Thank you
Go global
The world isn't as globally oriented as we might think. With startups, the premise is that you and your product can serve the world, so for us as founders it might be more common. However, this shows us that there is a huge market to conquer in the coming years. Borders are just that, and shouldn't stop anyone from connecting and serving globally.
With the Startup Foundation we started out serving a local market, our hometown of Rotterdam. But in the last year we've learned there is a lot of work to do in connecting founders globally. Hence why we started #startup, and this Curated as our first steps to create a truly global startup ecosystem. And we just happen to be headquartered in the Netherlands ;-)
We hope you enjoy this weeks Curated, and your weekend.
- Articles & Lessons Learned
When should you “turn on” revenue with your startup?
There is a ton of discussion around when startups should “turn on” revenue. In this piece the author will tell you a) why this debate exists, b) when you should turn on revenue, and c) do you have to invent a new revenue model for your startup?
Experimenting with Product, Price and Market
Every startup has to experiment with product, price and market to find the right combination that allows them to scale and win. But if you find yourself experimenting with all three at the same time, you need to take a step back and evaluate where you’re really at.
Where to find money if you are a startup
Jeff Carter of West Loop Ventures details advantages and disadvantages of twelve different sources of funding for a startup in this post.
Why metrics get worse with scale
Many metrics can actually get worse over time for a startup. Take growth rate as a simple one. The law of large numbers suggests it is easier to double in size when you are doing $1 million in revenue as compared to when you are doing $10 million, never mind $100 million. Thus, more mature companies naturally have slower growth rates than younger ones. This post covers a few other key metrics that are hard to scale.
The psychology of notifications
Nir Eyal and Ximena Vengoechea describe the 3 tenants of a good push notification. 1. Good triggers are well-timed 2. Good triggers are actionable 3. Good triggers spark intrigue
How this founder turned slow burn rate into a big exit
When Tasso Roumeliotis started Location Labs in 2001, the dot-com collapse had left a smoking, desolate venture capital landscape in its wake. The founder, whose mobile security app business was acquired this past September for an estimated $220 million, remembers the carnage well. In fact, his first go at fundraising was so difficult that Roumeliotis made a vow that he wouldn't make the rounds again unless he absolutely had to — and that meant curbing burn rate.
Growth Is optional: 10 reasons why companies fail at growth
It might sound crazy because there's not a company that says they don't want to grow. But many don’t do the things required to grow. It's like a lot of people who want to lose weight, stop smoking, or make some other major change in their life. They have the desire, but not the will to do the hard things.
The wrong mantras have been pushed. Product is everything. You growth hack your way to success. The way to find growth is to try every channel possible. Paid acquisition is for companies with bad products.
They are all simply wrong.
The concepts behind growth are much simpler than most people think. As with most things, it is executing that is the tough part. This post contains 10 things the author has seen companies fail at executing that prevent them from growing.
The most important SaaS metric nobody talks about: Time-to-Value
The takeaway is that highest priority should be given to building software that just works, and that means focusing relentlessly on reducing or eliminating altogether the time investment to fully deploy your solution in production. Ideally, you want customers to derive full value from your offering in mere minutes, if not seconds. To do so, treat on-boarding as a wholesale product within your offering and devote engineering resources to it. Find religion about optimizing TtV!