Most small businesses have it really rough. Whether they are retail or b2b, marketing is a huge problem for them because the can't do sponsorships, brand strategy, advertising and slick PR like the big boys. They've still got to get customers from somewhere, though.
About five years ago, Stealthmode Partners had a consulting agreement with the City of Phoenix to help businesses affected by light rail construction. Those businesses along the construction route were typical small businesses -- everything from yogurt stores to hairdressers to Chinese restaurants. When the sidewalk in front of them was torn up and the construction signs appeared, their walk-in traffic went away and many of them suffered 40% revenue losses.
Ed and I went about showing them the glories of online marketing, showing them products like Constant Contact, Typepad, and even MySpace. We taught them how to collect business cards (some were already doing this) and make email lists, and then we taught them how to do email marketing. For most, this was like revelation. Constant Contact was a huge leap. They were amazed at how many existing customers opened, read, and acted on their emails.
Fast forward five years. While they all have email lists now, and they are sending out the same emails, fewer are being opened. The tools have changed, the analytics are much better, but small businesses can't understand or afford the combination of SEO, social media, monitoring and tracking tools they need. Nor do they have either the time or the professional marketing team to leverage all the social media stuff that's out there.
So Ethan Bloch, a young, energetic entrepreneur I met through another young, energetic entrepreneur (these are the ones I really love) decided to do Flowtown.
Give Flowtown an email addresses and it can tell you who a person is (name, age, gender, location, occupation) and where they hang out on the web (facebook, twitter, linkedin, myspace, flickr, amazon and more). It makes the emails more relevant, and allows them to be targeted and better performing. Or it intelligently routes the marketing effort to where the customers really are, and what services they use. It also lets the businesses follow up with their customers (potential, current, and even past) and keep in touch with everyone wherever they are. You can then build or maintain mind share through social media messaging.
Most of our small business clients now know that they should be doing online marketing differently now -- they just don't know how to do it. I'm looking forward to showing my Fasttrac programs Flowtown, because I think it will coordinate their sporadic and often ineffective efforts at both email marketing and social media marketing.
[Disclosure: I went on the Advisory Board of Flowtown because I think this is going to solve a big problem for both the businesses and their technical assistance consultants:-) ]
UserVoice, a San Francisco-based customer feedback startup I've been working with for a while just came back from the O’Reilly Media and TechWeb Gov 2.0 Showcase in Washington, DC. What was a tech company doing at a government conference? Well, by a series of friendships, karma and coincidence that characterize the Bay Area, UserVoice donated its application to the City of Santa Cruz, which was looking for a way to get public input to make budget cuts. The same old folks kept showing up at public meetings with their same old priorities, and the City was looking for new ideas.It took six hours to get a UserVoice site up and running for Santa Cruz, and it was such a success that the city was chosen to present at the showcase, and UserVoice CEO Richard White decided he had better see what was happening. White is a geek, and most geeks don't give much thought to government. He told me he was surprised by what he saw. Apparently, governments at all levels are trying to reach out -- albeit with a lot of trepidation about what they might discover from their constituencies.
Naturally, politicans and campaigns show the most interest in customer feedback There's obvious upside to doing these sorts of initiatives in terms of positive PR and
being "with it" if it helps them win. Some candidates already using the tool are Mike McGinn, a candidate for Mayor of Seattle, and IdeasforAustin.com, a site for civic engagement. But the Showcase showed a lot of interest in using customer feedback inside big agencies. TSA
did a whole presentation on how they built and launched an internal to gather ideas from front-line
employees, and a White House speaker talked about how
the Veterans Administration deployed the same sort of solution and was
blown away with the response. Notice that neither agency has summoned the courage to do this externnaly (yet), but their seem to be bureaucrats inside the walls with good ideas that could promote change.
My guess is that this is just beginning in government. For the first time, I could enter my continuing education information credits into an electronic record, although I was not asked for feedback about the courses or the requirements. O'Reilly plans to hold another Gov 2.0 Expo in New York Nov. 19-22 to continue this fledgling conversation. In the mean time, UserVoice picked up a potential client at the Expo in Washington -- a large federal agency but again, just talking to its own employees. It's a beginning.
