Cinco de Moustache 2011 edition.
The Moustache is a pretty important facial features here at FreshBooks HQ. Not only do we participate in the yearly Movember event, we take it one step further and also celebrate Cinco de Moustache every year in March.
From left to right, we have Owen with a marvelous mutten chops, Levi, with a classic chevron, Taavi, sporting the bushiest painter’s brush he’s ever grown. Mike, our trucker-with-a-soul-patch CEO, Raj, sporting a Franz-Josfe, and Steve, who looks like he could use some help in the moustache growing department.
Needless to say, all FreshBooks employees were issued a special pair of glasses to prevent temporary blindness from this aura of awesome-ness.
Next week is South By SouthWest and like years past we have a slew of the cool stuff planned and are hoping you all make us a serious part of your social calendar! (If you cannot attend 
– we hope you enjoy the posters at the bottom).
Myself, Saul Colt, and my partners in crime, Sarah Wilbore, Sunir Shah, Jon Spenceley and Grace Antonio have all been in “plan better” mode ensuring that this will be the most incredible South By. Instead of waiting till after to brag, we figured this year we would share ahead of time everything that is planned so you can all join in on our fun and help ensure everyone leaves Austin knowing what FreshBooks is all about and can all plan to hang out with us and not stumble over us by accident. And be sure to check out our panels (near the bottom!) Read the rest of this entry »
Certified Public Accountants (CPAs or CAs) can be beneficial to your company in many ways you may not have considered. Your accountant will serve as your primary source of financial guidance for your business, offering assistance in a variety of areas that your business may or may not need. Before you begin to work with your new accountant, it is important to have an idea of what duties you will primarily need them to perform in the short term, keeping in mind that you can always ask more of them in the future.
Advisory Services
Your accountant will soon come to know your particular business very well, and can advise you on all manner of financial decisions. Entrepreneur Magazine reports that an accountant can bring a fresh perspective to common business problems and uncover money saving opportunities you may not be aware of. According to Entrepreneur Magazine, “Accountants can offer advice on everything from insurance (do you really need business interruption insurance or is it cheaper to lease a second site?) to expansion (how will additional capacity affect operating costs?).” Depending on your needs, your accountant can become more than just a bookkeeper, they can help guide you toward sound financial management and make a meaningful contribution to your bottom line. Read the rest of this entry »
The internet split in half this week.
Ok not really, but based on a series of blog posts by Fred Wilson, Rand Fishkin and Brad Feld there has been a lot of discussion around when a tech start-up needs to focus on Marketing or if at all. Each of these posts focus on the early days of a technology start-up, when a product is focused on tech savvy early adopter. The bigger issue, which isn’t touched on, is whether or not early adopters (or as we call them, Shiny Thing Finders) are even the best target for a start-up. Sure they will try your product and talk about your service, but will also leave you as soon as the glimmer of something newer or shinier catches their eye. Seriously, it isn’t their fault, this is what the definition of an Early Adopter.
Two years ago we wrote a blog post called TechCrunch is not a marketing plan and the idea behind that post was that focusing all your energy on getting a TechCrunch article (or any major media outlet) isn’t the best strategy since accomplishing this may get your company 24 hours of attention and lots of new traffic but what do you do to follow up the next day, next week and next month? Read the rest of this entry »
Discounts and special offers are a hot topic for marketers, they can improve sales but might compromise a brand. We’ve done a number of discount offers over the past few years, but recently, we tested them to see if it was worth it for our business over time.
Why have a Discount Offer with SaaS?
For a SaaS applications (like FreshBooks), where the service is a subscription, discounts are targeted to speed up the decision making process of customers by offering them a discount code that expires in a few days. It‘s targeted to make them evaluate the product in a short period of time so they can take advantage of the discount.
The Test
We ran a split test by sending a discount code offer (via email) to half of what we define as “inactive” free FreshBooks accounts. The other half was a control group, who were sent nothing. This allows us to measure the affect and get beyond our gut feeling. Of course, it was not a perfect test, as discount codes are very viral. However, there was very limited use of the code in the control group.
The Results
Read the rest of this entry »
will send an invoice and a dolphin will swim the length of a 
