I recently was talking to a friend of mine about Cooler Planet and he asked me some very simple questions about the business like:
- Who is your customer?
- What's their buying process like?
- What's the market size and your market penetration?
- What's your renewal rate?
The questions were simple and the answers -- and the conversation with him reminded me of the core components of this business. Very, very useful exercise to do for each one of our companies! If you (or someone you know) asks simple questions, the answers may surprise you and result in re-thinking priorities.
One of the things that became particularly obvious was that it had been some time since we had looked and analyzed our own business data. My friend reminded me that this data often is easily obtained and is critical in terms of driving decision making. I know this -- it's like business 101 -- but it took his dumb questions to remind me! Maybe they weren't such dumb questions!