There's a long story behind this launch post. I'm on the advisory board of EmpowHer.com,
a women's health site founded by a friend of mine, Michelle Robson, who
had an awful experience with the health care system and decided to
become a patient advocate in a world-changing way. Michelle is no
ordinary woman; she's not only a businesswomen on her own, but the wife
of my greatest business mentor — the person who told me in 1980 to get
a Mercedes and a cell phone instead of an office. We all go back a long
way, and when I heard Michelle was launching this company, I prostrated
myself to become a part of it (well….I'm given to hyperbole but you
know what I mean).
EmpowHer has needed very little guidance from me to become a
powerhouse. It rides the wave of Health 2.0, patient empowerment, the
rising tide of women in business, and the need for reform in the
American health care system. Today it launches Health Events, Michelle's dream of a clearinghouse for free patient education information. And no, it's not in Silicon Valley.
Health Events features nearly 1.7M events in all 50 states from over 560 providers including Maxim Health Systems,CVS, Walgreens, Curves, and The Red Cross,
among others, offering low cost and free health events, flu shot
clinics, blood drives, exercise classes, yoga, support groups and more.
Michelle has personally gone out and partnered with everyone to bring
this big database online. Her goal is to give women the right
information about a health issue, support for their own health
condition or care for their families regardless of their location,
economic circumstance or health condition.
Health Events is simple to use, giving women the ability to
search by city, state or zip code and / or by health topic. Users can
browse listings of events by state, and can also sort their search
results by date and distance from their location. Additionally, Health
Events has a location auto-populate tool that will automatically drop
in the user’s location based on her IP address eliminating the need for
the user to re-enter her information each time she uses Health Events.
Providers can learn how to publish their health events to EmpowHer.com
at providers.empowher.com.
Go check it out. It's pretty awesome because of the level of
content the team has assembled for the site. They go all over the
country taping interviews with experts in every field that concerns
women. And by the way, many on the team are men, and Michelle even
hired a male CEO, Shahi Ganem, formerly of DivX. There's an equal opportunity need for good health information.
A couple of nights ago I had the prvilege to hear Tom Milsom, a 20-year-old musician play music for friends in my living room. A mutual friend had "discovered" him on YouTube. And he was wonderful.
I wrote a blog post about that experience, and got the following email from an old friend who is now playing music in Austin, and who has the entrepreneurial sense to see where the music business can go next. His name is Bill Teags, in case you are ever in Austin, and he has been a serial entepreneur, a packaging executive, and all the while -- a musician. The cool thing about Teags is that he combines Tom Milsom's passion with the business sense of a 50-year-old. He GETS it.
Take it away, Bill...
I am currently playing with Eric Tessmer (www.myspace.com/erictessmer) and was approached by the management of Joe Richardson (www.myspace.com/joerichardsonexpress)
to play bass in his band as well (two of the top guitarists in this
guitar town). Back before I was an entrepreneuer / packaging guru, I
played music - touring, recording and all that. Here is my take on the
music biz today and how it has changed from the 70's when I started my
recording and performing career:
#1 Game Changer - The InternetThe
Internet has democratized the music industry. Communication is now
available to anyone with a computer connection or smart phone.The good:- You don't need a major label to gain a world-wide audience.-
You don't need secretaries to handle your written correspondence, such
as contracts, letters to managers / booking agents, or your fan list.
