A Smart Bear

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Real Unfair Advantages

July 19, 2010 How-To

It's not a question of if someone copies your business idea, it's when, and what are you going to do about it?

Here's some ways to earn competitive advantages which cannot easily be overcome.

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No, that IS NOT a competitive advantage

July 12, 2010 Essays

Listening to first-time entrepreneurs talk about their competitive advantages is as predictably invalid as the local weatherman's 10-day forecast.

Here's the top, invalid competitive advantages startup founders like to claim.

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5 Lessons from 150 startup pitches

July 11, 2010 How-To

After reviewing several hundred startup pitches for Capital Factory, I found several extremely common problems. You're probably making the same mistakes — I did have too ten years ago — so let's get that fixed.

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Human + Fallible = Love; Corporate + Sterile = Refund

June 28, 2010 Essays

A lovely new company/customer etiquette has emerged, and small startups are especially suited for capitalizing on it (literally). I hope you're not ignoring it.

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Out of the cesspool and into the sewer: A/B testing trap

June 21, 2010 Essays

Don't get caught in a cycle of useless A/B testing. Sometimes you need to try something radically different, and sometimes that can change more than just your AdWords campaign.

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The Pattern-Seeking Fallacy

June 14, 2010 Essays

You don't believe Nostradamus was prescient, because you know that if you write enough vaugely enough and stretch the match enough, you can make anything look like anything.

And yet, you're making the same fallacy every day with Google Analytics and other marketing and sales data.

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Taking "Fail Fast" to a whole... 'nutha... level

June 10, 2010 Essays

It's not that you ought to fail, it's that you are constantly failing. Ignore it at your peril.

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Telling the 800-lb Gorilla to Shove it up his Ass

May 31, 2010 Essays

You worry about competition from the big, brand-name, deep-pocketed company.

But there are better things to worry about and ways to avoid running into gorillas in the first place.

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Bending over: How to sell to large companies

May 24, 2010 Guest Posts

Selling to big companies can be lucrative, and small bootstrapped startups absolutely have the power to sell to the big boys.

But it's a very different world than you're used to. Here's what you can expect and how to deal with it.

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Tech Support is sales

May 17, 2010 Essays

If you think of tech support as the bottom of the corporate food chain, you're exactly wrong. Tech support is a powerful channel for product development, marketing, and sales; don't squander it!

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Solving the "marketplace" business model

May 10, 2010 How-To

I'm amazed how many startups follow the "marketplace" pattern but don't acknowledge or address the peculiar difficulties of that model. Here's some guidance.

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