I help startups build repeatable revenue through marketing modeling and tactics that feel more like math than mystery by interviewing your customers to identify your Ideal Customer Profile, and then build that ICP into a revenue and growth model https://www.loom.com/share/82af3600c72d4357ba83df04008e4da0.
As part of this work, we'll look at Annual Contract Price for a customer, Cost Per Lead, length of sales cycle relative to deal size amongst other things. This helps align personas and messaging, and clear demographic and firmographic criteria with sales and marketing investments like hiring and demand generating activities.
I definitely started with zero tech experience (and perhaps some ambivalence towards the industry), and build a career out of not much.
- Graduated with a writing degree at the height of the 2008-2009 recession
- Very minimal business experience
- No clue about tech, startups, or entrepreneurship
What I ended up doing was writing job descriptions at startup companies, selling my ability to do content marketing and community marketing until one hired me. Then I did it again 2 years later, got hired again, and then moved to San Francisco to help open a satellite office.
The rest is history.
I wrote more about how other people can create tech jobs from nothing in the book Itamar mentions, and if you want a high level look, the following blog post will be useful:
This is a post to my corporate site, but I created a list of case studies / blog posts of folks discussing how they've moved over: datawire.io/microservices-stories.
I have a bigger list that I haven't had time to put on the site. If you'd like them, I'm happy to create an open google sheet for you.
Yep, it starts. I happen to really love driving, clean record, etc. In 10 years, it's going to be getting touchy for folks who still prefer driving themselves rather than letting the self-driving cars do it. The freedom will be exchanged for safety, and nobody will blink.
Flip those around to positives, because they are relative and preferences, and you've got the recipe for why Austinites love Austin, the weather being among the top 3 reasons.
Also, Texas is objectively a better place to start a business, other than funding sources. Your tax rate is about HALF of what it is in California.
It is harder, frankly. But the counter-argument that Austinites make is that they don't need as much funding, and prefer to avoid large amounts of investment in favor of a more bootstrapped company that is (probably) more stable and a long-term business.
It's a stylistic thing. Obviously, some companies require tons of funding, and are best-suited to SF/The Valley.
Full responsibility, on the surface, means that Manning is taking full responsibility under the law, and is not shying away from the legal consequences of his actions. He knows that according to the laws and the power structure, he's accountable for his actions which threaten said laws and power structure. Those self-interested parties will react in the appropriate way to defend the status quo.
Full responsibility to history means something else entirely.
Full responsibility to history means that Manning doesn't shy away from the responsibility he has in challenging a corrupt power structure, and fighting for the rule of law. He's accepting responsibility for standing up for truth, in spite of the legal consequences. He's accepting full responsibility for being part of something bigger than himself.
It's a fair point, and you balance out the spectrum of "touchy feely vs. effective," but it's just that: a spectrum. People don't have to be abrasive and impossible to deal with in order to be brilliant, and people don't have to be in touch with their emotions and have good bedside manner to be incompetent and a waste of oxygen.
I think his point that he "made it so far" on his first try is apropos. He's done a shitload as CEO to capitalize on the opportunity and generate a ton of value (debatable whether that will be long term value) in a way that few people ever do.
To fault the guy for having a good exit letter seems a bit myopic.
This is why the resume is broken, and why I drew a line in the sand for myself shortly after graduating college in 2009 that I would never get a job using a resume again. I would only find jobs via my reputation, connections, and by pitching the work that I thought needed to be done, and why I was the person to do it. Now, I was working the Austin, Texas startup community, and built a group of 120 startups at a local accelerator, so it's safe to say that I wasn't setting my career up for jobs that would have an HR manager.
That said, I broke my rule the next year, sent in a resume and went through a grueling process to ultimately get hired at a small consulting firm. Breaking my rule was a terrible decision, but fortunately its affects were quick to take effect, and short-lasting.
It was an awful job for me, but the company had a round of layoffs 90 days later that I was caught in.
My foot hit the pavement that day, and I realized it was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
I'm currently at a fast-growing, profitable startup. I got the job by pitching work and writing my own job description. I joined the company as employee #12. Not once did anyone ever ask me for a formal resume. All they cared about were results.
I have a beautiful resume somewhere on my hard drive. But I have even better results that you can see in my actual work.
I'm very curious to see what the technical review turns up tomorrow.
This feels like something that would have been connected to the Salesforce acquisition 3 years ago, and then making the service less efficient in order to increase profits or revenue targets on paid accounts. Not to mention saving money on the free ones.
It would be a little bit like Tesla not only selling you the Model S, but also selling you the electricity you charge the vehicle with. At some point, they make the car less efficient, forcing you to charge more often, and then claiming they didn't document this very well. Frankly, there are only so many people who will be a capable enough electrical engineer (or in Heroku's case, a sysadmin) to catch the difference and measure it.
The apology should be, "we misled you, and betrayed your trust. Here's how we're planning on resolving that, and working to rebuild our relationship with our customers over the next year. [Insert specific, sweeping measures...]
Product Marketing for startups
I help startups build repeatable revenue through marketing modeling and tactics that feel more like math than mystery by interviewing your customers to identify your Ideal Customer Profile, and then build that ICP into a revenue and growth model https://www.loom.com/share/82af3600c72d4357ba83df04008e4da0.
As part of this work, we'll look at Annual Contract Price for a customer, Cost Per Lead, length of sales cycle relative to deal size amongst other things. This helps align personas and messaging, and clear demographic and firmographic criteria with sales and marketing investments like hiring and demand generating activities.
gomarketmodel.com [email protected]
Thanks!