-
Users
- Registered Users/DAU/MAU
- Active Customers
- Customer Churn
- Cohort and Retention Analysis
- Net Promoter Score
-
Revenue
- Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)
- Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
- Expansion MRR
- Contraction MRR
- Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA per month or year)
-
Unit Economics
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
- Lifetime Value (LTV)
- CAC Payback Period
As a founder be an expert on your users - nothing else. Be passionate about them and the problem you are solving for them. Markets will be taken care of.
- Launch now
- Build something people want
- Do things that don't scale
- Find the 90 / 10 solution
- Find 10-100 customers who love your product
- All startups are badly broken at some point
- Write code - talk to users
- "It’s not your money"
- Growth is the result of a great product not the precursor
- Don’t scale your team/product until you have built something people want
- Valuation is not equal to success or even probability of success
- Avoid long negotiated deals with big customers if you can
- Avoid big company corporate development queries - they will only waste time
- Avoid conferences unless they are the best way to get customers
- Pre-product market fit - do things that don’t scale: remain small/nimble
- Startups can only solve one problem well at any given time
- Founder relationships matter more than you think
- Sometimes you need to fire your customers (they might be killing you)
- Ignore your competitors, you will more likely die of suicide than murder
- Most companies don't die because they run out of money
- Be nice! Or at least don’t be a jerk
- Get sleep and exercise - take care of yourself