David Cummings on Startups

Blog

  • When Does Startup Culture Start

    Social Sciences

    Talking with an entrepreneur recently we started to debate when the culture of a startup takes place. My position is that is occurs immediately with the co-founders and builds out with each additional hire. Her position is that the startup needs 15+ employees to have enough personalities and stories to fully articulate the corporate culture.

    Here are a few ideas to keep in mind when thinking through corporate culture in a startup:

    • Corporate culture is the only long-term sustainable competitive advantage within your control
    • Corporate culture starts immediately with the co-founders and strengthens or weakens with every new hire
    • The sooner the culture is defined and clarified the better for determining future hire fit
    • Getting the wrong people off the bus and the right people on the bus is the most important leadership job

    It took me seven years of being a startup CEO before I really appreciated corporate culture and now I’m a huge proponent of having a strong culture. The corporate culture starts on day one and needs to consciously nurtured forever.

    What else? What are you thoughts as to when corporate culture starts?

  • Form or Function Product UI

    Electronic components shops in Guangzhou. Ther...
    Image via Wikipedia

    Products with great functionality and strong form/design are often the most successful, but they don’t usually start out that way. For many entrepreneurs, especially with B2B products, getting the function right should precede getting the form right. The idea is that you want to solve the problems as efficiently as possible, even if the UI isn’t as nice as it could be done with more resources or time. Some entrepreneurs attempt to get the design right before users are even on the system. Users are oxygen for the product and need to be part of the design and feedback process so that it isn’t built in a vacuum.

    Here are some ideas when thinking about product form and function:

    • Function needs to come before form
    • Form is important for B2B products, and even more so for B2C
    • More and more enterprise products are taking UI inspiration from B2C web apps
    • Consumer web apps are raising the design bar for business apps
    • It is often more difficult to find front-end product designers that back-end developers

    Product form and function are difficult to do well but function is more important. Form takes a special talent with a graphical eye as well as strong user experience understanding.

    What else? What are some other ideas when thinking about product form and function?

  • Find the Early Adopters

    Promenade...!!!
    Image by Denis Collette…!!! via Flickr

    Signing the first 10 customers for a new product is one of the most difficult things an entrepreneur will ever do. It isn’t the act of signing the customer but rather everything required to get to that point and the challenge of getting the prospect to take that leap of faith and become a customer. One of the best things to do is to find the early adopters who take pride in using technologies before they’ve crossed the chasm.

    Here are some ideas to find early adopters:

    • Go to meetups and educational events for the target audience
    • Participate in forums and message boards online where enthusiasts hang out
    • Engage in LinkedIn Groups around specific topics
    • Advertise on niche community sites

    Finding the right type of early adopters can be difficult but the results can be incredible. Create a methodical plan and execute it to find and convert the early adopters into customers.

    What else? What are some other ways to find early adopters?

  • Developing an Example Customer Story for Demos

    The White Sands Complex - Danzante
    Image via Wikipedia

    One of the techniques I like to employ for sales demo is to create an example customer, complete with dummy site, domain name, and persona to use for sales demos. The idea is to paint a picture of the typical app customer such that the prospect that’s watching can visualize himself or herself using the software. Telling a story is much more powerful than showing features (don’t show up and throw up).

    Here are some tips when developing an example customer story for demos:

    • Have several scenarios available so that the story can be tailored to the prospect
    • Look for hooks and memorable anecdotes that you can intertwine in the story
    • Be confident about the example customer story while also being straightforward that is only an example
    • Develop an example site (e.g. use WordPress with a professional Woo Theme), custom domain name, and anything else to make the example customer convincing
    • Finish the customer story with a clear summary and desired next steps

    Great example customer stories for sales demos can really differentiate one company from another. My recommendation is to focus on story telling with strong supporting resources when doing sales demos.

    What else? What other tips do you have for developing an example customer story for demos?

  • The Value of EO (Entrepreneurs’ Organization)

    The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, as viewed from ...
    Image via Wikipedia

    Last week I was talking with my brother who owns the world’s most successful online spanish dictionary company. Early in the conversation the topic of the Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) came up as he was meeting with the local Washington D.C. chapter. He wanted to understand the value of the organization and whether or not it was worth the $4k/year for membership.

    Here’s some of the value of EO:

    • Peer-to-peer experience sharing through amazing forums
    • Local social and educational events with the highest signal-to-noise ratio of any events I’ve been to in the past 10 years
    • Regional, national, and global learning events with renowned speakers and attendees
    • Secondary benefits like a private portal to ask other members questions (including members of YPO and WPO), access to the best doctors in the country on short notice, and unpublished PR opportunities

    For me, having a peer group of other entrepreneurs with $1 million+ business for intimate small group experiences as well as larger social and learning events fills a big hole that I had. I highly recommend EO and can’t say enough good things about it. As with anything, the more you put into it the more you get out of it.

    What else? Have you had experience with EO?

