Data Driven Startups

By Jason Thompson, co-founder, 33 Sticks

At 33 Sticks, we advise several startups and data is always at the heart of every discussion regardless if that discussion is about building a pricing strategy, strategizing market positioning, or preparing for an important investor pitch.

Recently, I started to wonder if the startups that we are working with were a good indicator of how startups in general were making use of analytics, so I decided to conduct a brief survey of how startups prioritize and use analytics. The following are a few of the insights I uncovered:

Startup Demographics

The majority of respondents are startups that are building a SaaS product and are fairly well established.

Prioritizing Analytics

I asked a series of questions to better understand how startups viewed the value of analytics as part of running a successful business.

• 88% of those surveyed agreed that startups that value the use of analytics have an advantage over their competitors who do not value analytics.
• However when asked if startups had funds to adequately invest in analytics, 60% of respondents said most startups are unable to properly invest in analytics due to lack of funding.
• In an attempt to understand how limited resources impact a startups ability to use analytics, the results were mixed. 23% disagreed that lack of resources was a barrier to being data-driven, while 42% agreed that resource constraints made prioritizing analytics difficult.
• When it came to using data to optimize marketing spend, most were in agreement that for startups, with limited marketing budgets, using data to get the most out of marketing efforts was critical, with 89% agreement.

Putting Analytics Into Action

It wasn't a surprise that almost all of the startups surveyed were making us of, or at least had deployed, Google Analytics.

Also, the healthy number of respondents who indicated they were using Optimizely and Mixpanel makes perfect sense when you look at the following chart and notice the two biggest areas of interest center around conversion rate optimization and acquisition analysis, which Optimizely and Mixpanel, respectively, are perfect positioned to assist with.

Are you a startup? How are you making use of analytics in the day-to-day operation of your business?

About the Author:

Jason is an experienced digital analyst & entrepreneur whose primary focus is on forcing organizations to think differently about the delivery of information, insight, and recommendations. He has a personal passion for cooking, a talent for playing bass guitar & piano, and a unique interpretation on life through the art of photography. He can also consume large amounts of sushi. Follow him on Twitter:@usujason or connect with him on Linkedin: Jason Thompson