A post by Fred Wilson pointed me to Dave McClure's Startup Metrics presentation. This is a great presentation and one that I'm going to point out to startup / early stage company CEOs. Normally, when I am talking to the founder of any startup trying to figure out what they need to do, one of the things I always try to do is understand their business at its core. This kind of a simple model also helps: Define the early proof points for the company. In many cases, I can break it down into: Customer Acquisition Cost – how will you reach prospects, how will you convert them and how much will it cost to convert them Customer Lifetime Value – how much will you make off of each converted customer This very simple model works for a surprising number of business models.

I generally am working as an acting CTO for about 3-4 start-ups or other companies at any one time. I also found this interesting graphic of the changing needs around the CTO role in different size/type companies that somewhat echoes my experience. ( Roger Smith ) This helps explain where I normally play. Most often I'm being brought in the early stage, Start-up or Expansion (as the company looks at new product lines). I was just talking with someone who asked me to define how that could work and what they meant. Great question.

I’ve been having discussions with several people recently about the role of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in very early stage companies. In December 2007, I described how I commonly take on an Acting CTO Role in a Start-up . I used an image from Roger Smith that describes the varying roles of a CTO as the company matures. However, I’ve now begun questioning how and what an early-stage / startup CTO should Most often at the earliest point in the life of a startup, the dominant need is certainly to produce product to get something in the market, get funding, etc.

This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice .  I Keeping a blog has been great because so many entrepreneurs have written me with questions about their companies and I’ve gotten to know many of you personally through the process.  In In these many exchanges similar questions crop up. Beware of VC Seagulls, who shit on you and then fly away (or worse yet leave you with Red Herrings) I write this post as a warning to pick your VC’s carefully.  I

UPDATE:  I’m setting up a new project on analytics.  One of the things I am passionate about is analytics and metrics. It was this experience that gave me the appreciation for the importance of metrics and the greater importance of making meaning of the data for decision making. While at one of my recent startups I developed a framework for startup growth metrics If you are interested in collaborating ping me on twitter @gammill.  It promises to be fun and interesting. **************­**************­**************­**************­***********

I just had an all-too common conversation with the founder of a startup who had spent more than a year working with a software development company who had produced a mess. The mess really comes from a developer who was willing to get started on a product that was not fully thought out. I always take a very different approach in early conversations. If I’m being asked to do startup Some founders are taken aback. They are calling me to go build what they tell me to build.

TechCrunch Europe ran an article in November of last year that European startups need to work as hard as those in Silicon Valley and I echoed the sentiment in my post about the need for entrepreneurs to be maniacal about their businesses if one wants to work in the hyper competitive tech world. Mine started this way … TechCrunch ran my article yesterday as a guest post but I wanted to have a copy here for anybody who missed it and for future readers of this blog.  This This is a slightly longer version and also has an update at the end.

This month’s “Startups Uncensored” will be on “Getting Your Internet Company Bought”. It will be an open and frank town-hall conversation revealing the metrics and measurements for Mergers and Acquisitions in the online space with one of the best experts in the field. We are joined this month by Shawn Colo , the Co-Founder and Head of M&A at Demand Media . Shawn created the original concept for Demand Media and executed the simultaneous acquisitions of eNom, eHow Since co-founding the company with Richard Rosenblatt in May 2006, Shawn and his team have sourced, negotiated and completed over 30 acquisitions.

Heres 5 steps to start exploring: View Write me an e-mail and let me know what youre up to! The first 6 steps to homegrowing basic startup analytics Comments Quick intro to getting set up on analytics I’ve Futuristic Play by @Andrew_Chen Analysis on viral marketing, user experience, game design, and online ads As

One of the topics that came up in my post Mobile Internet Apple Facebook was around open vs. This issue comes up at the start of almost every new startup company in a variety of forms. From there, you will generally see a pop-up dialog similar to the following (this one is from CitySearch): Once you click Connect, the original site now knows that I’m Tony Karrer from Facebook and the various demographic and friend information from Facebook. closed platforms. I’m constantly struggling with trying to figure out the best way to pull together