Who’s lying?
@ASmartBear
by Jason
2y ago
Click to RT (source) We had been flying for four hours, but both gas gauges still read “full.” I didn’t need a pilot’s license to know that couldn’t be right, nor to feel the rush of adrenaline in my gums at the thought of the engine sputtering to an eerie quiet death, propeller blades windmilling as we scream “mayday mayday” and “set it down over there” like in the movies, hopefully including the part where the heroes confidently stride away while the wreckage ignites in a fireball, such a banal event in their exhilarating life that they can’t even be bothered to glance back at the carnag ..read more
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What’s The Important Thing, that is powerful enough to override all your deficiencies?
@ASmartBear
by Jason
2y ago
Do you feel the crushing weight of the disadvantages facing every new company? No brand, no features, no customers, no money, no distribution, no search engine rankings, no efficient advertising, no incredible executive team, no NPS, no strategy. How do the successful startups rise above all that? Do they solve all those problems at once, or at least quickly? No. I apologize in advance for using the dang iPhone as an example but… The iPhone is one of the most successful and important products of the past few decades. But the first version launched with a mountain of issues. It was a terrible ..read more
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Capturing Luck with “or” instead of “and”
@ASmartBear
by Jason
2y ago
I won a fake stock market competition in elementary school.  I put all my money in a few penny stocks — where prices are less than a dollar, and because of their small denomination, their value (as a percentage) fluctuates wildly. Some days I had the worst portfolio, other days I had the best. The competition happened to end on an up-day. This was an example of “high risk, high reward.” Like startups. Startups need luck too, in finding advertisement channels that work, in the right mix of features and usability that triggers product/market fit, in cultivating a useful social media presen ..read more
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Kung Fu
@ASmartBear
by Jason
2y ago
Startup strategy is like Kung Fu. There are many styles that work. But in a bar fight, you’re going to get punched in the face regardless. I can only teach you my style. Others can only teach you theirs. This is my style. “MVPs” are too M to be V. They’re a selfish ploy, tricking people who thought they were customers into being alpha testers. Build SLCs instead. I don’t like freemium; I want to learn from people who care enough to pay, not from the 20x more who don’t.  Founders almost never have a real strategy. They say things like “we have a unique feature” and “the incumbents are dum ..read more
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When “fits and starts” is the most efficient path
@ASmartBear
by Jason
2y ago
You roll down the windows and wear a helmet when you take your car to the track. This does not make me less terrified of a fiery death. The American Autocross champion was sitting in my passenger seat screaming at me to not let my foot off the pedal until I bounced off the RPM limiter. She was properly intense. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it’s fun to power through curves in a high-speed tenuously-controlled skid in my Mini Cooper S (plus Cooperworks). The proper driving strategy for Autocross is bizarre. It is possibly the worst-case scenario for wear and tear on a car. The strategy s ..read more
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A Scorecard: Should a decision be fast, or slow?
@ASmartBear
by Jason
2y ago
We all know that startups should make decisions quickly. Fast decisions leads to rapid action, which accelerates the loop of production and feedback, which is how you outpace and out-learn a competitor, even one that already has a lead. But some decisions should not be made in haste, like a key executive hire, or how to price, or whether to raise money, or whether to invest millions of dollars in a new product line. How do you know when your current decision should be made slowly: contemplative, collaborative, deliberate, data-driven, even agonizing? I’ve made the following scorecard to figur ..read more
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How repositioning a product allows you to 8x its price
@ASmartBear
by Jason
2y ago
Pricing is often more about positioning and perceived value than it is about cost-analysis and unconvincing ROI calculators. As a result, repositioning can allow you to charge many times more than you think. Here’s how. You’ve created a marketing tool called DoubleDown that doubles the cost-efficiency of AdWords campaigns. You heard that right folks — as a marketer, you can generate the same impact, the same number of conversions, the same quality of sales leads, but with half your current ad-spend. Wonderful! Who doesn’t want higher ROI. What can you charge for this tool? Clearly y ..read more
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WP Engine passes $100M in revenue and secures $250M investment from Silver Lake
@ASmartBear
by Jason
2y ago
People said there’s no money in hosting. WordPress is just a toy. After the success of Smart Bear, I should be setting my sights on something big, not this. I’m sure people said similar things to Heather when she joined as our CEO. The Silicon Valley-oriented technology press outlets don’t cover us because we’re not in San Francisco, even though we’re more successful than most of the startups they cover. We’ve come a long way from switching this blog to WordPress in 2009, my systematic vetting of the business idea in 2009 (after needing it myself due to the success of this blog crashing my de ..read more
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Brittleness comes from “One Thing”
@ASmartBear
by Jason
2y ago
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. But what about the companies that die even though they did sell some copies of software, and where the early team isn’t dysfunctional? I don’t have data for that cohort (tell me if you do!), but informally I’ve observed the following things, which follow a pattern that can be identified and counteracted: The initial marketing channel quickly saturated, so growth stalled at a non-zero but unsustainably-l ..read more
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You can have two Big Things, but not three
@ASmartBear
by Jason
2y ago
Forget work/life integration for a minute. How much time do you have, regardless of partitioning? From your 24-hour daily allotment, the 1950s-style break-down is 8 hours for work, 8 for home and commute, and 8 for sleep and ablutions. So, “work” and “home” are the two things in which you can spend 40+ hours per week. This is the amount of time it takes to tackle something huge. A career. A parent. A startup. There are weekends and vacations and sick days and such, but those don’t add up to enough concentrated time to carry off something like a startup without causing work or home to suff ..read more
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