A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 8, 2019

You could get your first few hundred customers through GoogleAds, or Facebook ads, or affiliate sales, or targeted outbound sales, or partnering with a high-profile reseller, or great press about your unique brand and message, or other ways. Consider marketing channels.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 22, 2013

A great writer (content marketing, social media) versus 100 average bloggers. A great customer support rep thrilling customers and causing love on Twitter versus 100 others “answering tickets” but never invoking an emotional reaction. This is approximately true everywhere.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 21, 2011

One big exception is anything that requires authority , like blogging and other social media stuff. Social media marketeers (like mouse-katteers but with larger Twitter followings) have already beat this point to death; no reason to repeat it. You can’t buy authority. Yeah, you and 60,000 other people.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 25, 2010

I figured on 10-20 new customers at minimum and dreamed of 50. And let's put this into broader context: At WPEngine we had 50 paying customers (not prospects) before my post went live. So whatever we did without the advantage of this blog was far more important, at least in the one case of getting initial customers.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 25, 2012

You don’t need the distraction of customers clamoring outside your office while you’re still refactoring your NoSQL database structures. That means you can’t talk to potential customers either, because people talk! Customers literally can’t afford not to buy it. Stay in stealth mode until the last minute.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 13, 2015

and 5%” or “cost to acquire a customer between $50 and $500″ or “average monthly revenue per customer between $20 and $200.” Their product has a few usage tiers; on average a customer spends $50/mo. So they’ll need 1666 customers to achieve their revenue target. (We

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 8, 2015

But we are judged, by our customers choosing between us and a competitor, by our employees choosing whether to entwine their careers with our fate, and by our peers, allies, and passive-aggressive antagonists on social media. We’re told not to judge, lest we be judged. We’re instructed to respect others, especially other cultures.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 16, 2014

The question isn’t “What did some other company do,” but rather, “Am I happy with this metric, and if I change it at the expense of other metrics, or of innovation, or of my lifestyle, or of my happiness, is that the right trade for me , for the company, for my customers, and for my employees?”

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 7, 2017

The company landed one big customer representing 80% of total revenue, but that customer canceled. It wasn’t a mistake to sign that customer — it funded the entire company. “One big customer” is brittle. But sometimes you experience the adverse end of that risk.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 11, 2011

You already know that nowadays you’re invisible without some sort of social media presence. Kathy over at Virtual Impax has a great way to remedy that: If you’re in business, you’re either helping customers/clients to: 1. eCommerce with WordPress sucks; I send my WPEngine customers to Shopify. solve a problem.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 28, 2010

A lovely new company/customer etiquette has emerged, and small startups are especially suited for exploiting it. This doesn't mean you get a free pass to screw your customers, then earn forgiveness from a heartfelt "open letter from the CEO." I hope you're not ignoring it. Or, if it does go down, I want someone to apologize to me.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 18, 2012

We put up with colic for 3 months and it was hell, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I can calm a disgruntled customer over ZenDesk.) .” That sounds good in the moment, but the truth is that millions of people put up with colic but aren’t particularly good at a given job. (We But there are useful skills.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 7, 2012

“Old Media” will be consumed less. People selling first edition hardcover books are met with dwindling competition and joined with grateful customers who feel abandoned by the Kindle-driven online “book” industry. ” A lot of predictions are easy. Mobile device usage will increase. Is that really better?

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 28, 2014

Not to mention 10 minor incidents with degraded performance, or a DDoS attack somewhere in the data center affecting our network traffic, or some other thing that sets pagers a-buzzing in our Tech Ops team and mobilizes our Customer Support team to notify and help customers. Now consider what happens as we try to inform 50 customers.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 3, 2011

Second, and more “metrics-y,” cancellation rate is one of the keys to computing customer LTV ( l ife t ime v alue). If we know a typical customer pays us $50/mo and stays with us for 30 months, that’s $1500 in “lifetime” revenue. Or: How many customers do we need to produce $10m in revenue?

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

Jason: Because you said premium digital media, so I didn’t get selling music out of that. So Leon and I have met numerous times, about marketing strategy and the music one is that developed after Chicago became a customer. He’s a conduit to it and first of all he’s a perfect customer for this. Dan: For money.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 17, 2010

After all: Tech support deals with insane customers. Tech support keeps angry customers at bay while having no power to effect change. For most of your customers, tech support is the only human interaction they'll have with you. Enabling your customers isn't just about your product , but rather your entire company.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 4, 2017

On the other hand, while the small company loses 9 months to the loss of a key employee, or even implodes, the big company is the steady turtle that adds thousands of customer per month like clockwork and wins the race. A new feature that helps you land just a few new customers this month is worth doing. Predictability.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 8, 2010

For example, you know that to avoid social media shitstorms you're supposed to have stupendous customer service , so you claim as much on your website. 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. You have to work in fits and spurts.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 21, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. But we managed to grow a few customers, so that’s good, in spite of the name. You are coordinating customers by email. Jason: There you go.

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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. Outside of that, who knows.

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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? Just on the basis of these advisors, Hiten will get hundreds if not thousands of customers.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. So that means stuff like thinking about what a business model might be, it does mean customer development. So I have a question for you, Jason. Patrick: Exactly.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

Gary Vaynerchuk (the founder of Wine Library TV and the so-called " Social Media Sommelier ") made a similar point in a speech at the Web 2.0 I remember him reading book after book about the Japanese culture and customs, and I remember his many trips to Japan — when my mother, brother and I wouldn't see him for weeks at a time.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 5, 2010

Zero media appearances in traditional media. Or really any connections for media. I’ve been blessed to have snuck into the media over 100 times including ABC, CNN, CBC, The Wall Street Journal, Bnet and more. Here are some of the lessons learned: #1: It Starts With Being A Media Source & Creating Interesting Content.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 7, 2016

A good answer minimizes time-to-market, because true learning doesn’t happen until customers are paying for something. Social Media makes group-games viral. Why is yours the right one? This means creating the simplest possible solution that’s still compelling (which doesn’t mean a too-minimal shitty MVP).

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 28, 2011

So, what I mean is, especially at the beginning, you want so bad to get that big sale, or get that big customer name on the website, or add some feature, because you only have three customers, and they’re asking for something. The customer asks and they say yes. ’ But still, it sounds like, ‘Oh, great.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 28, 2011

Instead of: “Evangelists enjoy pointing out how customers use Twitter.&#. This is the principle behind my satirical post on the “rules&# of social media. (In eCommerce with WordPress sucks; I send my WPEngine customers to Shopify. Blow something out of proportion. Transfer the concept to another context.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 29, 2010

All technology depends on "platforms" — operating systems, browsers, libraries, even pre-existing customer prejudices. Unlike Twitter, where social media marketing consultants don't care which Twitter clients are most popular. Of course you can't conclude that using another platform is automatically imprudent.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 2, 2013

Yes, except if you don’t listen to what customers are telling you to do, you’ll build a product no one wants to use. I’m responsible to our 10,000+ customers to fulfill the promises we make around service and product. Never mind managing consultants or employees! ” Does it mean no one can tell you what to do?

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 25, 2010

Ask potential customers 3 specific things (market research). With customization (i.e. I know, you thought "print media" was dead. Existing Customers. Potential customers currently trialing your stuff. Examples: Make a sale on the tradeshow floor. Get at least 20 genuine prospects. Talk with 10 industry leaders.

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