Strategy

A Reminder about Picking Metrics for your Startup

A Reminder about Picking Metrics for your Startup

It’s near the end of the year once again. And the end of the year always reminds us about metrics. We’ve suggested before that it’s a good time to assess what’s working and what’s not. If you want a reminder about the most important metrics for startup marketing, check out our previous blogpost on the topic: Metrics, Metrics. And if you want to be reminded about how to do an end-of-year audit, check out our blogpost: 3 Important Metrics to Audit.

A common theme in these two blogposts is that it’s important to keep your metrics simple. In fact, just this week we were looking at some analytics and were amazed at how unhelpful some metrics can be. So we wanted to share two examples to get you thinking.

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Top Ten Misconceptions about Startup Strategy

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Top Ten Misconceptions about Startup Strategy

We were recently asked to do a webinar about startup strategies for an audience of angel investors. The reason we were asked to talk about this topic is because many people are confused about a strategy versus a tactic. We thought we’d share our list of misconceptions about strategy with you, our readers as well. Let’s start with a definition. We define strategy as “the process of linking today’s choices and actions with tomorrow’s destination, under uncertainty.” You see, there a many, many actions any startup can take. Having a strategy means having a plan for where you are going. With that overarching plan, then daily and weekly choices have “bumper rails” because only actions that fit with the overall strategy should be taken. The startup’s strategy helps take alternative actions off the table.

We are going to do this list like a “David Letterman Top 10.” We’ll start with number 10 and work our way to the top. And these are misconceptions, so the opposite is true!

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When Should Startups Punt, Pivot, or Proceed?

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When Should Startups Punt, Pivot, or Proceed?

You may recall our “PEP” model for successful entrepreneurs—that success is based on a combination of Passion, Experience, and Persistence. We have another model grounded in Ps that has come up several times recently in discussions with founders: When is it time to throw in the towel? Or change directions? Or jump all in and put the pedal to the metal? Virtually all startups have those inflection points, both negative and positive, that lead to doubt—or euphoria. The venture journey is littered with such times, both for specific decisions (like letting an employee go or changing terms with a customer, etc.) as well as overall sink or swim moments. So how do you approach these inflection points?

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How Venture Ecosystems Enable Startups To Succeed

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How Venture Ecosystems Enable Startups To Succeed

The focus on “ecosystems” as a contributor to startup community success has recently begun to receive additional attention from academic researchers. A healthy and vibrant entrepreneurial or venture ecosystem can provide a nurturing environment for startups and innovators. This boosts job creation, economic growth, and talent attraction. Innovation itself includes both de novo (i.e. brand new) startups as well as new undertakings by large and small organizations. As a result, we prefer the term “venture ecosystem.” Think of a venture ecosystem as being kind of like a marine reef. It is a home for a variety of life forms including coral, fish of various types, and a host of other life forms with often symbiotic relationships. So what makes up an “ecosystem?”

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Is Your Startup’s Measurement Just A Stick In The Sand?

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Is Your Startup’s Measurement Just A Stick In The Sand?

One of our family’s favorite museums in the world is the Royal Cabinet of Mathematical and Physical Instruments (en Deutsche, Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon) in Dresden, Germany. The Museum sits in the impressive Dresdner Zwinger complex which houses a range of museums and performing arts facilities. A central theme of the museum is instrumentation—the collection of measuring instruments that have allowed us as humans to evolve and innovate over time. It is fascinating to think about how being able to measure things has enabled our progress as a society.

Startups May Need To Partner With “Competitors” In Trying Times

When you are starting a company, you have challenges from so many different directions – competitors, customers, and even what we academics call the “macroenvironment” which is also known as the general climate for business. There are generally three types of environments:

1. Benevolent - everything is awesome and it’s easy to grow

2. Turbulent – there are a lot of changes going on, some good and some bad

3. Hostile – just like it sounds in that everything is hard and it seems like nothing is good

The macroenvironment occurs at multiple levels too – for all businesses, for specific industries, and even for specific companies. In the terminology of The Titanic Effect, it can also create hidden debts, or debtbergs, for the unsuspecting startup. Right now, the overall environment is pretty hostile for most businesses. The economic conditions combined with the pandemic create both turbulence and hostility. Now is a good time to look for coopetition opportunities.

What Startups Need to Know about the Trajectory of the COVID Economic Recovery

What Startups Need to Know about the Trajectory of the COVID Economic Recovery

Our respective roles with the IU Kelley School of Business and the Regenstrief Institute have given us the opportunity to be part of many community conversations about the economic recovery trajectory. Is it a “V” – steep decline, followed by steep incline? A “W” – the decline happens two time ? A “Swoosh” – a decline followed by a slow but steady increase? Or even worst case, an “L” – a drop that takes a long time to change? And I am sure there are letters we 

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Startups and Others, Beware the Bleeding Edge of Newfangled Technology!

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Startups and Others, Beware the Bleeding Edge of Newfangled Technology!

As you can imagine, we like to follow news about the Titanic. Thankfully have many followers who share updates with us as well. This week had some interesting news about the Titanic’s Marconi radio. In the roughly 108 years since the sinking, explorers have not been allowed to salvage/explore/ransack the ship (more on that later). But, a group is being allowed to cut open the vessel to extract the radio the ship’s communications crew used to contact passengers’ families. Oh yes, and nearby ships for help as well. The telegraph was newfangled technology to bring on board. 

Startups Need to Understand How the Human Brain Deals with Uncertainty

Startups Need to Understand How the Human Brain Deals with Uncertainty

We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating – being an entrepreneur is not about taking risks, it’s about being comfortable with uncertainty. And let’s just admit that we live in uncertain times. In order to manage this uncertainty, or any of the uncertainty that comes with creating and growing a startup, it might help to understand how we process it.

Let’s start with some of the academic research. Over the last 10 years, researchers have been using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to see how the brain responds to different kinds of inputs. People are given different kinds of tasks and the fMRI measures what parts of the brain have increased blood flow. The idea is that more blood flow = the part of the brain that is working the most. What this research has shown is that some ideas that we think of as being on a continuum actually work in parallel. For example, when purchasers evaluate how much they trust a seller, the parts of the brain associated with reward, prediction, and uncertainty are working the most. But when they focus on how much they distrust these same sellers, the active areas of the brain are associated with intense emotion and fear of loss.

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Launch a Startup During a Pandemic? It’s Not as Crazy as it Sounds

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Launch a Startup During a Pandemic? It’s Not as Crazy as it Sounds

These are hard times for all of us. The pandemic is taking a global toll on our health and our economy. It is a time of tremendous uncertainty. Why would you possibly start a company during such challenging times?

First, there is a history of great companies being started in hard times. Going back more than a century, GE and IBM, Fortune 100 companies today, were founded during the 1890s, a time of great upheaval and tough times with a major banking crisis. In fact, the original J.P. Morgan of banking fame, Director of the White Star Line who built and operated the Titanic, was instrumental in steering the U.S .economy from the brink of collapse in the late 1890s. Read more about J.P. Morgan and how he affected the Titanic’s demise in our book, The Titanic Effect.