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Monday, July 21st, 2008
The path less travelled by
in: Communicate, Create, Standing out, Startups
What can a bookstore teach Canadians about positioning their companies? Marketing is increasingly about attention, and less about product. Most competent people can build a competent product or service. But in today’s world of instant attention, it’s often more about how to succeed in the market than how to get the product right. I had lunch a couple of weeks ago with Robin Axon, formerly of VenturesWest (and candidate for the coolest cyborg name of a VC ever.) We were chatting, as often happens among Canadian entrepreneurs, about The Canadian Ailment. Despite tremendous competence in product design, we never seem to make it North of the Border in the same way the US does. Even US bookstores, apparently, know this instinctively. But more on that later; back to Robin. He had a pretty clear theory about what ails us, which I’ll paraphrase (badly) here: Canadians try to succeed with a product, but Americans succeed with a market strategy.
View CommentsSaturday, June 14th, 2008
The purpose of your first slide
in: Communicate, Funding, Standing out
I was talking with the CEO of a startup last week and we were going over funding slides. There’s always an overview slide up front. According to common wisdom, this is supposed to “tell them what you’re going to tell them.” But I have a slightly different take on it. Sure, you have to say what industry you’re in, how much you’ll make, how you’ll make it, and why you’re the one to make it happen. And do all that in a couple of sentences. But your first slide has a different, more important purpose. The purpose of the first slide is to change their mindset from “I have to sit through this” to “I get to sit through this.”