You’ve had a piece of the PIE… Now What?
As this year’s PIE class wraps up it’s official program and settles down to dig in and advance their products and companies, I thought it would be useful to put together some strategies for thinking about the future.
This two part series highlights the more operational areas of growing a company and supporting the product once it’s launched. It is not meant to be a “how to” but a guide to start thinking and planning best and worst case scenarios.
So what’s your first year plan look like? How should you be thinking about it?
There’s no hard and fast rules about “the right” way to grow and maintain a company except that revenue should exceed expenses to be sustainable. A business plan helps, and those of you who are beginning to look at seed investment will need to at least have a cursory version of one.
Operational Forecasting
It takes money (cash) to launch and continue running a company. From the companies I met with at PIE, many were hitting the VC trail to pitch for Seed funding. An important thing to think about at this stage is until the Seed funding comes in where is the cash coming from and how much do you think you need?
Running models which forecast out spend through anticipated Seed then spend once the check has cleared (let’s say a 12mo. cycle) is going to be helpful. On the expense side this includes travel (to pitch), legal fees, marketing efforts, money needed to support the product (hosting, licenses), insurance and current payroll. One of the bonuses of sticking around PIE after the session has ended is free rent, which alone could save your company five figures this year of expenses, so take advantage!
From here, sales/revenue forecasting (being as realistic as possible). Where do customers (or sponsors, advertisers) 1-100 come in, 101-1000, and what would be an average percentage to use for growth? (I use 3% as a safe metric).
Overlay the expense forecast against the revenue one and you’ve got an initial idea of your company’s break even point, operating costs and revenue opportunities.
I also think it’s wise to run a Plan B scenario where the company doesn’t land funding (we all know it happens) or the lead time takes 2-3x longer than anticipated. Can the company quickly produce enough revenue to be sustainable? How does that affect the growth plan?
Understanding both sides of these scenarios will help inform how the company should operate and where there might be major decision factors to consider.
Goals, KPI Creation & Monitoring
With so many moving parts required to operate a business, it’s important to set goals to measure company performance against. These goals, measured over a set time frame will allow founders and the management team to gauge how different areas of the operations are doing.
A couple of examples of goals and their associated KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) are:
Increase App Downloads 10% in next month. KPI’s could be traffic/user sources, daily downloads, social media mentions.
Increase Sales on Website 20% over a 3 month period. KPI’s could be daily sales, shopping cart abandonment %’s, and competitive pricing.
Setting goals should inform business decisions in areas such as your product, positioning, pricing, traction in the market, customer service and define areas which need help or re-strategizing. KPI’s are used to drive the actions in these areas.
There are several KPI dashboard tools out in the market which could be worth researching and investing in to help.
Hiring
Allison Krug wrote a strong piece about hiring for startups back in September. Areas I think worth expanding upon are:
Inventory the capacity your current team (I know that sounds terribly Dilbert-esq). Are they fully booked with work, and are there opportunities to cross train which would give both the company an additional skill set and the employee a chance to learn something new? Understanding where your team is now and what they can produce informs your product milestones, roadmap and operational capabilities. Running an OPE (Overall People Effectiveness) model, which supports the Lean Startup methodology, is a useful tool to understand the productive %s of your team.
When budgeting for new hires, if they are full time salaried, add ~22% to the market base salary. This will cover the company’s piece of employee taxes, any benefits given plus on-boarding costs (e.g.: a new laptop). Based on the percentage above every 5 hires will cost the company roughly the equivalent of a 6th employee.
One last (potentially eye opening) note about the realities of hiring, once you bring on a hire as an salaried employee (not consulting) the company becomes liable for part or all of their unemployment payments (in Oregon at least) should the employee file within 24 months of working for the company. The company pays into the Oregon Unemployment Insurance fund through their share of the employee payroll taxes, so take Alison’s advice to heart, make sure your hire is a good fit on all sides!
Next post, I’ll cover strategies about product and issues which could affect you as a founder. Other PIE mentors, it would be great to see additional thoughts and input to what I’ve outlined above!
PIE Blog 