A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 15, 2013

I know, time waits for no one, survival of the fittest, broken business models, you can’t live off useless classifieds, etc etc. They live for that perfect turn of phrase, like that elegant single line of code in which a lesser programmer would take three (and wouldn’t handle the error case properly).

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Salary Software Developers Software Development Software 234

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

Presumably, some will and some won’t ever figure out a business model, but the point is that their position as “winners of the market” is due to being an excellent virus in a Darwinian sense, not due to possessing an excellent business model.

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Technical Review Viral Metrics Salary 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 8, 2011

When should a company should focus on growth only, ignoring the business model and revenue? We transform a company’s trajectory by rephrasing a long, confusing diatribe into a three-word pitch. How to “size a market&# when there’s no good data, and some common pitfalls when you try.

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Cofounder Angel Investor Hosting Software Review 226

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 21, 2017

So the shift to mobile meant Facebook’s business model was breaking. Facebook mobile usage was already clearly eclipsing desktop, and the dominance of mobile in developing countries makes this trend permanent. Yet mobile advertising revenues were paltry. This had to be remedied.

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Balance Sheet Vertical Acquisition Revenue 242

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 24, 2011

Customers gleefully avoid the Blockbuster none-of-these-look-good-just-pick-one-already-zombie-walk — and NetFlix just put Blockbuster out of business — but is this a workable business model? Turning a profit at a growing company is nearly impossible regardless of business model.

Intellectual Property 242

Intellectual Property Open Source Bandwidth IP 242

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 7, 2013

This is the fifth article in a series on novel ideas for SaaS metrics, which started with The unprofitable SaaS business model trap , COC: a new metric for cancellations , The mistake of 1/c in LTV , and SSEBITDA: Steady-state profit metric. Metrics summarize tons of processes, causes, and effects into a single number.

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Metrics Technical Review Revenue Cost 244

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 16, 2013

Seems like every third startup nowadays is using the “Freemium” business model: The lowest service tier is free, and the business is designed to get those users hooked and then upgrade to a paid plan. That’s something few other business models can boast. Stats for selling.

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Marketing Viral Campaign Business Model 318

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 31, 2011

No, but you have other unfair advantages — you have insight into some market, you have an unlikely team that can both build and sell, you have a rolodex, you have a business model others can’t duplicate, or something else.

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Customer Software Review SEM Technical Review 279

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 4, 2016

Only by combining these metrics can you get a clear and true picture of the health of the business model. For example, you can increase price which increases MRR but also increases cancellations as people can’t afford it.

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Metrics Retention Revenue Equity 270

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 14, 2016

Here’s a slew of examples to guide you: Business models change based on pricing in roughly 10x increments. .” But I think it’s actually true, or true enough that it’s an excellent rule of thumb that should be assumed until proven false. Great people are more than 10x better than average.

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Restful Portfolio Channel Business Model 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 17, 2017

The analog in startups is: What is right for this company, in this market, with these competitors, with these customers, at this price-point , with this business model , with this team, with their goals. In diets, half the answer is physiological — how your body reacts.

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Social Media Media Lean Design 219

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 9, 2013

You change one thing about your business –maybe it’s the business model, or pricing, or target market– and see what happens. Evaluating Your Business Model I like to use a Lean Canvas as a forcing factor to ask myself, “Do I really know what the hell I’m doing?”

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Lean Analytics Metrics Viral 284

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 11, 2014

Additional Reading Joel York’s “ SaaS Metrics Guide ” and corresponding SaaS Metrics Rules of Thumb Jason Cohen’s “ Why I Don’t Like the LTV Metric “ Jason Cohen’s “ The Unprofitable SaaS Business Model Trap “ Jason Cohen’s “ COC: A New Metric for Thinking about Cancellations in (..)

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Churn Rate .Net Metrics Hosting 288

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 28, 2014

A much better approach for business development is as follows: How can the smaller company make money for the larger company in the manner that the larger company already makes money? Said another way, how can you grow the larger company in a way that matches their existing business model?

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Startup Hosting Distribution Revenue 293

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

Edwin: Oh sorry, so the business model. Edwin: The business model is that the organizer has to pay. Edwin: What do you think about my business model where the organizer needs to have a paid account and participants, they can provide comments and they can contribute to the agenda. Your RPU is too low.

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Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

Why even if someone gave you money for your platform, you still might not have a business model. Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it makes sense to give away a product to consumers as a sales path to a paid professional/enterprise product.

