Don’t Make the Same Mistake As All Founders. Start Collecting Data Today.
Most founders spend their early years obsessed with marketing, sales, and product for obvious reasons. Those things drive scale and growth.
Data comes last, if it comes up at all, usually around the time someone asks “Can we see our funnel over the last two years? I want to know how we can scale.” Spoiler alert: the answer almost always comes down to some variation of “We don’t have it. We never tracked it” or “We have some data, but it’s basically garbage.”
By the time you want the data, it’s too late. You’ve lost years you cannot recreate, and are starting behind companies that started the journey years ago. You can’t scale or grow if you’re blind to what’s already happening.
Why The Data Gap Matters
In June, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon sat down on the Odd Lots podcast to talk about running a bank in the age of AI. The real driver behind successfully using AI isn’t having the latest AI model or AI assistant. It’s having decades of clean data for AI to use.
Goldman is better positioned than most companies. They’re required to store reams of data for SEC reporting purposes. Goldman also has stock trading data going back 40 years. Data isn’t a feature they added 20 years into their existence. Their data has been stored since day one. Now, decades of data are a structural advantage that no competitor can retroactively build, even if they’re using AI at scale. (Time machines are cool, but sadly no working model has been introduced to the market yet.)
Google did the same thing with search. They captured and stored every search term from the very beginning, and used that history to continuously improve the product.This is why they were able to ship their “Did you mean?” features as early as 2001. Google’s vast archives of real searches (typos and all) is why they could surface the right result even when you spelled it wrong.
You might be thinking, “I’m not running a bank, and I’m not building a search engine. I just want to run my family business, and I don’t want to overcomplicate my life by becoming the next Google.”
Fair.
Here’s our counterpoint:
You still need data. Lots of it, and from the start. You still need to understand why your customer retention is dropping, and whether your sales strategies are working.
Don’t believe us?
There’s a reason big companies are obsessed with tracking metrics and return on investment. Their worst fear is as simple as not having a clear signal in the noise, or not having good data to begin with. Their worst fear is that they’re burning money with no tangible growth or results.
The Underlying Lesson Here Isn’t About Scale. It’s About Future-Proof Systems and Habits.
In 2011, Startup Genome interviewed over 650 founders and dozens of VC firms. They wanted to find the signal in the noise — they wanted to find the patterns that actually separate companies that succeed from ones that don’t.
One of their clearest findings can be traced back to data. Companies that track metrics grow 7x faster, on average, than ones that don’t, and these companies are 60% more likely to raise funding.
Let that sink in. 7x faster growth AND 60% more likely to raise funding. We’re not talking about a Goldman-sized or Google-sized advantage. We’re talking about systems that are available to any founer at any stage, starting today. We’re talking about having data so you have options.
The catch is that you have to start before you think you need to.
The entire value of data boils down to one principle: it compounds. Knowing what to track, when to track it, or how to use it is rarely obvious, especially before you have much data to work with.
So, come learn what data and metrics actually matter from two women who’ve spent decades teaching organizations big and small exactly what data they need and why. We’ve taught companies what roles to fill, what skills to hire for, how to scale, and when to downsize. We’ve done it all before. Now let us help you.
