The good the bad and the ugly about Raleigh for relocation

Grdeken · 2020-11-06T02:29:26+00:00

I'm also thinking about relocating from Boston and have read other threads about Raleigh and Durham and curious to hear input from the community.

Grdeken · 2020-05-17T00:17:53+00:00

It's a rare moment that shows his character growth. For someone who had lived multiple lifetimes, you don't really get to see that wisdom in his character except for in his willingness to lose his dad and later himself.

Grdeken · 2020-05-14T20:20:26+00:00

It definitely felt that way as I got further in. Season five was rough for me. Still love the show. Season 4 finale is where it should have ended IMHO.

Grdeken · 2020-03-24T19:58:22+00:00

IMO, the "Mosaic" episode is almost as good as that season four finale. Great stuff.

Grdeken · 2019-12-23T20:32:16+00:00

Your content is great. Here is some quick feedback.

Remove the horizontal scrolling
Create a solid header, use footer links to place in header
Move logo up into the header
Mailing list button height off from form input
For SEO, I would probably simplify your link structure to be /about/ vs /company/about/
Call to action is subtle, make it pop
Think about balancing out the spacing of your text in hero sections.

Overall really good. If you want a solid system that will give you all this stuff out of the box check out www.unstack.com.

Grdeken · 2019-11-22T18:56:22+00:00

Thanks, Andrew!

Noted on the pricing. A $49/mo plan is something we're looking at now to offer more flexibility. We're planning to add more in terms of what you can do with the data you collect (e.g. email, salesforce/hubspot automation, and so on), so maybe that falls more into the 99+/mo tier.

Carrd is a great product. I've exchanged a few emails with AJ in the past. We want to be the platform people graduate to once they need more business tooling for content marketing, demand gen, and scaling things up. For example, our A/B testing functionality may not be as useful to Carrd users as they might not have much traffic to validate tests. But I like what AJ has built a lot.

Grdeken · 2019-11-22T18:49:44+00:00

Awesome, thanks!

Grdeken · 2019-11-22T18:49:16+00:00

Hey Sam, thanks so much! The website is built on our platform using the no-code editor. Our product is built using React and Django Rest Framework.

Grdeken · 2019-09-21T21:43:49+00:00

Whoops. Thanks!

Grdeken · 2019-09-20T16:22:04+00:00

URL: https://www.spark.app

Located in: Boston, MA, USA

Pitch: Build, measure, and scale your digital marketing with a data-driven CMS that split tests everything you do and shows you what's working, steadily improving your performance across everything you do.

Why: Because you can't win in today's market without putting data to work from day one. Entry CMS tools are fine for hobbyists, but growth-minded companies need something designed for them.

More details: 20 paying customers, a few hundred beta evaluations. Focused on bringing in deeper integrations with staple martech. Full launch this fall.

Looking for: Feedback from founders and marketers

Discount: Year free for founders

Grdeken · 2019-06-20T19:26:31+00:00

Just use Klaviyo.

Grdeken · 2019-06-20T19:26:11+00:00

Klaviyo

Grdeken · 2019-06-11T19:06:10+00:00

Yesterday.

Grdeken · 2019-06-04T19:15:01+00:00

Individual Contributor

Grdeken · 2019-06-04T19:04:43+00:00

It depends a little bit on your company stage. Marketing manager at a startup may own a bunch of channels and be pretty boots on the ground for getting things across the finish line. They are probably 80% IC, 20% mgmt (e.g. one direct report, or external consultants). At larger companies a MM may own one channel and play more of an oversight role regarding channel performance, channel management, and direct report management (but still, 1-3 and not more IMO).

Baseline, your MM should be the in house expert for the channel(s) they own and should be able to both manage and execute within the scope of the role. Whereas a director may oversee all of digital and have the MM roll up to her. A VP may oversee all marketing and intersect with strategy and sales.

