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"Common Sense Business" by Ed Byrne of Scaleworks

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Drew Olanoff
Drew Olanoff

The document discusses common business principles and strategies that are often not grounded in common sense. It advocates for creating new product categories to automatically become the number one player in that space. It also recommends focusing on category design rather than just product differentiation. Additionally, it provides strategies around project management tools for game developers, enterprise cloud version control, and pricing models based on customer value rather than just costs.

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COMMON SENSE BUSINESS
Common sense is the least common of the senses!
"Common Sense Business" by Ed Byrne of Scaleworks
Its a winner takes all market Once we finish building this feature Our customers dont actually want to talk to us We can only acquire customers as low cost leaders But I do talk to my customers Increasing the price is impossible without huge churn and Twitter meltdown Distributed teams are a win-win Our Engineers are the best of the best Theres no point hiring salespeople We need to spend aggressively to hit our growth goals That might work in other companies, but were different There is no way to cut costs without destroying the business
Principles Price Strategy Category Design Installed Base Health Centralized Teams Success Based Investing Customer Interviews Go to Market Science > Product
Category Design
Product differentiation isnt strategy. My best salesperson vs your best salesperson; youve raised more VC dollars than me; Im the cheapest; Ive got the most features. HARD WORK! Create a New Category - automatically be #1. You want to occupy a position in the customer's mind, and only one company can be there. Its easier to sell a category than a product. Customers self-select. The company is easier to run! At every level, decisions become more obvious fits or misfits.
Project Management and Code Repos All-In-One-Place . for Game Developers! Goldilocks: More powerful than Trello, better UI than Jira. #1 in SVN Assembla
Enterprise Cloud Version Control
Price Strategy
Value Pricing: The mid-point between the value you deliver and the maximum the customer could pay. Entrepreneurs typically dont value price - they do cost or competitor. Increase Prices: Most SaaS companies price too low. (And almost never increase prices!). Dont Grandfather Plans. Its not a standard practice, its really over-charging new customers to subsidize the existing base. Evaluate all the Levers. As your business, customer, and product evolves - the dimensions of value change too - regularly evaluate the levers pricing should be applied to.
Thank you!

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"Common Sense Business" by Ed Byrne of Scaleworks

  • 2. Common sense is the least common of the senses!
  • 4. Its a winner takes all market Once we finish building this feature Our customers dont actually want to talk to us We can only acquire customers as low cost leaders But I do talk to my customers Increasing the price is impossible without huge churn and Twitter meltdown Distributed teams are a win-win Our Engineers are the best of the best Theres no point hiring salespeople We need to spend aggressively to hit our growth goals That might work in other companies, but were different There is no way to cut costs without destroying the business
  • 5. Principles Price Strategy Category Design Installed Base Health Centralized Teams Success Based Investing Customer Interviews Go to Market Science > Product
  • 7. Product differentiation isnt strategy. My best salesperson vs your best salesperson; youve raised more VC dollars than me; Im the cheapest; Ive got the most features. HARD WORK! Create a New Category - automatically be #1. You want to occupy a position in the customer's mind, and only one company can be there. Its easier to sell a category than a product. Customers self-select. The company is easier to run! At every level, decisions become more obvious fits or misfits.
  • 8. Project Management and Code Repos All-In-One-Place . for Game Developers! Goldilocks: More powerful than Trello, better UI than Jira. #1 in SVN Assembla
  • 11. Value Pricing: The mid-point between the value you deliver and the maximum the customer could pay. Entrepreneurs typically dont value price - they do cost or competitor. Increase Prices: Most SaaS companies price too low. (And almost never increase prices!). Dont Grandfather Plans. Its not a standard practice, its really over-charging new customers to subsidize the existing base. Evaluate all the Levers. As your business, customer, and product evolves - the dimensions of value change too - regularly evaluate the levers pricing should be applied to.