Thanks – that's similar to what cooperadymas was saying.
Who did you mean by "their"? We are soliciting feedback on our more B2B channels too. But I'm posting here because a) it's a startup and HN likes startups and b) I like HN and wanted to share. :)
* We are soliciting feedback on our more B2B channels too.*
I'm sorry, but I don't understand this sentence. Do you mean that you are getting feedback from prospects? Or getting feedback from other businesses (that are not prospects)?
By their, I mean businesses who might actually buy your product. That's the only feedback you should really pay attention to. Asking for opinions on HN is good, but ultimately, less valuable than trying to make a sale with a real prospect.
vegetarianism is not the answer. Monsanto is one of the evilest companies on earth and they control most soy production (I say this because many vegetarians eat a lot of tofu).
It's about understanding the source and making good choices. Eat grass-fed, antibiotic-free beef (these two things virtually guarantee you're not supporting the concentrated feedlots) and free range chicken. Eat non-GMO vegetables that are locally grown and in season. It's about supporting the right suppliers, which thankfully exist for all parts of the omnivore spectrum.
First, vegetarianism is not synonymous with soy eating.
Second, the majority of soy is used to feed food animals (even grass-fed, which generally does not count how the animals are "finished").
Fourth, free range is a joke. Sure there are some farmers that give their animals a decent life. But labels like free range and cage free are not well regulated and give you no real guarantee of anything. Please do some research on what is actually involved in these kinds of claims, which are essentially marketing.
Finally, jayfuerstenberg said he/she was moving closer to vegetarianism due to the mistreatment of animals. Don't reply to that by saying vegetarianism is not the answer because it is in this case.
Or just eat pastas, lentil based dishes, vegetable curries, soups, or even supplement meat with texturized vegetable protein for faux meat pies, bolognese etc. I'm a meat eater and can't tell the difference.
The vegetarians I know don't eat tofu very often, and would rather eat tofu potentially produced by a notorious company than eat an animal.
Didn't down-vote you BTW, just thought I'd chime in because I know a few veggos, including my wife. It's not bad food I can assure you.
As a now grain farmer who grew up on a dairy farm, what I find more concerning is all of the crazy synthetic and mined resources we have to pour onto the fields in the absence of animals in order to be able to meet the world's demand for food.
Our production of "vegetarian food" grew up with the idea of having animals as part of rotation, but with the decline in demand for most meat varieties, economics do not allow those animals to be part of the cycle anymore.
Vegetarianism may be a solution for the long term society, but it seems like we have a lot of technical challenges to overcome in the meantime. Right now it looks like we are just trading one problem for another.
If anything, where there's been a slight reduction in one area of consumption (e.g. beef) there's been an increase in another (poultry) with an overall rise in meat consumption.
> economics do not allow those animals to be part of the cycle anymore
Given the incredible size of modern farms, using animals as a source of fertilizer is no longer practical. Meat consumption isn't really part of the equation - livestock require food themselves, so you'd need to grow huge sums just to feed the animals as well as produce enough grain/vegetables for human consumption. If you can artificially produce fertilizer then you remove this bottleneck.
Smaller farms would allow animals to be part of the rotation.
I live in Japan and generally avoid buying any food from the US. My beef comes from Australia and vegetables mostly from Western Japan (as far from Fukushima as possible).
It's not cheap but it's better than supporting Monsanto and factory farms in general.
The free-range and grass-fed stuff is far too nuanced (and expensive) by itself to put an end to or even reduce the rivers of blood and mountains of skulls that are the output of industrial factory farms. What will stop it? environmental legislation? Ending farm subsidies?
I just watched "Food, Inc" this weekend, it's a very well made documentary. Much more evidence-based and non-preachy than I expected.
They talk at length about what they call 'veggie libel laws' and other laws introduced by food producer lobbies that limit free speech and surveillance about food productions. There's a long history of this, unfortunately it's nothing new.
It's actually pretty spot on. If you go and visit some of the places depicted in the film, without prior approval and scheduling, and you'll see it first hand.
I say this as someone who use to work for an organization that sourced and inspected chicken and beef processing facilities and, I've visited them regularly.
Sadly, it is. The types of conditions in processing facilities make a lot of the employees temporarily insane. They're asked to do inhumane things and thus become what they do. I even pity the workers. Most of them are illegal immigrants being paid shit wages to do horrible things to these animals. Do you honestly believe that if it was not commonplace that this bill would have even been considered?
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Core technologies: Client-side Javascript (we use Sproutcore), Scala (all server-side code).
To apply email prlambert@learndot.com with [HN] in the subject line. Open positions:
1) App and Web Designer. We are looking for a talented visual designer who wants to help us build smart and beautiful applications for web and mobile. Time would be split around 70%/30% between design on our core app and design for our website & marketing pages. You would work closely with our Chief Product Officer to create solutions for user needs, with your end product being photoshop or keynote exports for our dev team.
2) Front-End (JS) or Full Stack Engineer (JS + Scala). We are looking for a great javascript developer who will work directly with our CTO and Designer in building our core application across multiple devices. Learndot is a thick-client JS app using Sproutcore. Our backend API is written in Scala. The ability or desire to work in Scala is a bonus, but our immediate needs are on the JS-side.
Sorry about the confusion. When I say I will pay $60 for a warm lead, that's assuming a number of them will not convert. Our LTV is in the 1000s, but another part of the cost of acquisition is the time on the phone to close the deal.
It's more like this:
- We'll pay $300 bucks for 5 warm leads to hand off to sales.
- Sales will work the leads to close, spending another $200 of time. One of them will close.
- We'll get a customer with a LTV of greater than $2000, for $500. LTV >= 4x total CAC.
In valuing the leads from TechCrunch, it's a mistake to assume they'll all close (in which case their value is beyond $5520), we have to value what they actually are: potential. We have to discount the risk. That value, is about $60, so all 22 are worth $1320.
I like the optimism though. :)
And you're right it's not a great payoff overall. ~$3000 isn't a great ROI for the effort that went into the launch. There were other channels as well beyond HN and TC, but I wanted to keep the story focused on these two.
We've been testing more channels since and there's lot of data there as well and so, so much more to learn. Looking forward to your post!
I figured your LTV was probably much higher given what you're doing. That 4x CAC thing is really intended for consumer companies I think.
The reason this methodology matters is that when you have a marketer trying to figure out how to deploy a substantial amount of capital against business goals they've got to break it down by channel. And this common misconception is one of the most painful hurdles to get over with startup management teams who tend to be spending adverse even when the marketer finds a channel she wants to exploit the hell out of.
Marketing, as a function, deals in potential. If I can spend $1 to get you $10 of potential, and you (being sales or self-service conversion funnel) close 20% of that then we are a fucking awesome company :)
Numbers are always trustworthy if they're accurate. You just need to right context to interpret them in. These numbers are straight from Google Analytics, and you are correct that one was a direct link and the other was via TC. I say this in the article.
This is a real world scenario. Many people ask how much traffic we got from being on TechCrunch. This is just data, take it as you want. I do my best to explain the main caveats, including the one you pointed out. There are many.
This is great. :)