TechEmpower

JULY 24, 2023

At TechEmpower, we frequently talk to startup founders, CEOs, product leaders, and other innovators about their next big tech initiative. Background Questions Let’s start with some background questions about the business and product. Ads, Viral/Social, SEO)? What are your key Startup Metrics ? Who are the customers?

Developer 520

Developer Technical Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO 520

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

What metrics do we use to see if we learned enough in Customer Discovery ? And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” I gave my boilerplate answer, “I’m a product guy and I tend to invest and look at deals that have measurable revenue metrics. Don’t launch.

Customer Development 228

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 228

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 25, 2015

This is why I loved Brad Feld’s recent post about the “ illusion of product / market fit.” Are our users addicted to our product? But if users don’t come back to your product directly and often I question whether you have a sustainable product / company. Not vanity metrics.

Product 150

Product B2B Warrant Technical Review 150

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 8, 2020

Plan to deliver a family of products, rather than a one-trick pony. Even a great initial product, with no follow-on, won’t keep you ahead of competitors very long. A smarter risk is to build a plan, with associated greater resources, that will put you in position to expand your product line and keep one step ahead of competitors.

Management 322

Management Entrepreneur Forecast Stock Options 322

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 2, 2022

Plan to deliver a family of products, rather than a one-trick pony. Even a great initial product, with no follow-on, won’t keep you ahead of competitors very long. A smarter risk is to build a plan, with associated greater resources, that will put you in position to expand your product line and keep one step ahead of competitors.

Forecast 304

Forecast Stock Options Technical Review Metrics 304

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 14, 2021

In this article, we’ll share key brand tracking metrics and methods for how to measure and optimize your success. Key brand tracking metrics. Supplement brand loyalty metrics with qualitative measures such as brand associations and perceived quality, as these can give you insight into why customers intend to repurchase.

Metrics 157

Metrics Marketing Campaign Audience 157

SoCal CTO

MAY 21, 2012

Many of the factors are not obvious and include building mystery to drive margin, why boring B2B companies often win but are challenging in other ways, how bootstrapping wins, integrating metrics from the start and many other similar lessons. What is our viral spread coefficient? What does it cost to acquire a new customer?

Fractional CTO 175

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Startup Social Network 175

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

He has a really interesting background as a product manager and now an entrepreneur. Like many product managers, my background is fairly eclectic. That's where I learned I enjoyed interacting with customers and working with development teams to build and launch products. Tell me a bit about your background. How did it help you?

Management 150

Management Product Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 150

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 27, 2014

Plan to deliver a family of products, rather than a one-trick pony. Even a great initial product, with no follow-on, won’t keep you ahead of competitors very long. A smarter risk is to build a plan, with associated greater resources, that will put you in position to expand your product line and keep one step ahead of competitors.

Startup 283

Startup Forecast Stock Options Technical Review 283

SoCal CTO

MARCH 11, 2013

Yesterday, I was talking to a startup founder about their MVP and they said something that finally got me to write this post: "I have a few investors interested but they want to see a product." It is almost never the case that you are building an MVP to "show" to an investor the product itself.

Algorithm 264

Algorithm Metrics Viral Venture Capital 264

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 28, 2012

Read everything you can about viral marketing. Define relevant metrics and measure. Don’t use the same message on Twitter you developed for email blasts and postcard blitzes. Social media demands two-way communication, rather than outbound only. It’s not free, so budget appropriately, but not excessively.

Social Media 289

Social Media Small Business Media Technical Review 289

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 25, 2007

As I look at more and more start-ups predicated on viral growth, and at the use of social marketing, its becoming simultaneously easier to understand some aspects of viral growth and still a gap in understanding whats going to be that "hook" that will grab people at the end of the day. Marketing, Startups and Networking in Los Angeles.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

A great product is always the foundation but a clear distribution strategy becomes essential to cut through the noise. Your business has a high viral co-efficient (or perhaps even a network effect) that lets you amass users cheaply without worrying too much about the monetization per user or spending money on paid acquisition.

Churn Rate 168

Churn Rate Viral Acquisition Cofounder 168

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

In an over-funding environment companies are encouraged to eschew revenues in a land grab to acquire eyeballs, clicks, page views or whatever other vanity metrics give VCs the false comfort that they’re sitting on a gold mine. The Exit Problem. We’re online all the time and at high speed.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Mobile 347

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Creators of new products in environments of extreme uncertainty, startups face enormous risks. Through rapid experimentation, short product development cycles, and rigorous measurements of the right metrics, they can ascertain what customers really want. In the US, about 50% of small businesses fail in the first five years.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

VC Cafe

NOVEMBER 2, 2019

One question that keeps coming up when speaking with early stage entrepreneurs when it comes to funding, is what metrics the company needs to hit to raise seed/series A/B etc: What’s a good conversion rate? Investors look beyond top line metrics to assess other important factors. What should our MRR growth be?

