Today’s early-stage companies are obsessed with data. They rely on analytics to understand every facet of their business, optimizing the way they acquire and engage customers, how they spread the word, and how they extract revenue. After all, you can’t improve what you can’t measure. But this obsession with data has a cost. What if you’re optimizing the wrong things? What if you’re already better than the rest of the industry in one dimension, but falling behind in another? How would you know? In this session, Bjoern Herrmann shares his research into thousands of startups. Working closely with entrepreneurial visionaries like Steve Blank, Bjoern and his team have collected and analyzed the key performance indicators of a broad range of startups, and codified this data into a system that understands what “normal” looks like.

1. The Startup Genome &
The Entrepreneurial Enlightenment
International Startup Festival

2. Explosion of Technology Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurial Enlightenment

3. Massive Impact on Economy
90% Job Growth in the US

4. 90% of Startups fail
because of Self Destruction

5. How can we reduce
the failure rate of startups
in a scalable way?

6. The Startup Genome
• Based on Stanford study 2010
• In collaboration with Stanford, Berkley & Oxford
• Extracted expert knowledge from thought leaders
• Built Predictive Models, Contributory Database & Artificial Intelligence
• Published the two reports with 25k downloads adopted by ~100
Universities
• Launched StartupCompass.co with 20k+ users

7. What did we learn?

8. Extreme uncertainty is the
biggest challenge

9. The Problem: Premature Scaling
Startups efficiently execute
the unnecessary

10. The Solution: Learning
The faster you learn the more
likely you are to succeed

11. How we assess premature scaling
Discovery Validation Efficiency Scale Sustain Conservation
Market/Environment
Actual Stage
Customer Response
Customer Interaction
Startup/Organism
Behavioral Stage Customer
Business Behavior Product
Team
Financials
Business Model

12. Example: Color
Discovery Validation Efficiency Scale Sustain Conservation
Market/Environment
Actual Marmer Stage
Customer Response
Customer Interaction
Startup/Organism
Behavioral Marmer Stage Customer
Business Behavior Product
Team
Financials
Business Model

13. Result: Revenue

14. Result: User Growth

15. Result: Valuation

16. Result: Funding

17. Summing up
• Startups are exposed to extreme uncertainty.
• This uncertainty can lead to misallocation of resources, bad decisions
and ultimately failure.
• To avoid failure the startup has to reduce uncertainty.
• Uncertainty can be reduced by listening to your customers.
• The Startup Genome Compass helps you to asses your situation,
diagnose problems and measure progress.

18. How can you identify
premature scaling?

19. Business Model

20. Team

21. Focus

22. Product

23. Valuation

24. Customer Acquisition

25. Questions?
• Check out the Startup Genome Compass at startupcompass.co
• send us an email at bjoern.herrmann@gmail.com
• download the report at blog.startupcompass.co
• Follow me at @bjoernlasse