Probably the thing I get asked to do most often by founders is to review their pitch decks and give candid feedback.  With this post, I want to share the comments I frequently give on this subject. I am going to start with a simple concept. If your business is still early stage, you should...Read More

At this point you have hopefully reached the point where you have happy customers and have achieved that blissful state where your unit profitability is on the right side of zero. Congratulations! It is finally time to apply fuel to the fire and grow your business. You will need to figure out where you are...Read More

In two prior posts, we discussed how to calculate customer acquisition costs and revenue. When you bring these two things together with your cost of goods sold, you will have your unit profitability. In the early days, your unit profitability might not look so great. Chances are you are still paying relatively high unit costs...Read More

Once you have a handle on the cost of acquiring a new customer, the next step is figuring out the amount of money you expect to make from them. This is often called Revenue Per Users (RPU) in the tech world, but let’s stick with Revenue Per Customer (RPC) for this conversation. For the calculation...Read More

At this stage you have gotten your product to market and customers are paying for it. As you prepare to scale the user base, you need to ensure the unit economics are on the right side of zero. We are going to start this conversation by figuring out what it costs to acquire your customers....Read More

Your business has achieved Product Market Fit and is now ready for you to pour gasoline on the fire and light this sucker. Congrats! At this stage, the first thing to do is figure out your unit economics and make sure they are on the right side of zero. The focus needs to be on...Read More

Maybe you have a product in market, but you are struggling to grow the customer base. Or your product has been live, but you can’t get the unit economics above the water line. Possibly you have a freemium model and customers love the free product but won’t convert to the paid premium level. These are...Read More

Every company starts off with zero customers and zero revenue, that’s just how it has to be. As a company starts to acquire customers or users, often it will be free or at a subsidized price. An interesting question is always when does a company need to flip the switch and start getting each customer...Read More

The original definition of Product Market Fit (“PMF”) was “the degree to which a product satisfies a strong market demand”. In the mid-2000s, Marc Andreessen defined the term as follows: “Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.” I don’t think you need to be in a...Read More

Once you have launched your Minimum Viable Product (MVP), the next big goal for your business is to find Product Market Fit (PMF). PMF is an elusive concept, I have heard others describe it like pornography, you will know it when you see it. Basically, PMF means that you have built a product or solution...Read More