3 Wrong metrics founders chase

For entrepreneurs, it is very easy to get lost in today’s startup world, which consists of too much glamour, events and several other distractions that kill the most valuable resource – Time of Founders

Following three wrong metrics top the list of time killers of founders which they believe will scale their startup wrongly.

• Media Mentions, Interviews etc

Past few years have seen tremendous growth of support system for entrepreneurs which includes mentors, accelerators as well as various online blogs for publishing interviews of founders etc.

On the face of it, it looks like a great thing that has happened as the startup journey now looks a lot more attractive and rosy with all the attention. However, too much of publicity or media attention hurts startups a lot more than supporting them.

There are times when founders start focusing on these articles a lot more than what is really required for the startup.

In my two startups, I have been very conscious of interviews and media articles written and avoided a lot more than what has been published.

Most of media articles do not contribute to user growth of startup or actual business growth. 

The media stories just pamper the ego of the founder, add some glamour to the startup story, win some claps from friends and usually it stops there. This would vary a little bit based on target audience of the startup but largely, I have noticed that such articles gives eyeballs but a very few actual customers.

To top it, most of founders waste a lot of time chasing media article writers as well.  It probably feels good to read about you in articles but does it really increase business for you? 

Productivity Tip :- A great bunch of founders know how to strategically use media.

Here is what you can do.

1. Get your interview published if you have significant product release or service offering to be published.

2. The media that helps you reach your target customer should be the medium of choice. For ex. if you are in fashion tech, relationships oriented startup, try to get your interview with popular relationship magazines, blogs or specific relationship articles in leading print media. 

3. Maintaining cordial relationship with authors in your sector helps a long way in getting your views, mentions when they write about any important event happening in that sector.

4. Product reviews is good strategy that you can deploy for reaching out to audience when you have significant public releases.

• Startup Events and Competition(s) participation

This is another time consuming dragon which should be tamed by being very very selective. 

If the event or competition does not add any value worth the time you will spend there, it is good to skip that event/competition.

It is not the trophies that you win that counts, but the users/customers growth.

Productivity Tip :- A great bunch of founders know how to strategically use media.Founders should ask the following questions before attending any event or competition

• Does the audience have customers for your product or service?
• Will spending these many hours be more productive for my startup than every other activity that I can do?
• Does the topic of event really address problems at hand for my startup?
• Will participating in this competition increase my customers/users and improve growth numbers?
• Do I really need that Gyan session from the speaker today? 

• Social growth [FB likes, followers, etc]

Recently I heard one radio station boosting about being the most liked station on Facebook. I am not sure if that number of Facebook likes is the metric that will help them. Perhaps time to think about if social growth is directly pushing the business growth.

I have also received a number of requests for liking Facebook page of startup by founders and I am sure you would have too. 

The notorious way of Facebook algorithm as well as how the likes on Facebook does not guarantee proportionate increase in business growth have been discussed multiple times before.

Will the Facebook be even right channel of customer acquisition for you? Should you even bother pushing the likes of Facebook or twitter followers? 

Founders need to ask these questions and only if the answers are positive then consider increasing social likes and that too by customers only and not by irrelevant likes.

The likes of fellow entrepreneurs, or in general such irrelevant likes, actually hurt your organic reach if they are not your actual customers.  Facebook’s crazy algorithms determine whether to show your post to further users by trying a sample of few users and if they happen to be your not-customers and they do not like,share post, it kills the chances further.

Productivity Tip:-   

• Understand the social channel needs of startup before actually putting efforts in that.
• Relevant likes, followers are very crucial specifically from FB point of view.

Let me know your views 🙂 

Prashant

Twitter @PrashantPansare

Earlier: Founder Playerify , CoFounder OnlinePrasad