EPK - electronic press kits are easily packaged for download. No more
cassette or vinyl with printed brochures.- Venues can sample
your "best effort" right from their computer. Instant like / dislike -
sadly, decisions usually made more visually than aurally. -
The Internet killed the record label industry. This is good, because
this industry totally forgot what it was they were selling. Elvis did
not come out of a formula and neither did the Beatles, Pink Floyd, The
Who or the Beach Boys. By the 90's, the majors were all about marketing
within a comfort zone, which meant stale music with little room for new
or innovative. (Ask Bela Fleck how hard it was to get his first label
deal after New Grass Revival - they still don't know where to put his
awesome talent!!)- Viral and community networking. Done right, the Internet can get your Klezmer with Sitar band a decent worldwide audience.- Craig's List - what better way to see who wants you and let others know you are around - for free!The bad:-
There is no filter mechanism that separates the good, bad or great
artists. The "noise threshold" is now so high that you are hardly
noticed apart from the 4 million other artists on MySpace alone.-
The Internet has killed off local booking agents. Venues don't need
someone to sell them a good act. They have access directly to the
artists. Why is this bad? Artists who in years past would have been
relegated to parties and 'audition nights' are getting Friday and
Saturday gigs - because they will work for free (or beer and pizza). So
why bust your butt perfecting your craft and buying top-line gear when
some 'weekend-warrior' with a hobby is going to drive the pay scale
down to 1960's levels? Booking agents stayed in business by promising
AND delivering top talent. The result was better local music and a
healthier music scene.- The Internet has killed the record
industry. Yes this was a good thing, but the problem is that there is
nothing in its' place. Artists used to live on royalties from album
sales. People want to fill their iPods, but the Internet let's them do
it without concern for compensating the artist. We need to live too,
and you can't take beer and pizza to the bank to pay the electric bill!-
The Internet has made music a much more individual experience. Ear buds
and PC's isolate listeners and we are losing a bit of the socializing
that was once integral to music.- Craig's List - what better
way to post that you are a 'pro' musician looking for other 'pro'
musicians, but cannot play Wednesday because of bowling nights and
Sundays because your ex makes you take the kid (and you only are
allowed by your current spouse to play / practice 2 nights a week). Get
the point? Weed through 3000 postings to find one that says 'touring
band auditioning - US and European dates'.The
key is that the Internet is a tool. It is not the end, but the means. A
farmer doesn't buy a shovel, stand it next to the fence and wait for
the ground to turn over - he puts the shovel to work digging the
ground. Ya gotta use the tool, dude! #2 Game Changer - Digital-
The recording process - Back when I first started recording, it was
state of the art to have 1" 8 track and totally killer when you could
lash-up 2 8 tracks for 16 tracks. Today, hard drives have replaced tape
(for the most part) and the number of tracks is almost unlimited. This
unlimited freedom does have a price. There were lots of times when we
had to 'get it right on the first take' as we were tracking onto
existing sound. You had to be really good or you blew days worth of
effort. And the art and magic came from unexpected discoveries while
being constrained by technology.- The quality
of the artist - with the current tools in a bedroom studio, you can
create and fix just about any sound imaginable. There are singers who
could never sing tune that are top stars only because the software
auto-tunes their voice. (No need to be Barbara Streisand to make it
big). Even drummers who can't keep a beat are aided by
tempo-correction. Made a mistake? Cut and paste.-
The final product - Albums had several magical qualities about them.
One was the artwork (that is why there is a Grammy for album artwork)
and the other was the physical presence. You mention chamber music, but
during the 60's and 70's we also had album parties. We each brought a
few albums over to share the listening with and to talk about music or
life in general. Even CD's lack this magic - they are too small to be
treated any more than casually. Digital downloads, while probably the
greenest way of getting music, is a very sterile process.So... What's Next?This is a question that gets brought up often in my music circles. Here is my take:-
Live performance will be more important than in the past 50 years. This
is where artists will earn their bread, assuming they can rise above
the "will play for beer" crowd. Musicians who are also good
business-people have already figured this out. (It doesn't take a math
genius to figure out that Madonna grossed $180 million on her last tour
in 14 months while selling under 2 million CD's. At $0.09 per song
versus a couple of million per show, net, she has it dialed in).-
Recorded music will be like a business card. Record it and give away.
