A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 5, 2010

Many competitors used a different technique I call "boogers," because to me it looks like someone shot snot rockets all over the screen, and also because it's fun to deride competitors, because it feels good to make fun of other people who (appear to) have more revenue than you do. But don't you agree they look like boogers?

Software Review 226

Software Review Metrics Lean Algorithm 226

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 29, 2011

The visual bug tracker for web developers & designers. Tame bugs like a boss! Powered by LaunchBit ). Tweet. --> At this moment I’m in the worst seat on the plane. Even the one you turn away could become a fan.

Technical Review 236

Technical Review Software Review Reputation Sales Cycle 236

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 9, 2014

Then we optimized each of them, improving each a bit more every month, and sure enough revenue doubled every year. The best chance you have for developing that resonance is when it arises naturally, not because you A/B test your Twitter persona (should I be more humorous and sarcastic or more serious and profound? Or just give up ?).

Marketing 301

Marketing Channel PR Social Media 301

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 13, 2011

I’ve chronicled the eye-melting design work that punished potential customers in the evolution of the Smart Bear website, and yet with all that cringe-worthyness, here is a company that doubled in revenue and profit like clockwork for half a decade — a stat any startup would be proud to match.

Design 253

Design Lean Database Cofounder 253

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 26, 2013

The scrounging and scrabbling and begging and fighting the a s for those morsels of revenue, those crumbs of validation. Are you OK with innovation taking a back seat to developing scalable, mature processes? The inner doubt suppressed for the morale of the team. No salaries followed by low salaries. It’s over. We did it.

Software Review 295

Software Review Startup Cofounder Search 295

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 1, 2012

Sacha demonstrated the benefits of selling many copies of an eBook at a low price, while Jarrod pointed out the advantages of higher prices, bringing in more revenue with 1/6th the number of units sold. In that case, A can’t keep growing forever, so its revenue is limited, which is a bad spot. maximizing per-unit profitability).

Customer 320

Customer Revenue Acquisition Cofounder 320

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 22, 2013

There’s a saying that a great developer is 10x more productive than a mediocre one. A great developer, or a great designer, is better than 10x an average one — they’re better than an infinite number. That’s not true. You can’t put 100 average designers on a committee and get a fabulous design, right?

Engineer 257

Engineer Social Media Acquisition Sales 257

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 21, 2017

Revenue multiples, profit multiples, premium over the previous financing — these are metrics used by sellers to help determine a minimum acceptable price. Even for startups, it takes years for a new product to become good enough to demand many millions of dollars in revenue.).

Balance Sheet 242

Balance Sheet Vertical Acquisition Revenue 242

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

So Leon and I have met numerous times, about marketing strategy and the music one is that developed after Chicago became a customer. I mean, it’s easy to talk to very little bands and just say I feel like the amount of revenue for you is very little. Interviewee: Well, I’m talking web development. Jason: Why?

Cofounder 199

Cofounder Technical Review Chicago Technical Cofounder 199

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. When a company has revenue but is susceptible to the fatal afflictions above, I call it “brittle.” Another is to prioritize accelerating sales until that customer represents a percentage of revenue that you can stomach.

Software Review 294

Software Review Channel Revenue Non-Compete 294

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 31, 2012

.” It’s the founder who says she doesn’t need to talk to customers before embarking on a $100,000 development project because “my customers are idiots.” ” It’s the developer who is sure that “Java sucks.” ” Scars are part of what make us unique. I like scars.

Bootstrapping 230

Bootstrapping Java Revenue Hosting 230

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 23, 2012

After I sold Smart Bear, that division has increased revenue and profit every year, for five years, even through the 2008/2009 economic disaster. GroupOn’s engine that turned capital into revenue growth was a form of force-feeding rather than building a product). But really, are all those acquirers so stupid? Surely not.

IPO 240

IPO Flash Bootstrapping Private Equity 240

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 29, 2013

ignoring indirect costs) or saying they’ll “fix that later” by raising prices, finding other channels of revenue. CAC = MRR x 4 If you combine the previous two results, you see that the cost to acquire a customer should be no more than four months of revenue.

Bootstrapping 285

Bootstrapping Affiliate Cofounder Channel 285

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 4, 2017

There’s also an armed globally-dispersed Sales and Support teams, so we’re selling to our 70,000 existing customers as well as thousands of new customers per month, which means we’ll end up adding more new revenue in one month than a small company will take in over a whole year. The tradeoff, however, is predictability.

Government 223

Government Startup Cofounder Technical Support 223

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.” So they’ll need 1666 customers to achieve their revenue target. (We ” Estimating with these extremely wide ranges can be surprisingly useful.

Business Model 120

Business Model Affiliate Startup Bootstrapping 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 28, 2012

We can’t afford to put in the development effort required to take ${product} where we all want (i.e. hiring a few developers). So it’s our fault, and yet I’m asking you to lock arms with me and walk through this phase of our development by accepting this modest price increase. But there it is.

Software Review 240

Software Review Technical Review Email Revenue 240

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

About twenty people on Answers OnStartups have asked this question in one form or another: When I meet an angel investor, he may ask: "What if a big company copies your idea and develops the same website as yours after your website goes public?". But how does authority convert to revenue? How can I answer this question? Common vision.

