A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
NOVEMBER 5, 2014
Your product is designed with natural tripwires to trigger other pricing ( Freemium model ), or not (business model left as an exercise to your future self). Even bootstrapped businesses can make this work (e.g. Price is not an afterthought, it is essential business design. Think: GoDaddy). This is a hard slog.
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
JULY 12, 2010
Software patents are especially useless for small, bootstrapped startups. Innovative design and intellectual property are no longer long-term competitive advantages. Except in certain industries (e.g. food, drug, medical), I'm unaware of companies who stave off quality competitors through patent holdings. So where does that leave us?
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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
OCTOBER 11, 2010
WhenBusy is a bootstrapped startup that lets people schedule meetings with you in currently-available time-slots without you having to share your calendar [disclosure: I'm an advisor]. Does Apple win the hearts (yes, hearts ) of millions because of their obsession with design or because of their development APIs?
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
NOVEMBER 14, 2011
You need clever, carefully crafted copy and well-designed landing pages. Those higher costs make learning to write ads, manage campaigns, A/B test, and design landing pages a very expensive activity for an early stage, bootstrapping startup. It turns out that AdWords is not as simple as it sounds.
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
FEBRUARY 1, 2010
If your idea is any good, you'll have competition from multiple players, both funded and bootstrapped, both smart and stupid, both large and small. For every Jason Fried who says "simple design is better than complex features," someone else needs to point out that they've (I've!) How do you continue to justify your price point?
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
MAY 1, 2012
Why the obsession with raising money, what if you don’t want a huge company, what if you want to bootstrap, don’t you know raising money isn’t a measure of correctness or success, … I agree! Let’s focus on just one question: For which company would be easier to raise money? That’s shitty!
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
MARCH 11, 2014
” 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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