Use it as promo for your live gigs. Retain the rights as you are
entitled to legally, just in case TV or movies wants to use your sound
for background.- Get 'biznified'. Understand
that Colby Caillet was not a MySpace sensation. Her dad is in the music
business and she recorded her 'bedroom' tracks professionally and was
pitched to a major label by insider business people. Being a musician
is like being a baker. You are creating a unique product each time you
'go to work'. Bakers don't give their bread away - they sell it and
they call that a bakery! Failure to recognize this is why most
musicians are not making it in the business. Learn how to market your
art, how to manage your music as a product. You can do this
independently, as an indie artist, or you can enlist a solid team of
experts around you. Let's give it up for Bill Teags, ladies and gentlemen. Most musicians still don't get this. The ones who do will be famous as in the past.
A couple of nights ago I had the prvilege to hear Tom Milsom, a 20-year-old musician play music for friends in my living room. A mutual friend had "discovered" him on YouTube. And he was wonderful.
I wrote a blog post about that experience, and got the following email from an old friend who is now playing music in Austin, and who has the entrepreneurial sense to see where the music business can go next. His name is Bill Teags, in case you are ever in Austin, and he has been a serial entepreneur, a packaging executive, and all the while -- a musician. The cool thing about Teags is that he combines Tom Milsom's passion with the business sense of a 50-year-old. He GETS it.
Take it away, Bill...
I am currently playing with Eric Tessmer (www.myspace.com/erictessmer) and was approached by the management of Joe Richardson (www.myspace.com/joerichardsonexpress)
to play bass in his band as well (two of the top guitarists in this
guitar town). Back before I was an entrepreneuer / packaging guru, I
played music - touring, recording and all that. Here is my take on the
music biz today and how it has changed from the 70's when I started my
recording and performing career:
#1 Game Changer - The InternetThe
Internet has democratized the music industry. Communication is now
available to anyone with a computer connection or smart phone.The good:- You don't need a major label to gain a world-wide audience.-
You don't need secretaries to handle your written correspondence, such
as contracts, letters to managers / booking agents, or your fan list.
EPK - electronic press kits are easily packaged for download. No more
cassette or vinyl with printed brochures.- Venues can sample
your "best effort" right from their computer. Instant like / dislike -
sadly, decisions usually made more visually than aurally. -
The Internet killed the record label industry. This is good, because
this industry totally forgot what it was they were selling. Elvis did
not come out of a formula and neither did the Beatles, Pink Floyd, The
Who or the Beach Boys. By the 90's, the majors were all about marketing
within a comfort zone, which meant stale music with little room for new
or innovative. (Ask Bela Fleck how hard it was to get his first label
deal after New Grass Revival - they still don't know where to put his
awesome talent!!)- Viral and community networking. Done right, the Internet can get your Klezmer with Sitar band a decent worldwide audience.- Craig's List - what better way to see who wants you and let others know you are around - for free!The bad:-
There is no filter mechanism that separates the good, bad or great
artists. The "noise threshold" is now so high that you are hardly
noticed apart from the 4 million other artists on MySpace alone.-
The Internet has killed off local booking agents. Venues don't need
someone to sell them a good act. They have access directly to the
artists. Why is this bad? Artists who in years past would have been
relegated to parties and 'audition nights' are getting Friday and
Saturday gigs - because they will work for free (or beer and pizza). So
why bust your butt perfecting your craft and buying top-line gear when
some 'weekend-warrior' with a hobby is going to drive the pay scale
down to 1960's levels? Booking agents stayed in business by promising
AND delivering top talent. The result was better local music and a
healthier music scene.- The Internet has killed the record
industry. Yes this was a good thing, but the problem is that there is
nothing in its' place. Artists used to live on royalties from album
sales. People want to fill their iPods, but the Internet let's them do
it without concern for compensating the artist. We need to live too,
and you can't take beer and pizza to the bank to pay the electric bill!-
The Internet has made music a much more individual experience. Ear buds
and PC's isolate listeners and we are losing a bit of the socializing
that was once integral to music.- Craig's List - what better
way to post that you are a 'pro' musician looking for other 'pro'
musicians, but cannot play Wednesday because of bowling nights and
Sundays because your ex makes you take the kid (and you only are
allowed by your current spouse to play / practice 2 nights a week). Get
the point? Weed through 3000 postings to find one that says 'touring
band auditioning - US and European dates'.The
key is that the Internet is a tool. It is not the end, but the means. A
farmer doesn't buy a shovel, stand it next to the fence and wait for
the ground to turn over - he puts the shovel to work digging the
ground. Ya gotta use the tool, dude! #2 Game Changer - Digital-
The recording process - Back when I first started recording, it was
state of the art to have 1" 8 track and totally killer when you could
lash-up 2 8 tracks for 16 tracks. Today, hard drives have replaced tape
(for the most part) and the number of tracks is almost unlimited. This
unlimited freedom does have a price. There were lots of times when we
had to 'get it right on the first take' as we were tracking onto
existing sound. You had to be really good or you blew days worth of
effort. And the art and magic came from unexpected discoveries while
being constrained by technology.- The quality
of the artist - with the current tools in a bedroom studio, you can
create and fix just about any sound imaginable. There are singers who
could never sing tune that are top stars only because the software
auto-tunes their voice. (No need to be Barbara Streisand to make it
big). Even drummers who can't keep a beat are aided by
tempo-correction. Made a mistake? Cut and paste.-
The final product - Albums had several magical qualities about them.
