startup

Beta, What Beta?

By Mark Evans in Startups 1 Comment Tags: , ,

I’m not sure about you but I sign up for a lot of betas that seem interesting. After all, they’re free so why not take one for a spin?

For some start-ups, however, there’s a gap between the time they let people sign up for a beta and when it becomes available.

So here’s a tip for start-ups when they send e-mails to people letting them know the beta is ready: include a reminder of what your service does. A good example is CardFlick. I can’t remember signing up for the beta, let alone know what CardFlick does so a short reminder would have been a great idea.

Screen shot 2011 09 11 at 2 57 06 PM

What I Learned about Business in 2010

By Mark Evans in Main Page No Comments Tags: , , ,

It is sometimes difficult to believe that it’s been two years since I started ME Consulting – a move that came more out of necessity after parting ways to PlanetEye, an online travel startup.

In many respects, it has been a huge education, as well as a tremendously exciting and satisfying personal and professional adventure. Althought I had worked for three start-ups (Blanketware, b5Media and PlanetEye), there is really nothing like starting and running your own company. When there is no one else to support the business, you can either sink or swim.

In 2009, ME Consulting was all about survival and experimentation. You have to remember the economic downturn was alive and well. so it probably wasn’t the best time to go into business for yourself. My biggest focus was getting enough business to operate for another month. Every new client meant another brick within the foundation, which meant there was no lack of motivation.

As 2010 rolled around, ME Consulting was a going concern. Rather than thinking about surviving, I started to focus on growing the business and doing a better job of telling the world what I do and why they should care. At the same time, the learning curve stayed front and centre. Here are the biggest things I learned in 2010.

1. Life gets a lot easier and more fun with the right partners and people. My partnership with Seth Singer (aka Think 33) has been a win-win professionally and personally. By having Seth as a partner, we’ve been able to expand into a digital agency that offers social media strategy and tactics, Web site development and design, content creation and video production. Basically, we’ve become a one-stop shop – something that wasn’t possible without our partnership.

2. Sell, sell and then sell some more. As much as it’s great having clients, the reality is you can never rest on your laurels, and stop selling. Clients come and clients go, which means the hunt for new business never ceases. It can take a lot of energy and time to be prospecting but it’s a necessary evil to keep a business thriving.

3. Don’t take on business you can’t do. It seems like a simple proposition but it can be difficult to turn down business, particularly if your company isn’t running at full capacity. It is a lesson I learned the hard way after accepting a marketing gig that didn’t seem like a natural fit but the dollars were difficult to turn down. After spending a month scrambling to do the work, I had to concede it wasn’t in my wheelhouse – a decision that frustrated the client, who had entered into the project in good faith.

4. Referrals are good (and the right thing to do). In some ways, this lesson is closely linked to #3. If there is a situation that’s not a good fit, the best move is referring someone to another person or company who can meet their needs. This has three benefits: it avoids you taking on work you can’t do, it helps the other party, and it scores point with the company getting the referral. One of my biggest and most interesting clients happened because I made a referral with no expectations other than doing the right thing.

5. It’s smart to invest in your business. As much as we’re living in a lean and mean environment, there are many benefits to investments that make your business operate more efficiently and effectively. It could be buying office equipment, computer hardware or online services. It could be hiring people to do work that would consume too much of your time. The key is spending where it makes the more sense and you get the biggest return.

6. Make sure your books and finances are well organized. The biggest mistake I made in 2009 was not spending enough time on my finances. It meant having to spend several weeks reviewing receipts, back-dating transactions and categorizing spending to get my books properly organized. While I didn’t perfect my finances in 2010, I was a lot better organized. Next year, maybe the shoebox full of receipts will disappear!

What were the biggest lessons you learned in 2010?

Blekko: The Next Google or the Next Cuil?

By Mark Evans in Google, Search Engines 3 Comments Tags: , , ,

After a lot of hype and venture capital, Blekko launched today. For those of you not familiar with Blekko, it’s a new search engine that like most of the search start-up in recent years has been billed as a new threat to Google.

While I haven’t had much of a chance to put Blekko through its paces, here’s hoping it is able to survive its debut to live another day. In other words, it would be good to see Blekko be given the benefit of the doubt rather than be hit with the criticism that cut off search start-ups such as Cuil and Wolfram at the knees.

Even before Google emerged as the industry Goliath, search has been a competitive and nasty business. Pre-Google, being king of search was a short-lived experienced. One day, it was Lycos, the next day, it’s Excite.

And since Google, the biggest challenge facing search start-ups is that the acid-test has been benchmarking its performance against Google. Wolfram, for example, which set itself up as a research tool, was savaged by critics because it paled in comparison with Google.

Another problem has been many search start-ups have suffered from a bad case of hubris and over-hype. Cuil boasted about the billions of pageviews it had indexed, while Wolfram did little to dismiss the buzz it was the next Google. This is the kind of material that critics love to chew on because it provides a story with drama.

My first impressions of Blekko are that it provides good search results, although the real value of Blekko may be the ability to make vertical searches from an original search query. I haven’t had time to fully explore this feature but it appears to be a smart way to differentiate itself from Google.

I was also impressed by how Blekko quickly responded to a comment that I made on Twitter this morning after I read a New York Times story about its debut. If you are a new search engine looking to win over consumers and technology watchers, being engaged on Twitter is a very smart idea.

Like many people, I did a query for my name. At first, I was surprised to see I ranked second, while Google ranks me first. According to Blekko, Mark Evans Art is the king of “Mark Evans” because it was recently bought by Boing Boing, which is sending a lot of traffic its way.

