A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 29, 2011

But it doesn’t matter who’s responsible for what — the real problem is that we were a bad match and we both wasted time, money, and reputation.

Technical Review 236

Technical Review Software Review Reputation Sales Cycle 236

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 24, 2015

That matches well with the life of a 20-something — fueled by the energy of youth, too young to be jaded, with no financial or social dependents. Founding a company is a selfish act. It will consume every waking moment for the next 1-10 years. It’s an act of defiance and irreverence towards competitors and the status quo.

Warrant 120

Warrant Founder Engineer Matching 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

Their customer service consistently earns NPS between 75 and 80 — some of the highest scores in the world — so their financial health is matched by customers who truly want the product. Large: USAA with $24 billion in annual revenue and $3 billion in profits is the 49th most valuable company on Earth.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Viral Metrics Salary 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 23, 2010

We've spoken with 20 potential customers who match at least two of those criteria, and they agree our product is exactly what they need and that none of our competitors are doing an acceptable job addressing their issues. We're targeting the market segment defined by X, Y, and Z.

Software Review 275

Software Review Technical Review Software Advertising 275

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 4, 2011

Most sporting contests culminate in a single-elimination tournament, meaning that after each match the winner continues and the loser goes home: At the end, only one contender will be undefeated, which makes it seem logical to crown them the undisputed champion.

Distribution 235

Distribution Matching eCommerce Revenue 235

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 21, 2009

Evidence" means emails and Tweets and testimonials that use those words exactly; otherwise you're likely interpreting their feedback to match your expectations. (I If you have an answer, is it because you have hard evidence that this is how your customers perceive you and why they give you money, or just because you believe it?

Startup 315

Startup Revenue Cofounder Sales 315

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 31, 2011

The colors in-between are continuous — and seem to generally match the order seen in the various color wheels — but then it just terminates with violet. This isn’t adding up. Let’s turn to science. Physics makes it worse. Physics is clear and certain. But here we have a clear beginning (red) and end (violet).

Green 336

Green Matching Coder America 336

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 20, 2011

Also the product probably won’t match existing company standards, neither in the user interface, the design patterns underneath, the technology it’s based on, etc. On the flip side, entrepreneurs are an unknown quantity which typically doesn’t fit well into corporate culture, so that will inevitably come to a head.

Sales 260

Sales Channel Cofounder Valuation 260

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 28, 2014

Said another way, how can you grow the larger company in a way that matches their existing business model? A much better approach for business development is as follows: How can the smaller company make money for the larger company in the manner that the larger company already makes money?

Startup 293

Startup Hosting Distribution Revenue 293

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 21, 2012

Now, does the startup you find have to match exactly on every point? Of course I’m ignorant of this whole industry so it’s quite likely I’m not even in the right ballpark with any of those ideas. But the mindset is right. But now you know what you’re looking for. And, once you find it, you’ll get the job.

Hiring 230

Hiring Washington Startup Matching 230

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 20, 2013

Does this match up with your data and expectations? Capping at 48 months definitely doesn’t make sense for our older customers, so although I still like the concept of a monthly cap, the discount rate method seems like a better fit to our data. What do you think? Let’s continue talking about it in the comments.

Retention 262

Retention Metrics Revenue Bandwidth 262

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 21, 2011

Of course the numbers don’t match because, again, I pulled those potential valuations out of nowhere. In the case of WPEngine, I’ve been saying $5m in three years or $25m in five years. To make $250,000 out of $5m the investor would need 5%; to make $840,000 from $25m the investor needs 3%.

Equity 276

Equity Salary Hiring Institutional Investors 276

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

After all, one thing successful blogs do have in common is that the writing matches the personality and quirks of the author. If you have a visceral need to provide three specific examples immediately following an a sweeping generalization marked by a large, red font, follow your rhythm. So embrace your quirks!?

RSS 227

RSS Iraq Social Media Media 227

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 29, 2010

is still around at least, but wisely pivoted into matching celebrities (like Mandy Moore) with major brands (like NBC). Zen koan for you: If a sentence has an article-count mismatch and no one cares to read it, is it still grammatically incorrect?). They "survived.".

Marketing 229

Marketing Ruby SEO Widget 229

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 26, 2010

The more you focus on your competitors and match their offerings then the more similar you will be to them. The more you are focused on matching and dueling it out with your competitors the more you lose a way to present your business as unique. If you are a blur, then the only thing you will be competing on is price.

Matching 215

Matching Audience Customer Distribution 215

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 28, 2011

You don’t need to match the emotional stability you see from the big bloggers. Who cares, the point is: Getting through this slog of a thing that’s a startup — or anything difficult and worthwhile — doesn’t require that you’re always confident or stoic or smart or right or wise.

Bootstrapping 312

Bootstrapping Sales Texas Salary 312

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 10, 2010

To see this done right, consider Threadless , a bootstrapped marketplace matching people seeking unique T-shirts with people who invent them. But at first your marketplace won't be large, so to get started you have to deliver value even though you're small.

Business Model 310

Business Model Finder SEO Bootstrapping 310

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 29, 2010

But later I was poking around the data myself and decided to add a category for "Others": Some people call this the Long Tail — a pattern wherein a few big players are far larger than any other single player, but when you add up all the little players they collectively match or — as in this case — tower over the big players.

Metrics 257

Metrics Analytics Conversion Ratio Texas 257

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

Another idea would be to say matching up. the sort of pain solution match-up process can work. During the meeting. so when you talk about how it works or a tour and that kind of stuff, then it makes sense to do that. But right on the homepage, there’s different ways of course of doing this here.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 21, 2011

Q: I would decide what that niche is and that way you can talk to people in that niche and make sure that their world view and viewpoint on this stuff matches yours. I guess we have to try and identify a niche that can be a sweet spot to actually [??]. I also think there’s a lot of lack of knowledge in this area.

Widget 204

Widget Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 204

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Anything like that where you can just drag and drop to order them, but it’s still linear in time, I feel is at least having the tool match reality. Which is similar, it has less of a SCRUM-my feel to it. I think the problem is just when you describe in Jira, ‘I want to make this ticket go away for a week.’

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 28, 2011

I have to be more flexible to let it do something or maybe get over a hump before I can really get it to a place that matches my constraints. Actually, I remember way back when, I started up my company, or when I wanted to become and entrepreneur, I always thought that I would be satisfied doing this. It’s the name of the game.

Cofounder 223

Cofounder New York Conversion Entrepreneur 223