One was the artwork (that is why there is a Grammy for album artwork)
and the other was the physical presence. You mention chamber music, but
during the 60's and 70's we also had album parties. We each brought a
few albums over to share the listening with and to talk about music or
life in general. Even CD's lack this magic - they are too small to be
treated any more than casually. Digital downloads, while probably the
greenest way of getting music, is a very sterile process.So... What's Next?This is a question that gets brought up often in my music circles. Here is my take:-
Live performance will be more important than in the past 50 years. This
is where artists will earn their bread, assuming they can rise above
the "will play for beer" crowd. Musicians who are also good
business-people have already figured this out. (It doesn't take a math
genius to figure out that Madonna grossed $180 million on her last tour
in 14 months while selling under 2 million CD's. At $0.09 per song
versus a couple of million per show, net, she has it dialed in).-
Recorded music will be like a business card. Record it and give away.
Use it as promo for your live gigs. Retain the rights as you are
entitled to legally, just in case TV or movies wants to use your sound
for background.- Get 'biznified'. Understand
that Colby Caillet was not a MySpace sensation. Her dad is in the music
business and she recorded her 'bedroom' tracks professionally and was
pitched to a major label by insider business people. Being a musician
is like being a baker. You are creating a unique product each time you
'go to work'. Bakers don't give their bread away - they sell it and
they call that a bakery! Failure to recognize this is why most
musicians are not making it in the business. Learn how to market your
art, how to manage your music as a product. You can do this
independently, as an indie artist, or you can enlist a solid team of
experts around you. Let's give it up for Bill Teags, ladies and gentlemen. Most musicians still don't get this. The ones who do will be famous as in the past.
Information. Sustainability initiatives can’t succeed unless you
know where you are starting out, what you are doing, and where you are
going. Especially if the Obama Administration’s cap-and-trade bill
becomes law, which seems likely, companies will need good raw data,
because that information will be translated into dollars on the carbon
market.
If you were the person in charge of writing the Corporate Social
Responsibility Report for your company, and you wanted to make sure you
had accurate data on your carbon management, greenhouse gas emissions,
and sustainability practices, where would you look in your
organization: the ERP system, the EMS system, the BI application? Data
from each individual facility? Probably all of those. And on somebody’s
Excel spread sheets, too.
Enterprise software was sold in pieces, each piece promising that it
would be a “total solution.” Ironically, only twenty years after the
first adoptions are we realizing that we need to see across facilities,
departments, and processes to figure out how to build sustainable
businesses.
That mean building “bridges” between systems so they can talk to
each other. IBM’s new Green Sigma(TM) initiative is the first time
industry leaders are coming together to work collaboratively to address
greenhouse gas and carbon management and sustainability
enterprise-wide. Charter members of the Green Sigma™ Coalition
are Johnson Controls, Honeywell Building Solutions, ABB, Eaton, ESS,
Cisco, Siemens Building Technologies Division, Schneider Electric and
SAP. The coalition members will work with IBM to integrate their
products and services with IBM’s Green Sigma solution.
