A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 21, 2009

For example, I'm an engineer, so my first answer to "Why don't you have more customers?" This gets you to crystallize what cost-centric activities would most help your business. Before you argue that the cost is too great, factor in the lost revenue due to you working on those tasks. Cartoon by Andertoons. It's accurate.

Startup 315

Startup Revenue Cofounder Sales 315

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

When you add up all our costs in Sales and Marketing (SaaS metric: CAC), the result is very small compared to the total revenue we’ll earn from than customer over the next few years (SaaS metric: LTV). I like this model, and we’ve used it to-date at WP Engine. If yes, we’ll make that money back.

Metrics 238

Metrics Revenue Flash Later Stage 238

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 11, 2017

It’s wise because costs are low (every vendor is thrilled to have new business) and if you can get people to buy when money is tight, you’ve really proved you have a desirable product. I started WP Engine in a boom (2010) and it went great. I’ve been explaining for eight years why recessions are a great time to start a company.

Bootstrapping 156

Bootstrapping Engineer Sales Cost 156

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 28, 2014

As the founder of WP Engine, I receive weekly emails from startups proposing a “win-win” deal. Large company should send a few emails to the customer base, generating easy sales at no cost, and the revenues are split. Let’s also assume that WP Engine will receive $50 per sale, which is higher than the typical offer.

Startup 293

Startup Hosting Distribution Revenue 293

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 4, 2016

past product/market fit and into tens of millions in revenue), you realize that cancellation scales with total customers whereas growth scales with sales and marketing costs, which means cancellation necessarily and always outgrows inbound activity, thus growth ceases. Once you’re scaling (i.e.

Metrics 270

Metrics Retention Revenue Equity 270

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 20, 2013

percent of MRR left over after paying for the cost of servicing the customer, such as servers, bandwidth, and tech support), and N is “expected months,” i.e. how many months you expect this customer to stick around: The trick is computing N ; the other numbers are straightforward. Which then leads to unprofitable growth.

Retention 262

Retention Metrics Revenue Bandwidth 262

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

You should not be focussed on automation, nor on cost-cutting. Cutting costs at this stage cannot lead to a significant change in the business. ” Rand over at SEOMoz just wrote up what he thought about how we did this at WP Engine. To see this, consider what would happen if you really were able to save $1000/mo.

Affiliate 261

Affiliate Revenue Bootstrapping Campaign 261

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 19, 2011

” This is how one of our competitors attempts to differentiate and compete with us at WP Engine. Google wasn’t the first search engine, the iPod wasn’t the first mp3 player, and DropBox wasn’t the first shared filesystem. Is it effective? Most startups insist they’re “first” at something.

HTML 243

HTML Hosting Engineer Leadership 243

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 5, 2011

Take NetFlix: The costs of inventory logistics, millions of non-technical customers, the Postal Service, and loss from wear and delivery will make profit impossible with a reasonable retail price. (Powered by LaunchBit ). I can rip any business idea to shreds. People will copy movies, pissing off suppliers. I still hate being wrong.

Lean 281

Lean Analytics Metrics Engineer 281

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 15, 2013

the most online-visible person at WP Engine. But wait, doesn’t that mean a pay raise to cover cost-of-living? I suppose I could “justify” the cost of living salary increase using these incidents as “business cases,” but why should I rationalize? I’ll buy dinner after?

San Francisco 247

San Francisco Austin PHP Social Media 247

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 8, 2012

While I was bootstrapping WP Engine I constantly heard that we’re hamstrung by not taking an investment; after raising a Series A a different set of people expressed their disappointment that I had “sold out.” Every day you delay the decision is costing you. ” Who’s right?

Bootstrapping 231

Bootstrapping Hiring Engineer Web 231

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 28, 2014

Something interesting happens when you run more than 1,000 servers, as we do at WP Engine. Some of those will notice the problem and create extra customer support load at minimum, but at worst they’ll post on Twitter about how their website was slow today and WP Engine didn’t even know it. No, just the opposite.

Technical Review 275

Technical Review Social Media Engineer Cost 275

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 23, 2012

In other words, they’re back to seeking product/market fit, and only an immense market (and excellent fit) will counterbalance their crushing costs and pay back past investments. GroupOn’s engine that turned capital into revenue growth was a form of force-feeding rather than building a product).

IPO 240

IPO Flash Bootstrapping Private Equity 240

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 7, 2017

Examples: large bidders tripled the cost per click, Google’s SEO algorithm changed, the event organizers changed the rules or stopped doing the event, the link-sharing site became irrelevant, the hot blog lost its traffic, the magazine running the ads finally failed. Again this is what advanced data centers do. Talk about brittle!

Software Review 294

Software Review Channel Revenue Non-Compete 294

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 31, 2012

I still find myself sometimes running WP Engine like the bootstrapped startup that it was for the first 18 months of its life, instead of the funded growth machine that it’s evolved into. For example, last week I spent about 10 hours saving about $1000/mo in hosting costs.

