If there is one super-important-do-not-forget mantra I have learned to heed during my short time in start-up land, it’s this:
Keep it Moving
If you don’t keep it moving, you’ll feel as if you, your company, and your dreams are stagnating, and in turn your soul will be crushed.
And that would be bad.
A good heuristic for thinking about how to price a product/service, especially one that doesn’t lead to immediate gratification.
Read more here:
In the first case, we have something like purchasing food. Immediately that hamburger has a lot of value (you’re hungry right?) but after you eat it, the value is largely gone.
In the second case, there are products that deliver the same amount of value to you every day. A newspaper subscription is a great example of this. Every day it shows up at your door and you get the same value from it each time.
In the final case, you see a product whose value increases over time. On day one, you haven’t invested much time into it and you probably don’t even understand how it helps you. However, as you use it more and more and put more into it, the value because increasingly clear. Services like Dropbox and Evernote are perfect examples of this.
Mailchimp is an awesome Atlanta success story, and an organization that doesn’t really function like a traditional company. A lot of their company projects - and a lot of what their customers love them for - have nothing to do with their actual ‘business’ (how they make money). Initiatives like:
This is a great talk by their CEO & Founder, Ben Chestnut, that will get you thinking about what it means to be a successful CEO or manager and how to create a company culture that encourages innovation & creativity.
I’m sure everyone has heard by now that Peyton Manning signed with the Denver Broncos last week. It was probably the biggest free agent signing in NFL history; at the very least, it was the latest notable instance in an ongoing series of all-time great QBs switching teams late in their careers (see: Brett Favre, Joe Namath, Johnny U).
Peter King at SI wrote a great piece that covered the day-by-day pursuit of Peyton Manning, and the article resonated with me both as a football fan and as a recruiter. We just brought on a CTO (!) at Frequentr, and I’ve realized that the basics of recruiting someone to your company vs. recruiting a Hall of Fame QB in the NFL really aren’t all that different. For the most part.
Is Peyton Manning a developer? Biz dev specialist? Marketing whiz? No (though he is a kickass salesman…). And his salary is 10x an average Series A round. But play along for a few minutes.
Atlanta pride
I left a great job at a great company to start Frequentr. It was a tough decision, for sure – I was giving up a nice salary, an environment with smart, enjoyable co-workers, and a clear career path – but you know what’s really tough? Realizing that it’s all you now.
This is an awesome post about one of my favorite new products.
Like millions of other people this week, I found out about DollarShaveClub through its undeniably hilarious viral intro video, “Our Blades Are F****** Great”. I will leave it to someone else to pick apart how incredibly brilliant the video itself is (insofar as any form of advertising can be…
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1-star review of Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles (Hollywood) by Claudia B.
I’m late to the party, but FYY is solid gold. It’s like browsing through a case study of everything that’s wrong with review-driven apps.
(Source: fuckyouyelper)
My take on ‘off the shelf’ solutions for pre-launch landing pages.
In my post on Landing Pages yesterday, I spoke about my desire to have more informative, tailored landing pages for pre-alpha/beta companies. Though I was not referring to them in my post, a friend of mine is building a site called Frequentr (personal food & hotel recommendations) that is…