Robert Johnson, CEO of ESS,
one of the charter members of Green Sigma, explained it simply: “In
order to address GHG, carbon and sustainability across your company,
you have to get all the data collected and rolled up. In the past, it’s
been in silos, and companies have had difficulty getting it out of the
different vendor systems.”
The Industry has evolved with vendors working in isolation doing
their own thing, because companies have never had to collect and merge
data before for any real purpose. The systems they have in place were
bought by individual departments to handle certain situations, and were
never designed to be integrated.
But things have changed with the increased emphasis on the
environment. Green Sigma is a group of leaders, typically in corporate
IT environments, who have decided to help clients by making it easier
for systems to talk to each other. It is based on Lean Six Sigma, a
business strategy for carefully analyzing operations to improve overall
efficiency, lower costs, increase quality, and add, change or eliminate
activities and processes to improve overall performance.
ESS is excited because it is the only small independent company on
the charter founder roster. The next smallest company is over a billion
in market cap. But Robert Johnson has been an evangelist on the subject
of unified platforms for years, and ironically the company has had some
big successes in China, where the US wants to sell its green products
and services as it retools its own economy. ESS is already the
environmental health and safety platform for China Light and Power,
China National Petroleum, and PetroChina. If anyone can help the big
guys pull together their disparate efforts into actionable information,
it’s a small company.
You can't just make a web site anymore and hope people will come. You can't even blog anymore and hope people will come, although good blogging software like Wordpress has built-in SEO (search engine optimization). You have to do something to get your content out to where the people are. Even large corporations are often disappointed by the amount of traffic to their corporate sites -- people just don't go to sites. In the early days, people "surfed" the net. Now we all know it's too big to find things randomly. Rather, we take advice from friends, follow links from Twitter and Facebook, or take whatever result comes up on Google or Yahoo searches. So do your visitors.
The marketplace is full of companies that supposedly help your site get attention. While some are good, some resort to methods you might not want to be associated with if you care about your corporate image. So don't just hire a company and entrust it with the responsibility of carrying your image out on the internets. Take the time to learn a little about the most important marketing tool you have -- your web site. Develop it correctly and it will be found even without outside help.
There are several simple web site development tools that are almost free (Weebly, Wordpress, Squarespace)
or support themselves through hosting services that I use when I want
to turn a site over to a client who will be able to maintain it
him/herself in the future. Use one of them if you are doing a site youself.
Or ask your web developer to abide by these simple rules, and your content will get out into the world at large. Search engines work on complicated alogrithms that usually involve changes, links in to your site, and good keywords. So here are seven simple ways to get people to look at your site.
1)Create quality. Forget brochureware and product sheets, unless they already contain the keywords your customers and clients will be looking for. No one is looking for "complete real-time solution." Make your terms crystal clear, without jargon, and repeat them naturally in your copy. Hyperlink terms to other places on your site. If you were buying, searching, comparing in your own category, what would you be typing into a search engine?
2) Add a feed to your site. This allows someone who comes to your site to subcribe to your content. At the very least, create a Twitter feed that will automatically make your site changes or blog posts come up as links in your Twitter posts, where your followers can click on the links.
3)Change the content often. Search engines look for changes. This is why blogs work. And don't accept a web site that can't be updated and managed by you without having to call the web developer. It's called a "content management system," and you want one. Static web sites don't get found.
4)Make your site social. Put a Share this button on your site, so if someone wants to send your content to a friend or a social site, it's easy for them to do. There are many different widgets that allow your readers to share your content; just choose one. I've got nothing invested in ShareThis, other than its ease of use.
5)Use anchor text wisely. Search engines crawl it. So every time you write "click here," you are missing an opportunity. Instead, hyperlink keywords you think your readers are looking for, or you wish they were searching for to find your site.
6)Find out what the most important keywords in your sector or business area are. There's a service called Hitwise you can use to get this data, or you can get it from Google itself. Believe me, Google's Adsense program knows. Use them in your copy.
