Marketing, Startups, and Venture Capital
Drew is a data-driven marketer with a passion for crafting exceptional brand experiences. He currently runs marketing at High Alpha, an Indianapolis-based venture studio, and previously held roles in content marketing and product marketing at ExactTarget and Salesforce. At High Alpha, Drew advises and runs marketing in the early days for the High Alpha Studio portfolio companies, helping them scale to their first $1M in revenue and build world-class marketing teams.
From The First Law Of Internet Physics by Fred Wilson:
many users * low arpu >>>> few users * high arpu
I’ve seen so many people try paid content on the Internet and the result is less users, a lot less. You can extract a higher average revenue per user (arpu) from a paid model, but you get so many less users that is it better to extract a lower arpu with a free model and get many more users.
Read MoreFrom Ten Realities of Taking Venture Capital Money by Charlie O'Donnell:
If you take venture capital money...
1) You increase the chances that you may not be CEO of your own company one day--and that also might be the best thing for its long term success.
2) You are signing up to sell the company one day--to another company or to the public market, but definitely to someone.
3) You will almost certainly take more venture capital money after that.
4) You will almost certainly go cashflow negative, increasing the risk that your company will fail.
Read MoreI was waiting to see someone much smarter than me write their opinion on Ello's move to become a public benefit corporation and the implications that has for startups and VCs, but I have yet to see any good posts on the news. So I thought I would share my thoughts and reaction to hearing this.
In case you haven't seen the news yet, a couple weeks ago Ello—the latest social media sensation to hit shelves—converted to a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC).
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