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Everyone is learning statistics because making sense of data is the difference between success and failure. R, the open source statistics language, is about a third as popular as Ruby and growing fast.

Statistics are essential because data is ubiquitous and volumes are growing exponentially, even in startups. CEOs measure key company metrics. Engineers measure application performance and build machine learning models. Marketers measure campaign performance and reach. PMs measure engagement. And so on.

Over the last few months, I’ve been helping a few companies build hiring pipelines to recruit at nearly every experience level and for technical, sales and business development roles. Below are the lessons I’ve learned.

Identify your ideal candidate
If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. Narrow your search focus to find the right candidate. The easiest way to start is by building look-alike candidate lists. I start with either a particular person or a list of companies that would provide someone with the right experience for the role.

Passion is not something you follow. It’s something that will follow you as you put in the hard work to become valuable to the world. Follow a Career Passion? Let It Follow You

In his book “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”, Cal Newport, a college classmate, champions the idea that passion lags work, instead of passion inspiring work. It’s the same philosophy embraced by sushi master Jiro, in the documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi.” Jiro should focusses on mastering a practice, making sushi.

Any number of challenges can arise during a startup’s initial years. Some of these changes could be major and may require rethinking strategy. Competitors enter your target market. New products are released into your market which undercut yours. Customer acquisition costs rise dramatically.

If faced with these questions, it’s hard to know where to begin or how to structure an analysis to reach an answer.

McKinsey uses a 6 step process to frame the process of answering these strategic questions which is profiled in this month’s Harvard Business Review. This framework has helped me many times simplify strategic questions and shift from questioning to analysis to action.

Yesterday, I spoke at Columbia Business School. We had a conversation about the role of incubators and accelerators (or the moniker of your choice) within the startup ecosystem.

Given the volume of first time entrepreneurs and the broad growth of interest in entrepreneurship, I think these programs are invaluable. To entrepreneurs, these programs offer up to seven value propositions, listed in order of importance, as I see it.

1. Education - Examples include General Assembly runs a substantial education program and YCombinator operates Startup School and First Growth’s Venture Network
2. Startup-in-a-box - TechStars offers legal help to incorporate a company, PR and marketing support for launch, banking partners, business development contacts, developer tools discounts all with the goal of eliminating as much friction as possible and helping founders focus on product/market fit discovery and execution.
3. Networking - Within each program, founders develop relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and most programs offer guest speakers typically luminaries and previously successful founders to speak about their startup experiences. 500Startups, among others, offers mentor networks.
4. Fund raising assistance (aka Demo Day) - These events are designed to build auction pressure in financings by generating simultaneous investor interest.
5. Ramen funds - Most programs offer between $10k to $150k in ramen money. It’s just enough to get someone started.
6. Office space - Only a few incubators offer office space and many of them at a fee. General Assembly in New York and Founder’s Den in San Francisco are two great examples.
7. Brand - Every graduate of an accelerator program can use the the brand of the program as proof of credibility.

These incubators/accelerators are the graduate schools for entrepreneurship and have a very important role in the ecosystem. They may not be right for every company, but these incubators build the hubs of successful entrepreneurship communities. And I hope they continue to thrive.

Every investment requires a leap of faith, an emotional act that’s not pure reason, and that’s got to carry you through in the inevitable many months, sometimes years, of horrific bad stuff that comes with the company. And you’ve got to have that energy, that sustaining belief to carry you through, because if you don’t, then you regret having done it. So when I have regret, it’s when I didn’t have that, and I’d logically talked myself into [the investment] and checked the boxes. So it was really helpful [to have a failed investment] that taught me, ‘don’t invest like that.’ You have to have the love affair, and if you don’t, then you shouldn’t do it.

1. We are in the heyday of SaaS. The conference spanned 20+ buildings, served 60,000+ attendees and was sponsored by more than 300 vendors. Free food everywhere. Skullcandy wireless headphone giveaways. DJs in every corner. Four square play areas on fake grass outside. It is one huge party.
2. Benioff delivered a tremendous keynote. I wish I could speak in public with his confidence, control and passion.
   
3. Dreamforce created the perception that Salesforce is at the center of a huge ecosystem of their own creation, which inspires confidence in customers and partners.
4. Social is the buzzword. After the BuddyMedia and Radian6 acquisitions, this is no surprise.
5. Salesforce manages a torrent of brands: Chatter, ChatterBox, Do, Desk, Data.com, Heroku, Social Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Sales Cloud, Services Cloud, etc. It’s confusing to customers but indicative of their ambition.
6. At some point, startups will need to evaluate platform risk, asking hard questions like which categories will Salesforce compete or let others thrive.
7. Chatterbox is a well-built product. It lacks some of key features including security and documents association with client records (Box’s key feature), but it will get there. At Redpoint, we use Salesforce to run internal deal tracking and logging processes; we use Dropbox for file storage and Yammer for chatting. I could envision swapping out Dropbox and Yammer for Chatter and Chatterbox.
8. Marketing automation companies claimed the center of the expo with the biggest booths. Sales technology has outpaced marketing technology. Marketers are clamoring for the same insights from customer data. This demand is driving four bustling companies Marketo, Eloqua, Silverpop, and Pardot.

The excitement was palpable and indicative of the enormous wave SaaS has become.

At a recent meeting, David Barrett, one of the founders of Expensify, drew this diagram when explaining his company’s structure. He has overlaid the core teams of a company with a conversion funnel. It’s brilliantly simple.

As every SaaS startup transitions from development to growth, the company must supplement the engineering and product capability with sales, marketing and account management. This diagram is the simplest way to show how they work together harmoniously at a strategic level.

The throwaway line in pitches these days is “we’ll sell our data.” Most of the time, this notion is wrong.

Data is the most valuable outcome of building a successful product. It’s the insight, the secret, the keys to the kingdom. Don’t sell the keys to the kingdom.

Data provides economies of scale and insights used to develop huge barriers to entry and it should be kept within an organization. Internal data use is the path to building a huge business.

SMB SaaS companies cannot afford to pay for distribution. At 2 to 4% conversion to paid rates and $5 to $10 monthly subscription fees, the breakeven CPC for these products on search is $0.40. The average Google click costs three times this and the iOS average cost-per-install is more than twice as expensive.

The most successful SMB SaaS companies (Zendesk, Expensify, Square) build communities to drive distribution. Those communities reinforce and build a brand. And the brand drives subsequent organic distribution.