nrmehta

6 ms·

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by nrmehta 14y ago
For what it's worth, the mistakes that happened were completely on our end (actually I take full responsibility as they were under my watch). Zuora was nothing but amazing in supporting us to get us back to health. Luckily, thanks to Zuor
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by nrmehta 14y ago
Thanks (I'm the author). At a high level, the tweak was a big change but I didn't realize it. We used to pre-bill a customer for the next period (e.g., quarter) based upon the previous period's usage. So if you go from 10 users to 20, th
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by nrmehta 14y ago
That's a good question and thanks for reading it (I was the author). I don't have a magic formula but I have concluded that when I decide to switch, the switch needs to be binary not gradual. I do agree you can't sustain it for long perio
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by nrmehta 14y ago
This was a good post by Chris and I think there are a number of companies who are shifting in this direction. Overall, I think Marketing is getting a bigger share of spend in enterprise IT vendors vs. sales from previous days. That being
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by nrmehta 14y ago
Totally agree with you. I think this is about hiring the right type of people. Honestly, marketing has a bad reputation with many technical people. So if you tried to hire a CS grad into an online marketing role, it might be tough. Henc
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by nrmehta 14y ago
Definitely agree with the comments here. One thing to add is I think some of this comes down to ex-ante versus ex-post thinking. Ex-ante, many things are required to make any substantial change. Ex-post, we can scrutinize and analyze and
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by nrmehta 14y ago
Really appreciate the post - especially the thought in making the content relevant for the readers (e.g., the video).
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by nrmehta 14y ago
Really appreciate you sharing this so openly. Excellent stats for the community to leverage.
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by nrmehta 14y ago
So awesome. Nice work and very good for the startup community. One minor "nice to have" request would be to show the VC Series A ownership in a dynamic calc. Since many VCs optimize for 20% ownership or whatever, it's helpful to plan out
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by nrmehta 14y ago
In disclosure, I'm a "backer" of app.net and am on the alpha. And as a hardcore Dark Knight fan, I can fall for any DK quote. But while I respect MG's other writing, I don't agree with all of his conclusions here. Some thoughts: 1. He sta
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by nrmehta 14y ago
If my dad were on Hacker News, he'd be all over this. I clearly don't value his advice enough even though it's been pretty dead-on. One thought to add though. I think one problem people have with advice (at least a problem I have with ad
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by nrmehta 14y ago
BTW I don't disagree with what you just said - was just trying to explain this middle bucket because I don't think it's a clear no. Sometimes (very rarely) those middle bucket interactions turn into funding. But I agree w/ you that it's u
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by nrmehta 14y ago
The article is good but I don't think it delves into the "middle ground" which is so common for startups. A very small percentage of companies elicit huge interest (i.e., fast action, term sheet quickly, etc.) A surprisingly small set of
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by nrmehta 14y ago
Thought-provoking post. To me, one way to determine whether a system will have network effects or anti-network effects is to ascertain how much of its usage is driven by fashion versus utility. Take email as an extreme example of the latt
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by nrmehta 14y ago
Good question. In the last few years, the term has been overloaded to talk about a new engineering-like approach to marketing and user acquisition. But the confusion is understandable. I personally think it's kind of cheesy but whatever
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by nrmehta 14y ago
Nice work. Definitely going to use this.
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by nrmehta 14y ago
From my experience, his tips are very practical. In particular, if any of you end are founders / leaders or end up being founders / leaders, I can't overemphasize how important it is to communicate and repeat your message, strategy, goals,
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by nrmehta 14y ago
Really interesting - particularly how much of a theme there is around getting more product/technical knowledge throughout the company.
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by nrmehta 14y ago
Thanks for the response and I think I probably should have been clearer. Zynga is fundamentally tied (today) to factors outside of its control (like airlines) but that are (a) controlled largely by one entity (facebook) and (b) opaque to t
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by nrmehta 14y ago
For the layperson (like me), the below is an intriguing and related TED talk from Brian Greene. A big conclusion is that we now believe the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate based upon the edge of the observable universe. But
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by nrmehta 14y ago
I think Zynga will be a very hard stock for wall street to understand for some time. Since it's revenue is so tied to usage (meaning unpredictable after hockey stick growth flattens) and since usage is so tied to external factors (e.g., Fa
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by nrmehta 14y ago
I agree HN needs tags but still think this was an interesting post. While the analogy could have been more thoughtfully constructed, I think the topic is very relevant right now for startup business models (ad-supported versus paid).
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by nrmehta 14y ago
This is a good and relevant article based upon my experience (last company was SaaS company with 60% of revenue from partners). I would add that partners generally won't care much about your business (they care about their's, rightfully so
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by nrmehta 18y ago
I enjoy reading your essays. I think the concept of heroes is a worthwhile one and I might compile my own list. Einstein would be there for me but probably as much because my mom put a poster of him in my room when I was six (which remains