Check your business model before you code

Bill Gurley from Benchmark Capital has written an excellent blog post about valuations of companies based on multiples of revenue. Called "All Revenue Is Not Created Equal", he outlines why some companies' revenues are more valuable than others and how this affects their valuation.

The article is written from the point of view of an investor, but it is also required reading if you are starting or running a business. 


A lot of tech startups seem to focus exclusively on either the technology or the customer. But to build a sustainable business, equal weight needs to be given to the business model. 


It's no good having the best technology and best customers if you can't generate sustainable, defensible revenues. I am constantly surprised by startups that don't set out clearly how they are going to do this before a single line of code is written.

Gurley lists 10 things to look for in measuring the right multiple for valuing a company. You should check your own business model against these to see how it stacks up and if it should be changed.

Facebook Permission Dialog Performance

In the last post, I mentioned that I had received a bit of feedback from users of Relevenz that were reluctant to use Facebook to sign in. This results in a number of bounces from the site.


There is another metric which you should check if you are using Facebook to sign in to your web application - the performance of the Permission Dialogs.


If you have ever used an application in Facebook or used Facebook to sign in to a site, you have to grant a set of permissions to that application so it can access your profile. The dialogs that Facebook shows to grant or deny permissions are called Permission Dialogs. 


You can find out what proportion of your users that grant or deny permission to your application by looking at the performance of these Permission Dialogs. Simply check the "Users" section of your application's Insights page. At the bottom of this page, you will see the number of Permission Dialog Impressions and Permission Dialogs Accepted.


The percentage conversion is a very important metric to add to the number of installs. It will give you a much clearer indication of how well your application is being adopted.

Sign In With Facebook? - No Way!

One of the most frequent responses we have received following the launch of Relevenz is that many people are reluctant to use their Facebook credentials to sign-in to the service.

This is a surprising result, given the rapid adoption of the "Sign in with Facebook" button across the Web. The main reason given seems to be a lack of trust in what applications can do once you give them permission and a distrust of Facebook itself.

I posted the question to the Lean Startup Circle (in Google Groups) to see if this was a common problem. It turns out that several other site owners have experienced the same result.

In addition, I asked a question on Facebook on the same topic. The majority of respondents indicated a preference for creating their own accounts on other sites.

As a result, support for native accounts has jumped to the top of the list for the next MVP of Relevenz.

What's your view? Ok with signing in or prefer to have your own account?

[UPDATE 16th May]
Thanks to everyone who posted their comments to this post. Unfortunately, the recent outage at Blogger seems to have done away with them.

One point though on implementing this: Make sure that you ask your Customers if this is what they want. Your audience for your product may have a completely different opinion than mine.

Have any thoughts on this or any other aspect of Relevenz? Leave a comment below or email us at info@relevenz.com.

A little more about Relevenz

Thanks to everyone who has taken time to look at Relevenz, try it out and give some feedback.

Now that the service is live, I'd like to take a little time to explain what we're trying to do with the service.

The Kitchen Calender - Sharing Plans

To put it simply, Relevenz is an electronic "kitchen calendar". 

If you haven't used a kitchen calender before, it is a paper based calendar that is usually hung on a wall in your kitchen. All the things that are going on in a family get listed there, things such as doctor appointments, parent teacher meetings and a whole host of other plans and events.

The reason for doing this it so that any family member will know what the other members are doing at any time. It is really useful when trying to organise your own time.

But there are problems:

1. It is paper based. This means that it gets quite messy when events and plans change.

2. It is in the kitchen. Of course it is! It's a kitchen calender after all. However, most of the notifications we get for things to do or places to go occur when we're not in the kitchen.

3. It is limited to the family sharing the kitchen. There are others that we need to inform about our plans - extended family, friends and so on.

Why not use an electronic calendar?

All calendars are innately personal. Mine contains a wide range of things that I've got planned, in work, at home and with friends. If I want to let others know of my plans, I've got two alternatives:

1. I can send them an invitation to specific events. This is not satisfactory as I am not actually inviting them to the event, but rather letting them know that I am going.

2. I can share my whole calendar. This equally is not satisfactory as my calendar contains a mix of things and I don't want everyone to see everything.

What does Relevenz 1.0 do?

In the first version we have released, you can enter the details of plans and events that you have and share them with particular family and friends.

Our choice of using a Facebook login is primarily around making it easy to share your plans and events with an existing list of friends rather than making it necessary to forge new connections in a new social network. It also uses wall postings to let people know that their friends have shared plans and events with them.

Your plans and events are shown in a list format on the main dashboard in Relevenz. Any plans or events that have been shared with you are also shown there. The key thing is that only the people you have shared your plans with get to see them.

What now?

There are many ideas that we have, including filtering, integration with regular calendars and so on. But first, try it out and see what you think!

http://www.relevenz.com

If you have any comments or suggestions on how the service can be enhanced, please let me know by leaving a comment below or emailing us at info@relevenz.com.

The Lean Start Part 4 - Product Launched!

It's been a couple of months since I posted on our progress and at last, I'm delighted to say that we have launched our service.

A little bit about Relevenz

The basic idea behind the service is an electronic kitchen calender. This differs from an normal calendar in that it is used to let other people know what you are doing and what you have planned.

Using Relevenz, you can create personal events and share them with your family and friends on Facebook. You get to decide who sees which events. 

We'd be delighted if you'd drop by and take a look. Any feedback is more than welcome.

www.relevenz.com