P1100470 Jason Cohen viral marketing slide

I don't quite remember in what context Jason Cohen gave this viral marketing example. Naming a company with an acronym STDS would suggest a motto "Our invoices flare up every year!" It's a bit less funny taken out of the context of the presentation, I know. :-)

This was part of a talk by Jason Cohen (@asmartbear), the founder of Smart Bear Software, titled "From Geek to Entrepreneur: Sifting Through The Bull5h1t". This was the gist of his advice for techies who want to start their own companies: take all the established entrepreneurial wisdom with the grain of salt. Advice exists in context. Rules -- from how often you should blog about your company, to how hard you should work, to whether you need salespeople, to whether it's better to be bootstrapped or funded -- are dependent on the nature of your business ("Rich vs. King", as shown in the next picture), and exist solely in context. Since rules are meant to be broken, pick the rules that are fun to you! In his speech, Jason Cohen illustrated how he broke each established rule, and still built a successful software company.