2010

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

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Yes, but who said they'd actually BUY the damn thing?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

This is Part 3 of the series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches.? Of hundreds of startup pitches at Capital Factory , almost none had unearthed 10 people willing to say, "If you build this product, I'll give you $X.". Meditate on this: Hundreds of people ready to quit their day jobs, burn up savings, risk personal reputation, toil 70 hours per week, absorb as much stress as having a baby (believe me, I've done both).

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No, that IS NOT a competitive advantage

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

This is part 1 of the series: 5 Lessons from 150 startup pitches. Listening to first-time entrepreneurs talk about their competitive advantages is as predictably invalid as the local weatherman's 10-day forecast. Between this blog and reviewing applications to Capital Factory I see hundreds of pitches a year. Every pitch has a section on competitive advantages, and quite literally 95% of the time the claimed competitive advantages are pathetic, unoriginal, and not really advantages at all.

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If you build it, they won't come, unless.

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

This is Part 5 of the 5-part series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches. Ask a technical founder about his startup, and he'll proudly describe his stunning software — simple, compelling, useful, fun. Then he'll describe his cutting-edge platform — cloud-based, scalable, distributed version control, continuous integration, one-click-deploy.

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Telling the 800-lb Gorilla to Shove it up his Ass

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Every founder frets about competition from a big company, me included. We scoff at their inability to innovate and for prioritizing shareholders over customers, but still we quiver in fear. Dozens of people on Answers.OnStartups ask about it so I know I'm not alone. It always goes like this: I'm just a two-person operation with no budget. What if a huge company with a hundred software developers and a million dollars in marketing budget decides to copy my idea?

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"Authentic" is dead

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

It's time to retire the following phrases. They should no longer be used, ever, in any context except derisive mocking: Fast and easy. Putting customers first. The Holy Grail of. The leading provider of. Legendary customer support. Also eschew these words, as devoid of meaning as a yogi's mantra and as useless as a simile that doesn't contribute new information: Authentic.

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Enough with the "expert" guilt

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

I'm sick of being admonished that success is predicated on spending the next 10,000 hours of our lives becoming "an expert.". I'm sick of hearing about how I should be molding my life in the image of Michael Phelps or Albert Einstein, because the only thing that separates me from genius is identifying my strengths and working really really hard. I'm calling bullshit.

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The right way to position against competition

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

This is Part 4 of the series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches.?? After seeing hundreds of startup pitches for this year's Capital Factory program, I can tell you that the two most common errors in positioning a company against competition are, strangely, opposites: Claiming you have no competition. Defining your company's offering and positioning by combining "the best" traits of 6 competitors.