startup adventures in nyc - Latest Comments

Re: Why They Don’t Answer Your Emails

Marc Polish — Tue, 09 May 2017 08:54:54 -0000

I love your article, it really says it all
Marc Polish
www.justtoiletpaper.com
Most companies have no idea what you want or who you are. I have found the person spending the money has to work harder than the people making it. There will always be a need for toilet paper

Re: This Is Not Your CAC

Alex Chaidaroglou — Mon, 31 Aug 2015 07:36:36 -0000

A very interesting post and I totally agree with this. I think if early stage startups stick to more usual methods of PPC it won't be very hard to track and especially with all the new tools out there.

I believe it's even better to track CAC and LTV per advertising channel, to be fully transparent.

Re: This Is Not Your CAC

MikePugh — Sun, 30 Aug 2015 01:15:49 -0000

You really need to do both: track (1) campaign level metrics and (2) aggregate level metrics. Tracking only at the campaign level ignores branding benefits, lift across channels, and the difficulty of measuring some campaigns. Measuring only at the gross level covers up poor performers and hides good ones. Doing both still leaves plenty of questions unanswered, but at least you're looking from different angles when making tough judgment calls.

Re: How I Set Personal Goals

Mian — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 17:15:44 -0000

Hi Brad,
Which email I can reach you? I have some idea about GA.

Cheers,
Mian

Re: Silicon Valley Moves to New York

Joseph — Mon, 11 May 2015 16:14:33 -0000

swonderful good work..

Re: This Is Not Your CAC

Mystery Tackle Box — Sat, 09 May 2015 00:40:31 -0000

Very interesting post, however one thing to consider is that early stage startups (and even many late-stage ones) lack the ability and resources to truly attribute CAC to specific channels. Even huge brands often struggle with attribution and some companies have entire resources dedicated to attribution modeling. For example, we may spend $2,000 in one day on Facebook but only see 10 direct click through conversions. But on the same day we may see a 15% bump in conversions come through branded paid search and another 20% increase come through organic search, and another 5 sales come in through the phone, 10 come in from other websites (where people landed after searching our brand) and 5 more come in through retargeting a week later. As you can see, the CAC Facebook spend is not really $200, although basic analytics may make it seem that way. It gets even more complex for companies that advertise on TV, YouTube, Print, Radio, etc. So I think blended CAC is still an important metric to look at the overall performance of CAC/LTV, especially for early state startups that lack the resources to do sophisticated attribution modeling.

Re: This Is Not Your CAC

John Jackovin — Fri, 10 Apr 2015 11:57:18 -0000

Couldn't agree more. Makes A/B testing REALLY difficult if you blend your results.

Re: On Building General Assembly and My Next Steps

Conrad Egusa — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 20:01:36 -0000

Congrats Brad!!

Re: On Building General Assembly and My Next Steps

Luke Palder — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 17:32:20 -0000

Congrats, Brad! Excited to see what you accomplish next, man.

Re: When You Should Hire a Dev Shop (other than “never”)

Debbie Madden — Sat, 20 Sep 2014 09:33:12 -0000

I run Stride (www.stridenyc.com), an Agile development consulting shop. I think this is a GREAT article. It's critical to understand why you are hiring a dev shop like Stride. If your points do add up to 10 and you do decide to outsource, the risks don't end there. It's still vital to choose a solid shop, one that will deliver what they promise. Here are my thoughts on "4 Mistakes to Avoid when Outsourcing Development" - http://www.stridenyc.com/bl...

Re: Game Development’s Four Inflection Points

Kyle Waring — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 17:45:52 -0000

I'm with you. I don't think their movements with iOS8 are enough, but it's a start. I wrote a blog post on gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com/bl... about giving more power to influencers and developers, versus companies with the largest ad budgets.

The idea is simple. Allow developers to "like" or promote other developers content, on their listing. Similar to how soundcloud has "likes"... which is an amazingly easy way for me to find awesome music... follow the artists I like... and find what they like... versus the app store pulling "related content" by top within X category + more from same dev

Re: Game Development’s Four Inflection Points

Brad Hargreaves — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 17:10:28 -0000

The question is how they interpret "getting more people into games they love" -- is that about really opening the market and giving visibility to indie developers at the risk of allowing bad actors into the garden, or hand even more power and distribution to established publishers/studios? The past 2-3 years have made me a skeptic.

Re: Game Development’s Four Inflection Points

Kyle Waring — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 16:21:48 -0000

Great post, you touch on 4 critical topics in gaming and nail it. It's true that the mobile games industry is a race to the bottom, where competition is cannibalizing itself and most of the largest games are F2P. It will be interesting to see how Apple improves iOS 8 to improve app discovery, I believe that will be a critical moment (sept 9th) for the mobile markets. It's in Apple's (and Google's) best interest to get more people into games they'll absolutely love, versus games they barely care about (and don't pay for). Being the industry standard ~2% paid conversion on F2P game is a clear indication that there's a gap in the market.

