I favor entrepreneurs with a keen focus on pipeline metrics.  Etsy has some great ones worth noting:

• Only 2% of sales goes to marketing.   Pretty amazing for a consumer facing business.
• 93% of traffic is from organic marketing channels; leaving only 7% from paid traffic.  Note that organic includes direct and email referrals.
• 78% of purchases are from repeat customers.  Now that’s customer loyalty.

Another interesting fact:  One reason for Etsy’s high repeat usage is that it isn’t greedy in its fees to customers.  Etsy’s revenue, as a percent of its overall gross sales to consumers, is 8-10%.  Some marketplaces charge 20-30%.

Great metrics for a company tracking to raise $100 million in an upcoming IPO with a potential  $1.7 billion valuation.

These metrics are from Etsy’s S-1 filing as analyzed by Paul Bennetts at AirTree Ventures.