Category Archives: Entrepreneurship

Scale and the Unbelievers

Posted on Monday, 21 May 2012 9:22 am by markpilip

There are two things that matter when building great products, movements or companies. They are easy to follow, easy to understand and also incredibly easy for those of us with MBAs and too much corporate experience to screw up. User … Continue reading →

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Product Development, Strategy | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Who Wins SxSW This Year?

Posted on Friday, 9 March 2012 6:41 am by markpilip

Unfortunately, I won’t be going to SxSW this year after having a great time and learning a lot there last year. But I’ll still be watching from afar to see what “wins” in 2012. Last year, GroupMe killed it (my … Continue reading →

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Fifty Little Cups of Coffee

Posted on Friday, 19 August 2011 11:50 am by markpilip

I’m a continuity direct response marketer.  My 10,000 hours were spent testing hypotheses about lists, creative, offers, products and fulfillment methods by doing thousands of univariate and multivariate tests.  Each test was, essentially, a small bet of $500 to $50,000. … Continue reading →

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Planning to Kill Creativity

Posted on Tuesday, 5 July 2011 8:56 am by markpilip

It’s annual planning time for big corporations and many of us are working feverishly on revenue and expense forecasts for existing products, planning our three year product roadmaps, capital budgets, new initiatives and the like.  It’s all very important, especially … Continue reading →

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Product Development | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Minimum Viable Work Product

Posted on Wednesday, 29 June 2011 5:01 am by markpilip

I love the concept of the Lean Startup.  But does the philosophy work for those of us who work for larger corporations or who are entrepreneurs? I won’t get started on my opinions on most Product Management and Product Marketing Management … Continue reading →

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LTV>CPA

Posted on Thursday, 19 May 2011 8:54 pm by markpilip

Fred Wilson recently wrote this great post on LTV>CPA.  It’s something us old-school direct marketers had ingrained in us from day one.  It’s something that’s not taught as much as it used to be.  It’s worth a read, particularly the … Continue reading →

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Google to Open-Source Nortel Patents?

Posted on Monday, 11 April 2011 5:03 pm by markpilip

I love the idea that Google is the stalking horse for the Nortel patent portfolio.  I hope what it means is that Google will release some of those patents into the public domain to drive innovation, instead of seeing them … Continue reading →

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An Adult Approach to Data and Privacy

Posted on Tuesday, 29 March 2011 6:00 am by markpilip

I’ve been a huge and enthusiastic fan of Evernote for some time now.  I use it on all my computers, my iPhone and my iPad.  I’ve been a premium subscriber for some time now and can’t figure out how I … Continue reading →

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Telecos + Open APIs + Developers FTW

Posted on Wednesday, 23 March 2011 1:55 pm by markpilip

I spent a few days at SxSW last week and had a great time and one key takeaway: Developers rule Not big companies. Not big VC dollars.  Not anybody else.  In today’s world of zero capex and lean startups (see … Continue reading →

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Fail Spectacularly

Posted on Monday, 21 March 2011 5:58 pm by markpilip

Andy Swan writes, as usual, another good blog post today.  He asserts that in order to win, you have to know how much you’re willing to lose.  And he takes to task the use of Chinese Math, which I learned … Continue reading →

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