7)Stay away from Flash animations on your landing page. Flash looks good, but search engines don't search it, so if you want to be found, you can forget about it.
None of these tricks is complicated, nor will they get you in trouble with the search engine gods. I've learned them all through hard experience.
For many reasons, I’m interested in the next generation Internet. Today I’m at Launch SIlicon Valley, watching ten companies in this space present their concepts.
I haven’t finished listening, but I have already jumped to my
conclusion. According to these presenters (who were quite good, by the
way), the next generation of the internet solves problems created by
the current generation of the Internet.
In other words, it’s full of refinements and improvements, rather
than big technological jumps. A better process here, a better algorithm
there, and lots of emphasis on smart phone apps or Firefox add-ons. The
most interesting company by far was from China, which is definitely
kicking our ass in next-gen internet stuff according to this presenter,
the first Chinese company ever to present at this conference.
World’sLaw is a legal service. Its competitor is Legal Zoom, but these guys have attorneys, while Legal Zoom is only document preparation services. By Jobi
– a power search with saved search with timelines and keywords,
language and location, domains and file types. It’s a power search
built on top of Google GazoPa-
similar image search. Uses features such as color and shape to find
images, and uses the image itself, not just keywords, as the search key.
The founder actually drew a watch on his computer, uploaded it, and got
photos of watches back. Even now, it has an iPhone app to upload
pictures from your iPhone and search images.
With current mage search engines, if large volume of data, can’t return
images quickly. But for them, the more data they have, the better they
can return Gliider-
manages travel for you. It holds on to your travel information,
replacing bookmarks, cut and paste, printed documents. ‘There’s no good
way to hold on to my travel info when I am planning a trip.” It’s now
in private beta, and is a Firefox add-on. Gamexiu.
Games and social networks are two fastest growing segments in China.
16,000,000 games, growing at 17% a year. 200,000,000 users are on
social networks in China, and the virtual goods business is a $4
billion business. Most users are single children under 25, using social
gaming as the way of getting companionship.
It’s the world’s first 3-D Internet social gaming platform. Completely
integrates into other social networks, so is also distributed. The
avatars can go anywhere across the web, and the application itself can
be embedded in other social networks.
They are a social world similar to Second Life. It looks easier to bring the user into an immersive life than SL, however. And the selling of virtual items is huge!
Here’s the second set of companies.
CellWandisn’t
really next generation of Internet; it’s mobile voice apps accessed
through abbreviated dialing codes (#taxi #home #pizza). It’s a pay per
use app ($1.25-1.79 per call), partnered with carriers. They get big
margins from loyal users, and use the wireless carriers, alcohol
companies, and media partners for marketing. CellWand is live in
Canada, and penetrates at 1 call per 250 mobile phone users. If they
penetrate similarly in the US, that would be $1m/month revenue. They
also use the carrier billing systems. They have locked up all the
Canadian carriers
Surf Canyon
– delivers relevant personalized search results. It re-ranks results
according to what you might have clicked on from the first search — on
the fly, in real time. Another Firefox add-on, also works on IE. And
for good measure, it also personalizes the sponsored links. Works with
Bing, Yahoo, Google.
Dacast,
a product of Andolis LLC believes the future of TV is multicast. The
company has a peer to peer system to cut the cost of live streaming and
unite all the Dacast users in an ecosystem. That allows for more
appropriate advertising to users. So Datacast is free for content
owners, cheaper to stream, and more carefully targeted. The company
projects profitability by end of 2010. Every player wins: Advertisers
get more clicks, users get free content, content owners get more money.
Wowd – is now in private beta. It turns the wisdom of crowds into useful work finding content, tagging itself “the web you want.”
“Wowd connects people to a planet’s worth of content.” YOICS “Your Own Internet Connected Stuff”
Cloud IT services for the rest of us. Private bookmarks only available
to you or people you are connecting to, using the internet as your own
private LAN. This could also be used for security services, and you
would be able to see it on any browser anywhere.
You can use it as a replacement for an FTP service. You can download
the Yoics app, drag a file form your computer to it, and make it
accessible to a selected group (like a graphic designer could do for
clients).
