A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 4, 2018

We have never had the caliber of teams we do today, as evidenced by our award-winning 70+ NPS customer service, our historic-low cancellation rates, our security and uptime, our product and engineering initiatives, our global brand leadership, our customer acquisition through both marketing and sales, our hiring and employee experience teams, our finance, (..)

Engineer 152

Engineer Revenue San Francisco Security 152

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 8, 2019

Can you hire someone you’ve worked with before, or build something sustainable without hiring? For example, can you pick a large and growing market? Can you compete in a niche where incumbents don’t care or cannot move quickly?

Affiliate 245

Affiliate Stock Channel Portfolio 245

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 26, 2019

Either you haven’t hired great talent, or you have but you’re disempowering them. If you can’t answer that, you aren’t building a company worth joining, which means you won’t be hiring awesome talent, and it means you don’t have a purpose other than revenue. One-on-ones are never a waste of time. Fix that now.

Restful 202

Restful Founder Revenue Acquisition 202

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 21, 2011

The question is further complicated when the new hire is getting a salary. Here’s why: Suppose a new hire just quit a job paying $10,000/month and agrees to take $3,000/month for a year with you, after which time (assuming the company does as well as everyone hopes) she’ll be raised back up to $10,000/month.

Equity 276

Equity Salary Hiring Institutional Investors 276

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 25, 2017

It’s best to hire based on the value of someone’s strengths, and veto only if a weakness is excessive and relevant.). person you hired, project you embarked on), is an unmitigated disaster. Examples: “We thought we hired a culture fit, but they weren’t, but we let them rampage around for nine months doing damage.”

Flash 298

Flash Africa Hiring Advertising 298

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 7, 2014

You still signed that 5-year office lease, hired support, sales, and engineering, and brought in training, a comptroller, and a business operations person. You scramble to hire ahead in support, sales, and the additional demands on engineering. Marketing is over-spending to compensate. So, you’ll need more money than you planned.

Revenue 270

Revenue Finance Equity Engineer 270

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 22, 2013

Now, if you understand this universal, timeless, human rule, you then realize you cannot afford to hire anyone less. In fact, if you think there’s any position at your company where this rule of “better than 10x” doesn’t hold, you’ve never worked with greatness at that position.

Engineer 257

Engineer Social Media Acquisition Sales 257

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 26, 2013

I didn’t want to manage managers or figure out what changes, strategies, hirings, products, marketing, and sales were needed to make $100m/year. At Smart Bear I didn’t want to lead a huge company. I didn’t want to relinquish Eclipse and my ability to check in code.

Software Review 295

Software Review Startup Cofounder Search 295

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 19, 2018

Nothing is exempt: teams, processes, products, sales motions, branding, interviewing, culture, office space, customer interactions, architecture, security, finance, governance, hiring, … It is certainly difficult to jerk around. Some people can’t take the forces, and that’s understandable. No one said this would be easy.

Architecture 236

Architecture Government Finance Security 236

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 16, 2017

Maybe that marketing hire needs another few months to figure things out. But doing the difficult things — not the easy things — is what will define your organization and could be the difference between success and failure, because that person is taking a seat, and every seat has to be filled by a powerhouse.

Operations 215

Operations Hiring Employee Founder 215

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 15, 2011

After hiring a few people, being the CEO became a lot easier, and I was able to focus on high-level strategic plans instead of fighting fires. I built this software for myself, and then it turned out a million people wanted it exactly how I originally envisioned it.

LLC 335

LLC Founder Startup Campaign 335

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 24, 2011

In our recent hiring spree we found terrific folks willing to work with us at less than market rates because they believe in what we’re doing and what we’re trying to be. After all, quality technical support requires an army of quality technical people, and those don’t come cheap.

Intellectual Property 242

Intellectual Property Open Source Bandwidth IP 242

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

How to get hired at a startup and. Still, no matter which side of the table you're on, this is useful for your hiring process. Tags: Essays Guest Posts hiring investment strategy writing. I wrote up the full behind-the-scenes story. How to write a cover letter that actually gets read. WorkAwesome).

Angel Investor 161

Angel Investor New York City RSS Viral 161

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

You can’t hire someone with it. You can’t afford to hire anyone else, you can’t cut enough costs to be worthwhile, you don’t have enough money left over to invest in future things (marketing, features, anything), and you still don’t have enough knowledge about what specifically you’d invest in anyway.

Affiliate 261

Affiliate Revenue Bootstrapping Campaign 261

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 8, 2012

Dithering doesn’t move you closer to either goal — it’s draining time and energy from whatever is actually valuable, and it’s blocking other decisions about spending money, hiring, your lifestyle, stories for the press, features, everything. So you need a fast decision, and other people cannot give you the answer.

Bootstrapping 231

Bootstrapping Hiring Engineer Web 231

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. Statistics show trends, but trends don’t predict outliers.

