Metrics that matter to social platforms (Part 1/3)

A few months ago, we wrote about the data we focus on to evaluate marketplaces and later shared a marketplace KPI dashboard that we created to guide founders on the important metrics they should track. As we have been developing our investment thesis on social platforms, we want to provide the similar information and tools. There are […]

Marketplace KPI Dashboard

A few months ago, I wrote about the questions that we typically ask when evaluating a marketplace opportunity. Now, inspired by our friend Christoph Janz at Point Nine Capital who created a KPI dashboard for early-stage SaaS, we have put together a KPI template for marketplaces. We recognize that every marketplace is different, but each […]

The data we use to evaluate marketplace traction

At Version One, we love marketplaces and platforms. Over 50% of our portfolio companies fall into this category including our recent investments in Headout (a mobile-first marketplace for last-minute travel experiences) and VarageSale (a mobile-first community-driven Craigslist). We’re often asked what we look for in a marketplace. While there are many factors to consider (Bill […]

Building your user engagement pyramid

One of the first blog posts that Boris shared with me when I was starting out is “Don’t forget your logged out users” by Fred Wilson. Fred notes that with many social platforms, a huge number of their regular users don’t actually login because they are able to derive value from their services on a “logged […]