A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 29, 2013

The trouble with “rules” in startups, besides the inherent survivor bias , is that by definition the successful ones are anomalies.

Framework 253

Framework Lean Design Revenue 253

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

They told me I couldn’t sell to The Enterprise with amateur design and a small-company, human voice. Unless you can’t bear to hire a traditional “enterprise sales guy.” They told me I couldn’t sell to The Enterprise over GoToMeeting, with a demo and no slides, from a geek with no webinar.

Founder 244

Founder Revenue Sales Naming 244

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 12, 2014

A few Mondays ago, a group of ten new hires were filtering into the office, dazed and clambering about their new environment, preparing for their first few days of orientation. It just goes to show that Seth’s amazing designs aren’t mere fancy decoration for a brand. It shows in the little things.

Engineer 229

Engineer America Hiring Design 229

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 19, 2010

It's perfect when you're wondering if you can afford $5000 in graphic design work, a new $6500 marketing campaign, or whether you can hire someone and have 3 months of runway to discover that was a massive mistake. But this method is perfect when pondering an experiment.

Revenue 232

Revenue Startup Forecast Finance 232

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 4, 2017

By which they mean: Without stupid rules that assume employees are dumb or evil, without everything taking ten times longer than it should, without wall-to-wall meetings, without resorting to hiring anything less than the top 1% of the talent pool, and so on. It’s a big reason why they move quickly. Recruiting.

Government 223

Government Startup Cofounder Technical Support 223

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 15, 2010

For example, let's say you designed a banner ad for a certain website (cost: $1000) and paid to run the ad for three months (cost: $2000). Your newest hire isn't working out. It's hard to abandon projects in which you've poured time and money, especially when you've also attached your ego and reputation.

Cost 273

Cost Reputation Agile Sales 273

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 3, 2011

There’s probably 1,000 people you could hire to do it too, because it’s mechanical. importance of design. And anyway, you can always optimize that little stuff later. You can always eke out 0.1% more conversion rate. Or even 1%. Of course you can. Non-trivial, but not difficult. And in your control. So don’t bother.

Metrics 273

Metrics Startup Revenue Engineer 273

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 15, 2014

My daily life consists of (a) setting the strategy and rationale of the Engineering & Innovation department, based on a mixture of vision, data, and the needs of the rest of the company, (b) participate in doing the same for the whole company, (c) hire, (d) manage the managers whose teams execute the real work.

CTO Hire 266

CTO Hire RSS Cofounder Algorithm 266

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 30, 2010

A virtual assistant (VA) is a remote worker hired to complete tasks you should not be doing as the founder of a startup. Not automating this process creates the ongoing repetitive work that computers are designed to handle. These hiring arrangements are described below: Task-based — ($3-10/hour overseas, $12-50/hour in the U.S.)

Software Review 284

Software Review Startup Technical Review Hosting 284

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

” So I’m looking at it, and the first thing I think is the design is simple. Edwin: Would I be able to attract other people if the design would be different? Jason: Some people think the design matters a lot more than that. I think this looks like no designer made this, right? And that’s probably good.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 3, 2012

This is a guest post by Jarrod Drysdale — a web designer and bootstrapper who recently broke five figure sales for his ebook that teaches bootstrappers do-it-yourself design principles and strategies. This just isn’t true; tech professionals are looking to learn about design, not grab the cheapest book available. Just ask mine.

Sales 261

Sales Bootstrapping Design Audience 261

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 7, 2016

This probably means capitalizing on the unique experience or abilities of the founding team, choose trade-offs in things like language/framework, algorithms, UX design , and delivery platform that the team is particularly adept in and thus can create quickly and with low risk. But why will the 50th employee join ?

San Francisco 170

San Francisco Startup Framework Azure 170

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 17, 2011

We’ve also rolled out new initiatives designed to reduce this rate, and for the most part we’ve been successful. You sign up customers faster than your ability to hire quality people, so either existing people are stretched thin or you make the more fatal error of lowering standards to fill chairs.

Business Model 245

Business Model Metrics Engineer Technical Review 245

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 8, 2012

Unless you have something tangible, that they said I will pay X dollars if you do this thing, then you’re just a web designer, which is fine, but then just do that. Like, if this does start growing, you can afford to do whatever like hire someone else to help on-board people, or spend more money on marketing, or I don’t know.

API 220

API Software Review Hosting Technical Review 220

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 6, 2011

Just ask the 10,000+ subscribers to Rob Walling’s excellent blog for the “micropreneur&# who never want to hire a single employee or go to a single meeting, much less “scale.&# ). designing an experiment. For hundreds of thousands of solo founders, “getting to scale&# isn’t even the goal.

Startup 234

Startup Cofounder Texas Austin 234

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 25, 2016

Examples: how a market will evolve, what competitors are investing in, whether new marketing campaigns will be successful, or how an important new hire will perform. Suppose we’re hiring a high-level, experienced position, like a VP of Marketing. If any are impossible for you to ameliorate, it’s a no-hire.

Differentiation 120

Differentiation Framework Restful Software Review 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 28, 2011

’ So a lot of them, there’s one woman that comes to mind, she’s actually a textile designer. Or let me hire this person or bring this employee in or this consultant or something like that.’ It’s not that interesting to me to just now pursue doing that more.’

Cofounder 223

Cofounder New York Conversion Entrepreneur 223

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 20, 2011

accounting, law, design) where the mechanisms for revenue and profit are well-known. To hire key employees. Otherwise they have a lot of planning and hiring to do before the project has a decent velocity, which could take 6-18 months. accounting, law, design) where the mechanisms for revenue and profit are well-known.

Sales 260

Sales Channel Cofounder Valuation 260