When you\u2019re building a startup, data can be like a warm blanket on a cold night. Data is comforting. It can be trusted. It\u2019s black and white with no apparent shades of gray.<\/p>\n
As Harvard Business School professor Clay Christensen<\/a> has said, \u201cMany people view numerical data as more trustworthy than qualitative data.\u201d The reality, however, is that data can introduce even more uncertainty into your business if not used correctly<\/a>. Because humans are deciding what to measure, how to measure and why to measure, almost all data is built on biases and judgment.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean you should ignore data and act on intuition alone. The point is that data is only one lens on your business. What your users are saying is another perspective. What you want to do internally is another. What makes financial sense is another.<\/p>\n I came to Intercom right after we closed our Series A funding round. At that point it was just product people at Intercom. Our series A investor, Mamoon Hamid<\/a> from Social Capital, looked around and said it was time to get the house in order from a finance and measurement perspective.<\/p>\n Joining at that early stage, right before we hit one million dollars in annual recurring revenue (ARR), was really insightful. Eoghan and the founders had done a great job setting up the fundamentals, but by bringing in finance and analytics early, we could start to understand deeper questions about the business. We could figure out where that ARR was coming from. How could we think about it moving forward? Why might we need future capital? When might we need it? Who might we want to start hiring?<\/p>\n Getting these questions answered made our later rounds of fundraising easier. Your job while fundraising, whether you\u2019re the CEO or the CFO, is to use data to build a case for why your company is going to be X times more valuable than it is today. Then it’s up to you to put that data together in a compelling story.<\/p>\nGet on the same page early on<\/h2>\n