May, 2011

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The Amazon outage and SaaS marketers' response

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

I'm sure the recent service outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) had lots of engineers scurrying around, looking for a fix. I've been at a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider when the solution's gone down. The operations and support people work through the night and weekends. Marketing people aren't completely off the hook, though. They should be doing some scurrying around too.

AWS 100
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Saying "no"

The Angel VC

Being an angel investor is a fantastic job. Every day you meet great new people, cool products, exciting technologies and interesting new business models. Nothing (in business life) is more exciting than seeing a company grow from two-guys-in-a-garage stage to become a relevant or maybe even dominant player in a large industry sector, and as an early-stage investor you have a realistic chance to be part of some of these success stories.

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Marketing numbers can lie

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

I barely passed an accounting course in college. The only thing I remember was a joke about "debits by the window and credits by the door." I didn't understand the joke then, and I'm still confused by T accounts now. Thankfully, in a stint as a bank credit analyst, I did finally gain some fluency with business numbers. I learned to cope with, if not exactly love, current ratios, inventory turnover, and return on equity calculations.

Marketing 100