  • Gathering Product Feedback in a Startup

    Image representing UserVoice as depicted in Cr...
    Image via CrunchBase

    Gathering and organizing product feedback from constituents like customers, prospects, analysts, sales reps, support reps, and more can be a real challenge. I like to recommend two different strategies depending on the stage of the startup:

    • Seed Stage Product Feedback Strategy – a simple Google Spreadsheet with columns like Idea, Comments, URL, Done, and Proposed By goes a long way. The goal is to have something quick and dirty that allows everyone to see the ideas and add their thoughts. Each month a sheet in the spreadsheet should be renamed to archives and another sheet should be added so that things don’t get too cluttered. Customers and prospects don’t have access to the spreadsheet but all employees do have access.
    • Early/Growth Stage Product Feedback Strategy – a combination of a simple Google Spreadsheet and a formal app like UserVoice. UserVoice would be used by customers and employees. The Google Spreadsheet would be similar to the seed stage spreadsheet but it would be exclusively managed by the product manager. Every month the product manager would solicit input in person from the key constituents as well as ideas in UserVoice to come up with the road map. The process is more formal but still collaborative and agile.

    Gather and organizing product feedback is critical for the success of a startup. Using these simple approaches provides for a scalable strategy.

    What else? How do you gather product feedback in a startup?

  • Treat the Website Like a Product

    IMG_4239
    Image by Pixy5 /Babushka via Flickr

    Startups often put up a cool website as quickly as possible and focus the vast majority of their efforts on the app. It some cases the app is also the website but often it is a separate endeavor that gets neglected. The website needs to be treated like a product and given serious attention. What good does it do to build an amazing product only to have a website that doesn’t attract visitors, doesn’t convert visitors into prospects, and doesn’t have focus?

    Here are some ideas for treating the website like a product:

    • Clearly assign the website responsibilities to one person in the startup
    • Schedule engineering time to work on the website on a regular basis
    • Don’t set it and forget it – consider assigning a product manager to it
    • Incorporate analytics like new qualified leads (if B2B) and unique visitors (if B2C) into your core KPIs
    • Use inbound marketing and marketing automation to maximize site value

    Treating the website like a product is tough with all the other demands of a startup. Building a sales and marketing machine is even tougher and the website is a critical part of the equation. My recommendation is to treat the website like a product and spend more time on it than you initially thought.

    What else? What other ideas do you have for treating the website like a product?

  • Startups Need Focused Websites

    Outside the Customer Service Centre
    Image via Wikipedia

    There’s a startup tendency to be more broad than more focused when it comes to websites and messaging. Part of it stems from trying not to cast a wide net for potential customers and part of it comes from the search for a repeatable customer acquisition process. Startups are better off with a focused website that speaks to their ideal customer in a direct manner. There’s only so much time to capture someone’s attention and the most likely outcome for a visitor is the click of death: their “Back” button in the browser.

    Here are some questions to ask regarding the focus of a website:

    • How many “products” are listed and how many do you really have?
    • What are the three most important buyer personas and how do you appeal to them?
    • What one or two call-to-actions are found on every page?
    • What are the three most important things you want visitors to do on your site?
    • What social proof (testimonials, videos, references, etc) do you provide?

    Staying focused with messaging is difficult. Startups don’t have the luxury of established brands and need to appeal to the busy visitor by staying on point and getting the message across.

    What else? What do you look for in a focused website?

  • Personal Finance Workshop as Startup Employee Benefit

    Save Money Vacation
    Image by o5com via Flickr

    Last month we finished our first personal finance workshop for company employees and had 28 participants. The idea is simple: employees that feel more confident about their financial future will be happier and more productive team members. We used MoneyCheck’s corporate-sponsored personal finance workshops as our provider to teach the course and have been thrilled with them.

    Here were a few takeaways from the experience:

    • The program should be facilitated by a third-party that is paid for by the company and isn’t trying to sell stuff to the employees (no one wants to sit through a class where they know they are trying to be sold something)
    • Benefits of the program include employee team building, significantly greater 401k participation, and increased individual confidence
    • Arrange for one-on-one time with the instructor and the employees so that more confidential and private questions can be answered outside the larger group setting

    If you’re looking to differentiate your startup’s employee benefits, strengthen your corporate culture, and increase employee satisfaction, I’d highly recommend talking to Alok at MoneyCheck.

    What else? Have you done a personal finance workshop and what’s been your experience?

  • Remind Yourself that Startups are a Marathon

    A couple weeks ago I was talking to a friend who had entered a dip in his startup. Dips are when you’ve been working hard at something for a period of time and it is getting especially tough where you have to decide if you’re going to give up or continue on. These are often very tough times. Startups are a marathon and not a sprint, so it is important to continually remind yourself of that.

    Here are some tips for the startup marathon:

    • Reflect daily and weekly on your small and large victories so that progress is recorded
    • When you’re in a dip recognize it as such and seek peer-to-peer feedback through a group like Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO)
    • Take personal time and enjoy life knowing that you’re in the startup marathon and need to pace yourself

    Startups are a marathon and need to be treated as such.

    What else? What are some other tips to help complete the startup marathon?