Jason Cohen
@asmartbear.com
Keyword, buzzword, half-truth, adjective, hey look at me! (founder of two unicorns: http://WPEngine.com, http://SmartBear.com). Writing for 18 years at: https://longform.asmartbear.com
100% free and open; no email required. 1. Determine your pricing strategy 2. Figure out why they’re compelled to buy 3. What to build next to justify raising prices
Set Your Price
Three skills, run in sequence, that build the value and desire behind your price and then charge for it — so customers value you more, love you more, and pay you more, for the right reasons.
skills.asmartbear.com
On Smart Bear Live E3 - Podsqueeze with Craig Hewitt: Workshopping how to restart growth after being stuck at €16K/mo. On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZSfcD94DQw Or Podcast: https://smartbearlive.com Video Short:
Heroku had countless “deal-breakers,” but `git push production` was so desirable, rails devs accepted the objections, and it (12-factor) changed how we built web apps. What’s your thing, so revolutionary that customers will overlook all objections?
The Important Thing--powerful enough to override all your deficiencies
This is the reason that startups succeed despite their many weaknesses. And it’s a reason to build a startup in the first place.
longform.asmartbear.com
On Smart Bear Live E3 - Podsqueeze with Craig Hewitt: Workshopping how to restart growth after being stuck at €16K/mo. On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZSfcD94DQw Or Podcast: https://smartbearlive.com Video Short:
“Just be 1% better every day, and you’ll be 37x better by the end of the year!” One of my pet peeves. It’s so incorrect, and therefore hides what you 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 do. Here’s why, and what to do instead:
Double your productivity without more work or stress
People love to say that getting “1% better per day” makes you 37x better after a year, but this obviously makes no sense. But 2x better is possible.
longform.asmartbear.com
On Smart Bear Live E3 - Podsqueeze with Craig Hewitt: Workshopping how to restart growth after being stuck at €16K/mo. On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZSfcD94DQw Or Podcast: https://smartbearlive.com Video Short:
New multi-skill AI workshop now available. 100% free and open; no email required. 1. Determine your pricing strategy 2. Figure out why they’re compelled to buy 3. What to build next to justify raising prices
Set Your Price
Three skills, run in sequence, that build the value and desire behind your price and then charge for it — so customers value you more, love you more, and pay you more, for the right reasons.
skills.asmartbear.com
LTV is usually BS but sometimes not BS. When? An article principally written and researched by @tanastaselos at @ChartMogul, co-authored by yours truly, a long-time skeptic of LTV. But now with 35k data points to back it up!
The SaaS LTV Report: Why LTV Predictions Are Systematically Wrong | ChartMogul
We stress-tested LTV against reality across 35,512 ChartMogul customer cohorts. The prediction errors are not random, they are systematic, and predictable by industry, size, and business model.
chartmogul.com
A company fails, publishing a post-mortem explaining they failed because 13 things went wrong. Nope. Also 13 things go wrong at the start of successful companies. The list is an excuse to avoid the truth: 1-2 things that had to go right, but didn’t.
It’s a torturous chaos until it isn’t
Even at wildly successful startups, the first few years are gut-wrenching, uncertain, on the brink of collapse, where pessimism is realism, and yet optimism is required.
longform.asmartbear.com
In our quest for A/B tests and metrics, we are in danger of losing the fun and value of creative work.
Maybe not so much with the “optimization”
In the quest for optimization, A/B tests, metrics, and funnels, we’re in danger of losing the fun and value of creative work.
longform.asmartbear.com
On Smart Bear Live E3 - Podsqueeze with Craig Hewitt: Workshopping how to restart growth after being stuck at €16K/mo. On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZSfcD94DQw Or Podcast: https://smartbearlive.com Video Short:
Forget the ROI calculators. They don’t work. That’s not how people buy:
“ROI” is the wrong way to sell your product
Customers ask for ROI calculations to justify purchasing your software, but it still doesn’t convince them. Here’s what to do instead.
longform.asmartbear.com
I just had an excellent support interaction over chat at transistor.fm. Which made me realize how rare that is nowadays. Kudos to them. /cc @justinjackson.ca
When it takes more effort to debate a decision than to execute one of the choices, just knock it out. But if execution risk is high, more deliberation or research is wise. More on when to decide quickly or not:
When should a decision be fast, or slow?
