David Cummings on Startups

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When to Push Out New Product Features
Continuing my post from yesterday that Usage is Like Oxygen for Ideas in Products I want to talk a bit more about the endless debate on when to push out new product features. Product, in this context, is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications on the web. Generally, with installed software, new features need to be tested 10x more thoroughly before shipping as there is a much higher cost to make a mistake. As for SaaS products, here are some reasons to push out features fast and frequently:
- No feature survives intact with contact in the real world
- Customers appreciate innovation, even if it isn’t always perfect
- Customers provide more input when they see a product is actively enhanced vs one that doesn’t change often
- Programmers have a tendency to overcomplicate features, so pushing out bite-sized chunks forces a simplification of the functionality
Now, how is fast and frequently defined? There’s a movement to do continuous deployment where every piece of code checked in goes straight to production if all the tests pass (see IMVU pushing out code 50 times a day). We don’t do continuous deployment but we do look to push code anywhere from daily to bi-weekly depending on the maturity of the product and the impact of the feature. My recommendation is to err slightly on the side of pushing out too fast knowing the trade-off that some features will not be enough for users, but will provide a strong foundation for feedback.

What else? What are some other considerations in pushing out new product features?
November 15, 2010
Usage is Like Oxygen for Ideas (in Products)

The founding developer of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, has a great essay titled 1.0 is the Loneliest Number where he recounts similar story to my post mortem on a failed product in which he spent entirely too long adding more and more features to a release before putting it out in wild to get feedback on it. His choice quote, which is echoed by the guys at 37signals, is as follows:

Usage is like oxygen for ideas. You can never fully anticipate how an audience is going to react to something you’ve created until it’s out there. That means every moment you’re working on something without it being in the public it’s actually dying, deprived of the oxygen of the real world.

My recommendation is to read Matt’s essay and to create a culture of minimum viable functionality for new features so that customers can provide feedback right away. Too often, the engineering mentality is that of a perfectionist leading to more and more functionality piled onto a feature to get it just right. Only, just right for one engineer isn’t the same as just right for 80% of a product’s user base. Don’t let your product ideas suffocate.

November 14, 2010
Startup Progression Part Three
Image via Wikipedia

Earlier this week I had a chance to meet with a seed stage startup here in Atlanta. The team is composed of two smart guys that have known each other since high school and went to the same ACC school. Here’s some more information on the team:
- Working on a B2C web startup
- Raised a mid-five figures friends and family round
- Both co-founders have a technical background
- Both co-founders worked for several years for big companies before starting this venture
- Have some traffic to their site but not much
- Thinking about doing an advertising and sponsorship driven model
My advice for them, being in Atlanta and doing a B2C startup, was to either figure out how to get to ramen profitability immediately or move to San Francisco and take part in the angel financing bubble. They could also pivot to a B2B model and have more fundraising options in Atlanta, but it is still tough without six figures of revenue.
November 13, 2010
What Could Go Wrong on a Site?
Image by erin m via Flickr

In the last few days I’ve heard of several entrepreneurs having challenges with their website/webapp where unexpected things are going wrong. While it has gotten much easier to build powerful websites, there are many more moving parts, and more subtle things that can break. What could go wrong on a site? Here are some examples:
- Network goes down
- Hard drive failure
- Web server failure
- Database failure
- Domain expires
- SSL certificate expires
- Page doesn’t render in a certain browser (IE is the usual culprit)
- Broken links (e.g. link to an external URL and that site changes their link structure without redirects)
- Slow loading pages and assets
- Third-party JavaScript causing pages not to load
- Third-party payment gateway fails (e.g. Authorize.net, Google Checkout, Amazon Payments, etc)
- Application functionality breaks (e.g. login fails, conversion path fails, etc)
- Distributed denial of service
- Spike in traffic
As you can see, there are many different issues that can arise with a site. One of the bigger challenges as well is that the traditional pinging services, which are very popular, only catch when the site is completely down, as opposed to when a specific piece of functionality like signing-in or a payment gateway is down. My recommendation is to recognize the complexity that goes into sites today and plan accordingly.

What else? What are some other things that can go wrong on a website/webapp?
November 12, 2010
The 5 Main Marketing Areas for Startups
All too often, startups I meet with don’t have a good grasp on their marketing strategy, more precisely, their customer acquisition strategy. The most common response to the marketing strategy question is search engine optimization (SEO), which almost never plays out as an exclusive strategy due to the competitiveness of the industry. On a simple level there are only a few areas startups should focus to build awareness and generate leads. Here are the top five marketing areas for startups:
- Word of mouth – where prospects and customers tell their friends and colleagues about the product (notice I didn’t say viral marketing, as so few products are truly viral)
- Pay-per-click – yes, Google AdWords are terribly expensive, but they are also effective especially with more targeted phrases (e.g. buying competitors’ names is a great tactic for low volume, high quality leads)
- Search engine optimization – SEO does work but needs to have a 6-12 month horizon and tons of content (e.g. publishing 1-2 blog posts a week indefinitely)
- Cold calls – now, people generally associate cold calls with sales reps, but cold calls are also a great way to build product awareness in a marketing fashion and should be done by most startups
- Social media – yes, people are making money off social media by monitoring industry terms and competitors’ names, then tactfully joining the conversation
My recommendation is to employ all of these areas as part of a marketing strategy and focus in on the ones performing the best.

