A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

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No, that IS NOT a competitive advantage

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Innovative design and intellectual property are no longer long-term competitive advantages. You live in the era of the flat world where millions of people have access to technology, education, and a powerful sales, marketing, and communication platform (the Internet). Almost anything can be copied.

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“Fantastic” beats “efficient”

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Of course this is Survivor Bias at it’s finest; these examples don’t prove this is a great strategy , they just illustrate that it can work: Zappos decided to sell shoes over the Internet, even though it meant eating shipping costs as customers tried shoe after shoe, constantly returning merchandise on the basis of fit or look.

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How to value your company for sale (Part 1)

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

They wanted to control Internet telephony, and Skype was the clear winner. In this case, all the typically-valuable things like “multiples&# or intellectual property or the customer base or the product-market fit or the market size are irrelevant. The answer sure doesn’t have anything to do with revenue multiples!

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