Software By Rob

OCTOBER 29, 2009

Product naming is hard. The Approach A while back Patrick contacted a handful of Academy members and asked for opinions on potential product names. Regarding the product name, which was the original purpose of the survey, a list of 40 names was given to each respondent was asked to choose up to 3 names.

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Software By Rob

JULY 20, 2010

July 20th, 2010 | Cool News, Links & Reviews Building your startup? I cover topics that affect software and web startups of all sizes, but mostly relating to startups you can fund yourself. I recommend it. Check out my book Like this post? Subscribe via RSS On Twitter? Follow me Startups for the Rest of Us. I agree with Dustin.

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Software Review RSS Software Developers Software Development 41

crowdSPRING Blog

JULY 10, 2014

The surprising secret of happier, more productive organizations: conflict – crowdspring.co/1qscUpx. How to Succeed in Business by Bundling – and Unbundling | Harvard Business Review – crowdspring.co/1lphhyB. The surprising secret of happier, more productive organizations: conflict – crowdspring.co/1qscUpx.

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Social Media Small Business Design Silicon Valley 97

Software By Rob

JULY 22, 2010

Tip #1: Use a Custom Design I’m typically a fan of text-only newsletter email due to the challenge of getting things to display correctly in email clients. I cover topics that affect software and web startups of all sizes, but mostly relating to startups you can fund yourself. But the design of this email is branded, yet simple.

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Email Software Review RSS Non-Compete 45

blog.alinelerner.com

JUNE 21, 2013

Bemoaning that non-technical people are the first to filter resumes is silly because it’s not going to change. To sort facts from folk wisdom, I isolated some features that were universal among resumes and would be easy to spot by technical and non-technical people alike and then ran statistical significance tests on them.

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CTO Hire Hiring Software Review Technical Review 98

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

Not because they have a conversion problem but because they never really nail the product or how to market it. This is a customer development problem. Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, developed a methodology for creating businesses that runs in parallel with the traditional product development process.

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www.joelonsoftware.com

MARCH 24, 2010

Joel on Software Fog Creek Compensation by Joel Spolsky Wednesday, August 30, 2000 At Fog Creek Software, the way we make sure that people are paid fairly and rewarded for excellent work is based on a professional ladder. So all Fog Creek software engineers are ranked at one of several different levels, level 8 through level 15.

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Software Review Stock Options Salary Technical Review 48

andrewchenblog.com

MARCH 10, 2010

The interesting part is when you get a couple months into your product cycle. You often end up with lots of half-done experiments lying around, an infrastructure that isn’t built to scale, and a mishmash of code that needs to be refactored. However, there’s the other side of the coin, which is the product design.

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Software By Rob

JULY 1, 2010

A Product that Scales The author, John Warrillow, says that most businesses do not scale well. Repeatable In a traditional business a repeatable product/service is something that does not require a high level of expertise and customization every time you make a sale. You pay them less than you bill out, and you keep the difference.

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Software By Rob

AUGUST 25, 2010

If they had done it for the money they would have stopped long before they became an overnight success five years of non-stop practice later. Find those people who need your product. If you can’t find this group of people, you’re probably building the wrong product. But they did it because they loved writing music.

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Software By Rob

APRIL 13, 2010

Our goal is to help non-venture-backed, bootstrapped startups, microISVs and Micropreneurs. That’s why we’ve made it out mission to provide practical information based on our real-life experience as software/web entrepreneurs (20+ years between the two of us), as well as the entrepreneurs we work with in the Micropreneur Academy.

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Restful Software Review RSS Startup 46

Software By Rob

AUGUST 11, 2009

At some point in the past year I watched a video of an Eric Sink presentation and he asked the following question (he said it was asked of him by a college student): Why would someone buy your product when it has an open source competitor? Even fewer can be installed in five minutes or less, even by an experienced software developer.

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Open Source Software Review Non-Compete Software 62

Software By Rob

JANUARY 12, 2010

Likewise, if you see the massive amount of traffic coming from SEO you have to know how many of those people are buying your product. As an example, Bidsketch is a product launched by a Micropreneur Academy member. I cover topics that affect software and web startups of all sizes, but mostly relating to startups you can fund yourself.

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Software Review Marketing Startup PPC 55

Software By Rob

OCTOBER 15, 2009

Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← Memorable Postcard from a New Mechanic My Report on StackOverflow DevDays → Are Twitter and Facebook Killing Blogs? When a product is released, almost everyone blogs about it.

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Software Review RSS Software Developers Software Development 49

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 7, 2017

We’re tired of hearing how small software companies usually fail. The data show that the two most common causes are: (1) Product isn’t useful to enough people, and (2) Problems with the team. The initial marketing channel was sustainable for a while , but got wiped away due to external forces.

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Software By Rob

OCTOBER 14, 2010

And after talking about this subject at length, I found myself again evangelizing it last week at the Business of Software conference. So the intention of this post is to lay out the key details of why you should start marketing your startup (or product, or book, or anything else you will launch) months before launch day.

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Software Review Marketing Technical Review Software 77

news.ycombinator.com

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

However you get to a good product is how you need to get to a good product. If youre in a market like pharmaceuticals, where all user testing can be done in a lab, execution in a bubble makes sense, but if your startup is a web product it sounds like hubris. Idea (A) is just a broad concept of a new product.

