All of our Data articles

Run Rate

Run rate is a financial forecasting metric that projects a company's future performance by extrapolating its current revenue over a longer period of time, usually an entire year. For startups, it's a quick way to estimate annual revenue based on limited data.

Churn Rate

Churn rate measures the percentage of customers or accounts that cancel or fail to renew within a given period. For subscription businesses, it’s one of the clearest signals of customer retention, recurring revenue stability and long-term growth potential.

Starting Up

Starting an Analytics Org From Scratch — Lessons From a Decade at DoorDash

DoorDash VP Jessica Lachs has grown the company’s analytics team from a band of scrappy generalists to a highly specialized 300-person org. Here, she spells out how founders can lay the groundwork for an analytics function at their startup and pick the right first hires for the team.

Engineering

The Startup Founder’s Guide to Hiring a Data Scientist

Are you ready to hire a data scientist? Mengying Li, Growth Data Science Lead at Notion, shares her framework for testing whether you should invest in this key hire and how to find the right data science skillset for your startup.

Starting Up

An Exact Breakdown of How One CEO Spent His First Two Years of Company-Building

Sam Corcos, co-founder & CEO of Levels, tracked exactly how he spent the two years since founding the company for a rare inside look at being a startup leader.

Sales

Step Up Your Sales Coaching Game — Dig Into The Numbers to Help Your Reps Level Up

Sales managers have an unprecedented opportunity to lean into the numbers and level up as coaches — but in Karen Rhorer's experience, most are leaving this potential untapped.

PR & Marketing

Why Qualitative Market Research Belongs in Your Startup Toolkit — and How to Wield it Effectively

Qualitative market research is the catalyst for creativity that not enough startups are taking advantage of. Jesse Caesar demystifies qual, outlines the questions that qual's uniquely positioned to tackle and shares how startups at any stage can add this powerful resource to their toolkits.

Product

User-First Monetization — Lessons from Instagram and Strava

James Quarles played a crucial role in creating Instragram's multi-billion dollar business model. Now CEO of Strava, he's sharing the fundamentals of healthy monetization for startups.

People & Culture

Here’s How to Wield Empathy and Data to Build an Inclusive Team

When it comes to diversity and inclusion, D&I leader Ciara Trinidad lets the data speak. When she left her last startup, the 125-person company was 59% women, its sales team had gender parity, and underrepresented minorities constituted the majority of its product team. Here she shares why a culture

Product

The Four Cringe-Worthy Mistakes Too Many Startups Make with Data

HotelTonight's Chief Data and Strategy Officer talks about how startups should set up and mine their data to drive insights that actually make a difference.

Product

The Tenets of A/B Testing from Duolingo’s Master Growth Hacker

Duolingo VP Gina Gotthilf has overseen the company's growth as it exploded from 3 million to 200 million users. One tool that's fueled this ascent? A/B Testing. Read on to learn from her favorite tests.

People & Culture

How Instacart Uses Data to Craft A Bespoke Comp Strategy

When searches for talent are competitive and condensed, startups have a need for speed that makes freestyle negotiations or plug-and-play comp data resources attractive. But that's not how it has to go down.