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17 Dec 09

Lean analytics: Questions VCs should ask (and you’d better answer) – Watching Websites

Good article on what VC will ask a startup and helping to make sure you are measuring the right things.

www.watchingwebsites.com/...uld-ask-and-youd-better-answer - Preview

vc measuring data startup kissmetric analytics goals strategicplanning

Not measuring the right things can be fatal
Because everything online can be tracked, it’s the perfect platform for accountability.
25 more annotations...
- All too often, however, we look at metrics like traffic to the site and number of followers. These don’t matter. What matters is your ability to get a message out to people effectively. If you have a cheap way of reaching many people, that’s a valuable asset.
- viral coefficient is perhaps the best example of this. Simply put, it’s a measure of how a message will propagate.
- for each message they hear, how many people does someone tell?
- amplification. How well are messages being amplified?
- On Twitter, it’s the number of Retweets
- For an investor, unhealthy infrastructure is often a sign that the startup lacks operational discipline and can point to deeper problems
- Performability, which is a combination of performance (latency) and availability (uptime) is usually enough here
- track the health of key steps in the business process, such as the enrollment loop or the invite process
- Voice of the Customer surveys ask visitors what they think when they’re on your site
- Community sentiment is a combination of search engines and natural language processing
- knowing when people are talking trash about your brand online is essential.
- How engaged are your visitors? Ask yourself: How many accounts have you signed up for, then abandoned?
- measure the time since the last visit by individual user, on a histogram.
- whether people are becoming more or less engaged, as well as how big your “dead pool” of visitors is
- web data shared at board meetings doesn’t match the business plan
- Core goals. What are the 3 or 4 assumptions on which the business hinges
- If you can’t explain these — and if you don’t lie awake thinking about them every night — find another person to lead the company.
- Extended funnel abandonment.
- Each of these steps towards the goal must be tracked.
- Movement towards or away from business goals. At every board meeting, you should know what changes to the product moved you towards or away from a goal
- Changes to the funnel. Seeing the funnel is useful; seeing it compared to the past period is essential.
- That means there are three trajectories: growth, failure, or sustainable burn
- Cost per engaged visitor is simply the operating costs of the site divided by the number of visitors.
- Peak to average ratio. All sites experience traffic spikes. How much busier is the site at busy times
- Minimum sustainable burn. If you had to hibernate, what would the steady-state cost of keeping the site running be?

16 Dec 09

Action Oriented Startup Founder

This is a great, and short, post on the value of being action oriented as a startup, founder, and entrepreneur. Very cool indeed. Plant a lot of seeds and see which ones will grow.

www.avc.com/...action-oriented.html - Preview

startup strategy hiring employees work business entrepreneurship action fredwilson

People ask me all the time about the traits I look for in entrepreneurs and action orientation is at the top of the list. I'd much rather back someone who makes 100 decisions a day and gets 51 of them right than someone who makes one decision a day and gets it right.
I'd much rather back someone who makes 100 decisions a day and gets 51 of them right than someone who makes one decision a day and gets it right
8 more annotations...
- the cost of making a bad decision is not nearly as great as the benefit of making a good one. So I like action oriented leaders.
- When you make a bad decision, you can always realize it was bad and change it. By being action oriented, you put a lot of things in motion and can evaluate what is working and what is not.
- You need to have a game plan for sure. But within that game plan, I believe it is better to try more things than less things. And I believe that perfect is the enemy of the good.
- a
  startup as the process of going down lots of dark alleys only to find
  that they are dead ends. Dick describes the art of a successful startup as
  figuring out they are dead ends quickly and trying another and another
  until you find the one paved with gold.
- You can think and debate about stuff all day long or you can try stuff out and see what works
- It's a messier way of doing business and some people have a hard time with mess.
- If you are "action oriented" in your hiring, you'll make more hires and more of them will not work out.
- Great entrepreneurs are hard to work for. They jerk you around, change things up, and are always pulling the rug out from under you. And often a company outgrows that leadership style and needs a calmer more organized leader.

