
Startup Marketing Advice from Balsamiq Studios - ajbatac
http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/?p=198
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petercooper
This guy is a class act! Everything I've read of his has been interesting in
some way and this post is the cherry on top - he pretty much gives away step
by step how you should be promoting small software products in 2008.

What's great is that you can clearly tell he's just fumbling his way through
after reading a few resources here and there, but because he's determined to
follow the advice he gets and actually follows through on it, he gets results.
He says 20% of the 40 bloggers (including many A/B-listers) wrote something
about him just because he asked - that's what it's all about.. walking the
(online) streets and spreading your message.

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webwright
"...with the notable exception of TechCrunch, which I never submitted to since
all they care about is VC-money-madness..."

Gah, parroting of anti-VC and anti-TC dogma gets so tired. I think treating
both with healthy skepticism is a good idea-- dismissing both outright is just
silly.

TechCrunch has covered two startups of mine that didn't have a nickel of
funding (neither was in fundraising mode, and both were started with the aim
to be a bootstrapped/niche business). They love finding hidden gems, and
probably have a pretty fabulous audience for Balsamiq (both bloggers and
buyers).

Seriously, people. Set aside the prejudices that startup blogosphere hits you
over the head with every day and think for yourself.

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tstegart
I'm afraid I'm with this guy. Assuming someone holds a view is a bad idea. The
TC attitude is often a result of people not getting written up more than the
viewpoint of the people at TechCrunch.

It sounds like you didn't want to be written up by TechCrunch more than you
didn't think they'd do a write-up on you. If you didn't want to be written up,
thats fine, but assuming they only care about VC backed companies and not
trying to get thousands of pageviews sounds kind of silly. What would sending
them an email have cost you? Your post is amazing, but that's one mistake I
think you made.

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balsamiq
You guys are totally right. I think that if I really dig deep, I fear that the
reason I didn't submit to Techcrunch before launching was that I felt like
they were so out of my league that it wasn't even worth trying. So maybe that
sentence above is my way to rationalize this insecurity of mine...if you know
what I mean.

Oh well, we live and learn...I am doing Balsamiq primarily as a learning
experience - learn about having my own business and learn about myself in the
process (what my limits are etc).

Today has been a good day in that respect, thanks HN community! :)

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danw
I must say I haven't used Balsamiq because you irritated me by twittering an
advert at me based on a keyword I'd said. Injecting yourself into
conversations is risky.

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balsamiq
Sorry about that, I guess I thought my tool could help you, but in your case I
made a bad call.

I wish there was a convention in Twitter to flag tweets as advertisements
(similar to @ and #). I would gladly use it.

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redorb
let me point out: its a great read the information and flow are nice, he
linked out to very good resources.... good job this deserves the hn front page

