A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 22, 2017

Product teams have been repeating the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) mantra for a decade now, without re-evaluating whether it’s the right way to maximize learning while pleasing the customer. It’s selfish and it hurts customers. The problem is that customers hate MVPs. Customers want great products they can use now.

Customer 336

Customer Video Engineer Social Network 336

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 29, 2014

If you’ve gotten 100 customers you can probably get another 100 in a similar way. One way to understand why 2x is plausible but 20x requires innovation, is to observe that the actions that got you your first 10 customers are probably not sufficient for generating 100, even though they’re probably sufficient for getting another 10.

Software Review 300

Software Review Technical Review Startup Channel 300

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 31, 2011

I was totally product focused for the last year and now it’s live, so I need to start thinking about finding some customers. ” So instead finding out who and where those potential customers are , which is hard, he just made a product, which is easy (for him). So I think the ideal customer is: SaaS, ISV, Web Products.

Customer 279

Customer Software Review SEM Technical Review 279

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 26, 2019

They’re a selfish ploy, tricking people who thought they were customers into being alpha testers. Founders explain failures with things like “our two main competitors did [thing] to us” or “customers didn’t understand [our point of view].” Sometimes that’s product design so thrilling that every customer spreads the word to five more.

Restful 202

Restful Founder Revenue Acquisition 202

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 4, 2019

No brand, no features, no customers, no money, no distribution, no search engine rankings, no efficient advertising, no incredible executive team, no NPS, no strategy. The thing where, if you’re extraordinarily good at it, customers will overlook everything else. How do the successful startups rise above all that?

Software Review 133

Software Review Technical Review API Algorithm 133

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

It’s often said that you shouldn’t talk about price during customer development interviews. This is often B2C because the value is in quantity of customers, and there’s 100x more consumers than businesses. $1/mo simple enough to be self-service). Even bootstrapped businesses can make this work (e.g.

Bootstrapping 294

Bootstrapping Technical Review B2C Sales Cycle 294

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 12, 2014

Is a company of 2 people and 150 customers the “same company” as with 150 people and 25,000 customers? For example, if in some choice we must either lose money or do what’s right for the customer, we will do what’s right for the customer. What about a startup? So, what doesn’t change?

Laos 279

Laos Technical Review Startup Engineer 279

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 10, 2012

” And customers demanded it — some even required that we produce an ROI spreadsheet. But this argument never worked, not once , even though the reasoning is sound and customers requested it. And we did. The argument makes sense (though it’s wrong). After that it’s gravy… all the way to the bank.

Software Review 256

Software Review Product Software Developers Software Development 256

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 4, 2018

That revenue is in on 75,000 customers, earned through the hard work of 500 employees across six offices on three continents. Every day, 5% of the entire online world visits a customer running on the WP Engine Digital Experience Platform. I’ve always said nothing beats the high of getting that first customer to sign up.

Engineer 152

Engineer Revenue San Francisco Security 152

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 10, 2011

She has the talent but didn’t know where to find customers who would buy such a thing, especially since the cards are expensive. That’s easy to answer if you’ve decided to nail this “ perfect customer.&# for $99 and send to your best customers just to thank them and see what happens.

Software Review 232

Software Review Technical Review .Net Design 232

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

Those ads must be perfectly tuned and targeted text missiles that leave potential customers with a thunderstruck need to open their wallets. You can add surveys, but online text ads are just not a high-fidelity connection with a customer. No new customers and no understanding of what went wrong after they hit my page.

Campaign 272

Campaign Software Review Brazil Conversion 272

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 29, 2011

I know our industry , I know how our customers think, and in our industry …&#. So, next week you’re going to a convention where you’ll talk to dozens of new potential customers. What followed was well-reasoned and sensible. “Great! Do me a favor — humor me! This is wrong for a number of reasons.

Lean 269

Lean Software Software Developers Software Development 269

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 5, 2013

You love converting marketing requirements into 960-wide artwork, replete with whitespace, custom fonts. Customers don’t open their wallets based on your unit test coverage or whether you used Bodoni instead of Times New Roman on the home page. Have you talked to 50 potential customers? Here are two: 1.

Fractional CTO 310

Fractional CTO Coder CTO Hire Design 310

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 23, 2010

This isn't just a problem when pitching — it's a problem with you defining who your customers are, what they want, and your role in the marketplace. Our target customer has traditionally solved this pain themselves or just lived with the pain rather than paying for relief. There is no competition. Example: Netflix). The rubric.

Software Review 275

Software Review Technical Review Software Advertising 275

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 21, 2009

Okay okay, "Planning == Bad," but the supposed benefits of planning are still important: designing for profitability, understanding your customers and competitors, focusing your attention, deciding what's worth doing next, changing directions, and ensuring the founders agree on important issues. But is that really the case?

Startup 315

Startup Revenue Cofounder Sales 315

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 24, 2010

Instead of making a few dollars per sale and hoping for thousands of sales, you sell to only a few customers, and charge much higher rates. Most corporate customers don't read them either, but some have legal departments that must approve any agreement that the company makes, no matter how small. But the rates are high for a reason.

Software Review 233

Software Review Technical Review Sales Software 233

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 3, 2010

Putting customers first. Legendary customer support. When a company claims to "put customers first" but then uses "Level 1 support" as a shield to prevent customers from intruding on profits, we realize talk is cheap. Instead of "disruptive" say "72% of our customers say they'll never go back to a normal email client.".

Software Review 279

Software Review Technical Review Security Advertising 279

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 13, 2011

Not only were the pages just ugly, they were peppered with database errors and CSS blowups: Just look at us now , sporting a grayscale 1950′s automotive motif playing off the “engine&# concept using the latest in CSS3/HTML5 trickery: It was such a contrast, customers emailed us saying “Thank God you fixed that horrible website.

