Glenn Solomon has a good piece up on TechCrunch titled Series B Fundraising For Your Enterprise Startup. Now, outside the venture money centers, the title of the post if more aptly labelled for Series A fundraising than Series B, but the content and metrics are spot on. Here are the eight metrics questions that need to have solid answers to raise a Series A:
- What lead volumes are you driving?
- How much are you paying for qualified leads?
- What’s the cost to acquire a customer?
- How long is the sales cycle?
- What’s the average selling price of an initial deal?
- Do you have evidence of high customer retention and/or account expansion?
- How long does it take a sales person to ramp?
- What percent are hitting/exceeding quota?
During the seed stage and beginning part of the early stage, these metrics don’t paint the whole picture due to a lack of sufficient data. As the startup grows, and more customers are signed, these become critical metrics post product/market fit to raise a Series A.
What else? What are some other metrics questions that need solid answers to raise a Series A?
David Cummings on Startups 