A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

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A Scorecard: Should a decision be fast, or slow?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Remember that it might take two engineers a week to implement something, but a few debates and some research might itself involve an entire engineering and product for a week as well. At WP Engine we’re extremely collaborative across teams. Huge effort. Some things take less time to implement than to estimate or to debate.

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Improving the worst experience

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

In 32B , jet engines thunder mere feet from my eardrums, a fact confirmed by a window whose proximity to the engine affords a vista only of three sheets of metal and 37 rivets. I’ve seen it at WP Engine. For example, at WP Engine we had another customer with lots of custom needs. Powered by LaunchBit ).

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How do I figure out who my next important hire should be?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Founders typically revert to whatever they’re already expert in, and decide they need more of that. So, a technical founder decides she needs another developer, or a sales-oriented founder decides she needs another sales person. Examples: You hire the VP of Engineering for Facebook.

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In its emptiness, there is the function of a startup

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

This article was originally published on the WP Engine Blog. Whatever it is, that is what defines the startup and it’s purpose , and is the answer to the all-important question: Why should anyone — employees and customers both — join the founder on this journey, sharing this very personal responsibility?

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Scaling by “delegation” isn’t good enough

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Young founders may fancy themselves wizards of coding, design, and salesmanship, because they’re individually excellent; I did! The trouble with this form of delegation is it results in a team that is not materially better than the founder , at anything. Not all selfish acts are bad ones! And it’s wrong.

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Refutation: An acquisition is always a failure

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

” He explains: Either the founders failed to achieve their goal, or – far likelier – they failed to dream big enough. It’s classic founder naïveté to think that “youthful energy” would have been maintained had the company remained independent. Companies are constantly changing.

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Yes, but who said they'd actually BUY the damn thing?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

By definition, if you're a startup founder you're explicitly not your customer. founder Blogger & Twitter. "If If the VP of Engineering thinks the target customer is just like him/her, you're doomed. Scratching your own itch" is how all three of my companies started, but it's only that — the start.