THE PENDING DRAFT

Reconsider – David Heinemeier Hansson

November 10, 2015

Our definition of winning didn’t even include establishing that hallowed sanctity of the natural monopoly! We didn’t win by eradicating the competition. By sabotaging their rides, poaching their employees, or spending the most money in the shortest amount of time… We prospered in an AND world, not an OR world. We could succeed AND others could succeed.

All this may sound soft, like we have a lack of aspiration. I like to call it modest. Realistic. Achievable. It’s a designed experience and a deliberate pursuit that recognizes the extremely diminishing returns of life, love, and meaning beyond a certain level of financial success. In fact, not only diminishing, but negative returns for a lot of people.

A great post by David Heinemeier Hansson. Read it!

Reconsider

Google creates new parent company “Alphabet”

August 11, 2015

Our company is operating well today, but we think we can make it cleaner and more accountable. So we are creating a new company, called Alphabet. I am really excited to be running Alphabet as CEO with help from my capable partner, Sergey, as President.

What is Alphabet? Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google. This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main internet products contained in Alphabet instead. What do we mean by far afield? Good examples are our health efforts: Life Sciences (that works on the glucose-sensing contact lens), andCalico (focused on longevity). Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related.

Google just announced that they created a new company called “Alphabet”, which will be the holding company for all their different efforts with Google being the largest of them.

Read the Announcement at abc.xyz

Baymard Institute – E-Commerce Usability Research

July 23, 2015

Baymard conducts original large-scale research studies on e-commerce usability.

The research is published in articles, reports, and benchmark databases. Topics include e-commerce search, homepage and navigation design, the checkout process, and mobile sites.

If you are looking for extensive research on E-Commerce Usability, look no further. The full guidelines are priced at $150 each but there’s also a lot of articles for free.

Baymard Institute

Joseph Walla on growing revenue from $0 to $1+ mio, twice

June 15, 2015

A great article about growing revenue as a Startup, especially with a SaaS product. He talks about a lot of points that many startups get wrong or struggle with, from being too cheap (or free) to early split-testing, what metrics to use and missed marketing opportunities.

And, above all, how important it is to charge for your product as soon as possible:

Charging is a powerful indicator that you’re building something people want. If you’re not charging, you’re likely spending money (development time = money) building features your users don’t really want. People who pay you have opinions about what to build next. Making them happy will lead to more people like them paying you (with this caveat: Don’t build a Galapagos product)

It’s a very refreshing post which debunks some of the popular truisms about pricing or startup business in general. Worth a read.

43 lessons growing from $0 to $1+ million in revenue, twice

Seth Godin: Overcoming the extraction mindset

June 12, 2015

Thirty years ago, I asked the fabled rock promoter Bill Graham a question that I thought was brilliant, but he pwned me in his response. “Bill, given how fast a Bruce Springsteen concert sells out, why don’t you charge $100 a seat and keep all the upside?” (In those days, $100 was considered a ridiculous sum for a concert ticket).

“Well, I could do that, but the thing is, I’m here all year round, and my kids only have a limited budget to spend on concerts. If I charged that much for one concert, they wouldn’t be able to come to the other shows I book…”

Bill wasn’t just spreading the money out over time. He was investing in a community that could develop a habit of music going, a community that would define itself around what he was building.

(Seth Godin)

Another great post by Seth Godin about short-term decisions and what he calls the extraction mindset versus long-term thinking.

Seth Godin – Overcoming the extraction mindset

Turn Unhappy Customers Into Brand Promoters

June 9, 2015

Supporting people who complain about your product can be hard. In my (short) time in retail I had quite a bit of experiences with clients who where unhappy for various reasons. One thing I learned is that a complaint is not just “not a bad thing”, it’s actually the best thing that can happen to you. People who complain to you directly are actively giving you a chance to help them, instead of walking away in anger and telling everyone else how miserable their experience with you was.

Of course, complaints can come in different flavors, sometimes they can be intimidating and it can be easy to fall into the trap and take them personally. Jessica Malnik has some very good tipps on what to do with unhappy clients and why it is important to have a crisis scenario in place.

While reading her post I remembered this little story I read some days ago. Check out this tweet and don’t miss to read the linked support thread, it’s a perfect real life example of how to “turn em around”!

Note to myself: Someone should make nice “turn em around”-shirts for support staff.

How To Turn Your Most Unhappy Customers Into Brand Promoters