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Barry Smith
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We did a road trip to take our daughter up to college at Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA. We then hit up a bunch of National parks (Yosemite, Grand Tetons, Bryce, Zion) on our way back to Los Angeles. Great trip.
Have you taken much vacation this year? What have you done during it?
Aaron O'Leary
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Barry Smith
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I use my own product to send out reminders to the team for stuff. They can send me a reply if they want to. Example: https://giphcards.com/card/ODk2
What's your take on communicating asynchronously over videos instead of synchronous communication?
surya shanmugam
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Barry Smith
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I have a client that uses Slack for everything and refuses to use Basecamp, Asana, or any other project management application. It's impossible to find anything in the never-ending scrolls of countless channels in applications like Slack. Complete headache.
Scrolling is stealing our time
Kat Volar
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Barry Smith
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"How I Built This" by Guy Raz
"Masters of Scale" by Reid Hoffman
"Startup" by Alex Bloomberg
"The Pitch"
What are some hidden gems/little-known podcasts for founders/early-stage startup marketers?
Forster Perelsztejn
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Barry Smith
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Stop worrying about how to make the next buck and do the stuff that makes me happy. Work on projects like the one I'm doing now (www.giphcards.com), coach youth sports (basketball), go to culinary school, and learn how to play 20 songs really well on the guitar. Cheers
If money were no thing, what would you do?
Aaron O'Leary
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Barry Smith
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I already worked from home so no changes for me. My wife however never worked from home until March. She started off working at a card table in our bedroom. It wasn't good for anyone. She felt like she never left work. After we took our daughter off the college, that room became my wife's office. Things are better for her, but I'm sure our daughter will have something to say about it when she...
Share your Workspace setup?
Felix Josemon
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Barry Smith
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I've worked on a few projects where we spent all of our time on how they would scale. In the end, it didn't make any difference that we had the ability to scale, because the users never came.
As an early-stage entrepreneur (https://giphcards.com), none of my stuff scales anymore. It's a bunch of one-offs to see what does and doesn't work. If something works, I put more energy toward it. The...
How much time do you spend on things that don't scale?
Forster Perelsztejn
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Barry Smith
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First and foremost, even a 15% open rate is great. Most companies are looking at 3% or less.
Rule 1: The max you should be sending emails out is once per week
Rule 2: Only send out emails when you have something of true value to your customers. People only care about stuff that makes their lives better, not yours.
Rule 3: Short and sweet. No one wants to read anything anymore. Cut to the...
How do you deal with declining email open rates?
Archisketch
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Barry Smith
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I'm a creative and work in branding, it's really tough no matter who you are if you haven't done it before. The hardest part is just doing it. Coding wasn't easy from day one, you took baby steps to get good at it. The huge difference is that if you write code it either works or doesn't, so the rejection you receive is pure and simple science, nothing feels personal. The opposite is true for...
What a great way to transition from being a developer to marketing?
Ikenna Paschal
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Barry Smith
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Here are a few thoughts:
1) The name describes what you're doing in a way that is memorable in as few letters as possible, (Dropbox, PayPal)
2) The name is something original but easy to remember and can only be spelled one way, (Uber, Ebay, Twitter)
3) Use a real word and then make it work with what you're doing (Amazon, Apple, Snowflake)
4) Don't use a hyphen
5) Use a domain name generator...
How do you come up with a name for your product?
Balaji C
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Barry Smith
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Is Facebook a good place to launch your startup?
I have an average number of actual friends (315) on Facebook. Since GiphCards is a consumer-facing entertainment product, is FB a good place to launch or should I be looking someplace else to get non-biased feedback? If someplace else, where? I'm open to any and all feedback. Cheers, Barry