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How To Set Up A KPI Dashboard For Your Pre-Seed and Seed Stage Startup - Alex Iskold

The document discusses how to set up a simple KPI dashboard for a pre-seed or seed stage startup. It recommends tracking no more than 5 key metrics, including new revenue/customers as the top metric. Sample dashboards are provided for B2B, D2C, and marketplace startups, focusing on funnels and growth. It also recommends including a simple runway dashboard tracking revenue, expenses, burn, cash, and projected runway. The goal is to keep the dashboard minimal but focused on growth through consistent metric tracking.

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Lindsey Santos
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211 views12 pages

How To Set Up A KPI Dashboard For Your Pre-Seed and Seed Stage Startup - Alex Iskold

The document discusses how to set up a simple KPI dashboard for a pre-seed or seed stage startup. It recommends tracking no more than 5 key metrics, including new revenue/customers as the top metric. Sample dashboards are provided for B2B, D2C, and marketplace startups, focusing on funnels and growth. It also recommends including a simple runway dashboard tracking revenue, expenses, burn, cash, and projected runway. The goal is to keep the dashboard minimal but focused on growth through consistent metric tracking.

Uploaded by

Lindsey Santos
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ALEX
ISKOLD
T H O U G H T S O N T E C H S TA RT U P S
A N D V E N T U R E C A P I TA L

How to set up
a KPI
Dashboard
for your Pre-
seed and
Seed
Stage Startup

POSTED 06/07/2019 2 COMMENTS

Metrics or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are


essential for driving and understanding growth of an
early-stage startup. What isn’t measured can’t be
improved, and startups that aren’t growing are not
likely to survive.

We have written extensively about these topics


before:
Intro to Startup Metrics
Funnels for Startups
Whats is the Magic Moment for your Startup
Your MVP is minimal, but is it viable?

Today’s post will focus on how to set up a simple,


actionable dashboard for your pre-seed or seed-
stage startup regardless of your vertical and
customer type.

3 RULES FOR
TRACKING KPIs
After working with hundreds of startups across
many industries, we are advocating for a simple,
minimalistic approach to metrics for an early-stage
startup. We recommend using 3 simple rules:

Rule 1: Less is more. Regardless of your vertical


and customers, pick one key metric— and no more
than 5 supporting metrics—for your dashboard. Be
reluctant to add more than necessary, and commit
to driving up the top metric. The top metric should
be tied to growth of revenue, or be a lever of how
you will likely make money in the future.

Rule 2: Consistency. Track each metric regularly—


weekly, monthly or quarterly, depending on what
makes sense.

Rule 3: Focus on Growth. Measure new revenue,


new customers, new visitors, etc, instead of totals
(or vanity metrics). This way, you can really focus
on your growth. Even when the progress will look
minimal at times, you will be focused on
acceleration.

For example, when your new revenue is a flat line


every week, you are still growing linearly. When
your new revenue is a straight line with a non-zero
angle from bottom left to top right, you are growing
exponentially.

Lastly, make sure you read this post about funnels


(https://alexiskold.net/2017/02/03/funnels-for-startups-a-
primer/).It will come in handy in many situations. For
sales and conversion funnel specifically, you want to
track the entire funnel on your dashboard, because
a lot of what you will focus on will be optimizing it.

SAMPLE B2B
DASHBOARD
Top Metric: New Revenue/MRR/ARR and New
Customers per month/week/quarter. This is your
bottom of the funnel.

Supporting Metrics:

1. New Leads/Qualified Leads per


month/week/quarter. This is the top of your
funnel.
2. Sales Funnel – the entire sales funnel with all
stages of drop off should be tracked and
optimized one stage at a time, starting from the
bottom. This includes unqualified leads,
qualified leads, demos, meetings, LOIs,
commitments, etc., depending on your
business.
3. Revenue/Customer Churn per
month/week/quarter.

SAMPLE D2C
DASHBOARD
Top Metric: New Revenue/MRR/ARR and New
Customers per month/week/quarter. This is the
bottom of your funnel.

If you are not yet generating revenue, then:

New Engaged Customers per month/week/quarter


⇐ Engagement should be tied to an activity that will
be monetized in the future.

Supporting Metrics:
1. New Visitors per month/week/quarter. This is
the top of your funnel
2. Conversion Funnel – the entire conversion
funnel with all stages of drop off should be
tracked and optimized one stage at a time,
starting from the bottom. This includes visitors,
activation, engagement, all the way to magic
moment.
3. Revenue/Customer Churn per
month/week/quarter

If you are not yet generating revenue, then:

Engaged Customers Churn per


month/week/quarter.

SAMPLE
MARKETPLACE
DASHBOARD
Marketplaces are more complex in the sense that
you are driving both supply and demand. It is typical
to focus on one side at a time. For example, if
supply is critical, you may want to initially focus on
locking down enough of it, like Uber had to lock
down drivers, and Airbnb had to have listings
available.

Then you may need to focus on the other side:


demand. This means that depending on the stage
you are at—supply constrained or demand
constrained—you may need to pay more attention
to one vs. the other.

Here are the general things you want to track.

Top Metric: New GMV/Transactions per


month/week/quarter. This is the bottom of your
funnel.

Supporting Metrics:

1. New Suppliers/Qualified Suppliers per


month/week/quarter. This is the top of the
funnel for Supply.
2. Supply Funnel – the entire supply funnel with
all stages of drop off should be tracked and
optimized one stage at a time starting from the
bottom.
3. New Customers (Demand) per
month/week/quarter. This is top of the funnel
for Demand.
4. Customer Funnel – the entire demand funnel
with all stages of drop off should be tracked
and optimized one stage at a time, starting
from the bottom.
5. Revenue/Supplier/Customer Churn per
month/week/quarter

SAMPLE RUNWAY
DASHBOARD
Regardless of the type of business you are running,
you also need to keep track of your runway and
burn. Here is a simple way to do it.

1. Revenue ⇐ Actual cash you got this month


2. Expenses ⇐ Cash you spent this month
3. Burn ⇐ Revenue minus Expenses
4. Cash in the bank
5. Average burn last 3 months
6. Runway in months

There are many tools (https://www.scoro.com/blog/best-


kpi-dashboard-software-tools-reviewed/) that allow you to
actually manage the dashboard, or you could even
start with a simple Google sheet. Also check out
KPI Ready (https://kpiready.com/), a Techstars ’18
company that I am an investor in.

Don’t spend time on fancy tooling. Instead, setup a


simple dashboard, focus on your funnel
(https://alexiskold.net/2017/02/03/funnels-for-startups-a-
primer/), start optimizing and start growing.

Once you have the Dashboard in place, it becomes


a great tool for you as founder to drive your
business forward and communicate with your team,
as well as mentors and investors
(https://alexiskold.net/2016/04/16/how-an-why-to-send-
investor-updates/).
 2 Comments ›
Great article Alex. Especially the
simplicity of the runway dashboard

 (https://alexiskold.net/2019/06/07/how-to-setup-
kpi-dashboard-for-your-pre-seed-and-seed-startup/?
like_comment=26673&_wpnonce=fed15c2e56)
Like

Timely reminder – thanks!

 (https://alexiskold.net/2019/06/07/how-to-setup-
kpi-dashboard-for-your-pre-seed-and-seed-startup/?
like_comment=26674&_wpnonce=b59ac50d23)
Like

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