Re: Price Gouging, Uber, and Alamo

Stanislav Ivanov — Thu, 07 Aug 2014 00:06:47 -0000

Actually in this case Alamo also has supply elasticity! If price stayed 80$ those who were the quickest to get a car would drive away alone - and now they are incentivized to share the car with other passengers, who otherwise would have been left there. I am sorry for my english =)

Re: Cargo Cult Game Design

Cakenstien — Wed, 28 May 2014 06:34:04 -0000

Sounds reasonably accurate to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Re: Price Gouging, Uber, and Alamo

morrillkevin — Tue, 13 May 2014 15:50:33 -0000

One benefit of Alamo charging so much is that the people who derive the most value getting to NYC that night now have the chance to. If they leave the price at $80, the resource isn't allocated as efficiently to where it creates the most possible value.

Re: Price Gouging, Uber, and Alamo

Brad Hargreaves — Sun, 11 May 2014 20:46:28 -0000

They tried to get around that by promising a late-night bus from Albany to JFK. But it was already 9pm and I knew I would hate every minute sitting on a bus as it went from NYC back out to a (closed) JFK airport.

Re: Price Gouging, Uber, and Alamo

Carol — Sun, 11 May 2014 20:23:06 -0000

It's been a few years, but when my AA flight from ORD to GRR was cancelled and we were going to be stuck in a hotel overnight, when I got to the front of the line to get my hotel voucher I asked if I could rent-a-car and drive instead. They let me and gave me a form to fill out to get reimbursed, and they reimbursed me promptly.

Re: The First Thing That Breaks

Sergey Nazarov — Sun, 16 Mar 2014 03:29:16 -0000

Cool blog Brad, this makes total sense. But how do you as an entrepreneur know which is the next bottleneck if your dealing with a specific stage/part of the business for the first time?

Other than having truly value added Investors for that part of the business eg: done it before or an experienced team member eg: built it before, marketed it before at scale, etc..., it doesn't seem like there is any other way to solve this beyond making a mistake, remembering it and trying again.

Re: Brand Crossovers and Education

Sergey Nazarov — Sun, 16 Mar 2014 03:20:36 -0000

Thanks for the post Brad,

I guess it depends on how valuable certification is going forward, right?

If certification matters a great deal like it does now, a virtuous cycle appears where top brands get better students, better placement and therefore a progressively better brand by touting those students and their placement.

If certification means less and proven ability/performance on ability X eg:Ruby Development code tests, coding competitions, etc... mean more, then actually educating people at higher costs makes sense since that isn't a competency you can develop overnight.

Or am I deeply missing something?

Re: A Golden Age of Management?

Sergey Nazarov — Sun, 16 Mar 2014 03:12:47 -0000

Yep, it's great that the market has gotten companies to compete on this dimension. Driving growth by creating above average results from individual highly paid knowledge workers eg:developers, to everyone's great benefit.

Though the piece of this literature that seems highly underdeveloped is how those who directly lead the highly paid knowledge workers should deal with their own psychology. What should the CEO/PM of a 3-10 person team do/believe/prioritize in the ups as well as the downs, to consistently achieve the optimal result in a volatile environment where high risk scenarios and regular setbacks are common eg: technology startups. Other than Ben Horowitz's new book and a few blog posts here and there, I haven't found much worth reading. Is there anything that has helped you with this?

Re: Spain Has a Tenured Faculty Problem

Martin — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 06:13:34 -0000

Listen I'm not one to say that Spain isn't doomed. It is for many reasons but the assertion that: "Anyone who has tried to do business in continental Europe — particularly Spain — knows that firing employees is effectively impossible. This can make businesses much more skittish when it comes to hiring full-time employees in boom times, favoring instead unprotected part-time contract labor." is NONSENSE. There are over 6 million unemployed. Have of which have been fired in the last three years so that argument doesn't stand up....

Re: When You Should Hire a Dev Shop (other than “never”)

S79L — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:12:03 -0000

Isn't "hiring a team of hackers" the hardest part of all this? If you just have an idea and need an alpha version just to attract talent, a dev shop seems like a logical way to go, no?

Re: A Few Notes on Learning Rails

Brad Hargreaves — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:49:20 -0000

Agree. But if you've been thinking about a particular project for years, it can be hard to define "minimum" without a lot of feedback.

Re: A Few Notes on Learning Rails

Rebecca Garcia — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 17:21:23 -0000

To point #2, start with a MVP (minimum viable product), once you've got that down then work on the finer details!