A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

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Kung Fu

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Sometimes that’s product design so thrilling that every customer spreads the word to five more. Instead, watch payback period for acquisition efficiency, watch retention for product/market fit, watch expansion revenue for long-term growth, and watch gross margin for long-term profitability. Sometimes that’s airtight product/market it.

Restful 202
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If you build it, they won't come, unless.

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Does Apple win the hearts (yes, hearts ) of millions because of their obsession with design or because of their development APIs? Does 37signals have over three million users because their software is "better" than the competition, or is it because they motivate designers and entrepreneurs through their writing and philosophy?

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Imbalanced People

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

You can’t put 100 average designers on a committee and get a fabulous design, right? A great developer, or a great designer, is better than 10x an average one — they’re better than an infinite number. There’s a saying that a great developer is 10x more productive than a mediocre one.

Engineer 257
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Which is better: Many customers at low price-point or few at high price?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Many more die that way than die because the product sucks or doesn’t have enough features or because they don’t have a staff designer. For example, the average cost of customer acquisition diminishes. You spend less on marketing/advertising/acquisition. Less time training customers.

Customer 320
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Deep dive: Cancellation rate in SaaS business models

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

We’ve also rolled out new initiatives designed to reduce this rate, and for the most part we’ve been successful. For a company laser-focussed on accelerating the number of active users, it might be actually worth having high cancellation rates if it meant an even higher acquisition rate.

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Smart Bear Live 8: Edwin from MeetingKing.com

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

” So I’m looking at it, and the first thing I think is the design is simple. Edwin: Would I be able to attract other people if the design would be different? Jason: Some people think the design matters a lot more than that. I think this looks like no designer made this, right? And that’s probably good.

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Startup Weekend pep talk: It ain’t the code

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Everyone here is a builder, a creator — whether a back-end programmer, a Linux hacker, a front-end producer, or a designer. In fact, I was on the judging panel last time, and the tech and design had nothing to do with our decisions. You’ll also do coding and design and that’s fine of course. You make stuff.

Startup 284