A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 5, 2010

In the quest for optimization, A/B tests, metrics, and funnels, we're in danger of losing the fun and value of creative work. It wasn't optimal and had no measurable benefit to usability, but it was "filled with win." It took extra effort but it was endearing — an important attribute not easily captured with metrics and spreadsheets.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 25, 2017

What the single most important metric the consort should be moving for the next 6-12 months? How could we all impact that metric? Everyone anonymously writes 3 things about each other they admire, enjoy, find helpful, etc. Then each reads hers aloud to others. — Jason Cohen (@asmartbear) July 15, 2017.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 15, 2014

Not only can I not share the company’s strategy, I can’t share our thought processes, our rationale, how we think about the market, how we’ve analyzed it, about customers, about metrics, about competitors, about the future. In fact, the process and data are much more precious than the conclusions.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 21, 2017

Revenue multiples, profit multiples, premium over the previous financing — these are metrics used by sellers to help determine a minimum acceptable price. Large companies don’t acquire small companies for their financials.

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Balance Sheet Vertical Acquisition Revenue 242

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 12, 2014

Can’t be the metrics, they’ll change by orders of magnitude. Can’t be about marketing prose, that’s molded by A/B testing into market-resonance. Can’t even be people — the team’s composition changes, and those who hang in for the entire voyage personally change. So, what doesn’t change?

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Laos Technical Review Startup Engineer 279

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 26, 2019

There isn’t one most important SaaS metric. Being focussed on SaaS metrics is not incompatible with valuing employee fulfillment and customer happiness. Priority depends on your goals (e.g. profitability versus size) and on what, at this moment, is so out of whack that ignoring it is fatal. Real life usually rounds down.

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Restful Founder Revenue Acquisition 202

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 16, 2014

What does it actually mean that metric X is better than average and metric Y is below? Measuring yourself against the average or median isn’t much better.

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Metrics Early Stage Retention Revenue 246

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 11, 2014

There are other important operational metrics to help steer your company (see related post titled “ You Never Know What Operational Metrics You’ll Need – So Instrument Everything “) but these are some of the first to start with. Basic Concepts The concept of the graphic shown below is very simple.

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Churn Rate .Net Metrics Hosting 288

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 3, 2011

He said: “ A startup can focus on only one metric. I’ll explain it here using WP Engine as the foil rather than revealing secrets about AppSumo because, although AppSumo internal metrics are both impressive and instructive, it isn’t my place to reveal them. And to do that, you have to focus on only one metric.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 29, 2014

And honoring metrics is part of building a high performing team and building a huge, sustainable enterprise. Nothing wrong with using metrics and money to keep score in this game. ” Then you win. Keep score, so long as you can distinguish between the game and life.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 21, 2012

I’ll be speaking this year (after Kathy Sierra — no pressure, last year I went after Clayton Christensen) with the working title: If I hear someone say “metrics” one more time, I will strangle that person – about (1) how to decide the 1-2 key metrics to focus on for your specific business, and then (2) a bunch of pitfalls (..)

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 2, 2013

to maximize the long-term value of those shares through solid financials, healthy SaaS metrics, and growing as fast as possible (but not faster). I’m responsible to the board and the shareholders (which in our case includes 100% of our employees!)

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 27, 2013

Then single hits aren’t enough and you need “biggest ever” to feel the rush, and we become slaves to the mantra of %MoM growth, then cajole more sophisticated metrics into acceptable ranges and trajectories, summoning ever greater and more abstract calculations to provide greater rushes that we collectively call “scale.”

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 14, 2010

Tags: Essays fallacies metrics.

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Software Review Analytics Conversion Metrics 254

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 28, 2016

” Our “error” metric will confirm that this forecaster is a genius — exactly zero over a whole year of predictions! This metric — “uncertainty” — is computed as. In the 30% example, the uncertainty metric would be 0.21. Even if it’s actually raining, right now, predict “30%.”

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 20, 2013

This is the third article in a series on novel ideas for SaaS metrics, which started with The unprofitable SaaS business model trap and COC: a new metric for cancellations. You can’t read an article about SaaS metrics without running into LTV — The L ife t ime V alue of a customer.

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Retention Metrics Revenue Bandwidth 262

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 29, 2010

Take "average time-on-site," a typical web analytics metric. Metrics and statistics "rules" cannot be applied blindly. Yes this means "metrics analysis" is harder than it looks. Final lesson: Since metrics are hard and take time and effort to get correct, don't attempt to measure and act on 100 variables.

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Metrics Analytics Conversion Ratio Texas 257

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 29, 2011

Hubspot has this down to a science, more so than almost any other company.