Framework 253

Framework Lean Design Revenue 253

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

Unless you can’t bear to hire a traditional “enterprise sales guy.” . “They” are in fact describing the way most successful companies sell to The Enterprise. Nothing wrong with “tried and true.” ” Unless tried and true doesn’t happen to jibe with you.

Founder 244

Founder Revenue Sales Naming 244

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 16, 2014

“It’s not fair,” we all said to ourselves. That was before WhatsApp sold for 19 billion dollars, with 55 employees.

Metrics 246

Metrics Early Stage Retention Revenue 246

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 shows in the little things. As I walked into the office, I held the door open for a few of them, and a guy who has been with the company for three years.

Engineer 229

Engineer America Hiring Design 229

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 14, 2014

Our building sign that a million Austinites will see is there because of you as much as me or Heather or anyone else.

RSS 309

RSS Engineer Metrics Government 309

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 6, 2012

When you’re pitching customers and mentors and investors and potential hires and co-founders, just talk. So no, don’t publish your secrets without reason, don’t give your competitors information for free. But stop being an idea-miser with people who might be helpful.

Cofounder 237

Cofounder Incubator Social Network Business Model 237

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.

Government 223

Government Startup Cofounder Technical Support 223

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 25, 2017

Suppose that between now and revenue doubling (any timeframe) no new hires are allowed. What role could we hire to make the maximum difference to the success of the company overall? Then, hire! (Prepare /w/ data from support, social, survey, etc). What should we do? — Jason Cohen (@asmartbear) July 15, 2017.

Software Review 154

Software Review Metrics Hiring Revenue 154

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 18, 2012

I know a startup founder who likes hiring parents because they understand time-management and the importance of being present in the moment. (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.) But there are useful skills.

Social Media 246

Social Media Restful Media Startup 246

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 11, 2012

There’s room for more — we’re always hiring.) Or you go work for another startup who’s latched onto something and get experience and a small exit for yourself which funds the next one. I think 1/3 of the people at WP Engine right now are in this last category.

Startup 254

Startup Algorithm Cofounder Lean 254

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. These hiring arrangements are described below: Task-based — ($3-10/hour overseas, $12-50/hour in the U.S.) I've had the best results hiring VA's in the Philippines. This includes hiring U.S.-based

Software Review 284

Software Review Startup Technical Review Hosting 284

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 19, 2012

years before I could even hire one employee, and even then it was 1/4 of the salary he deserved (and later ended up making). Now we’re making millions of dollars, employ 20 people, growing at 15%/mo, etc. But we started just like that — slowly, and not profitable. Same with my previous company Smart Bear — it took 2.5

Salary 246

Salary Bootstrapping Web Distribution 246

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 13, 2015

Suppose the goal of this particular company is to achieve $1m in annual revenue for a two-person bootstrapped startup, with a goal to be so efficient as to never have to hire employees, and therefore produce a terrific little business that nets each of them a few million dollars over the next ten years.

Business Model 120

Business Model Affiliate Startup Bootstrapping 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 28, 2011

You’re hired!” I came back with these three ideas: 1) Manager behind desk to applicant – “Your resume says you’re distractible, you like to gossip, and you sometimes oversleep? ” 2) Businessperson giving presentation with slide showing tube of “Anderson Wart Remover.”

Customer 228

Customer Audience Web Hiring 228

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 28, 2012

hiring a few developers). And we can’t afford to hire tech support folks who will ensure your questions, bug reports, and feature requests are handled with the speed and friendliness you’ve come to expect. We can’t afford to put in the development effort required to take ${product} where we all want (i.e.

Software Review 240

Software Review Technical Review Email Revenue 240

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

FEBRUARY 15, 2010

Your newest hire isn't working out. Problem is, it doesn't quite fit the business. You don't want to "waste" this great concept; surely you can use it somehow, somewhere? As with all writing, you have to learn how to throw things out. You did everything you could during the interview; he passed all the tests.

Cost 273

Cost Reputation Agile Sales 273

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 23, 2011

It may be called “burn-out&# but burn-out is solved with time, relaxation, hiring and pacing yourself. Thinking about how we are building stupid games for stupid people made me so uninterested in doing work. Have you ever felt that way? Unmotivated to do anything in your business.

Argentina 316

Argentina Email Web SEO 316

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. 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

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

Indeed, this is why many CEO's and other business leaders prefer hiring hungry, working-class guys over the wealthy Ivy-leaguers. She was also a headhunter, and my father started utilizing her firm to hire key executives at the company. But his insecurity and drive created in him a powerful work ethic and singular focus to succeed.

Entrepreneur 246

Entrepreneur San Francisco North Carolina Cofounder 246

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

NOVEMBER 7, 2017

You can’t just hire three more fantastic developers to create a robust engineering team, and you can’t just snap your fingers and find three new efficient, productive marketing channels. The usual refrain in the startup world is that none of these are options — everyone has to work 70+ hours/week and never falter.

Software Review 294

Software Review Channel Revenue Non-Compete 294