A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

During a lull in her practice she got a serendipitous opportunity to shift gears completely and ended up leading software product development teams. Indeed, most of the innovations we've made at Smart Bear in the art of code review have already been duplicated by both commercial and open-source competitors.

Software Review 325

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 1, 2020

Snyk was founded with the mission to help developers make their code secure, providing a platform to automatically assess and remediate open source vulnerabilities. The company’s success has been largely driven by its developer-led freemium model, going from Series A funding to a valuation of $2.6B in just 30 months.

Early Stage 62

Early Stage Open Source Development Team Review Security 62

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2010

I learned how to better run a product management process. I learned how to integrate customers into our product development process. But in our first year of sales (and those were really shitty years to be selling software) we sold $2.1 I learned how to establish sales targets and how to manage a sales pipeline.

Venture Capital 285

Venture Capital Hiring Software Review Stock Options 285

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2010

The good news is this team found a business model, product/market fit and a repeatable sales model. What lies ahead, however, is a different set of challenges: finding the new set of mainstream customers on the other side of the chasm and managing the sales growth curve. What’s Next.

Agile 120

Agile Development Team Review Leadership Merger 120

VC Cafe

DECEMBER 28, 2010

has sales offices throughout Korea and over 1,000 retailers carrying its product line, in addition to a local formulation facility. Placement on the list was determined by a combination of the company’s G/SCORE assessment, stage and pace of growth, and business potential. (Bravo AG). million.

Technical Review 87

Technical Review South Korea Mexico 87

OnlyOnce

MARCH 14, 2011

In Part Two, I’ll talk about some of the practices we’re using in our product management and development teams. Finally, back-end support and process—an accounting team that gets the invoices out, an HR team that helps make strategic hires—makes the folks engaged in product development more productive.

Software Review 67

Software Review Development Team Review Later Stage Technical Review 67

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

You constantly assess the situation, looking for hazards and timing your movements carefully to get across safely. For example, I quickly learned that when I twittered about the event, more often than not I would make a sale. So the product development team was busy creating lots of split-tests for lots of hypotheses.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Customer development is a parallel process to product development, which means that you dont have to give up on your dream. Our goal in product development is to find the minimum feature set required to get early customers. If I get sales I will expand on the site. What is customer development?

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. May your team, one day soon, refactor with pride. What a freaking mess.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Strategy - startups first encounter this when they have the beginnings of a product, and theyve achieved some amount of product/market fit. What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. As the company grows, this kind of work generalizes into "executing the companys current strategy."

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Sometimes, a great hacker has the potential to grow into the CTO of a company, and in those cases all you need is an outside mentor who can work with them to develop those skills. At the end of the day, the product development team of a startup (large or small) is a service organization. Does this sound familiar?

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94