shift conference 2015 - andrea barrica (500 startups)
TRANSCRIPT
Andrea Barrica, venture partner/EIR @
@abarrica
From Vitamin to PainKiller: Story of
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$1.1M seed !
!
2011(private chefs)
2011
We weren’t making money. !
Steve Blank, a forefather of “Lean Startup”
“Congratulations, you’ve failed!”
5 Lessons !
(on how to bootstrap a startup after burning $1M)
Lesson #1
don’t look back
we fired everyone
(even our customers)
Lesson #2
back to basics: find the pain
Lesson #3
empathy pay$ !
be delightful, get referrals
= $1M ARR in 10mo
"inDinero has saved us thousands of dollars and reduced the amount of time I
spend thinking about accounting by many hours a week. A fantastic
investment." !
- Kaz, CEO of Kash
Lesson #4
beware metrics that don’t matter
the vitamin:
20K “users” “5M transactions/month”
“$2B processed”
the painkiller:
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$315K MRR -400+ paying customers !
-growing 2x YoY !
-99% MoM retention rate
!
revenue MoM % growth
CAC vs. LTV % referrals WAU/DAU
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Lesson #5
find pain first, then worry about scale
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“not scalable?”
315K MRR!99% MoM retention rate
80% gross margins
Bonus Lesson:
diverse teams win
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Diversity will make you more money. !
+women +minorities +introverts
+high empathy +all ages
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