> I think the general notion that it is more difficult to improve things that you can't/don't measure is fairly accurate.
To be somewhat pedantic:
The difficulty of improving a thing does not change based on you measuring it. If I, say, measure the response time of a service, it's still just as difficult as it was before to improve the response time of the service. Furthermore, any improvement you do make will not change based on you measuring it. If I do improve the response time of the service, it will be just as improved whether or not I measure the change.
So, measuring does nothing but allow you to quantify the improvement you have made. It doesn't make improving a thing easier, and it doesn't make improvements better.
That said, there's plenty of scenarios where impartial measurements are critical. If you don't know what to improve, broad measurement across the entire system can provide an answer. If there's indecisiveness about which action will provide the best improvement, then impartial measuring will provide an answer. If you don't trust your perception, or cannot perceive the result, then impartial measuring can also provide an answer.
Taking measurements will usually prompt questions of "how do I change the results over time?" So, although the difficulty of improving the thing doesn't change; the chance of taking action to improve the thing does change for the better.
Measurements will usually encourage attention and effort to change in a way that non-measured things are unlikely to.
On that basis, I'd argue that even things that are very difficult to measure quantitatively would benefit if a suitable proxy was found that could be measured.
Of course, you do have to be careful that your proxy is suitable!
I want to increase the amount of money in my bank account. I'm using Mint to measure. Just because I'm measuring it doesn't make it easier to get money in there.
That said, it helps me keep budgets more. If I don't check mint periodically through the month, making sure I'm on track for goals, then I have a tendency to overspend.
We'll definitely be trying to do this in a few months, when we get an idea for what kind of general bump we saw in trials / signups. But a larger part of this endeavor was beyond direct sales.
Personally, I met a NYT reporter who's prepping a story on small-business CRM, I met the person in charge of CRM for Sony Music, and . Several of our larger customers stopped by and saw us as the mature, growing company that we are.
We had a great conversation with the CTO of one of our competitors at a meetup of The Small Business Web.
We're prepping to launch a rebooted Zendesk integration, and we bumped into their sales team at a bar one night.
It'll be several months before we can put a harder figure on those interactions, but we'd never be able to buy them on Adwords.
I'd love to hear from our peers on the value they're able to gain from this kind of thing!
This is a clear explaination of the value for each type of user. The frontpage of the app isn't as clear with the value prop. Put this on the frontpage in 3 big clear points. Great idea overall.
You say you "need" the cash. What do you need it for? At the very early stages you may need cash much less then you think you do. Cash feels like it will remove headaches but you are adding an investor to the mix at terrible terms which could add headaches. Could be a wash.
I've got a team of 8 full time people (half are salaried and half are only commission). We're hemorrhaging cash as we roll out our marketing plan. Plus we have features on our site like "Refer a friend, earn $10 when their first order ships." That money has to come from somewhere.
My only other option is to get as many personally-guaranteed credit cards as I can and just use them instead of taking on an investor. But this seems more high-risk.
Being employable is generally more about who you know then what you know. If you are just decent at being a founder then the activity of building your business will increase who you know exponentially.
Based on that rational I would say that founders generally become more employable.
I've seen it attributed to Peter Drucker as well.
I think the general notion that it is more difficult to improve things that you can't/don't measure is fairly accurate.