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? How to “size a market&# when there’s no good data, and some common pitfalls when you try. We transform a company’s trajectory by rephrasing a long, confusing diatribe into a three-word pitch.

Cofounder 226

Cofounder Angel Investor Hosting Software Review 226

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 17, 2011

It’s harder to train people and keep your culture going, and those founders who were brilliant at seeking market-fit and constructing the foundation of a startup might be ill-suited for scaling that organization. spend on marketing, but that subject is covered well elsewhere so I’ll skip this and get back to geeking out over math.

Business Model 245

Business Model Metrics Engineer Technical Review 245

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 4, 2016

The single most important SaaS metric is retention , because cancellations indicate lack of product/market fit, no matter the cause (price, features, severity of need, duration of need). If it cannot be fixed, it means the business is a failure even if other metrics are stellar. Once you’re scaling (i.e. Once you’re scaling (i.e.

Metrics 270

Metrics Retention Revenue Equity 270

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 11, 2014

Your company spends money on sales and marketing to acquire new customers (aka – new logos). CAC – Generally defined as sales and marketing costs divided by the number of new customers acquired over the same period of time (sales + marketing / new customers). Now let’s cover those nuances I mentioned.

Churn Rate 288

Churn Rate .Net Metrics Hosting 288

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. SaaS returns in a market are a power law; winner can take 10x the profits of the next. Examples: eBay ≥ 10 x Etsy; Google ≥ 10 x Bing; Facebook ≥ 10 x Twitter; Salesforce ≥ 10 x [rest of market].

Restful 120

Restful Portfolio Channel Business Model 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 20, 2016

In fact, they’re often replicated more quickly and cheaply than their original inventors, as proved by observing that “first to market” often doesn’t equate to “winning the market.” ” Thus, building in public forces you to create permanent competitive advantages. .

Open Source 120

Open Source API Framework Salary 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 28, 2014

A typical email will be from a WordPress plug-in or theme author, who has a product for $20, $50, or even $200, that they would like to market to our customers. 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?

Startup 293

Startup Hosting Distribution Revenue 293

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 3, 2011

I was listening to Noah Kagan (founder of AppSumo and the marketing mind behind Mint , and the author of this great guest post ) talk to the current crop of Capital Factory companies, when he said something so simple, so obviously correct, and yet it completely changed how I thought about my approach to WP Engine.

Metrics 273

Metrics Startup Revenue Engineer 273

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 6, 2012

Other people can copy almost anything, and they have every advantage — more money, more manpower, more experience in the market, and existing customers to commiserate with. No one’s that good at timing the market. The moment you soft-launch your competitors (and soon-to-be-competitors) will see what you’re doing.

Cofounder 237

Cofounder Incubator Social Network Business Model 237

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 1, 2012

Market size Suppose the total addressable market is small. Except, of course, investors don’t like small markets! In a large market, B isn’t necessarily bad, but A shows far more potential. Perhaps most importantly, A demonstrates that there is a large market at all. So let’s play!

Customer 320

Customer Revenue Acquisition Cofounder 320

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 20, 2010

30 simultaneous marketing campaigns, particularly when offline (e.g. A year after leaving Smart Bear, having talked with dozens of startup founders about their marketing woes, I realized 100% of them needed the marketing-measurement engine I built at Smart Bear. And it worked. Here's how to do it. print ads or trade shows )?

Startup 239

Startup Campaign Turkey Customer Development 239

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 23, 2012

OneBox.com — On $60m invested, sold for $850m 18 months after launch to J2 just before market crash — score! The pattern: Build up a business, create impressive shareholder value, then it fails. Support.com — On 2.5m invested, IPO’ed in 2000 for $32/share — stock price now $2.

IPO 240

IPO Flash Bootstrapping Private Equity 240

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

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.

Retention 262

Retention Metrics Revenue Bandwidth 262

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 21, 2017

Rather, buyer behavior is rooted in their strategy — a combination of product thesis, their theory of their market’s evolution, how they need to position for customers and against competitors, their long-term brand development, geographic expansion plans, and so on. ” “How can we become #1 or #2 in a new market?”

Balance Sheet 242

Balance Sheet Vertical Acquisition Revenue 242

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.

Audio 211

Audio RSS Hosting Austin 211

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

On the other hand, it’s a whole universe and you’d need an interesting perspective on why you should go attack that market and face all that competition and noise and everything that’s in the market. So when you’re thinking about marketing positioning to me, that side of it is the interesting side of it.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 31, 2011

Here’s an email I got last week: Hello Jason, I am a big fan of your advice and wanted to see if you could offer any advice for marketing my start-up XYZ. Marketing, advertising, positioning — they’re all forms of persuasive writing, just like an op-ed in the New York Times. Any advice will help.

Customer 279

Customer Software Review SEM Technical Review 279

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 8, 2010

We do only one thing and we do it better than anyone" is a great marketing slogan. 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. So if anyone complains that there's no phone number, you can just point out that for $5/mo you can't afford a phone staff.

Startup 252

Startup Email RSS Internet 252

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.

Metrics 244

Metrics Technical Review Revenue Cost 244

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 29, 2010

Some startups die because their business model is platform-dependant. a pile of content-free marketing buzzwords. In fact, many people call us "The Heroku of WordPress," an analogy I love but most WordPress folks don't know what Heroku is, so unfortunately it's not a good home page marketing message.).

Marketing 229

Marketing Ruby SEO Widget 229

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).

Salary 234

Salary Software Developers Software Development Software 234

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

No wait, I forgot, actually the question is: What happens when employee #2 makes off with your code and roadmap and marketing data and customer list, moves to Bolivia, and starts selling your stuff world-wide at one-tenth the price? To summarize: Anything that can be copied will be copied, including features, marketing copy, and pricing.

Software Review 325

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

How to differentiate yourself in a crowded market (and when perhaps you shouldn’t try). So that means stuff like thinking about what a business model might be, it does mean customer development. It’s a different market and you need to connect with the people who already have a burning need.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 8, 2012

I think that our biggest, our easiest group of people to target or market to are people who. Jason: Well, what is it that they want to have happen with their business? Jared: The ability to market their properties better as opposed to the way. It’s the ability to say, “Here’s my business card.

API 220

API Software Review Hosting Technical Review 220

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. First, realize that advice always comes with context.

Social Media 219

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?”

Lean 284

Lean Analytics Metrics Viral 284

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 7, 2016

There’s many possible solutions, each with trade-offs on speed-to-market, risk-of-implementation, difficulty-of-implementation, and choices in target audience, price point, and go-to-market methodology. A good answer minimizes time-to-market, because true learning doesn’t happen until customers are paying for something.

San Francisco 170

San Francisco Startup Framework Azure 170

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

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. Which means it costs 20-100x as much on marketing campaigns to achieve the equivalent revenue.

Marketing 318

Marketing Viral Campaign Business Model 318

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 6, 2013

This is the second article in a series on novel ideas for SaaS metrics, which started with The unprofitable SaaS business model trap. Marketing and Sales costs, plus the fully-loaded salaries of the folks in those divisions, including commissions and everything. That’s actually pretty good if you think about it.

Metrics 270

Metrics Business Model .Net Revenue 270