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Technical Review Software Review Reputation Sales Cycle 236

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 23, 2013

Another way to think about these solutions is that a SaaS business cannot have static fundamental metrics. The metrics themselves need to improve — lowering cancellation rates, lowering net churn, increasing GPM, reducing cost to acquire customers.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 9, 2013

This is a very metrics-focused approach, but you can ask yourself some higher level questions as well. Metrics and lines in the sand. You need to identify your One Metric That Matters (a single metric that tells you how things are going) and draw a line in the sand–a target that you’re aiming for.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 25, 2016

We’ve talked about this before in the context of SaaS metrics. Or someone might want to “throw a bomb into the institution of government” and elect Donald Trump, even if they agree he has and will continue to say and do atrocious things. This sort of simplification is logical, and necessary.

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Differentiation Framework Restful Software Review 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

What I mean by that is startups nowadays that raise money have absolutely ludicrous metrics. So in other words, the bottom line is you’re not prepared right now in terms of the market, the product, the metrics anyway for VC, and it doesn’t sound like you’d be happy with VC. Does that make sense? Jason: Charge more.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 14, 2014

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 (..)

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RSS Engineer Metrics Government 309

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 15, 2012

It’s just vanity metrics but they want it. And you start digging, and there isn’t really any value in that. It really doesn’t tell them anything. It’s really not actionable. Nick: Right, that’s exactly it.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

Congratulations, now there's only 47 other metrics you need to be tracking. What other simple, motivating metrics can you use early on in your startup? ?What's As you blow past that magical moment, your business can sustain itself indefinitely without further cash investment, and the date becomes infinite. That's the end of the chart.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 6, 2016

Worse, turning the gun on yourself: Worrying that it’s just too hard , worrying that you’re not following good advice , worrying that everything you do is unsatisfactory , worrying that others are so much better than you and therefore that you have no business doing any of this in the first place.

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Metrics Design Startup Customer 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

On the surface, it's yet another "marketing metrics" company. — you and I both will witness over the subsequent months whether or not this really resulted in a killer advantage! Yes of course I'll share details!). The right) Celebrity endorsement. Hiten Shah' s third company is KISSMetrics.

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Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 1, 2012

Because you get organized around marketing metrics, because your campaigns get optimized, because your landing pages and drip campaigns become stronger, because word of mouth produces sales “for free,” and so forth. Time heals many wounds (but not all) Over the time scale of “years,” you can count on certain treads.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 21, 2010

Tags: Essays branding lead-gen metrics positioning testing.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 5, 2011

The true masters are those who embrace metrics as an incontrovertible goal while also being creative enough to retain the aesthetics, creativity, and philosophy which makes their craft an art. I stand firm that my criticism was sound, but… so what? Designers want to be “right,” but have to temper that with analytics data.

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Lean Analytics Metrics Engineer 281

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 4, 2013

Mantras prevail that amount to “guess and check,” because it’s easier for advisors and investors to drive by metrics rather than by insight, by funnels rather than by a strong point of view. But I worry that the pendulum can swing too far. So what’s the answer?

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Marketing Early Stage Lean Metrics 259

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 7, 2011

One customer wanted detailed usage metrics per employee. I’ve had to solve this problem before. At Smart Bear people were always asking for reports, but everyone wanted a different report. Another wanted a prediction of how many bugs likely remained in each source file. Another wanted to see which source files were most risky.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 31, 2012

Of course it’s their job to help you, and there’s metrics and such which hopefully punishes them if they don’t do their job. No, you’re angry and frustrated because something is wrong, and you unfairly take it out on whomever you’re talking to, even though they’re your only link to salvation.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 13, 2015

Often your best estimate of any metric or market behavior or business model component is at best accurate within a power of ten, for example “expected conversion rate between 0.5% Early in a company’s life, you don’t know anything. ” Estimating with these extremely wide ranges can be surprisingly useful.

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Business Model Affiliate Startup Bootstrapping 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 17, 2011

So let that be your primary metric of name-worthiness. So now that we’ve dispensed with the idea that naming your company will dictate its fate, we still come back to the simple truth that the name is important, but to you, not to others. That’s simpler to do, except when you have co-founders.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 21, 2011

What I’m challenged with as a small business owner is, I don’t know if it’s the press, or if it’s just the culture in general, but there’s this pressing vanity metric of, How much capital have you raised? It seems like that’s the pattern you have to get in. I think you were talking, ‘Do More Faster.’

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Widget Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 204

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 23, 2011

Another helpful thing is looking at metrics that are more positive or at a trending level instead of just drowning your sorrows in today’s numbers. What helps in reducing the depression is to see how we can learn what went wrong with the AppSumo.com deal and write up how we can make it better next time.

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