Continuing with the topic from yesterday on Tools for Product Communities, let’s look at some example products from the different categories:
Please let me know what other tools you like and recommend.
One of the challenges for a growing company is to put processes and procedures in place to systematize how the organization operates. The idea is to add some level of reproducibility of what goes on so as to be able to scale to a company size that is many times larger. An area that is especially ripe for putting in tools to generate better economies of scale is that of online product communities. Here are some tools to consider:
I recommend starting with one or two of these types of tools at first and eventually incorporate all of them to engage the product community.
Continuing my posts from earlier in the year on using Google Spreadsheets to manage KPI Dashboards (here, here, and here), there are several areas we’ve been able to improve. Let’s look at them now:
We’ve found the Google Spreadsheet KPI Dashboards to be very effective for us and are going to continue using them next year.
This afternoon, I talked with a friend of mine about his web-based startup idea. He has five years of experience running a labor-intensive small business and he’s ready for a change. Naturally, building a web application and using his expertise to improve the industry with his domain experience makes the most sense. We got to talking about the idea, only to realize he had no idea how difficult it is to acquire customers.
I’m beginning to believe more and more startups are really sales and marketing plays. What I mean is that the winners will be the ones that execute the best with regards to customer acquisition. Yes, the product, support, and capitalization are critical, but if customers can’t be signed up and serviced profitably, there isn’t a business (assuming it isn’t a winner-take-all business).
My recommendation is to focus on sales and marketing, especially customer acquisition costs, when determining the viability of a business.
As commonly happens, I’m called in to help with IT challenges at my dad’s house over the holidays. I’m happy to help and am always curious about what new issues have arisen. Yesterday, the goal was to help him configure email on his new iPhone 3GS. He had just purchased it the day before due to the battery dying on his first generation iPhone, and it being unusually expensive to replace.
With a clean slate on his iPhone, I recommended he go with Gmail instead of Yahoo due to the superior web-based interface, no text ads in the emails, and the better integration with other Google services like Google Calendar. Of course, he’d been using Yahoo! Mail for seven years, so he was reluctant to switch. Here’s the trouble with Yahoo! Mail we had to go through to make forwarding work:
This trouble with Yahoo! Mail, actively making it difficult and cumbersome to forward email, shows they are on the defensive, protecting with they have, and not doing the right things to grow. Companies make lots of little choices that all add up to a strategy — Yahoo!’s strategy is to play defense.
Building on my previous post about the frictionless Apple App Store, another key benefit of the App Store is the top downloads section. The user interface is divided into paid and free apps, making it easy to browse popular applications and try them out (the free ones). Here are some benefits of this strategy:
I recommend thinking of how a similar approach could be beneficial to your startup.
One of the tactics I’m a fan of is putting together a one page outline as a basis for a conversation or partnership. The general idea is to just jot down ideas in a bulleted, outline format so that one or more parties are prepared for a discussion, and to use it as a basis for future discussions and accountability. Of course I use Google Docs, making it is easy for everyone to work from the same content and centralize changes.
Some benefits of the one page outline:
One page outlines work for me and I recommend them.
When a new product shows signs of taking off, inevitably companies and entrepreneurs in other countries will take note and reach out to form a distribution partnership. Having a distributor can really help startups generate revenue without significant capital outlays. Let’s look at a few considerations for international partnerships:
Partnerships generally fall under the 80/20 rule whereby 80% of the partnerships produce 20% of the results and 20% of the partnerships produce 80% of the results. Regardless, partnerships, and international ones, are great growth opportunities for startups and should be fully evaluated.
I just started reading the book SuperFreakonomics today and at the beginning they talk about how the success of their first book, Freakonomics, has made finding material for their second book so much easier as readers bring ideas to them. The term cumulative advantage, in the economics profession, describes a situation where previous accomplishments result in seemingly unfair advantages for future situations. Immediately, this made me think of serial entrepreneurs with a win under their belt.
Some cumulative advantages for serial entrepreneurs include:
I recommend working on relationships and expertise that result in building a personal cumulative advantage.
I just finished reading the book Jungle Rules by John Imlay and really enjoyed learning about the origins of the technology community in Atlanta. What the book really did was drive home the importance of having a sales focused corporate culture. Here are a few anecdotes that emphasize the type of sales focus of a few companies:
I recommend analyzing ways to make sales more top of mind in startup cultures.
David Cummings on Startups 