David Cummings on Startups

Category: Entrepreneurship

  • Insights into Blog Traffic

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    Continuing yesterday’s post titled Thoughts on Inbound Marketing, I want to highlight the power of driving traffic to blogs by way of examples from previous posts on this blog. Inbound links, social media, search engines, RSS subscribers, and email subscribers drive the vast majority of traffic.

    Some numbers and details on traffic to this blog:

    The morale of the story: high quality inbound links drive the most one-off jumps in traffic, which slowly grows repeat visitors over time.

  • Thinking about Inbound Marketing

    Inbound C-Line T Stop
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    Inbound marketing is hot. The idea behind inbound marketing is to pull prospects in and have them raise their hand for more information as opposed to outbound marketing that interrupts them. Now, I’m a huge proponent of outbound marketing including cold calls and other targeted messaging but inbound marketing is a major force rapidly growing in popularity. In addition, educating prospects is the best form of marketing.

    Here are a few notes about inbound marketing:

    • Content is king
    • The idea is to create unique, valuable content to educate site visitors and turn them into prospects
    • Quality, fresh content will generate inbound links from other sites increasing search engine rankings, more web traffic, and thus more leads
    • It encompasses content (blogs, videos, etc), SEO (search marketing), and social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc)

    My recommendation is to pay attention to inbound marketing and include it as part of your sales and marketing strategy.

  • Technology Companies that Continually Lower Prices

    Amazon Web Services logo
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    How often do you get emails from your cable or phone company saying they just lowered your monthly price? I’ve never seen it. In fact, I can’t think of any technology services, or regular services, that have lowered their price once, let alone continually.

    Amazon Web Services (AWS) lowers prices on a regular basis (see today’s notice here and another notice from a few months ago here). What that says to me as a customer of theirs is that they are committed to improving their infrastructure and economies of scale with the goal of passing some of that costs savings onto their users. That makes me a more loyal customer. We use AWS for a variety of functions from cloud instances with EC2 to cloud storage with S3. AWS is an impressive offering that keeps getting better, more comprehensive, and more cost effective.

    What can you do for your customers to make them more loyal? What’s your tradeoff between pricing and volume of customers?

  • Best Time for Sales Calls

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    As part of the EO Accelerator quarterly education day that I helped host at my office yesterday, we spent the day talking about people. On one of the tangents talking about sales reps the topic of best time to call came up. Turns out there was a report done by InsideSales.com in 2009 that’s available over at the The Lead Response Management Study site.

    Here are a few of the nuggets from the survey which was based on data from a CRM for calls made to leads generated from the web:

    • Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to call
    • 4-6PM is the best time to make contact with a lead
    • It is best to call within 20 hours of the lead coming in

    I’m a big proponent of striking while the iron is hot. My recommendation is always to follow-up with a lead immediately when they come in, if only to say that we’re hear to help. Most people assume they can’t get a quality sales rep on the phone and this is a way to differentiate and start establishing rapport. Head on over to the study to learn more.

  • Books for Software Product Managers

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    Product management is tough. It really is. I’ve written about it many times before (here, here, and here). In addition to learning from the school of hard knocks, there are several books out there on product management worth reading. Here are some of my favorites:

    There are many software product management related books out there but these are a few of my favorites.

    What else? What other software product management books do you like?

  • Antiques Roadshow and Startups

    Antiques Roadshow
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    Have you seen Antiques Roadshow on PBS? They do a great job of telling stories and history about random antiques people bring into a regional show. Oh, and they excitedly ask: do you know how much this is worth? Nine out 10 times the guest is flabbergasted by the high value. The value is the auction price before fees, but interesting nonetheless. Geico even did a funny commercial parodying the show talking about the value of a bird in the hand (antique) being worth two in the bush.

    What’s a lesson for startups from Antiques Roadshow?

    A few lessons:

    • One man’s junk is another man’s treasure
    • Most junk is exactly that: junk
    • Sponsors of the show are striking at the optimal time: when people are thinking about the value of their antiques and collectibles
    • Stories and history add significant value to products

    What else? What other startup lesson are there in Antiques Roadshow?

  • Product Managers in Startups

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    Four years ago I was having lunch at Ruth’s Chris steakhouse in Buckhead (they have good $10 lunches) with a local angel investor that was telling me his background (went to GA Tech and then worked for a major enterprise software company for many years). He said something that stuck with me, “Atlanta, and most places outside Silicon Valley, really suffer from a lack of strong product managers with an MBA.” Immediately, I thought to myself that a good product manager doesn’t need an MBA, rather, they need to be able to listen to customers and maintain an opinion of what the product should and should not do.

    Here are a few thoughts on product managers in startups:

    • It is one of the most critical functions that should not be underrated
    • Best done by a co-founder (yes, it’s that important)
    • Should balance ideas from prospects, customers, analysts, and competitors
    • Needs to have a strong opinion of what gets included and what doesn’t (saying no to features is even more important than saying yes as it occurs much more frequently)
    • Constantly asks the question, “Is this useful for 80% of the customers I want to have?”

    Product management is critical for successful startups and is difficult to do. I recommend reading Getting Real by 37signals as well as other resources on product management.

    What else? What other thoughts do you have about product managers in startups?

  • Core Engineering and Outsourcing in Startups

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    Two of my core tenants for startups are that one of the co-founders needs to be technical and that the engineering should be done in-house. Now, this doesn’t apply to more mature companies, or non-software/technology companies. One area to clarify is that core engineering should be done in-house while peripheral engineering can be outsourced. Core engineering is the main application and platform that provides the central value.

    Here are some potential items that can be outsourced:

    • Marketing website — only if the app is separate from the website (e.g. most B2B SaaS products)
    • Mobile app — many companies are dipping their toes in the iPhone and Android world, making it suitable to get started with an outsourced app (you shouldn’t outsource the mobile app if it is core to the business)
    • Plug-ins to other products — there are often special purpose plug-ins like those for Microsoft Office products that can be outsourced to specialists, especially if the plug-in is fairly black and white in functionality

    My recommendation is to do the core engineering in-house and consider outsourcing items that are more self contained and peripheral.

    What else? What other thoughts do you have about core engineering and outsourcing in startups?

  • Repetition is Key in Leadership

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    One of the best practices that took me several years to learn is that of repetition. I always assumed that I’d only need to say something once and that was it. It isn’t that people don’t hear or understand it but rather that there are so many things going on that create noise.

    Here are a few tips around repetition:

    • More important items need to be repeated more often (e.g. core values, corporate culture tenants, etc)
    • Different methods of communication like in-person, email, and voice should be employed to resonate with different team members
    • Only after you’re annoyed with repeating something so many times have you actually started to build recall in the minds of your people

    Repetition doesn’t come naturally to me but I’ve found it to be critical to reinforce key messages.

    What else? What other thoughts do you have about repetition as a leadership tactic?

  • Thinking About Goals for 2011

    Two New Year's Resolutions postcards
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    With the new year right around the corner it’s time to start thinking about New Year’s Resolutions and goals for 2011. For me, I like to create goals in several buckets: family, personal, professional, and community. Some of my goals are specific (e.g. X amount of revenue) and some of my goals are really habits (e.g. exercise twice a week).

    Here are a few previous posts to get you thinking about goals for 2011:

    What are your goals for the new year?