Design 253

Design Lean Database Cofounder 253

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 24, 2011

What if you decided to provide something tremendously fantastic for your customers, even though it meant great expense and hardship? 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?

Intellectual Property 242

Intellectual Property Open Source Bandwidth IP 242

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 11, 2010

We're going to use an affiliate program so our customers sell it for us.". But if it's not viral you still need a killer method of finding customers, and if it is supposed to be viral it better be encoded in the DNA of the application, not bolted on as an afterthought. some would be ready to become paying customers.

Software Review 261

Software Review Technical Review Viral Software Developers 261

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 13, 2015

Identify what role is missing from the company today, which also is the most vital for (your definition of) success over the next 12 months. (“Success” could mean revenue growth, great customer service, removing a large risk, or a dozen other things.). Hire the best person for that role. How to determine (1)?

Part-Time VPE 120

Part-Time VPE Hiring Retention Revenue 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 31, 2010

We scoff at their inability to innovate and for prioritizing shareholders over customers, but still we quiver in fear. Sure it's constructive to "set your sights" on a competitor, actively trying to beat them in the marketplace or even steal their customers (e.g. Every founder frets about competition from a big company, me included.

Software Review 243

Software Review Development Team Review Technical Review Software Developers 243

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 15, 2012

Listen to this episode with Nick from PinfoB.com to learn how to tell customers no. And so, the benefit to the customer is that they get a little bit of money. Nick: The question was: How do you know when to tell customers no. Jason: The first rule is that customers do not know how to tell you what features they need.

Naming 199

Naming Advertising Audio Software Developers 199

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 12, 2010

Trouble is, customers don't want more features, they want the right features. As the competition also adds features, they reach a critical mass where they have all the features 80% of your customers want, and then just having "more" is no longer an interesting selling point. We're patenting our features. So where does that leave us?

Intellectual Property 319

Intellectual Property Bootstrapping Software Review Open Source 319

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 12, 2011

If she left because she couldn’t stand the crushing bureaucracy, the tolerance of incompetence, and the lack of any visibility into what customers actually wanted, then she sounds like a person ready for a startup. In a small startup there’s no layer separating employees from customers. Or therapy.

Hiring 282

Hiring Employee Ruby Java 282

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 18, 2010

I would instruct customers on "best practices" for code review, but who am I to tell other people how to critique code? The tool really did save time and headache; customers said so. I doubt the quality of my software, so I fix bugs as fast as possible, I write unit tests proactively, and I thank my customers for their patience.

Software Review 335

Software Review Reputation Software Sales 335

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

Their customer service consistently earns NPS between 75 and 80 — some of the highest scores in the world — so their financial health is matched by customers who truly want the product. Large: USAA with $24 billion in annual revenue and $3 billion in profits is the 49th most valuable company on Earth.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Viral Metrics Salary 120

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

JULY 23, 2013

The mindset works like this: It costs a lot of money to land an enterprise customer. And: how many times do you run through that process and still lose the customer? So these costs are amortized over the customers you do land. time to earn back the revenue to cover all your customer acquisition expenses) 75% annual retention.

Business Model 335

Business Model .Net Revenue IPO 335

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 28, 2014

Distribution is the hardest thing for a young startup, defined as “getting in front of potential customers.” ” Large companies, on the other hand, have solved the distribution problem (proof: 100,000 paying customers). Big companies are surely scrounging around for new excuses to up-sell their customer base.

Startup 293

Startup Hosting Distribution Revenue 293

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 31, 2017

Your customers don’t want to figure out some newfangled thing just to navigate a dialog box. In fact, your customers don’t want to think about you at all. The trouble comes when we change for the sake of ourselves instead of our customers. The question to ask is: What will maximize your customers’ utility and joy?

Design 191

Design Customer Product Video 191

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 11, 2014

But it’s surprising to me how many companies with recurring/subscription revenue don’t understand the interactions between the elements that make up customer acquisition cost (CAC), churn and lifetime value (LTV). Your company spends money on sales and marketing to acquire new customers (aka – new logos).

Churn Rate 288

Churn Rate .Net Metrics Hosting 288

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 29, 2013

Even after the first hundred customers, half of those were serendipitous one-offs, not representative of repeatable, controllable customer acquisition, and the scale of the data isn’t statistically significant. The answer for a funded startup is “Bid as much as possible, to get as many customers — and data!

Bootstrapping 285

Bootstrapping Affiliate Cofounder Channel 285

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 5, 2010

When we demand overwhelming customer outcry before committing to the slightest product change, we're in danger of losing the value of creating a cool feature that takes too much effort but people just love. Customers generally prefer the right features over more features.

Software Review 226

Software Review Metrics Lean Algorithm 226

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 20, 2013

You can’t read an article about SaaS metrics without running into LTV — The L ife t ime V alue of a customer. Meaning, the gross revenue you expect to get from a customer over its entire lifetime. Consider a cohort of customers signing up in January. The derivation of the N = 1/ c formula seems logical.

Retention 262

Retention Metrics Revenue Bandwidth 262

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 19, 2018

For example, a new incremental product will launch to your existing customer base, with immediate impact in the millions of dollars — something a small company will take years to accumulate. Companies in the scaling phase feel like this too. In most ways you are moving faster than ever, particularly when you’re moving in a straight line.

Architecture 236

Architecture Government Finance Security 236

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 21, 2013

If you are trying to maximize revenue from a small audience, you need to get the most possible out of each customer, even if that means losing sales. Fewer customers can often be a good thing, especially when it comes to fewer support requests. Also, a higher price tends to attract a higher quality customer.

Sales 335

Sales Revenue Design Web 335