ouch. :) And yet what you're saying is true, even for those who are avoiding said pipeline as long as possible! @sama is right... growth and momentum are inextricably linked, and I've found @ userify that days with good numbers (and there are more of those these days!) keep us plugging through the harder days.
With momentum and growth, all things are possible. Without either, nothing is possible, and it messes with your mind. These are the days that you start messing with side projects and taking your eye off the ball.
It's all about building a growth machine on some meaningful axis (users, server, revenue, whatever) and figuring out what makes it grow fastest. Cashflow is derived from that. That's really all it is. Funding, hiring, even the technology itself: all just sideshows. Growth first.
The corollary: build something that helps you track your numbers. My thing literally just emails me a CSV with a new line appended every day. If it ever gets too unwieldy, I'll do something more sophisticated but for now it's a few hundred lines of python that helps me track trends etc in a spreadsheet. (I'd love to see a startup that can do API POST'ed metrics for $10/mo!)
Userify is growing at 50% monthly, but it's still not fast enough. Growth is everything, and the measurement of that growth is critically important. It doesn't need bells and whistles.. just get it done.
ouch. :) And yet what you're saying is true, even for those who are avoiding said pipeline as long as possible! @sama is right... growth and momentum are inextricably linked, and I've found @ userify that days with good numbers (and there are more of those these days!) keep us plugging through the harder days.
With momentum and growth, all things are possible. Without either, nothing is possible, and it messes with your mind. These are the days that you start messing with side projects and taking your eye off the ball.
It's all about building a growth machine on some meaningful axis (users, server, revenue, whatever) and figuring out what makes it grow fastest. Cashflow is derived from that. That's really all it is. Funding, hiring, even the technology itself: all just sideshows. Growth first.
The corollary: build something that helps you track your numbers. My thing literally just emails me a CSV with a new line appended every day. If it ever gets too unwieldy, I'll do something more sophisticated but for now it's a few hundred lines of python that helps me track trends etc in a spreadsheet. (I'd love to see a startup that can do API POST'ed metrics for $10/mo!)
Userify is growing at 50% monthly, but it's still not fast enough. Growth is everything, and the measurement of that growth is critically important. It doesn't need bells and whistles.. just get it done.