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- Anticipate (2)
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- Communicate (21)
- Competition (2)
- Create (13)
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Monday, June 9th, 2008
Not following through on an idea
A lot of startups have great ideas. But unless they follow through with them to the end, they can backfire. Like mugs, for example. I was at a Starbucks in the Bay Area recently and someone brought in their own mug to avoid using paper cups. Unfortunately, Starbucks tracks cups by writing your name and order on them. It’s how they survive the chaos of the morning rush. So the same company that says, “save the planet, use a mug,” puts those mugs in paper cups to keep track of them. A lot of startups have a great idea, but they fail to think it through all the way. This is a great example of the consequences of thinking it through. If you have a concept, you need test cases. You need to describe your end user in great detail, then build a prototype, then watch them use it, and then iterate quickly.
View CommentsMonday, June 2nd, 2008
Scarcity rocks
in: Communicate, Create, Standing out
I wrote an article a while back about Linkedin and Notchup. The short version: With a particularly viral offer, Notchup used Linkedin to harvest and enrol 900,000 users in around 3 weeks. But with popularity, the cachet of “reach the people who are hard to reach and not looking” goes away.I call this the Krispy Kreme problem. A friend of mine handled operations for the donut maker years ago (sort of the opposite of high tech), and he wondered to me one day whether the fact that you could get their donuts pretty much anywhere was a bad thing. He was right. Unfortunately, scarcity doesn’t scale.
Many of the blog comments that came back concerned scarcity. The whole premise of Notchup was to help recruiters find the hottest candidates–the ones who weren’t looking. They figured that it was worth paying to talk to this talent, and with a decent paycheck at the end of it, even the most tight-mouthed candidate would be willing to part with some personal details.
Saturday, May 31st, 2008
Canada’s carriers undermine Canadian innovation
in: Startups
The Ottawa Net Neutrality rally last week was a decent effort, but Canadian consumers need to get fired up about their information infrastructure for it to catch on as an issue politicians care about. Canada’s telco monopolies — each of which is part of a major media conglomerate — have no reason to play fair on this. Bell’s land lines are dwindling (down 9.9%) according to its 2007 annual report; and revenues from long distance (down 8.1 percent) are vanishing to VOIP. But the problem is that telco stuff like net neutrality isn’t sexy, as extralife brilliantly points out. Class action lawsuits might make people care — particularly if there’s a $2,000 windfall at the end of them.
Monday, May 26th, 2008
Plan B: Five reasons companies merge and acquire
in: Competition, Create, Exit strategy
Every startup dreams of making it big. And some do; but it’s vastly more likely that you’ll get acquired by a bigger fish. This is one of the reasons VCs look so hard for exit strategies involving other people in your market. It’s a more likely outcome, and it means that When acquisitions happen, particularly by public suitors, the business must be accretive to revenues in the first year, and must not impact margins. This is because the public company’s investor’s will scrutinize revenues and margins, and will expect to see an uptick. So the obvious motivations for acquisition are for getting new stuff to sell to existing customers, or for getting new customers. When a market consolidates — meaning firms of roughly equal size acquire one another, or the bigger players roll up the smaller ones, different criteria dominate. This tends to happen in “nuclear winters” like the funding shortage many think is upon us. Strategic Marketing 101 talks about four kinds of products: Stars, Dogs, Cash Cows, and Question Marks. The classification comes from two dimensions: Whether the product line is profitable (showing things like decent revenues and good margins) and whether it’s growing (showing an increased number of users and buyers, with hopefully an accelerating rate of adoption.) Everyone wants a star, and that’s what startups are after. Most startups are question marks: No customers, no revenues, and high hopes. If they can get both growth (customers) and profitability (revenues), things are good. But if they manage profits without accelerating growth, it’s a clear sign that mergers are in the cards. Here are five other motivations behind M&A in consolidating markets. Read more…if when things go wrong, you have a Plan B. It’s important to understand why companies want to merge and acquire within their space.
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008
If you’re not at Mesh08
in: Communicate
It should be said, however, that the live blog is only as good as its contributors. If too many people get involved in one event, it can be chaotic; in this case, there were a few dedicated folks snapping pictures and pasting links from the front row. Personally, I find this much more useful than a video capture. It’s random-access, and it’s got embedded links to all the content.
Scribblelive really is the next best thing. Check out this play-by-play of Michael Geist’s presentation yesterday, complete with every clip and video mentioned.
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008
Air Canada gets it wrong
in: Communicate, Create, Standing out
I have a love-hate relationship with Air Canada. I fly their planes a lot, since I’m usually starting from Montreal or Halifax. I love the fact that frequent travelers get access to their lounge without an extra fee, even when it’s a partner’s lounge. On the other hand, Air Canada has great planes, with power and screens. I was starting to warm to them again; they’ve overhauled their entire website. It still has problems, such as the complete failure of their mobile booking process (apparently intended to send a barcode to my phone.) But it’s getting better. And then they go and break my heart again.
But frustrated by ridiculously broken enrollment and online booking processes (things like having to convince their call centers that yes, in fact, the screen in front of me does say “server error.”) I switched my loyalties to United, who get it right much more often.