The conference scene is picking up again as we start to emerge from the Covid coma. I’ll be on-stage twice tomorrow at Traction Conference in Vancouver, interviewing two pretty badass execs:
Mary D’Onofrio, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners
We’ll be chatting about “10 Rules to Grow Operationally Efficient Businesses and Scale to $100 Million ARR,” and I’ll be asking Mary a bunch of questions, including:
- What is a centaur?
- How do you get there?
- What is growth endurance?
- As you get bigger, margins go down and time to CAC payback goes up. Why?
- What does cash conversion score tell you about a company?
- You’ve done a ton of work on benchmarks … if you want to be a $100M ARR startup, what marks do you need to hit for:
- ARR growth rate
- Retention (net and gross)
- Margin
- S&M as a percentage of revenue
- R&D as a percentage of revenue
- G&A as a percentage of revenue
- Free cash flow margin
- What are your top 3 tips for founders to grow operationally efficient businesses TODAY?
Spencer Kimball, CEO at Cockroach Labs
We’ll be chatting about 3 steps to scaling, multiplying, thriving … in a challenging economy. I’m thinking someone who named his company “cockroach labs” will probably know a little something about that. I’ll ask him a few questions along the lines of …
- Our topic is “scaling, multiplying, thriving,” but the first step (especially now?) is survival …
- Too many users or customers too soon is a problem. Why?
- Do you sometimes need multiple sequential MVPs?
- Key challenge from 0 to 1?
- Key challenge from 1 to 10?
- Key challenge from 10 to 100?
- How does the founder role change as you grow?
- What’s a healthy way to manage that change in your founding team?
- Entrepreneur stress
- How do you manage it?
- How do you run the marathon?