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Stealth Technical Review Startup Software Review 41

www.virtuosimedia.com

MARCH 8, 2012

Many partnerships don’t make it past this stage, devolving into a tangled mess about who owns the idea and the code and what the compensation should be. If, by chance, the relationship does survive and the product gets launched, that doesn’t mean that there’s smooth sailing from that point forward.

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Software By Rob

DECEMBER 23, 2008

Consider this the Year in Review for Software by Rob. Some choose consulting, but many more inevitably decide to build a software product. ‘After all,’ they think ‘you code it up and sell it a thousand times – it’s like printing your own money! The third was something I hadn’t expected.&#

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Software Review Software Product Technical Review 27

www.kalzumeus.com

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

Kalzumeus Software. Patrick McKenzie (patio11) blogs on software development, marketing, and general business topics. Mostly, I sell software. ” What does “execute arbitrary code” mean? Literally, it means that the attacker can choose to have your server execute any code they can dream up.

Security 101

Security Software Review Ruby Startup 101

Software By Rob

DECEMBER 3, 2009

The Micropreneur Spotlight is a look at a Micropreneur Academy member who has launched their product. This episode’s Micropreneur is Ruben Gamez who recently launched online design proposal software Bidsketch. == Rob: Thanks for your time today, Ruben. Rob: When & why did you decide to build and launch your own software product?

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infochachkie.com

DECEMBER 5, 2011

Lousy Products Might Break Your Bones – But A Name Will Seldom Hurt You John Greathouse – Posted in: Entrepreneur , Strategic Planning. When selecting your company and product names, consider the following: Uniquely Familiar. Correspondingly, your products’ names contribute to, but do not dictate, their success.

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Naming Technical Review Product Product Name 40

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

Not because they have a conversion problem but because they never really nail the product or how to market it. This is a customer development problem. Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, developed a methodology for creating businesses that runs in parallel with the traditional product development process.

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Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

crowdSPRING Blog

JANUARY 13, 2012

When Reviewing A New Idea, Never Forget Its First Impression – [link]. It’s no secret that visitor data measured by Alexa, Compete and others is flat our wrong – [link]. Legal Contracts for Software Developers Who Hate Contracts (w/free contract template tco use today) – [link].

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 93

Software By Rob

MARCH 12, 2009

Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← What is the Micropreneur Academy? of DotNetInvoice (my asp.net billing product) about 2 weeks ago. Within a week we were slogging through code and wiring up gateways like crazy.

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Software By Rob

APRIL 21, 2010

I cover topics that affect software and web startups of all sizes, but mostly relating to startups you can fund yourself. I have a harder time accepting people who have paid for a product or service, then request a specific feature they think is important really rudely. 10 comments ↓ #1 Neo_L on 04.21.10 6 Dan on 04.21.10

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Software Review RSS Software Developers Software Development 65

Software By Rob

AUGUST 5, 2010

You own a wall of books, or perhaps a Kindle or iPad bulging at the edge of its hard disk with non-fiction you’ve earmarked for future reading. Nor will it save you a single minute during product development, or sell one more copy of your application. Knowing you need to make your product remarkable is one thing.

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Founder Startup Software Review Software 78

Software By Rob

AUGUST 18, 2010

Not too long ago it seemed like every product I knew was offering some sort of free plan. The strategy was brilliant: get loads of people using your product and eventually turn them into paying customers. We want people to experience the product, the interface, the usefulness of what we’ve built.

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maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

Building Product 2. Product/Metrics (70%/30% time) * Get your product activation (sign-up + meaningful action) to 60% * then, Get your product retention to 20% weekly. Would it be a good idea clubbing all the other products / services under 1 venture, because some of them are totally unrelated. Build something.

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Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Find Questions, Topics and People Add Question Add Question Non-Technical Co-Founders Co-Founders Technical Co-founders Finding Co-Founders Startups & "How Important Are Ideas?" " Web Development Startups Solo Founders I am a creative guy with a startup idea. 24 Comments • Nov 8, 2010 I love this answer.

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Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

Software By Rob

JULY 14, 2009

She will likely produce a better finished product than I can. Drip outsourcing has become invaluable to my productivity. This ties back into a topic I’ve spoken about previously: when it comes to your product should you build it, buy it or hire it out? Outsource your product architecture?

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Software Review Startup HTML RSS 44

crowdSPRING Blog

AUGUST 4, 2010

Why software startups decide to patent … or not – [link]. Interesting perspective on why New York City could never compete in tech – [link]. The end of Google’s experiment with Wave as a standalone product – [link]. The Key to Non-Profit Website #Design : An Attempt for a Cause – [link].

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

The right sort of person is so passionate about coding, they can’t be stopped from doing it. But every day spent in that kitchen is a day NOT spent in a real kitchen, learning how to cook real food, and write real code. Full discloure, I am a former PHP, Perl, ColdFusion, ActionScript, VB.NET, ASP.NET and C# developer.

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Java PHP Software Review Coder 107

sivers.org

JUNE 25, 2010

They log in to translate the documents, one at a time, marking each finished when done, which sends the file back to the company for review.” Also important: Only go for providers who have great reviews from many past customers. Decline bids from providers without many great reviews. The translator rejects or approves.

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CTO Hire Hiring Software Review Technical Review 84

Software By Rob

SEPTEMBER 22, 2009

I’ve heard for years about the importance of finding a market before building a software product. Years later I’ve realized that the single most important factor to a product’s success is not the founders, not the marketing effort, and certainly not the software itself. “That’s ridiculous!&#

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