4 ms·

Why big companies suck and startups should beat them

9 points by divia 20y ago

ivan 20y ago
this is the result of making simple things (un)done in the most complicated way :)
Sam_Odio 20y ago
I liked the article, but had a hard time connecting it to the title. I think, based on the title, the author was implying that SalesGenie is a "big company" while GoDaddy is a startup. GoDaddy is younger, but it's not much smaller. SalesGenie.com's revenue in '05 was $383 million while GoDaddy's estimated revenue was $200 million. Sources: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/070315/iusa10-k.html http://biz.yahoo.com/e/070315/iusa10-k.html http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7BBE70F068-321F-4777-8640-ECAACDBA077D%7D&source=blq%2Fyhoo&dist=yhoo&siteid=yhoo http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7BBE70F068-321F-4777-8640-ECAACDBA077D%7D&source=blq%2Fyhoo&dist=yhoo&siteid=yhoo
- brezina 20y ago
  Good call Sam. I should have chosen a better title. Maybe something like, "If you have $2.5M to spend on marketing you should at least spend $15/hr on website testing." The funniest thing is if you google "salesgenie superbowl commercial" our blog is the second result. http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=salesgenie+superbowl+commercial&btnG=Google+Search http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=salesgenie+superbowl+commercial&btnG=Google+Search We got a lot of click-throughs from a small town in Iowa which happens to be the home of Salesgenie.
  - danielha 20y ago
    Oh man, that commercial is pure cheese. If you guys ever somehow drunkenly decide to blow $2.5M on a commercial, make sure to include gratuitous explosions and an extended car chase sequence. Then, of course, relate it back to email somehow at the end.
AF 20y ago
This article doesn't make too much sense to me. First of all, as Sam mentioned, the companies aren't that much different in size. GoDaddy is not a startup, it is now a pretty large company and anyone who has money to throw around on Super Bowl commercials certainly isn't a little guy. Second, GoDaddy and SalesGenie have nothing to do with each other. GoDaddy sells domain names, SalesGenie deals with businesses needing sales leads. While it is silly that they didn't test in Firefox, their market probably doesn't use Firefox that much. I'm willing to bet that 99% of their customers use IE so it really doesn't matter that much. Third, the number of people who actually know who Kevin Rose is or can recognize him is very small relatively. So while including him in their commercial might get a lot of webbies talking about it, it won't have any effect on the vast majority of their potential customers. This article made a lot of apples to oranges comparisons.

9 points by divia 20y ago

ivan 20y ago

this is the result of making simple things (un)done in the most complicated way :)

I liked the article, but had a hard time connecting it to the title. I think, based on the title, the author was implying that SalesGenie is a "big company" while GoDaddy is a startup. GoDaddy is younger, but it's not much smaller. SalesGenie.com's revenue in '05 was $383 million while GoDaddy's estimated revenue was $200 million. Sources: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/070315/iusa10-k.html http://biz.yahoo.com/e/070315/iusa10-k.html http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7BBE70F068-321F-4777-8640-ECAACDBA077D%7D&source=blq%2Fyhoo&dist=yhoo&siteid=yhoo http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7BBE70F068-321F-4777-8640-ECAACDBA077D%7D&source=blq%2Fyhoo&dist=yhoo&siteid=yhoo

brezina 20y ago
Good call Sam. I should have chosen a better title. Maybe something like, "If you have $2.5M to spend on marketing you should at least spend $15/hr on website testing." The funniest thing is if you google "salesgenie superbowl commercial" our blog is the second result. http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=salesgenie+superbowl+commercial&btnG=Google+Search http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=salesgenie+superbowl+commercial&btnG=Google+Search We got a lot of click-throughs from a small town in Iowa which happens to be the home of Salesgenie.
- danielha 20y ago
  Oh man, that commercial is pure cheese. If you guys ever somehow drunkenly decide to blow $2.5M on a commercial, make sure to include gratuitous explosions and an extended car chase sequence. Then, of course, relate it back to email somehow at the end.

AF 20y ago

This article doesn't make too much sense to me. First of all, as Sam mentioned, the companies aren't that much different in size. GoDaddy is not a startup, it is now a pretty large company and anyone who has money to throw around on Super Bowl commercials certainly isn't a little guy. Second, GoDaddy and SalesGenie have nothing to do with each other. GoDaddy sells domain names, SalesGenie deals with businesses needing sales leads. While it is silly that they didn't test in Firefox, their market probably doesn't use Firefox that much. I'm willing to bet that 99% of their customers use IE so it really doesn't matter that much. Third, the number of people who actually know who Kevin Rose is or can recognize him is very small relatively. So while including him in their commercial might get a lot of webbies talking about it, it won't have any effect on the vast majority of their potential customers. This article made a lot of apples to oranges comparisons.