David Cummings on Startups

Blog

  • Strategy Change for Small Ecommerce Business

    Two weeks ago I met with an entrepreneur that is in the midst of changing the strategy for his small ecommerce business. As ecommerce sites have become more prevalent, and big brands like Amazon.com have continued to expand product lines, it is more difficult for small vendors to compete. This entrepreneur’s enhanced strategy is as follows:

    • Eliminate 30% of the products offered as the secondary line extensions added over the past few years have not proved successful and diluted the brand
    • Invest much more heavily in custom content about the products, including unique information and rich media (e.g. 360 degree product views)
    • Spend more time training sales and customer service personnel on the products, and allocate time for them to actual use what they sell

    I don’t know much about ecommerce businesses but his enhanced strategy sounds strong to me.

  • Getting Involved in the Atlanta Tech Community

    Mike Blake has a great post from April of this year titled Joining the VC Scene in Atlanta. His insight and links are an invaluable resource for anyone looking to get involved in the Atlanta technology community. I would have tweaked Mike’s title to say “Technology Community” instead of “VC Scene” as his commentary is really applicable to anyone that is interested in getting involved, regardless of caring about the VC scene. In addition, I would add a few more links:

    Again, please read Mike’s post and get involved in the Atlanta technology community!

  • Startup Advice from Texas Startup Blog

    Alexander Muse, whom I don’t know, has a great blog over at Texas Startup Blog. One key section of his blog, labeled Startup Advice, has a great deal of content that every entrepreneur should read. Here are some of the topics:

    I recommend entrepreneurs read through all the topics.

  • Advice for Aspiring Web Entrepreneurs

    On Tuesday of this week I met with an aspiring web entrepreneur who sought input on what he should do to better his skills. In addition to the five habits of a successful entrepreneur advice, I offered up the following items to be a habit as well:

    • Pick 50 blogs related to technology, web development, web marketing, venture capital, and entrepreneurship and spend one hour per day skimming them
    • Learn HTML and CSS and spend two hours per week using them
    • Make a blog with your personal name as the domain name and write one post per day

    Doing these tasks on a regular basis isn’t the easiest thing to do, but making it a habit and sticking to it can make the difference between success and failure.

  • Software Roadmap Process

    In addition to watching the U.S. Open tennis tournament, I’ve been thinking about our product roadmap process. The previous roadmap process for our SaaS product hasn’t kept up with the pace of product demands due to success in the marketplace. Here are the general ideas for our new process:

    • Shared Google Spreadsheet with individual tabs for each department, a tab for the actual roadmap, and a tab for customer ideas from our idea exchange
    • Each department keeps a laundry list of what they’d like to see in the product in their respective tab
    • The sheets have the following columns:
      – Item
      – Description
      – Sponsor
      – Priority
      – Difficulty
      – Discussed
    • Department managers come together once a month to discuss items that haven’t been discussed yet and to lobby for their requests to be moved to the main roadmap
    • The product manager makes the final decision, based on input from the key stakeholders

    It’s a new process for us and I’m excited to see the results. The most important aspect of product management is to be opinionated about the product vision and fanatical about what does, and what does not make it into the application.

  • Software Pricing Proportionate to Sales Cycle

    Two days ago I had the opportunity to meet with a local entrepreneur who’s working on a SaaS product geared towards pharmaceutical sales reps. The gentleman and his co-founder are working on the business part-time while outsourcing the engineering to a contractor in NY. After the usual chit chat, he drilled into the area that he was struggling with the most: pricing.

    His product is currently priced at $99/month/user, and has one add-on with a per usage cost. Having a medical sales background, he’s enlisted several independent, commission-only reps to help sell the product, but with no luck. I asked him about the sales cycle and he said it usually takes a couple weeks for a rep to sell the product once the prospect is in the buying cycle. What’s the problem with this situation? A product that sells for $99/month, and requires a trained sales rep, isn’t going to work unless it can be done in a call center and is a mass market application (think cell phones or cable TV). Software needs to be priced in direct, proportionate relation to the sales cycle.

    My advice to him was to either make the web application more self-service with a price point that is in the $10 – $30/month range, or to go much more up-market and sell a $1,000/month product to departments. At $99/month, his product is too expensive to sell without an inside sales team, and not expensive enough to compensate trained sales reps. It requires selling, not order taking.

    Pricing is difficult and should not be under estimated. For more software pricing thoughts, please visit Joel Spolsky’s post from 2004.

  • Quick Thoughts on PowerPoint Presentations

    Last week I had the opportunity to hear two entrepreneurs give a PowerPoint presentation about their business. The delivery of the content was good but the slides were horrible. Absolutely horrendous. It’s beyond me why they used a deck with upwards of 100 words on each slides. Yes, 100 words.

    My advice for entrepreneurs pitching their company is simple: follow Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. I have nothing more to say on the topic.

  • One-Page Strategic Plan Templates

    The Gazelles website was recently redesigned, and as part of the redesign, the One-Page Strategic Plan (OPSP) templates and examples have been updated. The OPSP is an extremely valuable tool for articulating all aspects of your company on a two-sided piece of paper. Here are direct links to download different formats for yourself:

    I hope you find these resources as useful as I have. They really will make a difference!

  • Monthly and Quarterly Meetings

    Following up on my previous post about our weekly meeting rhythm, I wanted to make sure and capture what we do for our monthly and quarterly meetings. I’m a big fan of Patrick Lencioni’s book Death by Meeting, so we’ve implemented a schedule that is a hybrid of Lencioni’s recommendation combined with our own adaptations. Here are my monthly and quarterly meetings:

    • Monthly
      – Financials review
      – All hands meeting (company-wide update)
      – Leadership strategic meeting (on occasion)
    • Quarterly
      – Celebration
      – Leadership off-site

    Having a consistent rhythm, with different, special purpose meetings, has proved to be very effective for us and I recommend it to other entrepreneurs.

  • TechDrawl Awesomeness

    I wanted to talk briefly about one of the greatest additions to the Southeast technology community in the past two years: TechDrawl.com. From their site:

    TechDrawl is a blog showcasing emerging technology and new media businesses fresh from the South.  Our mission is to bring to the national stage the newest and most promising privately owned companies and entrepreneurs from D.C. to Texas (the U.S. Census South) and to report on their concepts and accomplishments.

    TechDrawl is so important because it gives a voice to the emerging technology community in one of the fastest growing portions of the United States. To me, TechDrawl has a done a great job with the following:

    If you haven’t visited TechDrawl lately, I’d recommend heading on over there.