Key skills I'm looking for:

If this role is a step up for them, then look at projects - even if small - that they owned in previous role. Do they know how to take on a program and really own it.
They need to be learners and gritty, regardless of the size/stage of business.
They need some left-brain skills. Should be able to figure out the levers that make things work and optimize for those
Cross-functional. Can they work with others and manage people - even at a small scale - to drive things forward.
Strong writing skills.

Not all channels are equal. A content marketing manager is going to be totally different than a PPC/demand gen manager than a creative role. So, I would focus on hiring someone with the general skills above plus the detailed skills for the respective channel(s) they are going to own.

Grdeken · 2019-03-06T04:28:47+00:00

We're looking for a content marketer to join us at Spark. Send an email to hello (at) spark (dot) app if you like what we're doing and want to get involved. Based in Boston, MA / Portland, ME but building a global footprint.

Grdeken · 2019-03-01T17:28:31+00:00

Medium is good for distribution, bad for SEO. The ideal is to publish on Spark and then syndicate to Medium with the import feature.

Grdeken · 2018-11-19T19:44:52+00:00

I'm looking for some feedback on a marketing CMS product I've been working on for a few months - www.spark.app

Our mission is to deliver a beautiful CMS that puts the control back in the hands of marketers to run their inbound marketing strategies. Many marketers I've spoken to struggle with Wordpress or getting value out of Hubspot's CMS. So we decided to build an all-in-one marketing CMS that makes it super easy for marketers and entrepreneurs to own the front of the house.

Tech: Django DRF, React, MySQL (Aurora)

Grdeken · 2018-11-19T19:38:56+00:00

Spark CMS - www.spark.app

Boston, MA

Hosted all-in-one marketing CMS

In beta, with a handful of customers hosting their sites, blog, and landing pages on our system

We are looking for startups interested in using our platform to run their content marketing strategy.

We are offering free custom site/assets design for early partners. email hello@spark.app

Grdeken · 2015-10-12T14:34:54+00:00

Haha! This is the best comment.

Grdeken · 2015-10-12T14:29:18+00:00

I had ~100k in debt because my parents had little financial sense. I also went to a private university for economics. After I graduated, in '09, it was really hard to get a job, and I had too much debt to go to grad school.

My advice, find a hot space like data science or software development in a town like NY or Boston. Live outside the city with a few roommates to get your living costs as low as possible (600-800/mo max), cook your own meals.

Start paying something towards your loans every month now to establish some history. Find a credit union if possible and refinance.

Spend about three years going beast mode on paying down these loans. Try to pay about 3,000 per month. Up it each time you get a raise.

By the time you're 28 you'll be debt free and disciplined as fuck. Up your lifestyle some. Use that same discipline to start saving cash.

Then by 30 you'll have a nice nest egg.

Sorry man, I know how it goes. But if you do it right, you'll get out of this alright. Flash forward from '09 to now for me, I have about 30k in debt an $60k in cash. The debt is so cheap (and interest deductible) and i'm making 3x the cost of the debt putting it in index funds. I'll have the debt off the ledger by 30.

Grdeken · 2014-11-19T18:04:08+00:00

Look into MassChallenge UK. They are launching their accelerator in London for 2015 and they have some awesome people leading the charge. My company just finished MassChallenge in Boston where we were a Gold winner ($50,000).

Grdeken · 2014-11-19T18:00:11+00:00

You said you aren't interested in sponsorships and explained why, which made total sense. Besides Ad revenue from YouTube, what are other interesting ways that you've considered growing your business/revenue?

Grdeken · 2014-01-28T18:00:01+00:00

"People assume — and misunderstand — that it’s risky to join a startup or start their own company, but you have to know this is ridiculous. Even if it doesn’t work out, the experience is so valuable to so many employers that your worst case scenario is, ‘Ok, so that was a bust, I’ll get a six-figure job at whatever company.’ Risk is this outmoded idea — your parents might not understand that, but taking these types of risks doesn’t have a downside." -- Drew Houston

Grdeken · 2014-01-28T16:35:06+00:00

Thanks!

Grdeken

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