A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

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The Lindy Effect on startup potential

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

One way to understand why 2x is plausible but 20x requires innovation, is to observe that the actions that got you your first 10 customers are probably not sufficient for generating 100, even though they’re probably sufficient for getting another 10.

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Not disruptive, and proud of it

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

That may be OK for Twitter — today — but what about the 100 other social-networking-slash-link-sharing networks that didn't survive? "It's hard to explain" should not be a standard part of your sales pitch. You just need to try it" and "trust me" don't cut it. Ask them about selling intangible benefits.

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Building in public forces true competitive advantage

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Now that Facebook has open-sourced their entire data center infrastructure, does that make it easy for a competitor to overtake Facebook as a social network? No, because Etsy has built a marketplace ; the presence of buyers and sellers is their primary asset.

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If you saw your competitor’s roadmap would it matter?

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Now with the Social Network movie promulgating this fear, I expect it will worsen. If a competitor got ahold of this — especially a well-funded one — I could die before I ever got started! Don’t VCs do that? Almost all founders I encounter are leery about discussing their product plans.

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Naming your startup: Settle down, it’s cool!

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Besides, nowadays most links are shared over email and social networks instead of typing them in directly. Those domains still say what you do, so it’s still informative and sensible whether you’re telling someone over the phone or displaying in advertisement. It’s more likely someone stumbles on you from a bit.ly-shortened

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I hate MVPs. So do your customers. Make it SLC instead.

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

No video, no filters, no social networking, no commenting and no storage — simple, yet Lovable and Complete, as evidenced by its massive adoption. The first iteration of the product was a screen where tapping anywhere took a picture that you could then send to someone else, at which time it disappeared.

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Uncommon Interview: Bob Walsh, Digital Entrepreneur

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Second, the core values that you find among people who came of age after the Internet are markedly different – the ugly corporate truth is traditional marketing and advertising barely influence them while what their personal social networks “think” and how they interact person-to-person (e.g. Zappos) matter far more.