|
•
Thursday, October 8, 2009
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. In many cases, I can break it down into: Customer Acquisition Cost – how will you reach prospects, This kind of a simple model also helps: Define the early proof points for the company.
|
|
•
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
UPDATE: I’m setting up a new project on analytics. One of the things I am passionate about is analytics and metrics. One of those models was a cool Structural Equation Model used to show how customer experience led to increased revenues. It was this experience that gave me the appreciation for the importance of metrics and the greater importance of making meaning If you are interested in collaborating ping me on twitter @gammill. It promises to be fun and interesting.
*******************************************************************
|
|
|
|
•
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
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 software development, Some founders are taken aback. They are calling me to go build what they tell me to build.
|
|
•
Sunday, January 31, 2010
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.
|
|
•
Monday, March 1, 2010
Here are some recent great posts that I’ve come across that generally fall in the intersection of startups and CTOs. 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. Great stuff. Of course, one of the best ideas around this is to have Negative Customer Acquisition Costs .
|
|
|
|
•
Monday, February 15, 2010
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.
|
|
•
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
One of the things I am passionate about is analytics and metrics. One of those models was a cool Structural Equation Model used to show how customer experience led to increased revenues. 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. I’m most interested in gathering a breadth and leveraging them to drive solid decision making. While at IBM I worked closely with a group of exceptionally talented researchers (marketing and technology) to develop a host
|
|
•
Thursday, March 4, 2010
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. He posted on several social networking sites the following message: If you know of a startup company that could benefit from the knowledge, experience, professional
|
|
|
|
•
Monday, January 5, 2009
Los Angeles-based Image Metrics (www.image-metrics.com) recently landed a $6.5M, Series B funding round for the firm's facial animation products. Mike Starkenburg: The company was founded in 2000, and was started in Manchester, UK, by a handful of computer vision specialists. How did a company started in the UK end up here?
Mike We spoke with CEO Mike Starkenburg -- a former venture capitalist at the Sprout Group and longtime reader of our newsletter -- about the firm and its technology and how it's revolutionizing facial animation in both computer games and the movies.
Tell
|
|
•
Monday, December 7, 2009
I talk to a lot of founders of startups. My initial conversations normally focus on the core of the business, important Startup Metrics , probably marketing strategy (ex. SEO for Startups and Negative Customer Acquisition Costs ) and, of course, the product itself. And it’s fairly rare that I add to that list. Normally the product is defined as a web site. Most founders are fairly passionate about the features and functions of the web site, iPhone application, Facebook application, or whatever web application represents the product.
|
