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. Marketing and sales spend is nil, so there has to be a reason it spreads by word of mouth, ideally virally as a natural result of using the product itself. $10/mo simple enough to be self-service).

Bootstrapping 294

Bootstrapping Technical Review B2C Sales Cycle 294

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?". P.S. For more, here are detailed examples of how this mindset also sets up your sales pitch.

Software Review 325

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Code Collaborator is tool which helps software developers review each other’s work, just like an editor of a book. So the economics are obvious: If two developers would each normally spend an average of 30 minutes on a code review, once a day, that’s 20 hours of total time in a business-month.

Software Review 256

Software Review Product Software Developers Software Development 256

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 4, 2017

Marketing isn’t scheduling a launch and recruiting isn’t timing the start-dates of the next 50 hires in customer service and sales. We didn’t line up that press and have those sales materials and ensure code-quality high enough to scale on day one, without predictability. This means you can — and should!

Government 223

Government Startup Cofounder Technical Support 223

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 13, 2015

So, a technical founder decides she needs another developer, or a sales-oriented founder decides she needs another sales person. You hire a super-effective VP of Sales , would that 10x sales in the next 12 months? (If If you could add that wisdom and firepower now would that 10x your company in the next year?

Part-Time VPE 120

Part-Time VPE Hiring Retention Revenue 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 29, 2014

The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 10 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time. — Tom Cargill, Bell Labs. It’s funny because it’s true. At the high end, you hit market size limits (Facebook has 1.3B

Software Review 300

Software Review Technical Review Startup Channel 300

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 31, 2010

What if a huge company with a hundred software developers and a million dollars in marketing budget decides to copy my idea? At Smart Bear we make a peer review tool for software programmers; you don't have to be a geek to know that any software development tool company shares the following fear: "What if Microsoft copies us?"

Software Review 243

Software Review Development Team Review Technical Review Software Developers 243

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

And let’s suppose you want to allocate just a little time for career development. It gives us an advantage in consulting because it accelerates our development and enhances our sales pitch. Billable hours trump product development; it’s always second-class, so you get a second-class side-project.

America 330

America Employee Hiring HTML 330

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 14, 2012

I’m putting myself in the same boat now with the solution I’m developing so could you tell me: 1. product that barely worked, no sales organization (except tech support, which often works better anyway ), and I just hoped they’d run a credit card. make for not putting customer development before writing code.

Customer 231

Customer Software Review IP Technical Review 231

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 26, 2013

” Almost all startup founders experience a deep and prolonged sadness after selling their company , even when the sale is an outrageous success. A startup founder lacks this distinction between personal identity and work identity , and this is the key to the “sale-blues” phenomonon and other behavior.

Software Review 295

Software Review Startup Cofounder Search 295

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 11, 2010

Great," I always exclaim, sharing the thrill of modern software development, "so how will people find out about this brilliant website?". Does Apple win the hearts (yes, hearts ) of millions because of their obsession with design or because of their development APIs? Maybe you'll even get a wobbly demo. Cue sound of cicadas buzzing. (Or

Software Review 261

Software Review Technical Review Viral Software Developers 261

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

DECEMBER 21, 2009

What one thing is most responsible for preventing sales? people not knowing you exist, pricing, not enough product features, unorganized sales strategy, look-and-feel of website, haven't identified pain points,). What's one thing you could do to get more feedback from customers, potential customers, or sales you've lost?

Startup 315

Startup Revenue Cofounder Sales 315

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 12, 2010

And even you could work 70 on-task hours per week, that's still blown away by 10 developers at a funded company or even 10 passionate open source developers working part-time. , so you figure if you work a "healthy" 70 hours per week , you'll win! But working harder is not, in fact, smarter. We're cheaper. It's not bad to be cheaper.

Intellectual Property 319

Intellectual Property Bootstrapping Software Review Open Source 319

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 3, 2010

My favorite way to start a sales pitch is to make fun of typical sales pitches. Or: People claim that peer code review tools will do magic things like make your developers smarter or fix existing social problems with the team. Instead of a bullet-list of benefits, quote actual customers describing your impact on their lives.

Software Review 279

Software Review Technical Review Security Advertising 279

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 12, 2011

Hazards of hiring by Eric Sink — Great tips, including some specific to hiring developers (for more on the latter, here’s another ). Remember, tech support is sales ! Ideas: Develop your blog/Twitter so you have a steady stream of eyeballs from people who like you. Attend local meet-ups and user groups.

Hiring 282

Hiring Employee Ruby Java 282

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 26, 2019

Or you can start selling to enterprise — nothing wrong with that — but then your high cost-basis of marketing, sales, and service will not scale downward. Sales” is not a dirty word. Otherwise, this is a failure of organizational development. Selling to the mid-market is hard. If the business is young, this is inevitable.

Restful 202

Restful Founder Revenue Acquisition 202

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

Of course, I had spoken with people in developing the product. He was on full sales alert. I didn’t close 100% to sales, but those relationships have yielded a lot more than a simple close. Reach out to customers and develop personal relationships. This was a low point for me. If I could, I would dive in there.

Campaign 272

Campaign Software Review Brazil Conversion 272

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

The benefit is that we work together for a common goal, taking care of the needs of support, sales, marketing, engineering, product, and even finance, rather than solving for one department’s goals at the expense of another. Decision requires multiple teams who haven’t worked together before.

