Nirpaz

MAY 10, 2012

It’s not enough to feel it inside – you should base your feeling on numbers and know which metric to measure – that would not only increase your customer engagement but can also increase inside engagement while selling an idea to your team! Need some help measuring your metrics? try Totango free !

Metrics 40

Metrics Sales Cycle Sales Programming 40

BeyondVC

JANUARY 14, 2010

Yes, it is imperative to keep the momentum building but before you get too aggressive with your growth plans make sure you can answer all of these questions about your go-to-market strategy: 1. Do we have a clear value proposition and know which market we are selling into and who we are selling to in the organization?

Sales 102

Sales Sales Cycle Portfolio Lead Generation 102

ConversionXL

JUNE 2, 2022

Account-based marketing (ABM) accounted for 79% of all sales opportunities in 2020. And yet, no one can agree on what account-based marketing is. If leads-based B2B marketing is fishing with a net, ABM is using a harpoon. How iRidium used audience targeting, networking, and activation to land 34 new sales opportunities.

Marketing 105

Marketing Campaign Artificial Inteligence Sales Cycle 105

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 5, 2016

Finding the Truth in Your Business written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Analytics or metrics or whatever you choose to call how a business performs can not lie – as long as you ask the right questions and track the right things. One for marketing, sales, finance, and customer satisfaction.

Analytics 28

Analytics Metrics Sales Cycle Finance 28

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 22, 2018

Talk to any B2B marketer about attribution and they’ll either roll their eyes or rant about how it’s important but hard to get right—long lead cycles, multiple contacts from a single organization, etc. As a group, we’ve gotten a firmer grasp on top-of-the-funnel metrics. Marketers like to work with frameworks.

B2B 131

B2B Marketing Analytics Campaign 131

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

Demand generation tactics address two of the biggest marketing challenges: raising brand awareness and generating leads. Without awareness and leads, you’re missing out on opportunities to close sales and grow your business. It uses marketing to raise brand awareness and get people excited about your products or services.

Demand 115

Demand Affiliate Audience Leadership 115

ConversionXL

MAY 19, 2016

Gone are the days of simple funnels and so there are many external factors that influence a purchase decision, such as content marketing or social media. While McKinsey talks of profound changes … Marketers have long been aware of profound changes in the way consumers research and buy products. Get all that data in one place.

Analytics 78

Analytics Metrics Channel Software Review 78