This is a talk I gave at Microsoft Startup Day. I took a retrospective after Speek raised our Series A round and talked about what I learned when I stepped back and thought about Speek's journey thus far.

1. Startups 101
Danny Boice, Co-Founder & President
Speek

2. About Me
Speek Co-Founder
Harvard & MIT
Exited First Startup in 2006
Georgetown Professor
Forbes Columnist
@DannyBoice

3. About Speek
$6 Million In Venture Capital
2 Years Old
Hundreds Of Thousands Of Users
Millions Of Calls
Exponential Growth @SpeekApp
www.Speek.com

4. Speek Press

5. We just closed our Series A round and
surpassed hundreds of thousands of users.
What did I learn in retrospect?

6. How Is A Startup Different?

7. Startups vs Small Businesses
A Restaurant, Barber Shop, bookstore, consulting
company, etc. is NOT a startup!
Different DNA (Exponential Growth)
Staff Size Does Not Equate To Revenue
Technology (Web & Mobile) Not Physical Locations

8. The “Trough of Sorrows”

9. The Startup Lifecycle

10. Success Requires 3 Things
Product
Users
Money

11. Product

12. The Lean Startup Methodology 101
Most startups fail because they build something
nobody wants
Startup success can be engineered
Validate your product ideas with quick experiments
For details see this great article by Grace Ng
To see it in action do a Lean Startup Machine
weekend

14. Lean Steps
• Should I build my idea?
• Construct a hypothesis
• Identify the riskiest assumption
• Pick a test (Exploration, pitch, concierge)
• Agree on success criteria
• Run the experiment
• Analyze the results
• Repeat

15. Users

16. User Acquisition 101
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Referral
Revenue

17. Tactics
Viral Loop
Word of Mouth
Freemium
Referrals
Content
SEO / Google / Bing
Social Media
Press
Paid / Ads

18. The Holy Grail

19. Money

20. Revenue 101

21. Common Revenue Models
Subscriptions
Freemium
Ads
Pay As You Go
License

22. Venture Capital
** Punting For Future Conversation **

23. Let’s Discuss!