Engineer 264

Engineer Framework Social Media Acquisition 264

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 28, 2012

As one of my first customers, you weren’t just a “sale – closed – won,” you’re a critical factor in the success of this business, and therefore fulfilling my own dreams and making 70-hour work-weeks worthwhile. , and in fact that pricing was a just reward for your patronage. hiring a few developers).

Software Review 240

Software Review Technical Review Email Revenue 240

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 30, 2010

Rob Walling generously allowed me to reprint this excerpt from his new book, "Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup" available in paperback and Kindle from Amazon and in PDF and ePub from StartupBook.net. As a developer, the features we dropped seem like a necessity from day 1. So we tossed it.

Software Review 284

Software Review Startup Technical Review Hosting 284

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 11, 2010

First and foremost, succeeding as a Digital Entrepreneur (my new catch-all keyword for traditional funded startups, unfunded startups, microISVs, indie game developers and content creators like bands and authors. Q: Your book is clearly targeted at web-based software companies, and perhaps even more specifically at software developers.

Entrepreneur 225

Entrepreneur Social Media Software Web 225

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 29, 2011

The visual bug tracker for web developers & designers. We did learn from the experience — we did a post-mortem and decided what evidence should have stopped us from accepting the account, and now we build that into our sales cycle. If you liked that, you'll probably like these too: Tech Support *is* sales. Tweet. -->.

Technical Review 236

Technical Review Software Review Reputation Sales Cycle 236

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 18, 2010

I would orchestrate purchases, but should I be handling large sums of money with no knowledge of accounting, cash-flow, invoicing, purchase orders, or "enterprise sales" process? Don't I need an MBA or at least some sales training? And sales isn't as mystical and unknowable as I feared. Aren't I too young?

Software Review 335

Software Review Reputation Software Sales 335

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 2, 2013

You can’t just “decide” to avoid working on sales and marketing and still have a business that you can rightly claim is more stable than a job. But yes, in the words of Ben Horowitz , “Some employees make products, some make sales; the CEO makes decisions.” Does it mean you decide your working hours?

Cofounder 312

Cofounder Startup Founder Engineer 312

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 31, 2011

I’m putting myself in the same boat now with the solution I’m developing so could you tell me: How did you reach out to your first customer? I had none of those things at Smart Bear , no unfair advantage at all, no network, no blog, no insights, no sales skills, no marketing skills, not even a particularly good product.

Customer 279

Customer Software Review SEM Technical Review 279

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 24, 2015

It’s relatively easy for a technical founder to agree that she isn’t the best person to build a global sales organization, but is she ready to agree that even where she is excellent , it’s still her job to find people who are even more excellent, not just at individual tasks but at building entire teams?

Warrant 120

Warrant Founder Engineer Matching 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 14, 2013

That implies it’s wise to optimize — there’s more sales for you there, and it’s easier and cheaper to optimize an existing campaign than to start up a new one. You might even experience some cost savings (per signup) as part of your optimization — bonus! We don’t have a lot of inventory left.

Affiliate 282

Affiliate Marketing Campaign Channel 282

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 25, 2010

Examples: Make a sale on the tradeshow floor. I frequently get a few sales just from the presentation. The sales guy you see at the counter screws things up. Sales people aren't enough. Most attendees don't want to talk to sales people anyway; if they're interested at all they want to geek out with their peers.

Software Review 287

Software Review Sales Email Naming 287

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

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

While at Comtech, my father had developed strong relationships with a few key senior executives at Nissho Iwai Corporation , a huge Japanese trading company. You are spending years with your fellow classmates; you are developing friendships and trust; and you are working on projects/schoolwork together.

Entrepreneur 246

Entrepreneur San Francisco North Carolina Cofounder 246

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 29, 2011

Shoot, I used this excuse myself recently: “I built a company and forged dozens of customer relationships in the software development tools sector; I know exactly how to sell into that market.&#. Use that rolodex to set up meetings and sales calls, but don’t assume you know what they’re going to say.

Lean 269

Lean Software Software Developers Software Development 269

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 28, 2014

Here’s the problem , and how you can change your approach to business development so that it can succeed. Large company should send a few emails to the customer base, generating easy sales at no cost, and the revenues are split. So far, approximately zero have resulted in an successful deal.

Startup 293

Startup Hosting Distribution Revenue 293

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 14, 2010

It's commonly said that basketball players are "streaky" — they get on a roll hitting 3-pointers (have a "hot hand") or develop a funk where they can't seem to land a shot ("gone cold"). Bringing it home to marketing and sales data? Patterns in Chaos. Take Google Analytics.

Software Review 254

Software Review Analytics Conversion Metrics 254

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 22, 2011

It’s why I couldn’t just be retired after the sale of Smart Bear , writing blog posts and talking to entrepreneurs. But neither should you stop striving, improving, learning, and developing “who you are.&# Stoke your motor. How you do “find yourself&# and draw the line between improvement and acceptance?

Software Review 250

Software Review RSS Differentiation .Net 250

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

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. There are things you can get for sales force if you use salesforce.com. The fact that you didn’t even mention sales force is interesting.

Widget 204

Widget Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 204