August, 2012

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Death by a thousand small features

Tom Tunguz

In 2010, Gaia Online started a user acquisition campaign to grow their user base. To simplify the on boarding process, they launched the Big Red Button home page below. It worked. Conversion rates from the home page spiked. Simple user experiences, like this big red button, are effective because users understand what is expected of them. There is just one flow.

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Subscription price and customer acquisition costs

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

Here's an inquiry from the SaaS Marketing mailbox: Dear SaaS Marketing guy, Do software-as-a- service (SaaS) solutions with a high subscription price per customer have a better chance of success than solutions with a low subscription price? Sincerely, Earnest, but Confused SaaS Solution Developer Dear EbCSSD, Here's the good news: Whether your solution carries a high subscription price or a low subscription price, either one can succeed.

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Simplicity. Quality. Inspiration.

Tom Tunguz

Two weeks ago, James Reinhart, founder and CEO of ThredUp , led his company through a branding exercise. The team spent an afternoon comparing and contrasting the brand attributes of Starbucks and Peets, Whole Foods and Safeway and a few other competitive pairs. The team quickly distilled each company’s brand into one word. Long ago, each of these brand selected the value that would define their brand.

Branding 101
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The tension between predictability and creativity

Tom Tunguz

In every one of my conversations with Peter Lehrman, founder of AxialMarket, he always speaks about AxialMarket as “the business.” Never the company, the startup or any other word. At first blush I thought it was a trivial semantic difference, a New York-ism, but over time I’ve come to realize this word choice marks a significant difference that manifests itself in culture, product and go to market.

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Beyond the Basics of A/B Tests: Highly Innovative Experimentation Tactics You Need to Know

Speaker: Timothy Chan, PhD., Head of Data Science

Are you ready to move beyond the basics and take a deep dive into the cutting-edge techniques that are reshaping the landscape of experimentation? 🌐 From Sequential Testing to Multi-Armed Bandits, Switchback Experiments to Stratified Sampling, Timothy Chan, Data Science Lead, is here to unravel the mysteries of these powerful methodologies that are revolutionizing how we approach testing.

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Consumer investment fatigue

Tom Tunguz

Many of the promising marketing and media innovations of the past six years, daily deals, subscription ecommerce, social gaming and social media, have been struggling. This trend is plain to see from IPO performance and negative press cycles. I’ve been asked a few times whether there is consumer investment fatigue as a result. Fatigue is too strong a characterization.

More Trending

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On negotiation

Tom Tunguz

We negotiate every day in almost every conversation and exchange, whether it’s rescheduling a flight, asking for a product return or responding to a term sheet. I’ve been reading Getting More , a book by Stuart Diamond, who trains the military, Google and many others on negotiation. Everyone should read it. This book is set apart because it recognizes the nature of relationships, emotion and human nature, forgoing concepts like ZOPA and BATNA.

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How much is a social media click worth?

Tom Tunguz

How much is a social media click worth compared to a email click or a search click for an eCommerce site? Monetate, makers of optimization software for eCommerce landing pages released data answering this question. Channel. Conversion Rates. AOV. CPC Relative Worth. Email. 4.25%. 90.4. $1.000. Search. 2.49%. 82.72. $0.536. Social. 0.59%. 64.19. $0.0986.

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The most important question a startup can ask

Tom Tunguz

At the center of every startup is a secret. A secret is not an unknown. Rather, it’s something just not widely believed to be achievable or feasible. In other words, it’s an insight. Exploiting that secret should be the aim of every entrepreneur. Leveraging the secret means disruption and ultimately success. The genesis of every secret is the word why.

Startup 100
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Segmenting the SaaS Market for Sales

Tom Tunguz

Developing a sales strategy is critical for software-as-a-service (SaaS) startups. The first step in developing a sales strategy is to build a robust market segmentation. I’ve used data from the US Census to develop a segmentation that reveals some surprising facts about the SMB market and may help inform your startup’s sales strategy. Chart 1: 98% of businesses in the US employ fewer than 100 people. 98% of businesses in the US employ between 1 to 4 people.

Marketing 100
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How Investors & Strategic Buyers Evaluate Integrated Payment Strategies

Explore how integrated payment strategies impact investor and buyer evaluations. Payments are more than a feature — they’re a key to long-term success and market differentiation. They help SaaS companies offer seamless user experiences and efficient operations. Investors and strategic buyers assess these integrated payment strategies as a measure of a company's growth potential and sustainability.

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Segmenting the SaaS Market for Sales

Tom Tunguz

Developing a sales strategy is critical for software-as-a-service (SaaS) startups. The first step in developing a sales strategy is to build a robust market segmentation. I’ve used data from the US Census to develop a segmentation that reveals some surprising facts about the SMB market and may help inform your startup’s sales strategy. Chart 1: 98% of businesses in the US employ fewer than 100 people. 98% of businesses in the US employ between 1 to 4 people.

Marketing 100
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All great managers are alike

Tom Tunguz

Hollywood and Silicon Valley often seems worlds apart. While movie making and startup building may always be very different endeavors, great managers use the same techniques in every discipline to empower their teams, hire the right people, and change the world. Over the weekend, I watched Woody Allen: A Documentary which profiles the great director through the words of his actors, editors and producers.

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All Great Managers are Alike

Tom Tunguz

Hollywood and Silicon Valley often seems worlds apart. While movie making and startup building may always be very different endeavors, great managers use the same techniques in every discipline to empower their teams, hire the right people, and change the world. Over the weekend, I watched Woody Allen: A Documentary which profiles the great director through the words of his actors, editors and producers.

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The Path to Exponential Growth

Tom Tunguz

For years, a product can grow linearly before suddenly seeing compounding growth. Facebook is a great example. From 2004 to 2007, the company grew at a fairly linear rate. And then, the magic happened! The network effects kicked in and exponential growth ensued. Linear growth always precedes exponential growth. For market places, in social networks or in advertising exchanges, the story is always the same.

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The Big Payoff of Application Analytics

Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business. That’s what drove the five companies in this e-book to change their approach to analytics. Download this e-book to learn about the unique problems each company faced and how they achieved huge returns beyond expectation by embedding analytics into applications.

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The Freemium Game Plan

Tom Tunguz

I love freemium businesses. I have met with many of them, work with one and if I were to start one, this would be my game plan, the characteristics of the product, market, distribution channels, conversion point and team. Product Characteristics. The existing solutions are either email and spreadsheets or software architected before the turn of the century.

Mobile 100