Software Review 325

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

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. We would rather chase revenue. Of course you should chase revenue. It’s supposed to make money, and of course, profitable revenue, too.

Widget 204

Widget Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 204

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 17, 2010

If this is your attitude, your conception of tech support is completely backwards and you're missing out on important channels for marketing, product development, and sales. Yes, I'm flagrantly paraphrasing the legendary Kathy Sierra , but the idea applies as much to tech support as to product development.). Is our terminology wrong??

Technical Review 245

Technical Review Sales Turkey Software Review 245

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 8, 2012

” Just adding a Google map to a website, I mean, you might as well just be a web developer and charge $100 an hour and have a WordPress template and knock us out and charge them $5,000. All you’ve proven is that you can make $200 a month in revenue off of some basic websites. Jason: In revenue. That’s good.

API 220

API Software Review Hosting Technical Review 220

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 24, 2012

I’m in development right now. If you see someone going, hey, I’ve sort of built it for, maybe you could call it profitability, but showing traction revenue, and now I’m ready to scale it big, and I don’t know if I should still charge. We’re building a product. This is actually my third company.

Silicon Valley 204

Silicon Valley Software Review Internet Technical Review 204

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 1, 2010

See, we don't line our pockets with that revenue, we spend it making you maximally effective. When you have a problem, we connect you directly with developers instead of hiding behind off-shore Level 1 support. Having nothing but the Web of Lies Internet to rely on for tech support is not free. We answer the phone on the first ring.

Open Source 239

Open Source Dilution Software Developers Software Development 239

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

We started with the product about three years ago, development, a year later we released it. They have many, many man-years of development and customer development in them. You have your general management meeting and in your general management meeting you talk about product development, about marketing and about finance.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 11, 2010

In the last interview Peldi Guilizzoni (Balsamiq Studios) gave detailed advice about how he earned almost a million dollars in revenue in his first year of operation. When it comes to software, you as the developer have got to really understand both the people who have the problem you want to address and the problem itself.

Entrepreneur 225

Entrepreneur Social Media Software Web 225

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 28, 2011

In other words, we’re always so focused on top-line revenue the BITA, that we forget like, but if you’re making a good living and you’re happy every day, isn’t that the point? Jason: Right. And it’s not fun. Typically if you love writing code, then you love writing code probably more than everything else.

Cofounder 223

Cofounder New York Conversion Entrepreneur 223

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.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 4, 2012

If you’re committed to being a stranger and not actually developing a relationship, the solution is to explain why it’s in my selfish interest to do this for another stranger. A startup with revenue, deciding between raising money or not raising money, and willing to do a Smart Bear Live podcast about it.

Internet 270

Internet Email Engineer Web 270

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 2, 2013

You’re optimizing for your own freedom, not for highest-growth or even highest-total-revenue. Rather, focus on creating something that people will pay money for, today, and much more money than it costs to acquire or serve them. One final word of caution. I executed exactly these bullet points at Smart Bear for over two years.

Cofounder 312

Cofounder Startup Founder Engineer 312

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 22, 2012

During the summer, one of the Capital Factory companies developed a plan to sell into the “mid-sized” corporate market. And since the sales effort isn’t much different between 75 seats or 750, this is a lot more work for the revenue.

Marketing 235

Marketing RSS Employee Software 235

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 25, 2016

Sure, you can’t turn a catastrophic weakness into a super-strength, but you could at least bring it to a passable neutral: The trouble with this line of thinking is that it ignores a deeper truth, which is that developing a 10x strength is far more valuable than shifting a weakness to neutral.

Differentiation 120

Differentiation Framework Restful Software Review 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 14, 2013

So a 10% improvement in bounce-rate off your pricing page means 10% more revenue across all campaigns: paid, organic, and word-of-mouth. For channels like affiliate programs where you can’t just “write a big check” and make them work, you develop an entire team to extract as much value as possible.

Affiliate 282

Affiliate Marketing Campaign Channel 282

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 16, 2013

Freemium is not customer development Just imagine how much you’ll learn once you have 1,000 real, active users of the system: Everything from behavioral statistics (which features are actually used?) to democratic product development (voting on which features customers would like to see next?).

Marketing 318

Marketing Viral Campaign Business Model 318

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 20, 2011

.&# They’ve heard rules of thumb like “A growing software company is worth 5 times their trailing 12-months revenue.&# When selling Smart Bear I had an M&A guy pull data about other companies which (a) sold development tools, (b) were sold recently, (c) were profitable, and (d) were growing. Actually, no.

Sales 260

Sales Channel Cofounder Valuation 260

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? MRR ( M onthly R ecurring R evenue) is the revenue you get every month from a customer, averaged across all customers. Thus, MRR = R / N, where R is your total revenue, and N is your total number of customers.

Metrics 270

Metrics Business Model .Net Revenue 270

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 26, 2010

We could take the ideas we developed in the bid and bring them to our clients proactively so we did not get caught in the same way again. Can a book generate substantial revenue or is it a “lost leader” in selling other products or services? When the bid came out, all of a sudden, we had a ton of things we could do for them.

Matching 215

Matching Audience Customer Distribution 215