Its the little things that make or break success, here is a couple of examples from industry giants Continue reading »
From Freemium to Premium – the Microsoft way
A couple of days ago, I was on a Skype call, and wanted to share the screen with my colleague. Well, lo and behold, I get the below – “you need Skype premium to make video calls”: (click to enlarge): My immediate reaction was, of course, unbridled anger at “the man” and rage at how Microsoft, … Continue reading »
How to get half a million users in a day
Google is dropping the Google Reader product. While painful, this is not what the below is about. This is about how a relatively small (my Linkedin search lists a handful of employees) company made all the right moves in capturing the user migration away from Google, gaining fame, 500K users and hopefully – fortune. A word about the … Continue reading »
Live and Learn from RFP to RFP !
I recently saw John Warrillow’s Inc Magazine article: “Death by RFP: 7 Reasons Not To Respond” and felt I need to retort. John makes an excellent point that RFPs suck away time and effort, and can be dangerous to the small, bootstrapped, startup. But that is only a very limited view of a wider situation. … Continue reading »
Why truth in “Marketing” is not the same for “Engineering” and why its OK
With regards to forming an opinion on something, engineering life is relatively simple: it either “is” or “is not”. Black or white. There is a bug in this flow, or there is not* . In marketing – or any other business related discussion – you have to ask for context. A yes (or no) at … Continue reading »
Performance – show it if you got it!
I have discussed, in the past, that performance is to be measured and tracked, especially in a world where consumer attention wanes after a few seconds (so bad performance means losing customers). Well, I have found a tremendous example: Heathrow is one of the most expensive airports in the world in passenger charges, as well … Continue reading »
The story of the stranded POC
[Ninja Tel - a fantastic cellular tower POC by defcon.] …It all began with the following conversation [artistic liberties abused]: “Operations Gal“: We need to delete all those freeloader free accounts using our service. “Director of Products“: Sounds great, do that. [time passes] “Operations Gal“: We are deleting the 50,000 free accounts not marked as … Continue reading »
How I toured a government situation room (or: security in practice)
Today, I toured the Ministry of Foreign Affairs situation room. For an Israeli, this is an exciting landmark as this is the heart of operations for events such as the rescue of diplomats from an angry mob during the Arab Spring, coordinating Israeli aid during the Japanese Tsunami and more. One interesting part of the tale is how … Continue reading »
Saas – consider CRM from day two
While most startups do not have CRM initially, many do have a lead-based automated marketing machine from day one. Very often, the technology is developed first thing and later on, comes the marketing organization. A good marketing process today works off lead generation and tracking, leading likely opportunities to the site using a combination of … Continue reading »
Impersonation for fun and profit (and customer value)
One of the greatest values of SaaS products is that you don’t really need to care about the underpinnings. It’s out “there” in the cloud, humming away. But things will always go wrong. In that case, how do you best leverage the power of SaaS to give your customers the urgent help they deserve? While … Continue reading »