Decisions should usually be made quickly, to accelerate action and learning. But sometimes it really is smarter to take your time. Here’s how to decide.
longform.asmartbear.com
On Smart Bear Live E3 - Podsqueeze with Craig Hewitt: Workshopping how to restart growth after being stuck at €16K/mo for two years. On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZSfcD94DQw Or Podcast: https://smartbearlive.com
Don’t ignore your weaknesses. But don’t fret either. One at a time, pick one you 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 want to improve, and work on it. For the rest, design your career / job / product / company / strategy such that your weaknesses are irrelevant, or at least non-fatal.
Is the following true? (BTW I'm not sure it is.) Things that are designed to create growth, often also create cost or time savings. Things that are designed to save time or money, rarely also create top-line growth.
New Smart Bear Live E03 just dropped! Restarting growth at Podsqueeze after being stuck at €16K/mo for two years. Cohost Craig Hewitt (Castos) and I workshop it with Tiago Ferreira and João Amaro:
E03: Podsqueeze: Workshopping how to restart growth after being stuck at €16K/mo for two years
Tiago Ferreira and João Amaro bootstrapped their AI podcast-repurposing tool Podsqueeze from zero to €16K/mo in less than a year, but then watched it sit fla…
youtube.com
Outliers are so interesting! Of course: They’re different. Curious. Maybe impressive. So, the media loves them, social posts go viral about them, and you like it too. Nothing wrong with that. But they rarely have lessons to teach us. Definitionally they’re one-time things. (1/2)
You’re overwhelmed because you’re only one person and you have to do everything in the business, and you’ve never done most of this stuff, and you don’t 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 to do most of it either. Procrastination can actually be helpful.
Procrastinate for Success!
Procrastination can be a useful tool. You can’t do everything. So don’t.
longform.asmartbear.com
Building, creating, making, inventing, teaching, composing, certainly can be joyous, but much of the work isn’t necessarily -- practice, failure, blocked, not good enough. It’s about finding fulfillment rather than finding comfort.
Use The Nibble to take a bite out of massive projects that are staring you down. At minimum, you make a little progress; often it gets you in the mood, and you end up spending the next few hours making a lot of progress. (1/6)
Had a blast on the Ditching Hourly podcast with Jonathan Stark. Was fun talking about consulting rather than products, about growth in the age of AI and other timely topics:
Ditching Hourly | Jason Cohen - Hidden Multipliers
Double-unicorn founder (WP Engine and A Smart Bear), Jason Cohen, joined me on Ditching Hourly to talk about the ideas behind his new book, Hidden Multipliers. We talked about using AI as a facili…
podcast.ditchinghourly.com
There should be three options for allowing push notifications: yes, no, and "no, and I hate you for asking."
If you don’t decide and encode a system of values, then people won’t embody them except by accident. This is more and more true every time someone joins the team. Do you want a culture by accident, or on purpose?
In its emptiness, there is the function of a startup
Everything about a startup changes over time. The few things that don’t, are its essence. The voyage is meaningless, unless you decide what those things are.
longform.asmartbear.com
I know, many believe that a $1B company is possible with one person. But as a solo founder, that’s still not the goal. It’s not even close to happening, and if it did, it would be an outlier. That’s not why you got into this business. Rich, yes, not “$1B”.
Great article defining an MVP in detail from @focusedchaos.co. Also gives a solid argument against the "L" of my SLC (https://longform.asmartbear.com/slc/?utm_source=bluesky&utm_campaign=asmartbear_bluesky&utm_medium=social).
There’s Nothing Wrong with MVPs
The definition for MVP has been mangled almost beyond recognition. But I still think the concept works beautifully. (#43)
focusedchaos.co
The latest DSM has finally acknowledged that being Sith is actually a spectrum.
𝗔𝗱𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗲𝗱: 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗼𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗜 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵 𝟮-𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁𝘀? Once a week? Is "variable" OK? 2 hours is a lot (even if few listen to the whole thing). How often do you 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 a longform podcast to appear in your queue?
