How to calculate the customer lifetime value of your internet business: Use a simple cohort analysis Take e.g. 1000 users that signed up 24 months ago, sum up the total revenue generated by these users, and calculate the average revenue per signup Do the same for users that signed up 12 months and 6 months ago Based…
Category: Wealth
Startups don’t die, they fade away
One of the most unfulfilling things I have done is to hold on to projects for too long. Especially projects where I’ve lost my commitment. Now I have a simple rule: Move forward, or move on. Fading away is not an option! After starting Trigami, our project Ayom was in limbo for a full 8…
Obsess about growth
Here are two fantastic posts from Y Combinator‘s Sam Altman and Paul Graham. Startup advice, briefly: Basically everything what Sam Altman knows, condensed in a very short and excellent post. Do things that don’t scale: Excellent essay by Paul Graham Key parts: “Listen to what your users tell you, improve your product, and then listen again. Keep…
Call your users
I’ve written about Y Combinator‘s mantra before: Talk to your users! Here is what I have done recently: I’ve written a short email to 100 of the most active Exsila users and asked them if they would like to do a short phone call with me. I asked them to send me their phone number and their availability….
Talk to users
Y Combinator — a successful start-up incubator — has a mantra: Talk to your users! Here is Y Combinator’s advice from the How to Start a Startup Lecture Series at Stanford (which I highly recommend!): “At YC, we tell founders to work on their product, talk to users, exercise, eat and sleep, and very little else. All the other…
Building a compounding engine
Ever since reading The Intelligent Investor many years ago, I subscribe to the “value investing” school of thought. It boils down to buying undervalued companies and being a long-term investor. What Has Worked In Investing (PDF) is a great start if you are new to the concept. Here is what I learned so far: While learning…
Focusing on key metrics
I often suffer from statistics paralysis. Too many metrics, too many moving parts, too much stuff to optimize. Over the years, I’ve learned that it’s helpful to pick just one or two key metrics to focus on. When I joined Exsila, my initial key metric was number of trades. But somehow it just didn’t feel…
The going international trap
Back in 2007, when Alain and I were building Trigami, we almost made a terrible mistake. Actually we were in the middle of doing it. To give you some background: Trigami was a B2B advertising network, specialized on blogs and social media, heavily relying on B2B sales (phone calls, proposals, meetings). We were young and…
Why you should fire your customers
I have a “please everyone” tendency. I find it very difficult when people criticize or don’t like me. What I have learned of course is, that it’s impossible to please everyone. And that no matter what you do, some people won’t like it. In the past, I tried to please every single customer. Not anymore….
Why home-ownership is a bad idea
A couple of years ago I almost bought a house. The mortgage was ready. The seller had chosen me as his #1 buyer. I simply needed to say yes and sign the papers. Due to some dumb luck I got distracted, then got cold feet and finally backed off. Thank you, Dear Universe, for the…