06 Dec 09

Why I gave away my company to charity | Derek Sivers

Guy donate company to charity. Then sells it. Takes a small piece each year but the rest goes to support music in schools. By giving away company he saved 5mil in taxes

sivers.org/trust - Preview

taxes selling business startup entrepreneur charity music

03 Dec 09

The Startup Pyramid

Excellent post on defining the first stage of a startup about making a product customer actually want.

startup-marketing.com/the-startup-pyramid - Preview

startup entrepreneur product growth scaling business strategy customerdevelopment

Customer Validation proves that you have found a set of customers and a market who react positively to the product: By relieving those customers of some of their money
the life of any startup can be divided into two parts – before product/market fit and after product/market fit.
6 more annotations...
- achieving product/market fit requires at least 40% of users saying they would be “very disappointed” without your product.
- Those that struggle for traction are always under 40%, while most that gain strong traction exceed 40%.
- If you haven’t reached product/market fit yet it is critical to keep your burn low and focus all resources on improving the percentage of users that say they would be very disappointed without your product
- Avoid bringing in VPs of Marketing and Sales to try to solve the problem.
- you (the founders) should engage existing and target users to learn how to make your product a “must have.”
- Once you have achieved product/market fit, it’s time to accelerate through the next steps of the pyramid and then begin scaling your business.

17 Aug 09

The Ideal First Round Term Sheet

A link to a "Standard" quickclose term sheet.

www.avc.com/...al-first-round-term-sheet.html - Preview

vc funding legal fredwilson startup entrepreneurship raisingmoney capital investment termsheet

Chris is a serial entrepreneur and I am a VC. And yet we agree on what the term sheet should say. That's progress.
Chris' favorite law firm, Gunderson,
4 more annotations...
- "quick closing".
- There are multiple benefits to doing it this way. First, it leads to a very fast close. Second, the legal costs are minimal, certainly less than $10k and they should be less than $5k. And third, it sets the company up well for future rounds of financing because there is nothing funky in the docs.
- We need to lower the time and cost of raising capital.
- We need to eliminate a lot of bad terms that have caused a lot of harm (tranched investments, mutiple liquidation preferences, super pro-ratas, etc, etc). We need to converge on a set of standard Series A terms that everyone uses.

04 Aug 09

Lifestyle Business

A VC's take on the term Lifestyle Business and how it's not the right word needed to describe a biz that won't get VC money. So he puts out a challege.

redeye.firstround.com/...-need-a-new-name-for-this.html - Preview

vc firstroundcapital raisingmoney lifestylebusiness business entrepreneur joshkopelman startup money redeye

I state that while I think the entrepreneur will make money here -- I just don't think I will generate the risk-adjusted returns I need.
I think the industry places too much of a premium on raising venture capital -- and it has become the default operating assumption for every entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs can create great businesses -- and have great outcomes -- without raising meaningful outside capital.
4 more annotations...
- Part of the problem, I think, is that the technology startup ecosystem seems to be structured so that the goal of every entrepreneur is to raise venture financing.
- The only phrase I've heard used is "lifestyle business"
- It falsely implies that these entrepreneurs aren't working as hard as those of VC-backed companies. It falsely implies that these entrepreneurs are choosing a better lifestyle than they would have if they were operating a VC-backed company.
- 37signals has written, it condescendingly implies that "A lifestyle business is for the hacks and amateurs while a real business is for the big guns and grown-ups."