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Audio RSS Hosting Austin 211

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

Office 2010 will be the end of Zoho, if we stop innovating, stop being nimble and flexible in our business model. Zoho made exactly this argument to explain why they're not terribly worried that Microsoft is now a direct competitor: Companies don't get killed by competition, they usually find creative ways to commit suicide.

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Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 20, 2016

By building everything in public, you’re forced to do “what’s most valuable” as well as “ what isn’t easily copyable ,” whether that means the quality of your workmanship, the fortress of your business model, or a talent magnet.

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Open Source API Framework Salary 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 3, 2011

And Dharmesh is a SaaS business-model God, as evidenced by his well-reasoned Business of Software speeches and tangible success with Hubspot. It went something like this: NOAH: So if you could change just one thing at WP Engine, what would it be? ME: Well Dharmesh told me it’s our cancellation rate.

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Metrics Startup Revenue Engineer 273

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 6, 2012

I hear all the time that “existing competitors already have these business models / investors / existing customers that prevents them from pivoting or allowing innovation like I’ve done, so it would be either impossible or take them years to catch up, and by then we’re on to the next amazing thing.”

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Cofounder Incubator Social Network Business Model 237

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 20, 2013

This is the third article in a series on novel ideas for SaaS metrics, which started with The unprofitable SaaS business model trap and COC: a new metric for cancellations. You can’t read an article about SaaS metrics without running into LTV — The L ife t ime V alue of a customer.

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Retention Metrics Revenue Bandwidth 262

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 20, 2010

But without getting down to brass tacks of pricing and business model, you haven't proven anything about your business. But I've seen — and had — enough ideas to know that it's possible to have a decent idea and no business model, and that's what I had.

Startup 239

Startup Campaign Turkey Customer Development 239

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

This is the fourth article in a series on novel ideas for SaaS metrics, which started with The unprofitable SaaS business model trap , COC: a new metric for cancellations , and The mistake of 1/c in LTV. Its tough for a growing SaaS business to ascertain whether or not it’s truly profitable. Here’s a way to do it.

Metrics 238

Metrics Revenue Flash Later Stage 238

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 25, 2011

Construct a plausible business model. Not a business plan , but rather a simple spreadsheet with pricing model, how money flows in and out during normal operation, customer acquisition cost, and therefore how many customers you’ll need to break even on operating costs, and how many more to break even including human costs.

Startup 284

Startup Algorithm Design Salary 284

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 7, 2016

Bill Gross examined 200 startups of all shapes, sizes, funding, and outcomes, and discovered that “timing” was the most significant factor of success — ahead of team, business model, idea, and funding. Where → Why here? Why should you build this startup in your current location?

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San Francisco Startup Framework Azure 170

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 23, 2012

For years they demonstrated real, growing revenues (not just “active users”), a repeatable, scalable business model (not just flash-in-the-pan ideas), ownership of a large market (SMB lead-gen, social gaming), and they survived the operational challenges inherent in rapid-growth companies.

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IPO Flash Bootstrapping Private Equity 240

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

So that means stuff like thinking about what a business model might be, it does mean customer development. They have 27 business units. In fact if I were to describe Mint, you see it as the business model of make money by pushing offers for credit cards, loans, and so forth onto people. What’s the worst case?

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Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 29, 2010

Some startups die because their business model is platform-dependant. Like this: Used to be, Twitter let you post anything, even advertisements, even if you didn't identify those tweets as ads. Companies like TweetUp and Ad.ly popped up as liaisons between advertisers and popular Twitter-ers.

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Marketing Ruby SEO Widget 229

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 1, 2012

If the market is small, it’s hard to get more than a few customers, so you need a business model like B that extracts the most amount of money from the limited available pool. Pretty much everything about it is nicer!

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Customer Revenue Acquisition Cofounder 320

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 8, 2010

Remember, your immediate goal isn't to make millions of dollars, it's to build a business just solid enough to quit your day job. Or it might mean you have enough customers to have "proved" you have a viable business model, so now you can raise money with sensible terms. Don't lie at work.

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Startup Email RSS Internet 252

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 8, 2012

Let’s just for now go with this Craigslist assumption, because at least it’s a business. The other stuff you’re talking about, to me – I still don’t understand the business model and the pain point. You obviously haven’t talked to people to identify it yet. Jared: Right.

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API Software Review Hosting Technical Review 220