A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 11, 2010

Ask a technical founder about his startup, and he'll proudly describe his stunning software — simple, compelling, useful, fun. Great," I always exclaim, sharing the thrill of modern software development, "so how will people find out about this brilliant website?". Maybe you'll even get a wobbly demo. Frightening honesty.

Software Review 261

Software Review Technical Review Viral Software Developers 261

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 12, 2010

That's what you sound like when you claim that getting a software patent will protect you from competition. Software patents are especially useless for small, bootstrapped startups. If you've lived in the software world for a few years you know the stuff they teach you in school is irrelevant, so who cares what degree you have?

Intellectual Property 319

Intellectual Property Bootstrapping Software Review Open Source 319

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 21, 2009

In the last post I beat you to death about ditching your business plan but failed to provide an alternative. For those hundreds of people who downloaded your software and never bought — is the reason "not enough features?".

Startup 315

Startup Revenue Cofounder Sales 315

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 21, 2017

The reason they want to trade balance-sheet assets for strategy-execution, is that (healthy, growing) software companies are valued on their P&L, i.e. the size and growth of income and earnings. They’re not valued based on how much money they have in the bank nor on how much debt they carry.

Balance Sheet 242

Balance Sheet Vertical Acquisition Revenue 242

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

The other thing to say about that is, and Jason may disagree and Pat may disagree, but I don’t think software today has to be morally neutral. I actually sold lots of software to Intuit at Smart Bear. They have 27 business units. Boy, I’m pretty happy with this new software stuff we’re using here.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 22, 2012

That’s often the argument for going after those mid-sized businesses — look how many there are! But the average employee count of the mid-sized is 119 and of the large is 3,100, so if your goal is to sell a copy of your software to everyone inside a company, you have to sell 30 mid-sized for every large.

Marketing 235

Marketing RSS Employee Software 235