451 Posts found for Source: First Round Review

I tell our founders that there should always be a slide in their board decks that shows the five most likely acquirers of their business and what they’ve done to further those relationships since the last board meeting.

Content: Quotation | Author: Chris Fralic | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Give new opportunities in tough times to the people who you see regularly in learning mode. They’ll help your whole company adapt to change.

Content: Quotation | Author: Kevin Chou | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Learning, Management

If a company is designing KPIs strategically, then every leader on your team has KPIs tied to product, market, growth or revenue. Every quarter, and certainly every year, you should see your leadership team hitting or coming close to their KPIs in those areas. If you start seeing significant misses in one of them, that’s a red flag for the whole company. As a CEO, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Kevin Chou | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Measurement

A/B testing is monitoring without interacting. Put down the binoculars. Pick up the phone and call.

Content: Quotation | Author: Lloyd Tabb | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Measurement

Once you get a user, attribute where you got them, how much you paid for them, and the time it takes to recover from that acquisition cost. Don’t stay on the surface. You paid for those clicks. You need to know. And that’s the only way you’ll truly understand your customer’s lifetime value.

Content: Quotation | Author: Lloyd Tabb | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Measurement

Your metrics influence each other. You need to monitor how. Don’t just measure which clicks generate orders. Back it up and break it down. Follow users from their very first point of contact with you to their behavior on your site and the actual transaction. You have to make the linkage all the way through.

Content: Quotation | Author: Lloyd Tabb | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Measurement

Averages are one-dimensional vanity metrics. Without context, they leave out the why.

Content: Quotation | Author: Lloyd Tabb | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Measurement, Statistics

Vanity metrics are surface-level metrics. They’re often large measures, like number of downloads, that impress others. Use them to initiate partnerships and gain a following.

Clarity metrics are operational metrics, like the number of minutes a day your product actually gets used or how long it took for a user to get service. These are the hidden gears that drive growth. Use them to solidify your … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Lloyd Tabb | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Measurement

… metrics that are elevated — from daily active users to revenue growth — effectively compare companies, but don’t necessarily help them run better. In fact, these measurements often slant toward what investors want to measure, showing if a company is valuable, not how it can create more value. […] These metrics serve a purpose — just not every purpose. Vanity metrics aren’t useless. They … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Lloyd Tabb | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Measurement

Make seriously ugly prototypes. No really, your early iterations should be hideous. You don’t need to worry about how it looks yet. But there’s also a hidden benefit. When something is ugly, people don’t fall in love with it. Especially with influential people inside a company, if you show them something that’s physical and they see it, they will lock on it. This actually also … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Caitlin Kalinowski | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Innovation, Management

No one would argue with the advice that one should listen to their customers. But when and where can be harder to determine, because ultimately you’re trying to intercept key moments that illustrate human behavior. Once you do, your goal is to conform to it or change it.

Content: Quotation | Author: Kintan Brahmbhatt | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Customer Related

Friction is anything that gets in the way of a customer and a task. Put another way, it’s any obstacle that prevents a user from trying or using a product or service. In this exclusive interview, Kintan Brahmbhatt takes us through how to detect and anticipate points of friction through monitoring steps in a customer’s journey with your product. He shares the three stages of … [ Read more ]

Content: Thought Leader | Author: Kintan Brahmbhatt | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Customer Related | Company: Amazon.com Inc.

At an All Hands or weekly check-in, show two slides every week. One slide is about what’s good, one slide is about what’s bad. Build this into your process. Whatever the format, the goal is simply to ensure that the people building and selling your products understand what’s going on with the company. Overemphasizing the positive becomes problematic. Some companies are just drinking their own … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Dennis Crowley | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

David Lieb discusses the risk of cognitive overload. He defines the phenomenon, explains why it matters and shares how to test for it. To help his fellow product leads and teams suffering from it, he dispels four myths about cognitive overload — and how to keep it from holding back your products.

Content: Article | Author: David Lieb | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

Startups need a simple test that can bring a go-to-market strategy into focus — one that can help smartly deploy limited resources when a product is first launched and a company has one chance to make a strong, first impression. For these inflection points, startups need a compass, and in my decades of working with them, I think this framework points them in the right … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Mark Leslie, Matt Heiman | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Marketing / Sales

As a company gets bigger, it’s scary to watch how most fall into longer and longer iteration cycles. Someone needs to be paying attention to this. Like, literally collecting data on how long every release is taking. How long releases of similar features are taking over time. How many features are getting launched per sprint, per quarter, etc. You have to know how long it’s … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Alex Le | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Measurement

Building a better mousetrap isn’t enough to set you apart. In fact, incumbent competitors have a number of advantages that could kill your startup, including entrenched distribution channels and consumer familiarity. Start to dethrone incumbents by making users a little uncomfortable; to make “better” matter — and users care. In many ways, your quietest, most steadfast competitor is indifference. The bottom line is you have … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Bret Taylor | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Innovation

All good advice tips people toward action, not options. You may think all you need is advice. Practice is what you need.

Content: Quotation | Author: Hiten Shah | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

A lot of people call me and ask how they should structure their product organizations. I always tell them to do it based on outcome. If you do it based on features, then you’re going to be perpetuating those features whether they’re useful or not.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jonathan Golden | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Amy Chang, who ran product for Google Analytics before founding data-driven networking startup Accompany in 2013, counts dozens of luminaries among her advisors — including best selling authors like Chip Heath and Nir Eyal. Fielding this type of expertise seems like a nearly impossible feat, but her only secret is this: She spent years figuring out how to methodically build her network — and is … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Amy Chang | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship