A model to understand and measure utilization rate in a marketplace business — A few months back, my team and I were discussing an article posted by Julia Morrongiello, an investor at Berlin-based PointNine Capital. Her article is a collection of summaries of other pieces addressing the need to identify a set of metrics to gauge marketplace liquidity. A marketplace lives or dies…

Our new, high-tech employee hunts scammers 24 /7 and is 100 percent effective in eliminating flagged listings — At accommodation platform HousingAnywhere, the safety of our users is paramount. The platform has been engineered in such a way that, provided business is carried out within the secure confines of the platform, scammers cannot cheat users of their money. One of our central tenets is to safeguard users against…

Hacking fundraising as a marketplace business: benchmarks for a successful round — There is a common misconception among founders according to which once a business reaches a certain magnitude (e.g. in terms of revenue) it automatically qualifies for a VC round. This is not only incorrect but also a dangerous milestone to target. Investment readiness is relative and not absolute The real…

Hacking fundraising as a marketplace business: benchmarks for a successful round — There is a common misconception among founders according to which once a business reaches a certain magnitude (e.g. in terms of revenue) it automatically qualifies for a VC round. This is not only incorrect but also a dangerous milestone to target. Investment readiness is relative and not absolute The real…

How Food Waste went from no-profit to business opportunity — As a keen observer of startup investment trends, I have become very excited by one in particular over the past few weeks. When interested in something, I only know one way forward: head-on. Today I am taking a nosedive into the topic of food waste! Like many of us, I…

What’s happening to the Venture Capital scene today is ironic. As an industry whose aim is to search for new innovation frontiers and scalable models, little has been done to scale itself. Despite creating more value and economic impact than any other sector, Venture Capital remains a niche asset class…

The ultimate guide to VC’s LTV/CAC analysis — final — Customer Acquisitions Cost (or CAC when the two of you become intimate) is one of those keywords insiders drop at every conversation. I always found funny how you need the jargon to be considered “part of the club”. Personal considerations aside, in this piece I’ll close the loop of my…

Customer Value and Lifespan: The Lifetime Value (LTV) — “How did you calculate your Customer Lifespan?” In the previous article I introduced the differences between a “normal” LTV/CAC (e.g. for an e-commerce or SAAS business) and the same analysis for a marketplace business. What makes things complicated is that a marketplace (e.g. Uber) needs to invest to acquire demand…

LTV/CAC for (two-sided) Marketplace — Pt 1 — “What’s your LTV-to-CAC ratio?” Does it sound familiar? It’s probably one of the key questions any VC expects you to answer, when diving into your metrics. For those who are not familiar with the terms, LTV stays for Lifetime Value (of the customer, sometimes referred to as CLT) and CAC…