A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

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Who’s lying?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

(source). We had been flying for four hours, but both gas gauges still read “full.” I didn’t need a pilot’s license to know that couldn’t be right, nor to feel the rush of adrenaline in my gums at the thought of the engine sputtering to an eerie quiet death, propeller blades windmilling as we scream “mayday mayday” and “set it down over there” like in the movies, hopefully including the part where the heroes confidently stride away while the

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What’s The Important Thing, that is powerful enough to override all your deficiencies?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Do you feel the crushing weight of the disadvantages facing every new company? No brand, no features, no customers, no money, no distribution, no search engine rankings, no efficient advertising, no incredible executive team, no NPS, no strategy. How do the successful startups rise above all that? Do they solve all those problems at once, or at least quickly?

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Capturing Luck with “or” instead of “and”

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

I won a fake stock market competition in elementary school. I put all my money in a few penny stocks — where prices are less than a dollar, and because of their small denomination, their value (as a percentage) fluctuates wildly. Some days I had the worst portfolio, other days I had the best. The competition happened to end on an up-day. This was an example of “high risk, high reward.

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Kung Fu

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Startup strategy is like Kung Fu. There are many styles that work. But in a bar fight, you’re going to get punched in the face regardless. I can only teach you my style. Others can only teach you theirs. This is my style. “MVPs” are too M to be V. They’re a selfish ploy, tricking people who thought they were customers into being alpha testers.

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When “fits and starts” is the most efficient path

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

You roll down the windows and wear a helmet when you take your car to the track. This does not make me less terrified of a fiery death. The American Autocross champion was sitting in my passenger seat screaming at me to not let my foot off the pedal until I bounced off the RPM limiter. She was properly intense. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it’s fun to power through curves in a high-speed tenuously-controlled skid in my Mini Cooper S (plus Cooperworks).

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A Scorecard: Should a decision be fast, or slow?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

We all know that startups should make decisions quickly. Fast decisions leads to rapid action, which accelerates the loop of production and feedback, which is how you outpace and out-learn a competitor, even one that already has a lead. But some decisions should not be made in haste, like a key executive hire , or how to price , or whether to raise money, or whether to invest millions of dollars in a new product line.

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How repositioning a product allows you to 8x its price

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Pricing is often more about positioning and perceived value than it is about cost-analysis and unconvincing ROI calculators. As a result, repositioning can allow you to charge many times more than you think. Here’s how. You’ve created a marketing tool called DoubleDown that doubles the cost-efficiency of AdWords campaigns. You heard that right folks — as a marketer, you can generate the same impact, the same number of conversions, the same quality of sales leads, but with half

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