prasanth m's List: Startup

Over the past few years, I have consulted to a few dozen pretty popular startups and passed on many others. The overwhelming reason why I did not take on the majority as clients is a rather unfortunate truth in nearly every startup’s business plan…there is no audience building strategy.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- For many people, starting their own business is a dream come true. But too many entrepreneurs see their dreams fall apart - their firms fail because of common pitfalls that could have been avoided.

One-third of small businesses fail in the first two years, according to the Small Business Administration, and a little more than half fail within the first five years.

Most venture capitalists will tell you that they invest in people, not business plans. They like experienced entrepreneurs they've worked with before. With luck, you've got one of those people on your team, preferably as CEO. But if you're not a veteran and can't find one, don't fret.

In other words, there's never been a better time to start your own company. New technologies are creating new business opportunities on the Internet, on mobile phones, in consumer products, and in information services. At the same time, many of these technologies have radically reduced the costs associated with launching a new venture.

Some suits are finding greater satisfaction working for themselves.

And there are a growing number of business-to-business franchises that are well "suited" for former executives who want to put their experience to work, but on their own terms.
Jim Hewell (working behind the counter) says the greatest thing he took away from his years at Texas Instruments was
Jim Hewell (working behind the counter) says the greatest thing he took away from his years at Texas Instruments was "the importance of customer service."
Big news in small biz

* 5 deadly mistakes when starting a business

* 7 ways to join the billion-dollar club

* How to lead your customer into temptation

Although starting a new business can be risky, here are some examples of people who have beaten the odds to become their own boss.

At 21, Diana Reed has already reached the pinnacle of one career. A senior at the University of Iowa, she is the Hawkeye Golden Girl, one of the top twirlers in the Big Ten. Every Saturday during football season, she strutted down the 50-yard line in sequins and Spandex, flinging her baton into the sky before a stadium jammed with tens of thousands of howling football fans.

What does it take for a company to hit $1 billion in sales? It's a rare feat, says David Thomson, who spent three years studying exactly what it takes for a startup to reach that milestone, and published the results in his new book Blueprint to a Billion.

As I have begun developing our marketing, I have become deeply bothered by the lack of resources available to marketing strategists of early early-stage companies. Aside from the awesome work and insights of Dave McClure and Andrew Chen there seems to be a real lack of resources.

He's proven it multiple times, both as an EVP at PayPal & founder/CEO/Chairman at LinkedIn, and as an insightful & early angel investor at Facebook, Digg, Friendster, Flickr and over 60 other startups.

This week’s case study was co-authored by guest writers Deepak Thomas and Vineet Buch.

Deepak is an MBA student at the University of Chicago. He previously worked at Oracle for 10 years in engineering and product management roles. He is currently looking for summer internship opportunities at early-stage Venture Capital firms. He may be reached at deepakthomas (at) gmail.com.

This was an awesome presentation DAVE. Although you were a bit rushed, the content and depth of your recommendations could save a developer or marketer a lifetime. I will be following more of your content - marketing suggestions. Please post or send me some feedback on Blacksonville as you learn more about the brand. Thanks for making this accessible on the web!

10 Million in 10 Weeks - What Stanford Learned Building Facebook Apps

Improving Interface Design

Interaction Design & Psychology (2002)

Maybe it’s because I studied a decent amount of economics in school, but I think the first step in marketing anything on a large scale is to know the economic conditions and trends you’re selling into. The best products will address gaps and problems being actively discussed on the public record. While a valuable product will sell regardless of economic conditions, strategic positioning can still be influenced by astute economic observations.

You are about to launch a new product or service and you *think* you’ve decided on a key demographic to target: say the 18-34 crowd. However, instead of focusing on marketing to a theoretical audience based on attributes such as age, sex, income, etc (standard acquisition marketing) first priority should be developing a strategy driven by user life-cycle. Specifically, life-cycle related to product engagement. If this sounds confusing, don’t worry, it’s not.

The idea behind tipping point marketing is straightforward. A startup *could* spend $50,000 over five months attempting to organically drive traffic to its website: using Google and Facebook advertising, writing a blog, appealing to influential bloggers, etc.

However, a startup could instead choose to focus its efforts on exploiting key events, time periods and news that result in short massive bursts of new users and have the added benefit of momentum. Affiliation with certain events where influencers are guaranteed to show up could easily result in $50,000 of marketing/PR over just a few days — and often at significant discount (for example, Techcrunch50 is free for exhibiting companies).

The first is what I'll call "Big Bang". This was very popular in the 1990s, particularly for venture-funded startups. In this approach, the sequence of events goes something like this: