A Smart Bear

Reflecting on selling Smart Bear in 2007, offering insights for entrepreneurs facing similar decisions.

Some of the most enticing, important metrics are impossible to measure, even after the fact.

"Building in public" is popular: How fun when strangers cheer you on!

Is everyone working very hard, all the time, and yet accomplishing 1/10th of what it seems they should?

"Focus" requires saying "no" to most things, but there's a way to do it that allows you to say "yes" exactly when it matters most.

These forces make larger companies slower and more difficult to execute, but also more effective when harnessed and leveraged.

What is it like to reach the pinnacle of success?

Language shapes our perception of setbacks.

"MVP" implies a selfish process, abusing customers so you can "learn".

An objectively "worse" strategy can win, if it leverages something unique or unexpected.

Most high-performing people experience Impostor Syndrome.

Most so-called "strategies" are vague, wishful thinking, written once and never seen again.

Many founders experience a profound and prolonged sadness after selling their company.

Being "in control" is impossible, perhaps not even desirable.

Beware of advice that tries to change who you are.

A novel system for selecting and presenting product KPIs, satisfying not only the product team, but also stakeholders, executives, and customers.

Advice from "successful entrepreneurs" might be unreliable due to Survivor Bias.

Don't use phrases like "unlikely" or "almost certainly."

Discounting is the typical sales technique, but refusing to discount can lead to a much better business, even in the Enterprise.

Leveraging strengths -- not "fixing weaknesses" -- is how to win.

Fast, or Best?

This simple method positions your product to be more valuable, especially against competitors who aim to disrupt you, or you them.

Everything about a startup changes over time.

This fresh take on "Willingness-to-Pay" analyzes three types of customer motivation, leading to superior strategies for growth that also better the world.

A business always takes more money than you expect, even when you take this fact into account.

No you can't "have it all."

A startup is a crucible -- a fiery place that tests your limits, not by probing them but by violently exceeding them, all of the time.

You can charge much more than you think, if you reposition your value-proposition.

Are you crying in the shower because you can't handle it anymore?

Many startups fail despite identifying a real problem and building a product that solves that problem.

Decisions should usually be made quickly, to accelerate action and learning.

Pricing is inextricably linked to brand, product, and purchasing decisions.

We dramatically, repeatedly fail to predict the future.

What creates a fulfilling existence?

A simple but effective system, used to vet what is now a Unicorn, for generating insights about how your potential customers think, what they need, and what they'll buy.

The vaunted "single-threaded, ordered list" confuses "prioritization" with "work-planning," and forces comparisons of the un-comparable.

This complete work-prioritization framework builds on the simplistic "Rocks, Pebbles, Sand" analogy, adding the details you need in the real world.

Binstack is a technique for selecting the "single most impactful" solution when there are multiple, incomparable dimensions to evaluate.

Traditional rubrics fail to reveal the best answers, or how to explain those answers to others.

We invented this strategic exercise at WP Engine -- engaging both Marketing and Product, generating actions for both sides that make products more desirable and competitive.

Meetings are most productive when we create something that none of us could have created alone.

Industries commoditize over time, delivering similar products at similar prices resulting in low profit.

According to the internet, being a Product Manager is impossible.

This admonition recurs in myriad books, frameworks, and topics, across decades of time.

We know, "no idea is a bad idea," but brainstorming is often unsuccessful.

Even Facebook and Slack did not grow "exponentially," as frequently described.

A lesson all pilots know: How you must use multiple dials, employing different sources of energy, to report identical data, because some of it is always lying.

A simple, decentralized, scalable, constant-memory mechanism for independent replicas to record events in time, preserving the "happened-before" relation in almost all cases.

What if your tech company has peaked?

Independent or acquired, companies always evolve, and not always for the better.