Every investor tends to have a slightly different definition of the metrics they look at when assessing businesses to partner with. The result is a bevy of misconceptions and difficulties figuring out what an investor is actually looking for. It's enough to breed frustration as you optimize your metrics for an investor, only to show up to a meeting to find that they look at things in a way you didn't expect.
While some investors will invariably be focused on a specific metric, and variants of it, that's not really how we handle metrics at Insight. For example, take what Ryan Hinkle, a Managing Partner at Insight, mentions in the video, "What Metrics Matter to Investors?" Ryan explains that lifetime value is easily one of the most misunderstood or abused metrics out there. There are so many ways to calculate such a statistic that you can run into seemingly countless different methods for deriving and using the data point.
In the video, Ryan explains that at Insight, we don't worry about the specific metrics you choose, but focus more on how you derive the metric and whether you deploy it in consistent ways. If you're concrete in the way you use the metric, then we can look at what you're doing and see the story that the data tells. When it comes to getting your metrics to make an impact on investors, that's really the key. Tell the right story with your data and show how you created that information and you can position yourself for a productive meeting with investors. Get a deeper look at Ryan's ideas by watching the video above.