For more thoughts on Blekko, check out the following
- Danny Sullivan – “Blekko the “Slashtag” Search Engine Goes Live.
- Rafe Needleman: “Blekko Launches the Biased Search Engine”

Sorry Storify, I Totally Don’t Get It

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

It’s tough being a startup.

Not only do they need to create a product or service that fills a void or need (or, at least, convinces potential users they have a void or need that needs fillings), they have to do an excellent job of marketing themselves to rise above the competition.

This is why messaging is so important. In a world in which people are time-strapped and multi-tasking, startups only get one shot to make an impression. If they fail to capture someone’s attention right away, it’s end of story, even if the service has some value or usefulness.

As much as I don’t like to criticize people doing hard work, an excellent case studies is Storify, which presented today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference.

Storify is a real-time curation platform to help journalists, bloggers and experts tell stories with elements of the social Web. It is, therefore, somewhat ironic that Storify does a bad job of telling its own story.

In particular, Storify fails to explain why anyone would want to use its service. Here’s Storify’s explanation about why someone would use it.

“That’s up to you! You can create a story around an event using social media from people who were there, or put together a story using your own Tweets and photos. If you’re a business, you can use it to compile what people are saying about your product. You can also make an online scrapbook from a wedding or party with posts from your friends.”

The problem is Storify is making me figure it out. When I’m checking out a new service, I don’t want to do the work; I want a start-up to clearly explain why they do and, more important, what’s in for me (the user). Storify needs to do a much better job explaining the benefits of using it services other than to “put together a story”. Sorry, that’s not good enough. Instead, it really has to explain why its service is better or different than other social media tools.

Another problem spot for Storify is its corporate demo video. Right off the bat, I want to know what the service does. It has to be clear and well-articulated. I want to quickly think “Yes, I totally get it”. Instead, the video is unclear. It’s hard not to get the impression that Storify was rushed out of the gate too quickly. If you haven’t nailed your messaging, it can be kill any chance of getting traction, even if the service is pretty good.

Storify demo from Burt Herman on Vimeo.

Sysomos: Life in the Eye of the Hurricane

By Mark Evans in Social Media 7 Comments Tags: , , ,

As many people probably know, Sysomos, which provides social media monitoring and analytics services, was acquired earlier this week by Marketwire. I’ve been actively involved with Sysomos for the past 18 months as its director of communications.

To say the least, it has been a fascinating experience to see the company evolve from a two-person operation out of the University of Toronto into a fast-growing market leader with customers around the world. In many respects, it’s been like living in the eye of the hurricane in which everything happens so fast – new customers, new products, a new office, new employees and more recognition as an innovative player.

Sysomos is the fourth start-up in which I have worked. The other three – Blanketware, PlanetEye and b5media – were nowhere near as successful but they were tremendous learning experiences.

That said, I’ve always been curious about what it would be like to work for a start-up that had the exactly the right product at the right time at the right place. Sysomos was – and is – that kind of company.

After spending three years developing the technology, Nick Koudas and Nilesh Bansal officially launched Sysomos in late-2008. Over the next few months, Sysomos started attracting interest in its flagship MAP analytics service, and, as important, customers. Sysomos then launched Heartbeat, which quickly gained major traction in the social media monitoring market.

Looking back, what was probably most impressive about Sysomos’ early days was the conviction that its service had real value and customers should pay for it. This was impressive in a world in which free reigns supreme, even for services that offer plenty of utility.

Not to take anything away from Sysomos’ leading-edge technology or the people who have fuelled its growth but, in many respects, it was a beneficiary of great timing. The social media monitoring and analytics market started to gain serious traction in 2009 as more companies recognized social media was becoming a viable and attractive communications, marketing and sales vehicle.

Sysomos was there with impressive technology that met real needs in a way that differentiated itself in an ultra- competitive market. While I’m clearly biased, I truly believe Sysomos’ technology and services are the best, and I have looked at a lot of social media monitoring services.

With Sysomos now part of the Marketwire family, I expect its growth will become even stronger. It’s really hard to believe how far one of Canada’s hottest start-ups has come in the past 18 months.

That said, Sysomos’ success really comes as no surprise. When Nick Koudos showed me MAP for the first time in his office in January 2009, it was immediately obvious it was something different from anything I had seen before.

WineAlign Uncorks Major Milestone

By Mark Evans in Main Page 3 Comments Tags: , , , ,

When I started my consulting business last January, one of my first clients was WineAlign.com. It was a start-up created by Bryan McCaw, who wanted to build a service so wine buyers in Ontario could make better and more informed buying decisions at the wine store.

Bryan created WineAlign because he has a passion for wine, and saw a perfect opportunity to launch a service to serve the needs of other people who also love wine. Despite the economic downturn, Bryan decided to bootstrap the business – a classic entrepreneurial decision that, frankly, Canada desperately needs to see more of.

Like many start-ups, WineAlign has been forced to fine-tune the service, try different marketing approaches and refresh its look and feel. At times, I think Bryan has been puzzled why consumers hadn’t flocked to a service that’s so useful – something I totally agree with given WineAlign works really well.

Slowly but surely, however, WineAlign is starting to see signs of significant traction. The company announced yesterday that it now has 5,000 registered users – a major accomplishment that reflects all the hard work that Bryan and his team have done this year.

Now, 5,000 registered users may not seem like a large number but it represents a critical mass who clearly like WineAlign. And, as important, it gives WineAlign a base upon which it can see exponential growth. No one wants to go to a restaurant with no customers even if the food is great, so the fact WineAlign has lots of users should make it easy for lots more people to check out the service.

Here’s a toast to Bryan and the continued growth of WineAlign. Its success reflects Bryan’s vision, perseverance and entrepreneurial passion.

Screen shot 2009-11-27 at 7.28.57 AM

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
1 2