Confessions of a startup: all our numbers, insights, everything

https://lookback.io/blog/confessions-of-a-startup

by littke • 12 years ago

100 30 12 years ago

instakill2• 12 years ago

Man, what's with the x-axes in those graphs? Yikes those legal fees are astoundingly high. Any particular reason why? Really great post, thanks for sharing it.

littke7• 12 years ago

Hehe, they're weeks man! It's a bad habit we use in Sweden to always refer to weeks by number: http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/?country=21

instakill2• 12 years ago

oooooooh. Now I feel silly.

dyeje• 12 years ago

Ah. It's pretty confusing without digging for an answer. Maybe change that?

datacarl• 12 years ago

(co-founder here) The lion's share of those costs are related to drafting the investment agreements. It is a lengthy process if you want to do it properly, especially if you haven't done it before. Usually you sign a term sheet first that roughly outlines the content of the agreement. The devil is in the details though, so the full agreement may take a couple of weeks to finish. Then there is due diligence, option pool, and a bunch of other stuff to consider before the deal is sealed.

ac2u• 12 years ago

Thanks for sharing. Always useful to know figures for perspective.

joshfraser• 12 years ago

I cringe at the money spent on lawyers and the PR firm, but bravo on the the transparency.

gone352• 12 years ago

Indeed. As if one needed more proof that the TechCrunch <-> PR industry loop is rotten to the core:

During the three months [the $15,000 per month PR firm] were working with us, their most important achievement was a piece of news that generated lots of traffic, leads and job applications, namely this TechCrunch post. It ended up being a very positive article filled with product images of Lookback. One could argue we could've achieved that post ourselves but I'm not so convinced. We had submitted news tips to multiple sites previously but to no avail.

guynamedloren• 12 years ago

Seems like the PR firms are the ones selling shovels in this gold rush.

alooPotato• 12 years ago

agreed. With a seed investment, why not just use standard convertible note docs or the YC Safe notes? Did the lawyers really help?

Napapijri• 12 years ago

SAFE and convertible notes rarely works outside the US.

ahnberg• 12 years ago

Thank you for sharing. A very interesting read!

gustaf• 12 years ago

Great post Jonatan - thanks for sharing!

FollowSteph3• 12 years ago

Be careful on the iphone it hijacks your browser and it's hard to regain control. Otherwise a really good read.

littke7• 12 years ago

Wait what? :)

integraton• 12 years ago

The mimimal-ui property in the viewport meta tag hides the top and bottom bars. In landscape, they are completely absent, and the only way to get them to appear again is to tap the top of the screen or rotate to portrait and tap the miminal top bar.

tom3k• 12 years ago

A really good, honest read. Thanks for sharing!

lem72• 12 years ago

I would love an article about what investors were looking for when you spoke to them about "What's your go-to-market strategy"

jnks• 12 years ago

Gotta love those cumulative graphs. Linear growth? Now it looks quadratic!

littke7• 12 years ago

Haha yeah, well. User account growth is indeed slowing and is down to 1% the last couple of weeks. I thought that was obvious from looking at the graph but I'll clarify it in the article. Recorded minutes are growingly steadily though and are still increasing with about 5% week over week.

gone352• 12 years ago

Jonatan, I may be superficially misjudging from your team photo on Sqwiggle [1], but as a company seeking to "collect, understand and share" user experiences from apps for all kinds of demographics all over the world, perhaps looking forward you might want to strive towards increasing diversity in your team.

You already have a work flexibility ethos to build upon, so it will be easier for you to make the adjustments and compromises needed. Besides, your company is still young so the changes in culture and early hires you do now will have a lasting impact.

[1] https://lookback-public.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/team-lookback-...

jessaustin• 12 years ago

Is it relevant that this company is based in Sweden?

littke7• 12 years ago

Good point, and you're right. Will consider it indeed! Thanks.

uts_• 12 years ago

I"m surprised at the wages, a decent developer in Australia will cost $100k+ alone.

mkilling• 12 years ago

Jonatan, great read. Can you already share with us what kind of business model you're thinking about?

littke7• 12 years ago

A fairly standard SaaS model. We haven't decided exactly what yet.

RickS• 12 years ago

What were Gil's 3 questions?

ckoglmeier• 12 years ago

We've been using Lookback for internal testing on our upcoming iOS release @ Craftsy. It's been super helpful. We're hoping to do some user testing with it over the next few weeks as well. Great service guys, congrats on the continued growth.

Confessions of a startup: all our numbers, insights, everything

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