B2C 141

B2C Technical Review Startup Retention 141

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

Growth Hacking isn’t viral marketing (although viral marketing is part of it). Growth Hacking comes to solve a very common problem in consumer startups: getting to the first x thousand/million users quickly once the product has launched and the hype has passed. KISS Metrics – How to Run A/B Tests that Get REAL Results.

API 167

API Viral Startup Retention 167

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

The Next Web

DECEMBER 4, 2013

Along with building a product and a company, you need to build social momentum and buzz. Metrics on keywords, follower profiles and competitors all help define your target listener. Product and culture . Particularly in the beta/pre-launch phase, the goal is to generate excitement for the product to-come.

Social Media 158

Social Media Media Viral Startup 158

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

Stage 1: Target the right metrics for an effective long game. In today’s market ( 8,000 martech products alone ), it’s easier to attract the right customer with material they value than it is to chase down and convert a prospect who isn’t ready to buy. Metrics for your demand generation funnel. Demand generation is no exception.

Demand 124

Demand B2B Distribution Channel 124

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them. In a previous post , I covered the three main drivers of growth: Paid, Sticky, and Viral. And this is true outside of games.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

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

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

In my experience, the majority of changes we made to products have no effect at all on customer behavior. This kind of result is typical when you ship a redesign of some part of your product. Without split-testing, your product tends to get prettier over time. First of all, why split-test? One last note on reporting.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Duct Tape Marketing

MAY 23, 2013

These are the first six key metrics non-robots must track to understand Facebook Page performance, why you need them and where to find them. #1: Viral reach (views) consists of posts viewed as a result of a friend’s actions (sharing, liking, commenting). Why your fan reach metrics are likely the most important.

Metrics 78

Metrics Social Media Viral Technical Review 78

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 17, 2018

Plan to deliver a family of products, rather than a one-trick pony. Even a great initial product, with no follow-on, won’t keep you ahead of competitors very long. A smarter risk is to build a plan, with associated greater resources, that will put you in position to expand your product line and keep one step ahead of competitors.

Forecast 161

Forecast Stock Options Technical Review Metrics 161

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Thats the conclusion Ive come to after watching tons of online products fail for a complete lack of customers. Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. Nothing made any difference.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

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

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

That last bit should sound familiar if you follow theories of Startup Laws & Metrics. Similarly, we hold up “viral growth” as the best sort of growth, because exponential curves overwhelm all others, thus once the mechanism is stable and the company gets large enough to be noticed, it’s neigh-impossible for competitors to catch up.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Viral Metrics Salary 120

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. In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. For example, I’m a big believer in split-testing.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 8, 2023

In contrast, it left several e-trends: augmented reality, zero coding, the marketplace boom, and product subscriptions are just a few of them. With the help of voice assistants, such as Siri and Alexa, you can purchase the product just by saying it while running errands. We will deliver product x every three months with free shipping.”

eCommerce 185

eCommerce Technical Review Software Review Analytics 185

ConversionXL

MARCH 6, 2019

On Facebook, an ideal customer may log on to see photos of a new nephew, not to check out a 30-second demo of your SaaS product. This post focuses on deployment rather than production, but here are high-level takeaways from those posts: Quality = attention span. LinkedIn video ads: tech specs, targeting, metrics, and cost.

Video 129

Video B2B Technical Review Campaign 129

Occam's Razor

FEBRUARY 3, 2014

Some have experimented with virality ( Pepsi Test Drive or Dove Beauty , etc.), Once you master step one… graduate to the next level, aim for the large possible global audience that is relevant for your products/services/mission. You can see the products used in the how-to videos right next to the video.

Analytics 151

Analytics Marketing Audience Channel 151

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 8, 2009

A post by Fred Wilson pointed me to Dave McClure's Startup Metrics presentation. Define what you need from a metrics and reporting standpoint. Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp, Sept 2009) View more documents from Dave McClure. You only build what you need to prove that model.

Metrics 225

Metrics Startup Retention Acquisition 225

Cracking the Code

MARCH 23, 2007

Popular Media: the key to viral marketing. Popular Media is a hosted, web-based technology platform that enables customers to quickly create, optimize, and scale viral marketing programs - and it seems to work pretty well. S&M productivity (CAC ratio) for the SaaS 13 Index. SaaS business metrics: why are they different?

Software Review 48

Software Review Viral Media Marketing 48

mashable.com

JULY 10, 2012

Unusual or Commoditized Products. These products compete on individuality and aesthetics more than price. Lifeproof , a line of waterproof and shock-resistant iPhone cases, aligned itself with Best Buy for this very reason, and it was able to penetrate the mainstream audience, whereas before it was simply a niche product.

eCommerce 101

eCommerce Software Review Technical Review Social Media 101

View from Seed

AUGUST 30, 2016

Regardless of your opinion of any of these companies, their successes or failures in going public, or the future of their businesses, they’ve all succeeded in convincing hundreds of millions of people (or even billions) to use their product. The city I call home, Boston, is not known for its social products. A Story of Impact.

Social Media 185

Social Media B2B North America Media 185