Ryan Waggoner's Comments

MightyBrand : Transparency is Bullshit; We Don't Want to See Everything

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 02:15:15 +0000

Perhaps, though I'm not sure one has a lot to do with the other. Regardless, American Airlines has to deal with the situation they have today, and while moving towards *more* transparency and *less* bureaucracy are worthy goals, going too fast is likely to only result in more dissatisfaction.

MightyBrand : Transparency is Bullshit; We Don't Want to See Everything

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 02:12:54 +0000

Yes, government is a different beast, though I was a Navy intelligence analyst, so I'm not really in favor of full transparency there either :)

MightyBrand : Got Customers, Part 2: The One in Which We Save the Startup but Lose Our Souls

Wed, 6 Jan 2010 00:43:52 +0000

Fair question that we're still trying to work through, but here are a few things off the top of my head: 1. We understand the needs and motivations of small businesses more. 2. There are a litany of very expensive tools available to large companies already that are cost-prohibitive for small and medium businesses, which is one reason we did this in the first place. 3. We've moved away from social media monitoring towards social media engagement tools and the problems in the engagement space are a lot harder for Fortune 100 enterprises. All that said, we're keeping an open mind and we're always open to discussions around how we can learn more about our customers needs and how we can better serve them. It wouldn't be any fun if we weren't scrambling to keep up :)

Marketing Technology Blog : I Have No Competition

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:49:40 +0000

I can't agree with this more. I think way too much time is spent focusing on and worrying about competitors. Especially in markets as dynamic as social media and SEO, which are growing so fast, there's lots of room for competition, and you're far more likely to die because you don't align well with customers than because your competitors are eating your lunch.

Marketing Technology Blog : The Greatest Marketing Tool Ever!

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:01:33 +0000

This can't be said enough. And yet companies *still* don't seem to get it. This is something we are starting to talk about more on our blog, and we're going to be digging deeper on how exactly companies can go from social media marketing to social media customer service, but I still think the first step is just reminding companies that customer service is the best marketing tool out there.

MightyBrand : Got customers? How we almost sunk our startup before it started.

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:03:11 +0000

Thanks for reading. Our next post will detail more about our customer development process, what we found, and what we did with it. Hopefully it'll be useful for you. Thanks again!

MightyBrand : Got customers? How we almost sunk our startup before it started.

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:24:05 +0000

Thanks for the comment. Admitting failure or weakness is something we avoided for awhile, but we've gotten such good reception when we've opened up and shared the things we've learned that we're starting to realize there's a lot of other people out there who are interested in avoiding the mistakes we've made, and we're really happy if we can help with that. Thanks again for reading!

PS - Instigator and Standout Jobs both look amazing. Is SJ doing well?

MightyBrand : Got customers? How we almost sunk our startup before it started.

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:56:25 +0000

That's a ridiculously nice thing to say :) The pain of rejection is rough, especially in the middle of the emotional roller coaster that is the startup life, and it's easy to avoid that pain in a startup because there's a million other things to do that feel great and give the illusion of "progress", as you mentioned. Even now, I'm responding to comments (which I love doing) instead of talking to customers about our product and finding out what they don't like (which hurts). Baby steps, I guess... :) Thanks for reading and for your comment!

MightyBrand : Got customers? How we almost sunk our startup before it started.

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:09:50 +0000

Ash, I definitely agree on the mind shift; I think the really difficult part is that launching a startup is an inherently creative endeavor, and you do have to rely on gut instinct a lot, especially when you don't even have knobs you can adjust yet. But you also have to temper that with data and learn how to develop experiments to test and verify your gut-level instincts as much as possible. Thanks for reading and for your comment! PS - Your blog looks like a great start. I can really identify with your decision to move from a freemium model with BoxCloud to a premium / trial model, as it's exactly what we did with MightyBrand. In the long run, there may be some disadvantages that will push us back to the freemium model, it's afforded us the ability to tighten our feedback loop and make the most of very limited resources, which is crucial when you're bootstrapping. I'll be watching for your next post!

MightyBrand : Got customers? How we almost sunk our startup before it started.

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:59:35 +0000

Wow, that's quite a compliment. We're really happy that people seem to have gotten something useful out of this post, and we'll definitely keep pulling the curtain back and talking about our own journey. More successful startups is good for everyone, and we definitely hope we can help others avoid the mistakes we've made. Thanks for reading! PS - In part 2, we're going to cover some pitfalls to avoid once you start doing customer development, so that may be interesting to you as well.

MightyBrand : Got customers? How we almost sunk our startup before it started.

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:14:33 +0000

We're beginning to agree :) I'm not sure what it is about tech people that makes us so afraid to pick up the phone or knock on a door instead of send an email or a tweet, but we've had great results as we've started doing that. Maybe it's like you say, we're just afraid that they won't like our product, so we keep them at a distance. Anyway, thanks for reading, and please share the article to others you think might benefit. Thanks!

MightyBrand : Got customers? How we almost sunk our startup before it started.

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:12:39 +0000

Glad you enjoyed it! We'll be posting a lot more stuff like this, so stay tuned. If there's anything in particular you'd like us to to talk about, please let us know!