startup marketing

    Startups.

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    Startup is the germination stage of all business. Most of us joining companies that are fixed and have histories. They have onboarding and employee packets and budgets and sales trends. Not startups. I worked for a startup and it was crazy. Crazy cool. We didn’t have a product, though. We had some code. I was hired as the director of marketing. “Tink about that,” as my Norwegian aunt Inga would have said. A director of marketing without the Product – the key P of the 4 Ps. To say the target was moving would be an understatement. That said the business visionary, Jim McNiel, did wear some serious visionary glasses. Jim was able to raise $11M on a vision, a database, web objects and a PC demo.

    The problem with that startup was the disconnect between the vision and the reality, complicated by a detachment from consumer experience. 

    The biggest problem was the product.  I learned a huge lesson in the concept of the Is-Does. What a product IS and what a product DOES. Fergus O’Daly once said to me “Nothing happens (in marketing) until someone sells something.” And with startups, there’s often nothing to sell. Not until there’s a prototype.

    My advice to startups is have a product. Not just an idea. That doesn’t mean the product can’t change toward its betterment, but you can’t start until you execute. Until you make something. Something you can touch. Use. Live with. Ideas are great — tangibles make the world go round.

    Peace.

     

     

    Blogger Turned Entrepreneur.

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    I first ran into Marshall Kirkpatrick in the blogger’s room at the Web 2.0 Expo in 2007.  At the time he was writing for ReadWriteWeb and one of technology’s top 10 bloggers; in the rarified air with Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Malik Om, Erick Schonfeld and Jeremiah Owyang.

    Sitting in on start-up product pitches for a living must have been hard.  Then under deadline, having to write about it, explain it and prognosticate — even harder. One would imagine that people like this would have at some point aspired to be involved in a start-up. But not so much. Mr. Kirkpatrick is an exception.  His company is called Little Bird.  If I got the Is-Does right (I sat through a webinar yesterday) Little Bird is a Social Monitoring 2.0 tool designed to help find category Posters rather than Pasters. The tool feels really smart at first pass.  

    Seeing hundreds of start-up presentations over the years has prepared Mr. Kirkpatrick for the “life.”  The funding period(s), naming, first hires, code-fests, Beta testing and pitching. And more pitching.  His tech blogging background does not insure a successful tech startup, though it certainly should give him a leg up. I applaud his derring do and look forward following Little Bird’s progress.  (Nice name by the way.) Peace.

    Startups, Brands and IPOs

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    After successful IPOs, companies add dough to the coffers, members to their boards, and oversight from investors. Near term, they are often given time to catch their collective breath. Funding a round is hard work. And depending on the size of the company and the raise, everyone needs a big exhale.  But within a year or so the pressures to grow start to mount. Where will growth come from? How will we accelerate? And don’t forget to watch the runaway – the burn.

    Typically post-raise, lots of new server boxes show up. Popcorn machines. Software. Desks and Beats headsets. But when the accountants start asking about returns, the business hats come out.

    Spotify, it was reported today, is looking to be more than a streaming music service. They are making two podcast purchases. And they won’t stop there. More forms of content are on the horizon for Spotify. Don’t ask me what. Pressure’s on. It’s what happens to highly funded startups.

    Startups need a brand strategy to help them understand their value – to themselves and customers. It also helps with focus. When Netflix went from DVDs in the mail to streaming movies, 5 years after their IPO, they stayed “on value,” on brand claim. Nice evolution.

    Startups without an understanding of brand claim and proof, looking to grow in non-endemic ways, are apt to wander the desert.

    Study the care-abouts and good-ats, baby. 

    Peace.