Wondering how your startup stacks up with others in your sector? Or how consumer Internet companies, say, compare with mobile startups? Seattle-based nPost, a media and resource site for tech entrepreneurs, is preparing to launch a quarterly report on startups—that are based not just in Seattle, but everywhere—to help answer such questions. The program, called nPost Metrics, will report on trends in startup burn rates, revenues, growth, customer conversion, revenue per user, and other data, all kept strictly confidential.
It’s all part of nPost’s mission to promote startups and provide important information for entrepreneurs and the tech community, says nPost founder Nathan Kaiser. The idea arose from his meetings with hundreds of local entrepreneurs who all want to know if their business model will work in a particular market, and at what price points. “They want to know the metrics, the benchmarks. I had that data anecdotally, but nothing in a scientific way. This is data at an industry level,” Kaiser says. “As a media company, we’re all about the expertise, insights and data points that will help startups be more successful.”
The data will be free for participating startups—defined as any company in the tech space that’s younger than five years old—and will cost $2,500 per quarter for everyone else. That includes venture capitalists, angel investor groups, accounting firms, large tech companies, and law firms.
If you’re a startup, you can enroll here and fill out the initial survey, which asks for things like number of employees, tech sector (e.g., consumer vs. enterprise), and platform (e.g., Web vs. mobile). Then, the idea is you’ll share information about your own startup, confidentially, in return for monthly updates and quarterly reports on the aggregate data from all respondents.
Kaiser says he expects strong startup representation from the San Francisco Bay Area, the Northwest, the Northeast, and other pockets of innovation around the country, as well as abroad. In conjunction with the reports, nPost, which has four employees, is also launching a consulting services firm that will work one-on-one with startups to analyze the industry data within their specific market. Kaiser has already signed up an undisclosed number of startups and customers, and plans to release the first report in November.
