A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

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Hiring Employee #1

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Tweet. --> It’s a big decision to make your first hire, because what you’re really deciding is whether you want to keep a lifestyle business or attempt to “cross the chasm” and maybe even get rich. There’s already a lot of great advice about hiring at little startups. (Powered by LaunchBit ).

Hiring 282
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Startup Therapy: Ten questions to ask yourself every month

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

More than that, knowing your "padding" as I used to call it is helpful in making decisions like "Can I afford to try this Risky Expensive Thing," such as making your first hire or trying a $20,000 media blitz. I know, you can't afford anyone right now, no one can do as good a job as you, and you don't even know that you'll ever hire someone.

Startup 315
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Capturing Luck with “or” instead of “and”

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Can you hire someone you’ve worked with before, or build something sustainable without hiring? You could get your first few hundred customers through GoogleAds, or Facebook ads, or affiliate sales, or targeted outbound sales, or partnering with a high-profile reseller, or great press about your unique brand and message, or other ways.

Affiliate 245
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How to think about cash vs. equity compensation

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

It’s among the most-asked questions on startup forums, and an issue we’re dealing with right now at WPEngine as we bring on new employees: How do you decide how much equity (shares) to give a new employee or partner? The question is further complicated when the new hire is getting a salary.

Equity 276
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You’re a company when…

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

TO EVERYONE AT WP ENGINE: My hope is that being an essential part of this unique journey is your dream too, not just mine, and that you’ll point up to that sign five years from now and explain to the children in your back seat that it’s there because of you , not because you were “there for the ride,” but because you actually (..)

RSS 309
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How do I raise prices?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

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.

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How a startup should leverage a personal assistant

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

A virtual assistant (VA) is a remote worker hired to complete tasks you should not be doing as the founder of a startup. More than two years ago, my business partner and I discussed launching a hosted version of our ASP.NET invoicing software, DotNetInvoice. I've had the best results hiring VA's in the Philippines.