Measuring Traction for Tough Goals
How do you know that you are on track for large aggressive goals?
Founders, if you are asked to set 2-3 milestones for your startup within a 6-12 month timeframe, what would they be? Customer targets? Revenue levels? Geographic expansion? Capital raise? How would you know if you are on track on a monthly or weekly basis? Would you use the same targets allocated in smaller achievable chunks? If you do, would these mini-targets tell you if you are on track for the vision you have at 12, 24, or 36 months?
Meaningful milestones and performance metrics reflect what you are trying to understand about a specific aspect of your business model within a defined time frame. They are most useful when serving as actionable pieces of information.
Derisking Ventures through UX Research: A chat with GV’s Michael Margolis.
How can you find your TAM and validate your product-market fit if you don’t know who your bulls eye customers are? UX research is a way to accelerate the learning curve of startups and derisk the investment.
We had another great session of my H4H impact venture incubator course at Columbia Business School this term. Michael Margolis, UX Partner at Google Ventures (GV) joined us to chat about the key takeaways of an effective research sprint to improve the success of a venture.
Michael shared with us highlights of his approach developed over his vast experience working with Uber, Slack, Foundation Medicine, One Medical, Flatiron Health, GitLab, Lime, Kindbody, Gusto, Blue Bottle Coffee, StockX, Cockroach Labs, and Nest. These are all companies known for effectively scaling based on maximizing the value of their customer/user experience.
TAM/SAM/SOM The Meaning Behind the Metrics
Founders, you may be struggling with calculating and interpreting these familiar concentric circles. Let’s begin with the understanding investors would like to derive from them.