Part of those questions are around Startup Metrics . This aligns with understanding the the core business model: Get Users (= Acquisition, Referral) Drive Usage (= Activation, Retention) Make Money (= Monetize) (and Lifetime Value is a good one) Of course, that’s a big part of what the investor wants as well. And you definitely should have ideas around important proof points for the business. Tim Berry has a great post on Why I Hate Those Huge Market Numbers tells us that he doesn’t like to see business plans with multi-billion market numbers used as the basis for projections.

Take a look at Startup Metrics . One of the topics that came up in my post Mobile Internet Apple Facebook was around open vs. closed platforms. This issue comes up at the start of almost every new startup company in a variety of forms. I’m constantly struggling with trying to figure out the best

Who’s responsible for what portions? How will we find and interview developers? How do we motivate and manage developers? What do we need to do to make sure we can survive technical due diligence by investors and partners? What specific technical innovations might make sense? What can we build that might be protectable? What metrics are going to be the key startup metrics and how do we get those metrics without too much cost? Where and how will we host the systems? I’ve been having discussions with several people recently about the role of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in very early stage companies.

Enjoy. Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition | For Entrepreneurs , February 2, 2010 Looks at the critical equation around customer acquisition cost vs. customer lifetime value similar to what I discussed in Startup Metrics but in more depth. They have a related post: Designing startup metrics to drive successful behavior | For Entrepreneurs , but I think that looking at Here are some recent great posts that I’ve come across that generally fall in the intersection of startups and CTOs. Great stuff.

Last Friday, the LA CTO Forum hosted a discussion on the various metrics used to measure ourselves and our companies. found a bunch of old examples, sanitized them, and was struck by how much metrics evolve over the lifecycle of a company. was inspired enough to put together a diagram that describes how the metrics for a product or startup company evolve over time. I was asked to participate, and eagerly dug into my archives.

Santa Monica-based Image Metrics , a developer of facial animation software and services, has raised $8.0M According to Image Metrics, it has entered into an exchange offer with International Cellular Industries, an OTC BB firm traded as ICLA, to become a pubicly traded company. Image Metrics said that ICLA will change its name to Image Metrics, and will change its stock symbol as part of the merger. in funding and gone public through a reverse merger. Source of the new financing for the company was not disclosed.

Los Angeles-based Image Metrics said Monday that it has launched its facial animation technology product, FACEWARE. Image Metrics' FACEWARE works with existing 3D software packages. READ MORE>> ...Tags: Tags: image metrics facial animation halo bungie videogame content softwar The new software is based on existing services the firm offers to game developers. The company also said the new package is being used in-house by game developer Bungie, the developer of HALO.

So, you can easily get sold that there’s little to no Gap. Some of the activities that are likely part of the mix where there might be need: Review and provide input on business plans Costs and time estimation Product prioritization Options analysis Systems analysis and design Technical risk analysis Technical research and evaluation Systems for accounting and reporting Metrics (see startup metrics ) Security Integration Scalability Social media integration plans (ex. I’ve worked with 30+ early-stage companies in all sorts of capacities (and spoken to many, many more), so I thought it might be worthwhile trying to classify the various ways that I’ve engaged in different technology roles in startups. Background This post partly really came about as a result of a great conversation yesterday with David Croslin a former CTO at HP who recently conducted an interesting experiment.

Isn’t this a completely different metric than what the new research studies? The London Times says that only 150 of your Facebook friendships matter . Might as well delete everyone else! This claim is repeated by the Telegraph and a collection of paid bloggers that should know better .

With goals in place, your metrics have so much more meaning and the time you spend analyzing data will drive more informed decisions geared at improving your conversion rates. Repost of SMCLA's Going Goo Goo Over Google Analytics Below is a highlight video of the evening.  To To view the entire talk click here .