Entries Tagged 'Startups' ↓

Photo by Francisco

A month ago I received a sales inquiry via email for my invoicing software package. The prospect asked if we could complete the questions he had attached in a spreadsheet:

I will need the attached questions answered in order to proceed as I can’t get them all answered off your website.

There were nearly 80 questions, at least half of which could be answered from our website.

In addition, he mentioned doing a flat-file exchange of data between our software and a custom piece his colleague had written. I mentioned that we have a .NET API or a web service layer, and that passing flat files back and forth would not be an optimal approach for a few reasons.

And that’s when it started to get good.

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This post is an accusation. A call to arms. A sharp stick that says “get off your ass and make something happen.”

But I didn’t write it for you; I wrote it for myself. Every one of these reasons has haunted me at one time or another over the past 10 years. Many a moon ago I thought I was the only person who struggled with them. Now I have several conversations a week that indicate otherwise.

These reasons will come to life every time you start something new, be it an application, a website, a book or a presentation. Excuses don’t discriminate based on what you’re creating.

So with that, here are five reasons you (and I) haven’t launched…

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The title of this post comes from the book Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, Steve Martin’s memoir about his days of stand-up comedy. It’s a crazy startup-like story that details his 14 year ascent to the top of comedy, followed by 4 years of wild success playing sold-out arenas; an unprecedented feat at that time.

Among the sage-like insight Steve imparts in the book is the observation that many performers have outstanding shows now and again. But very, very few are able to consistently nail their performance. Steve proposes that it’s consistency that makes someone successful in the long run, not having a great show now and then.

You’re probably wondering what this has to do with your startup.

So let’s get to that part.

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Photo by mpclemens

The following is a guest article by Dave Rodenbaugh of Lessons of Failure.

Shortly after the Millennium dawned, I was itching for something new to sink my teeth into.  Software development wasn’t giving me the satisfaction I craved from working, and I had recently been part of a startup that was now a smoking crater after the Dot Com crash.

While attending a local art show, I walked along perusing all the photography booths, as nature and landscape photography has always been a passion of mine.  Most of the photographers had similar kinds of work but there was one guy whose booth stood out from the others.  I stopped in and started up a conversation with him about his photos.  They weren’t just beautiful, they were striking.  To the point where people would audibly gasp walking by, “Oh wow, look at THAT”.  Knowing a little about the subject, I probed him a bit for his secrets.

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Photo by DeclanTM

This article is #7 in a series about startup marketing. The first 6 (not required before you read this one) are available here: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6.

I’ve gone on and on about the subject of pre-launch marketing on my podcast, made mention of it in my book, went into detail on TechZing, and again on a recent Micropreneur Academy conference call.

And after talking about this subject at length, I found myself again evangelizing it last week at the Business of Software conference. That’s when I realized I needed to sit down and create a permanent written resource for the topic. Then you don’t have to listen to me tell you about it – you can just ask for the URL.

So the intention of this post is to lay out the key details of why you should start marketing your startup (or product, or book, or anything else you will launch) months before launch day. [tweet this]

This may sound obvious, but given the number of times I’ve been asked about it (and the number of times I’ve seen people do it poorly) it’s apparent it needs further examination.

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The Business of Software 2010 was last week in Boston. This is without a doubt my favorite conference every year.

I had a great time and met a ton of new people (including finally meeting Jason Cohen and Patrick McKenzie after exchanging many emails over the past year or two). The whirlwind of the conference was such that it took me about 48 hours before I could hold a conversation about anything but starting a software company.

My talk was titled The #1 Goal of Your Website and I promised I would post my slides (and here they are).

There is a well-organized (and detailed) look at each talk here.

The subject of measuring market size comes up every few weeks in my interactions with startup founders, and one point I always raise is the difference between a top-down and bottom-up approach.

Top-Down
The top-down approach is the one you would traditionally link to business school case studies and startups going after large markets.

The approach involves going to a source of (often public) data and finding out how many X’s there are in the world, where X is your target consumer…be it a barber shop, web design firm or male under the age of 34.

The challenge with this approach is that unless you have a stack of cash from here to the moon, you have zero chance of reaching all of those X’s.

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Almost four years ago, after a failed attempt to grow my consulting firm, I made the decision to never hire another employee.

Through my experience as a manager and employer I realized that the time and energy it takes to hire, manage, motivate, train, administer, and retain employees would be better invested in adding value to my products.

In other words, I’d rather spend my time writing code, talking to customers, and marketing my products than managing employees who would do that work for me.

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I’ve worked with several hundred entrepreneurs over the past few years, and after the first 50 or so I began to notice a pattern. There are traits that successful founders possess that tend to be weaker or absent in people who are never quite able to make it work.

There are obvious traits that you need as a startup founder: a strong work ethic, perseverance, a desire to learn, etc… But at this point we’re all bored to tears of these entrepreneurial generalities. If you need someone to tell you to work hard and persevere, you should cut your losses now and head back to your cubicle.

So today I want to focus on a handful of lesser known traits that will contribute to your success as a founder.

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A good chunk of chapter 6 from my startup book went live on the interwebs this morning as a guest post on Jason Cohen’s popular startup blog A Smart Bear. I edited the chapter for length and tone, but the five key points are intact:

1. Why should a startup use a virtual assistant (VA)?
2. The two points in the startup process when a VA is most helpful
3. Case studies of my use of VAs
4. The steps for finding, evaluating and vetting a VA
5. The best places to find a VA

Read the full article here.