Frequently Asked Questions

Growth Scanner is a custom analysis of your data that measures the health of your startup with key metrics and benchmarks. In addition to shedding light on strengths or weaknesses in the business, the charts help you tell your story to investors, team members, and other stakeholders. And here’s the best part: in addition to a report containing all the numbers and charts, it comes with a live review over Zoom with one of our data experts to provide context and answer any questions.

Growth Scanner leverages other analytical tools to provide founders with a holistic view of their

• Answers important questions about the health of your startup.
• Easy to use without needing cumbersome instrumentation.
• Personalized insights from our team of data experts
  

Growth Scanner takes your data and feeds it through a standard analytical framework centered around growth accounting, which includes engagement, retention, and MAU/revenue growth. This framework provides signals to answer simple but important questions like, “Are we building something people want” and “Does our business have product-market fit?” It can also help address bigger strategic issues like, “Should we allocate more resources to user acquisition or user retention?”

Other tools on the market, such as Amplitude or Mixpanel, exist to help you answer these questions on your own. To feed data to them, you first must instrument your platform to begin event tracking. Growth Scanner can give you an analysis based on the historical data you have already captured. And these other tools don’t come with a Zoom meeting with our team of experts to hone in on the metrics that matter most to your business.

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It is free!

TheVentureCity is a global early stage venture fund focused on making the entrepreneurial ecosystem more diverse, grounded in data, and fairly funded. TheVentureCity’s experienced team of operators-turned-investors, including early employees from Facebook, WhatsApp, Ipsy & eBay, become an extension of their startups’ teams. Together, we work to scale internationally from day one, breaking into new markets and investment spheres.

As it pertains to Growth Scanner, the key phrase above is “grounded in data.” All startups generate lots of valuable data. However, the startup ecosystem lacks accessible tools and advice to help founders use that data to understand their businesses better. In our 5+ years in business, we have looked at hundreds of startup investment opportunities and helped dozens of companies we’ve invested in pursue product-led growth with–among other things–data instrumentation and analysis. In the process we have analyzed A LOT of transactional and usage logs, so many that we built our own data stack to scale our data analytics. 

We see Growth Scanner as an opportunity to leverage that investment beyond merely our internal use. Stemming from our “founders first” ethos, we launched this product to help any founder, anywhere in the world, to access our tools and team. It’s designed to give back to the startup ecosystem while (selfishly) helping us meet the data-savvy startup founders who we love to invest in and work with.

First step is to complete a quick inquiry form, including information such as if you were referred by a The Venture City member. You will then receive a confirmation email of your inquiry. Our team individually vets each opportunity to see if there is a fit. We may ask for additional startup information to better analyze and benchmark your data. Due to the high volume of demand, we will then send you an email requesting your data if it is a fit based on your business type. Once you receive the link to upload your data, you will then have 7 days to submit. Note, if the data is in the incorrect format, we will inform you and work with you to get the necessary information to provide you actionable results.

We need you to provide a comma-separated value (CSV) file of your anonymized data in a specific format. When we receive it, it feeds into our platform to generate an automated report. Behind the scenes, one of our data analysts will review your report and then schedule a 30-minute Zoom meeting with you to discuss it. If you provide us with properly formatted data, we commit to completing the Growth Scan Report and scheduling the Zoom meeting within three business days from the day you submit it.

We are asking you not to send us any “personal identifiable information”. In particular, this applies to the User ID field. We don’t want to receive a User ID from which the identity of a specific person could be determined. Examples of this personal information are email addresses, user names, etc.

If your user ID’s aren’t system generated numbers, we ask you to translate each user into an ID number or alphanumeric code before you send us your data.

Wrong format ❌:

Right Format ✅:

We will provide you the Growth Scan Report as a link shared exclusively with the email address you provide. You will just need a web browser to access to it.

“Events” are the things that users do in your product. Some events such as purchases, transactions, registrations, referrals, posts, shares, or likes tie directly to the health of your product and should thus be considered “key events.” Money does not need to change hands for an event to be “key.” Let us know which of your events you consider “key” and we will help you measure how many users realize value from using your product every week or month. Send us an “event log” of your key events: a record of every date/time a key event occurs and what user triggered that event. We will send you an Easy Guide once you submit to the form.

A comma-delimited text file (CSV), which you may send us via email or share via Google Sheets or Dropbox link.

Yes! In order to prepare your Growth Report, we will ask you for your anonymized data in a one-time CSV download. We do not need to connect to your database or any other sources, and  we do not need to know who your customers/clients are.

We won't sell any data or share it with anyone outside TheVentureCity. Your data is yours, and we'll remove it from our servers immediately upon request. You can visit the Terms and Conditions here.

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Please, send us a note. Our team is standing by to reply as soon as possible