Bootstrapping 230

Bootstrapping Java Revenue Hosting 230

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 4, 2017

Sure, when WP Engine launches a new product, the marketing department needs predictability for the launch date, but that’s because it’s a highly-skilled, well-funded group, which explodes with press, events, campaigns, social media, and newsletters, grabbing more attention in a single week than a smaller company might garner in a year.

Government 223

Government Startup Cofounder Technical Support 223

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 19, 2012

” It’s just made-up leftovers because you’re not acknowledge the actual costs of a startup, which include time and you having to work a second job. That’s exactly what my company WP Engine looked like for the first 9 months. In that case what have you proved?

Salary 246

Salary Bootstrapping Web Distribution 246

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 17, 2011

I put in these particular elements because I did a study of the reasons people cancel at WP Engine , and these are the main reasons for cancellation. For a quality-service company like WP Engine a high cancellation rate is a sign of terminal cancer even if acquisition rates are also increasing, so this metric isn’t useful to us.

Business Model 245

Business Model Metrics Engineer Technical Review 245

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 8, 2012

It cost you less than a week because you’ve got your template and you’re fast and smart, and you’re done. They had, maybe, a bad experience or it cost a lot of money, and the whole idea is to pay between $25 and $50 a month to get a higher quality website than what they have right now. Jared: Sure. Jason: In revenue.

API 220

API Software Review Hosting Technical Review 220

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 24, 2012

It’s quite simple, which is when you had systems where you had limitations on distribution or transportation of products, it enabled you to operate with a certain cost structure. That cost structure for traditional industry, for historic reason, remains high. ” Dan: Thank you for that. We have actually started coding.

Silicon Valley 204

Silicon Valley Software Review Internet Technical Review 204

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 20, 2010

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. There's the magic moment! Inspiration sparked by need. A real solution to a real problem shared by thousands, if not millions.

Startup 239

Startup Campaign Turkey Customer Development 239

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 1, 2010

You: When you factor in the cost of the tool, also factor in the cost of failing to be successful with the tool. Customer: You say you have great support, but BigCorp is the one with 100 developers and support engineers willing to help me. You: "Willing" to help you perhaps, but able? Customer: But they have 24/7 support.

Open Source 239

Open Source Dilution Software Developers Software Development 239

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Is that true or is there some engine there I’m not familiar with? So if I were you I would say, ‘That is not a viable engine.’ Obviously anybody that’s popular, that’s some of it, but, you know, it’s not a fundamental part of your business engine. So you’re going to need another engine.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

In other words, if I’m thinking about this just from a WP Engine perspective for a second as a potential customer, when you come up to me and say, “Meetings are awful because half of them don’t even have an agenda, and the ones that do, you don’t stick to it and they go long. Jason: Yeah. I already write agendas.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 28, 2011

I know a lot of people like me who are technical or engineers and then the business starts growing and of course writing code or doing that sort of thing is one of the first things that you have to give up because there’s everything else and you’re the person who has to do that. .’ What’s the cost of that?

Cofounder 223

Cofounder New York Conversion Entrepreneur 223

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 31, 2011

Even if I restricted myself to things like “code review tool,” the cost is two orders of magnitude more per click, and there’s tough, entrenched competition. And what’s the point anyway? I spent only hundreds of dollars a month and covered the entire spectrum of SEM.

Customer 279

Customer Software Review SEM Technical Review 279

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 29, 2010

For example, here are the origins of search engine traffic to my blog: There are several "other" search engines (e.g. Whether it's a cover article in Cosmo or a web analytics report, people love to read "Top 10" lists. Top lists can be useful. Ask and AOL), but the traffic doesn't amount to a hill of beans (as we say in Texas).

Metrics 257

Metrics Analytics Conversion Ratio Texas 257

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 14, 2013

Two are producing five signups a month, and it’s only cost you $1000 so far, so it’s not all bad, but it’s not moving the needle. And my own company WP Engine wasn’t dissimilar two years ago. You might even experience some cost savings (per signup) as part of your optimization — bonus! So now what?

Affiliate 282

Affiliate Marketing Campaign Channel 282

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 2, 2013

Another thing they have in common: I find most high-tech startup founders are software engineers enamored with the idea of waking late, sidling up to a coffeeshop table, pecking away at an IDE, getting into the zone for hours at a stretch, and doing what they love – coding something of their own invention. One final word of caution.

Cofounder 312

Cofounder Startup Founder Engineer 312

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 22, 2012

Maybe your competitors have figured out that it’s not cost-effective to sell to the middle. WP Engine is a perfect example of this. ” But there isn’t necessarily an opportunity. There are some drawbacks here to be sure.

Marketing 235

Marketing RSS Employee Software 235

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 6, 2013

The cost to earn a dollar of MRR What does it cost a SaaS company to add $1 of new monthly recurring revenue? Using the typical acronyms: CAC ( C ost to A cquire a C ustomer) is the total, all-in cost to get a full customer in the door. And each dollar of MRR costs you p dollars to acquire.

Metrics 270

Metrics Business Model .Net Revenue 270