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You nailed it. The two metrics most startups are judged on are both very toxic: money raised and number of employees. I blame the press, who use those two fals

You nailed it. The two metrics most startups are judged on are both very toxic: money raised and number of employees. I blame the press, who use those two false metrics as a proxy for company success. In return, founders tend to want to grow headcount quickly and raise a lot of money, both of which can lead to a quick and untimely death.

evansolomon 16y ago
What is the best metric the press could use for measuring private companies' success? Money raised and number employees might be bad, but I'm not sure they're not also the best ones possible.
- cabalamat 16y ago
  How about revenue and profit?
  - evansolomon 16y ago
    Do you know a lot of private companies that publicly share their revenue or profit? Of the ones that do, how many do it in a way that can be verified?
- abstractbill 16y ago
  For a consumer-facing web startup traffic numbers are a decent metric of progress, and can be externally verifiable (e.g. Quantcast).
  - evansolomon 16y ago
    Traffic is a double-edged sword. Certainly a lot more important than funding or headcount in many if not most cases. But it's also a lot less verifiable than funding or headcount. Quantcast is a good start, though certainly not perfect and requires opt in from the company. Then there's the whole mess of Comscore, Compete, Google Analytics, etc. Ask 5 companies to measure one site's traffic and you'll get 10 answers. My point wasn't that there aren't other tools to measure success, but that blaming the press for funding and headcount being emphasized is silly. Edit: There's no shortage of traffic data in the press either.
    - abstractbill 16y ago
      I might be missing something - how is headcount more verifiable than traffic? Actually now that I think of it, the first startup I worked for peaked at about 7 people and our CEO regularly told the press we were "about 50 people"!
      - evansolomon 16y ago
        Whether or not it's more often verified, it is definitely more verifiable. One is a count that is likely in the millions or tens of millions of people and made up of nearly-anonymous people from around the world. The other is likely in the tens and made up of people in a single building. A journalist could come to your office and make a pretty good guess at how many people work there. That's not to say people don't lie about it, but I think it's reasonable to expect an independent third party to be able to roughly figure out how many people work at a company even if the company wants to lie about it. I don't think it's reasonable to expect the same with web traffic.

evansolomon 16y ago

What is the best metric the press could use for measuring private companies' success? Money raised and number employees might be bad, but I'm not sure they're not also the best ones possible.

cabalamat 16y ago
How about revenue and profit?
- evansolomon 16y ago
  Do you know a lot of private companies that publicly share their revenue or profit? Of the ones that do, how many do it in a way that can be verified?
abstractbill 16y ago
For a consumer-facing web startup traffic numbers are a decent metric of progress, and can be externally verifiable (e.g. Quantcast).
- evansolomon 16y ago
  Traffic is a double-edged sword. Certainly a lot more important than funding or headcount in many if not most cases. But it's also a lot less verifiable than funding or headcount. Quantcast is a good start, though certainly not perfect and requires opt in from the company. Then there's the whole mess of Comscore, Compete, Google Analytics, etc. Ask 5 companies to measure one site's traffic and you'll get 10 answers. My point wasn't that there aren't other tools to measure success, but that blaming the press for funding and headcount being emphasized is silly. Edit: There's no shortage of traffic data in the press either.
  - abstractbill 16y ago
    I might be missing something - how is headcount more verifiable than traffic? Actually now that I think of it, the first startup I worked for peaked at about 7 people and our CEO regularly told the press we were "about 50 people"!
    - evansolomon 16y ago
      Whether or not it's more often verified, it is definitely more verifiable. One is a count that is likely in the millions or tens of millions of people and made up of nearly-anonymous people from around the world. The other is likely in the tens and made up of people in a single building. A journalist could come to your office and make a pretty good guess at how many people work there. That's not to say people don't lie about it, but I think it's reasonable to expect an independent third party to be able to roughly figure out how many people work at a company even if the company wants to lie about it. I don't think it's reasonable to expect the same with web traffic.