What else? What are some other marketing areas for startups?
November 11, 2010
Startups Overcomplicate Their Product
Image via Wikipedia

Technology startups, especially ones with strong technical skills on the co-founding team, have a tendency to overcomplicate their product and the necessary pieces to launch. There are several reasons why this is the case:
- As a developer it can be fun to experiment with the most fancy of tools, even when they are overkill (premature optimization is the root of all evil).
- There’s no code debt, so it is incredibly easy to add more features, even before a prospect has validated that there’s a need for the existing features.
- It is more fun to innovate and add functionality, due to the immediate sense of satisfaction, as opposed to doing sales and marketing with potentially little results.
- Without a deadline, or timeboxing the minimum viable product, there’s a normal perfectionist tendency as the product is a representation of the developers
- The minimum viable product often slips into the minimum respectable product, which is fine only in limited circumstances
My recommendation is to continually ask yourself if you are overcomplicating the product and necessary pieces to launch and start developing relationships with prospects.

What else? What are some other reasons startups overcomplicate their product?
November 10, 2010
Track Your Brand Recognition Online
Image via Wikipedia

Entrepreneurs are always looking for an edge or a new strategy to assess progress. One area that is important to track for certain startups is brand recognition online. The Internet, unlike most marketing mediums, provides fairly straightforward methods for tracking brand recognition through several avenues like the following:
- Track the number of times monthly that someone searches for your company or product name in a search engine and then clicks the link to go to your site (this is measured via the referring keywords in standard web analytics tools like Google Analytics)
- Measure the number of direct visitors to your site that didn’t come from clicking a link on a site to get to your site as this implies they had your site bookmarked or typed in the URL directly, and thus remembered your brand
- Calculate the number of mentions of your brand on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube using a social media monitoring tool like Looxii
As you probably guessed, the goal is to see the data show growth of the your brand recognition on a monthly basis.

What else? What are other ways to measure your brand recognition online?
November 9, 2010
Knock Three Annual Goals Out of the Park
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Recently I was talking to an entrepreneur about 2011 goal planning. A few minutes into the conversation she told me that one of the more successful approaches she’s encountered is to set three SMART goals at the beginning of the year and do whatever it takes to knock them out of the park. Too often people set too many goals, or no goals, and then aren’t able to adequately measure their progress. Some tips for the three goals:
- Make the goals specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and include a timeline (SMART)
- Ask advisors, friends, and family to hold you accountable on just these three goals (any more makes it difficult to focus and for others to remember)
- Put the goals on a post-it note on your bathroom mirror so that you see it every morning
- Set a recurring event in your calendar for the first day of every month to email you to review your progress against the goals
- Knock the goals out of the park and start thinking of your next set of goals
What else? How do you like to do annual goals?
November 8, 2010
The Cease and Desist Letter
Image via Wikipedia

Often times in the startup world there is what many refer to as the roller coaster of emotions that vary not only day to day but sometimes even hour to hour. One of the most unpleasant events, because it is potentially a waste of time, money, and energy if fought, is the cease and desist letter. The cease and desist has a few tell tale signs including arriving in a FedEx overnight envelope from a unrecognized law firm with a good bit of legalese. We’ve received several of these over the years for reasons like the following:
- Product names that were too close to a competitor’s name (2x)
- Price comparison page that ranked first in Google for the competitor’s name followed by “pricing”, which rankled the competitor
- Passing on information to prospects that was given to use by an employee of a competitor that was looking for a job with us, and volunteered it in her intro email
On a simple level it’s good to push the limits as it is almost always easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission. When it comes to cease and desiste letters, nine times out of 10 it is better to make the adjustment and move on.
November 7, 2010
B2B Sales Tools That Didn’t Exist a Decade Ago
Image by SystemF92 via Flickr

Yesterday I was spending time with one of our reseller partners talking through our best practices and strategies for selling our software. Towards the end of the conversation, with it clear that our partners were impressed by some of our techniques, one exclaimed how many of the B2B sales and marketing tools we use didn’t even exist a decade ago.

Here are some of those new tools and techniques:
- LinkedIn to find the appropriate contact based on company and job title
- Jigsaw.com to understand the email naming convention for a company as well as the direct dial number for a potential prospect
- Twitter to monitor your industry name and competitors in order to find potential prospects
- Caller ID for your website to understand which companies have been browsing around
- Drip marketing and other prospect nurturing programs to stay top-of-mind
Of course, no amount of new technology can substitute for good old fashioned hard work, including picking up the phone and talking to people. My recommendation is to experiment with a variety of B2B sales and marketing tools and incorporate the ones that are most beneficial.

What else? What are some other B2B sales and marketing tools that didn’t exist a decade ago?
November 6, 2010