the_bear

13 ms·

91.
by the_bear 14y ago
Yes, it was a pretty informal test, but the results were clear. Before adding the demo option, about 21 people signed up for the free trial each day. After adding the demo option, that dropped to about 16/day, but 30+ people tried the demo
92.
by the_bear 14y ago
I recently started highlighting a demo option next to the sign up button on my site. The total number of people who signed up for a free trial dropped, but that's only because there are a bunch of people who aren't a good fit for the servic
93.
by the_bear 14y ago
It also creates a mess if your other customers find out about it. In general, offering different prices to different customers is playing with fire unless you have a way to justify it when your non-discounted customers call. Not to mention,
94.
by the_bear 14y ago
Agreed. We just started sending an email to anyone who signs up for a free trial for our software asking when they're free for a one-on-one phone demo. This has increased sales more than anything else we've ever done, and the amount of time
95.
by the_bear 14y ago
I completely agree that companies shouldn't do this, but I don't think that most people on HackerNews do. A while back a co-worker of mine wrote a blog post about how a patent troll signed up for our service, and we decided to let them use
96.
by the_bear 14y ago
I could be wrong, but I don't think that the actual ticket sales are the hard part with something like this. I think that building a network of venues, and producing and promoting your own tour are probably much more difficult. I think Loui
97.
by the_bear 14y ago
I guess it depends on how you look at it. I think the Kickstarter has done a lot to facilitate direct-to-consumer business models. Sure, Kickstarter is a tool used by creators to reach their audience, just like Gmail is a tool I use to comm
98.
by the_bear 14y ago
This is obviously great news, but I really hope he has plans to take it to the next step. It's great that an incredibly successful comedian can get away this this, but nothing will really change in the long run unless smaller acts have acce
99.
by the_bear 14y ago
I agree that this would be a nightmare to build. There are many other problems as well (like how easy it would be to game the system). However, my comment was directed at the parent who claimed that a business wouldn't want to use it even i
100.
by the_bear 14y ago
This seems a lot like saying that my business should elect not to show up in Google search results just because we're not the #1 result (or that a product shouldn't be listed on Amazon if it's not the cheapest, etc.). Pro: You get a free in
101.
by the_bear 14y ago
I must be missing something here, because I can't see any reason for a store to turn this down. They're getting a free inventory system, and they're being shown in local search results. The alternative is to pay for an inventory, and never
102.
by the_bear 14y ago
I think that srunni's answer is probably a good start, but I'd also add another approach. Until recently, the Wash U CS program was run with a heavy focus toward academics rather than industry. As a result, most of the really talented stude
103.
by the_bear 14y ago
The article touches on this, but the real reason St. Louis could be a great place to start a company is because it has one of the most underrated Universities in the country. Wash U attracts very talented students to St. Louis, but because
104.
by the_bear 14y ago
Google seems to be worst with this. In addition to having confusing icons, they're not even consistent with themselves. The Gmail archive icon on my Android phone is a picture of a filing cabinet. The archive icon on their main web app is a
105.
by the_bear 14y ago
So you're suggesting that because some people are bad at weighing information, anything based on personal experience should be downvoted? Successful entrepreneurs should no longer give advice? Programmers shouldn't weigh in on programming i
106.
by the_bear 14y ago
If a post is about a topic that can and has been thoroughly researched and a reasonable conclusion has been drawn, then sure, a contrarian anecdote should probably be disregarded. But honestly, how often does that apply? Most of the convers
107.
by the_bear 14y ago
Seems pretty cool, but the main graph at the top doesn't seem like a very helpful way to visualize data. It seems safe to assume that the vast majority of Facebook pages gain likes over time, and the graph has lower and upper bounds that ar
108.
by the_bear 14y ago
When I was first getting started, it was common for new users to find little bugs here and there. I'd generally be able to fix them within minutes of the customer contacting me, and that really impressed them. The customers who found bugs w
109.
by the_bear 14y ago
I'd add one more item to this list: If you can't give your customer what they're asking for, explain why. I regularly take calls from people asking for features that we don't offer (and probably never will). They normally start out annoyed
110.
by the_bear 14y ago
I don't mean to sound snarky, but it seems like you don't deal with customers very often. You're thinking rationally when you should be thinking emotionally. Customers are hugely inconvenienced by downtime, but there's nothing to be done ab
111.
by the_bear 14y ago
In my experience, users actually do care quite a bit. Back when my company was on Rackspace, we had several periods of significant downtime that weren't our fault. Customers who contacted us were very upset, but when we made it clear that i
112.
by the_bear 14y ago
1) That is even more true for tiered pricing. Is there an alternative you know of that doesn't involve the price going up as your usage goes up? 2) If you expect software pricing to match the marginal cost to the supplier, then I think you'
113.
by the_bear 14y ago
Sure. My company is called "Less Annoying CRM" and one of our main marketing techniques is to identify all the things that annoy people about existing CRMs, and then do something that's not as annoying. Pricing is one of the huge things cus
114.
by the_bear 14y ago
If charging per user encourages companies to have fewer user accounts, then certainly charging per project encourages companies to enter fewer projects, which is even worse (given that managing projects is the whole point). However, I shoul
115.
by the_bear 14y ago
I agree that there are some serious benefits to having many small customers rather than a few big ones, but I strongly disagree with their decision not to charge per user. When you charge per user, the cost of the software increases linearl
116.
by the_bear 14y ago
This doesn't have much to do with the core idea you're testing, but I'm not wild about the filtering UI. If I click on "Fashion Sneakers" it filters the results, but there's no clear way to get back. It also seems like once you're viewing f
117.
by the_bear 14y ago
I have experience in a couple of industries where investors would never trust anyone under the age of 40 to run a company, even a startup. It's probably true that the tech industry favors young people, but if you've been an entrepreneur you
118.
by the_bear 14y ago
This isn't a hypothetical situation. Google was actively banning accounts for using fake names during the early days of Google+. It was in their terms of service, but that didn't matter. People were outraged. The HackerNews community in par
119.
by the_bear 14y ago
I think one of the questions you have to ask yourself is whether your primary responsibility to protect the interests of your real users (the non-patent trolls) or to take a stand against people you don't like. This would be a much easier d
120.
by the_bear 14y ago
I think this is a great summary, but it misses one key point. There's a big difference between refusing to buy a product from someone you find unethical and refusing to sell a product to someone you find unethical. The difference how this i

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