03 Jul 09

OPEN Forum by American Express OPEN | A Dozen Don’ts for Entrepreneurs

A quick read with nice tips in classic Guy style

blogs.openforum.com/...-dozen-donts-for-entrepreneurs - Preview

Tips entrepreneurship startup business guykawasaki failures fail

15 Jun 09

Founder Non-Admissions

Funny slideshow of things a biz founder will never say but are probably true

www.slideshare.net/...founder-nonadmissions - Preview

startup business founder funny slideshare

05 Jun 09

Steve Blank

running a start up on Faith-Based versus Fact-Based Decision Making

steveblank.com - Preview

blog business entrepreneurship startup faithbased factbased decisionmaking faith

29 May 09

10 lessons from a failed startup » VentureBeat

Filled with lots of great quoted and tips on failed biz. Some specific to just their biz, but most good for all.

venturebeat.com/...-lessons-from-a-failed-startup - Preview

entrepreneurship startup tips howto postmordum failed advice business

31 Mar 09

Google Ventures - Welcome

Google to start funding startups

www.google.com/ventures - Preview

google startup funding money entrepreneurship vc finance business

23 Dec 08

Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook - Jim Breyer, Accel Partners - From Harvard to the Facebook

ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html - Preview

facebook startup entrepreneurship Stanford thoughtleaders

Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner: Tina Seelig, Stanford Technology Ventures Program - What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20

ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html - Preview

startup entrepreneurship Stanford thoughtleaders

Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner: Andrew Frame, Ooma - Warren Packard, DFJ - Adventures of a Startup CEO: No Guts No Glory

One of Favs

ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html - Preview

startup entrepreneurship Stanford thoughtleaders

01 Nov 08

The Startup Lawyer: Start Up Law, Venture Capital, Securities, and M&A

blog about the legal issues related to startups

www.thestartuplawyer.com - Preview

legal startup entrepreneurship blog law lawyer

18 Sep 08

How to Change the World: The Art of Raising Venture Capital

Here is Guy K. 5 tips on the art of raising VC money.

blog.guykawasaki.com/...the-art-of-rais.html - Preview

venturecapital startups guykawasaki vc startup raisingmoney

05 Sep 08

David Heinemeier Hansson speaks at Startup School on Vimeo

This video is filled with several great bits of goodies for web companies, startups, and how to make money.

vimeo.com/924139 - Preview

video 37signals FHWW cooltips startup howto entrepreneurship effectivness paystructure

29 Jul 08

Information Arbitrage: Monitor110: A Post Mortem

One person's Post Mortem of his failed company. Great read for entrepreneurs.

www.informationarbitrage.com/...monitor110-a-po.html - Preview

venturecapital money entrepreneurship startup failures

16 Jun 08

Ask The VC: What's An Appropriate Equity Package For A Founding Board Member?

A nice answer to how much equity a board member should get

www.askthevc.com/...whats-an-approp.php - Preview

equity startup vc entrepreneur raisingmoney

Venture Hacks — Build your own cap table

How to build your own CAP table for laying out company equity.

venturehacks.com/...cap-table - Preview

equity VC startup business entrepreneur raisingmoney

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Tom Krieglstein's Library tagged startup → View Popular

Lean analytics: Questions VCs should ask (and you’d better answer) – Watching Websites

Action Oriented Startup Founder

Why I gave away my company to charity | Derek Sivers

The Startup Pyramid

The Ideal First Round Term Sheet

Lifestyle Business

OPEN Forum by American Express OPEN | A Dozen Don’ts for Entrepreneurs

Founder Non-Admissions

Steve Blank

10 lessons from a failed startup » VentureBeat

Google Ventures - Welcome

Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook - Jim Breyer, Accel Partners - From Harvard to the Facebook

Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner: Tina Seelig, Stanford Technology Ventures Program - What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20

Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner: Andrew Frame, Ooma - Warren Packard, DFJ - Adventures of a Startup CEO: No Guts No Glory

The Startup Lawyer: Start Up Law, Venture Capital, Securities, and M&A

How to Change the World: The Art of Raising Venture Capital

David Heinemeier Hansson speaks at Startup School on Vimeo

Information Arbitrage: Monitor110: A Post Mortem

Ask The VC: What's An Appropriate Equity Package For A Founding Board Member?

Venture Hacks — Build your own cap table

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