
Why Your Startup Needs a Visual Dashboard - domino
http://mygengo.com/talk/blog/why-your-startup-needs-a-visual-dashboard/
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patio11
I can't recommend these enough. Some thoughts:

1) If it requires > 5 seconds to refresh a page, you should be doing a cron
job (or whatever) to generate and then just reading from cached data. If you
have any pain in accessing data, you won't make decisions based on data.

2) I like to periodically update my dashboards to a) combat trend blindness
and b) include new widgets for projects that have upcoming decisions to be
made, like "Should I scale out this new SEO mini-project?" (You'd want data
which showed you whether it was working or not.)

3) The point of having eye candy is not to display numbers, it is to make the
right decisions. Don't include stuff that isn't actionable. (Exception: need
to bamboozle investors? Give them all the data they want and more.)

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pmjoyce
Disclosure: I run a startup that makes SaaS status boards.

While I agree that having access to _actionable_ metrics is what's really
going to be the biggest tangible benefit of these sorts of systems, I've also
found that there exists another class of data that, while not actionable, also
provides some utility. These are often tagged with the 'vanity metrics' label
and conventional wisdom deems them to be useless at best and distracting at
worst but, I've found, they can sometimes be useful.

In other words, I may not be able to act (or know how to act) when they change
but getting constant feedback from many aspects of my business helps me to
notice subtle changes that may be interesting and that sometimes act as a
harbinger for larger/more significant changes further down the line.

What these metrics are will entirely depend on your business what sort of
person you are. For me, something like changes in my Twitter follower count (a
classic vanity metric), when combined with a host of other signals can give me
subtle cues about how the business is being perceived, what's causing that, is
it a good change etc... none of it is immediately actionable but it all adds
up; it's more data points leading a more rounded understanding of how my
business works.

It's entirely possible I spend too much time dog-fooding my own product and
most reasonable business owners don't have the time to explore these cues, but
I do feel like it helps me to feel more connected to the day-to-day running of
my own business.

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patio11
I would be wary of that, given people's _incredible_ facility with fitting a
conclusion on top of collections of inconclusive data and then, worse, fitting
new data into that conclusion. I have probably done it myself.

Two thumbs up for metrics and startups and startups for metrics, but I hear
"delta Twitter followers" and start seeing subtle distinctions teased out
holistic evaluation of the arrangement of chicken entrails.

(The difference between Twitter followers and chicken entrails? Chicken
entrails have measurable value - people can at least eat them.)

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pmjoyce
I certainly would not argue that there is explicit value in knowing delta
Twitter followers, and wasn't what I was suggesting. If you're trying to
retrofit causation to a clutch of assorted metrics you happen to have lying
about I totally agree you're going to come up with some misleading
conclusions.

What I would say, however, is taken as one - albeit low weighted - input into
a system (my brain) that might x-ref against some other indicators of
different significance might lead to the conclusion "there's unusual activity
afoot". The # of Twitter followers doesn't tell you much about _what's_
happening but might indicate that _something_ is happening.

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CloudOps42
My own disclaimer: I run <http://www.DashboardToSuccess.com>.

Our belief is that a small business management Dashboard must be simple. We
also recommend, per Jim Collins and every CPA out there, finding your Profit
per X or Revenue per X and keeping a keen eye on that number.

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ladon86
Nice app, but do you think you could make the pricing more prominent? It's not
a lot to charge, you don't have to be scared of it!

I only found it after clicking the FAQ link at the top, and even the signup
screen is asking me to authorise paypal for an undisclosed amount.

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PonyGumbo
Ditto. Whenever a company hides pricing information, I assume the product is
incredibly expensive, or that there's some kind of licensing model that
involves a phone call and a salesperson. Considering that it's only $10/month,
the pricing should really be more prominent.

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ableal
Off topic observation on possible front page / ordering glitch: As of 15h50
UTC this submission had vanished from the front page, and wasn't to be found
in the second, third or fourth pages. It had "136 points by domino 5 hours ago
| 27 comments", which should be enough for the second page.

(It was sitting near the top of the front page; I refreshed and then got
curious about it, and had to look down the chronological list to find it
again).

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pmjoyce
Same here, not sure what the problem was. Seems like the points were more than
sufficient to keep it further up the field for a bit longer.

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topcat31
This is a phenomenal post. I completely agree that it improves things - we
recently got a massive TV in the office at Distilled to show off some key
metrics using Geckoboard: <http://yfrog.com/h3uhzrj>

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dermatthias
Any recommendations for an open source dashboard? Like what Piwik is for
Google Analytics, but only in dashboard-land like the ones in the original
post?

(Yeah, money is tight...)

Edit: Except the ones mentioned at the bottom of the post, of course.

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dataisfun
well, while we're not open source, we're still in private beta (so free :).
email me at dbeyer@chart.io if you'd like access.

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Swizec
Aw man this is awesome, I've been secretly longing for a visual dashboard for
months now, but for one reason or another I never got around to having one.

Never realised there were so many out-of-the-box solutions already, this makes
getting a good dashboard a weekend project! Sounds like a challenge ...

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ernestoo
You really can't talk about dashboards without talking about the Open Source
Business Intelligence Reporting Suite that <http://jaspersoft.com>
(<http://jasperforge.com>) offers.

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holdupadam
Do a lot of startups make their own dashboards like this to show their
specific data?

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thingsilearned
Yes, absolutely every startup I've talked to creates their own dashboard or
dumps some results to excel periodically. And I've talked to a lot of them, as
my company is addressing this issue. (chart.io YCS10)

I think that will change shortly.

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bvi
Is there a way I could try out chart.io? I'm looking at a bunch of options
here and what you guys seem to offer looks pretty compelling.

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dataisfun
Yep. email me at dbeyer@chart.io and I'll bump you ahead of the beta list :)

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softbuilder
Dashboards are awesome. That said I think they can easily become a glitter
project that detracts from more critical work. Shell scripts, cron+email, or a
bare-bones web page can all be cheaper alternatives and are quite useful.

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Schmelson
I agree. Totally essential, and really good for team motivation too.

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arethuza
Roambi does look much more like it is targeted at enterprises rather than
start-ups - pretty neat that it integrates directly with stuff like Essbase.

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bvi
This is a fantastic post. I just happened to be thinking about dashboards and
data visualization earlier today and ran into this link. Thanks!

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infocaptor
Disclosure: I built InfoCaptor - Dashboard software

most small businesses still use Excel and Access for their data. They
consolidate their excel files from various sources like quickbooks, other
spreadsheets. But if you are just starting, the only thing that matters is to
measure the user count and number of sales.

It is only when you start spending for marketing, outsourcing etc you need to
start keeping tab on your "profit margin","revenue" etc

