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 fact, this often becomes the mantra that we live by. Define what you need from a metrics 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. Most often I'm being brought in the early stage, Start-up or Expansion (as the company looks at new product lines). My focus in this post is on the Early and Start-up stages - expansion is more of a consulting, focused project role and it acts different. I was just talking with someone who asked me to define how that could work and what they meant. Great question.

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 be. 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. I’ve been having discussions with several people recently about the role of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in very early stage companies.

This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice .  I In these many exchanges similar questions crop up. Either you’re not a good leader and he shouldn’t be investing at all, or he has no clue what it takes to build a startup.” I learned a lot about how to set goals, manage projects, deal with competing personalities and, importantly, manage “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. ***********************************************************************

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.

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.

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 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 (focused primarily on user metrics). 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)

He talks about something that I end up discussing a lot with startups. and so on. Then he provides his high-level requirements for v1.0: Must be super easy to install and start using Must convey the core user experience in a way that is simple and fun, preferably with a single “cool” feature Must give the user a sense of what else is possible with future versions Must be self-updating–for the next version! Must not cause users any undue headaches Must be the absolute minimum feature set to accomplish the above This is a great list.