The general takeaway from this conference is the preponderance of peer-to-peer
services as a way of lowering the cost of streaming content, and the
general movement to the cloud. And I don't really think any of these companies, except Gamesxiu, stands alone. They will all get acquired.
It's everyone's patriotic duty to help Michigan. We are, indeed, at war, but it's not with terrorists, it's with the worst elements of ourselves.
I never thought I'd be saying this, but it has been a powerful day for me, a person who abandoned Amercian cars when her new college graduation gift, a 1963 Chevy convertible, lost its brakes on the Major Deegan Expressway in New York City two weeks after she got it.
It was a lesson, and I learned it quickly, never looking back.Not my responsibility, I said, as I bought Hondas, BMWs, Mercedes, Volvos and Audis at various stages of my career.
More than 40 years later, I realize that the government can't help Michigan, only American citizens can. We have turned our back on Detroit for decades, abdicating our roles as customers to provide constructive feedback. Perhaps if we hadn't just slunk away from those bad cars and bad decisions on the part of Chrysler and GM we could have made a difference. I know I sure didn't call my local Chevy dealer every three years as I went out and bought my next (foreign) car. And when I heard things were bad in Detroit, all I said was "tsk, tsk."
I'm not making a case for the car companies as well-managed, thrifty, or right in what they've done during those decades. But I am making a case for the connection between GM and everything else in the United States that is now haunting us: crime, gangs, inadequte health care, deteriorating public education, the financial crisis, and yes, even the murder of Dr. Tiller and the descent of our government into torture.
Somewhere along the way, we've lost the notion that we are connected to one another, and that we are a big community that has to learn to be resilient and take care of itself and each other. We've begun to think that, on the one hand, we can do it all individually, and on the other hand, if we can't the government will step in and save us.
Neither one of these is feasible.
Jennifer Granholm gave great interviews this morning about how Michigan was prepared to lead the country into the green revolution, generating new, green jobs for the one million people in Michigan who have been displaced by the auto industry.
But if no one buys the green products that will be manufactured by the retrained workers at the re-tooled factories in Michigan, will the stimulus and the cheerleading and the speeches work?
Of course not. As long as we pursue the easy (cheap) way out, buying inexpensive trendy, nearly disposable clothes that are made in third world countries that use child labor (this is what I realize I have been doing), buying Hyundais from Korea and fruit from Chile, we are enriching others.
We don't need a trade policy about this, or a stimulus package. We need common sense. We need a sense of community. Let's make this creative destruction, not just destruction.
Sramana Mitra's Bootstrapping: Weapon of Mass Reconstruction
is a book for our time, because it's something real out of Silicon
Valley. No more stories about legendary VC fundings or startup-to-IPO
in six months. In this, the second volume of Entrepreneurs Journeys,
her focus is on doing more with less, in tune with the times. The book
comes out June 1, but I got an advance copy because this is my passion:
starting up companies without outside investment. Unfortunately, this
is another one of the books Buppy read first, so the photo isn't what you might expect it to be:-)
Sramana Mitra has herself been an entrepreneur and a strategy
consultant in Silicon Valley since 1994. She founded three companies:
Dais (off-shore software services), Intarka (sales lead generation and
qualification software) and Uuma (online personalized store for selling
clothes using Expert Systems software). Two were acquired, while the
third received an acquisition offer from Ralph Lauren that the company
did not accept. Now she interviews entrepreneurs to find out what makes
them tick. It's quite interesting to read some of the stories,
especially those of entrepreneurs you think you already "know," like Om
Malik, in my case.
The very first entrepreneur in the book, Greg Gianforte, begins by
saying he doesn't believe in raising money from investors. "The best
money comes from customers, not investors," he says, echoing what Stealthmode's partners have always said to our own entrepreneurs. And for the same reasons. Boseman, Montana, where Greg started RightNow,
a customer service software company, isn't a tech hotbed anymore than
Phoenix, Arizona is. And bootstrapping, Gianforte says, " is a
discovery process." He goes on to say that if you got a bunch of MBAs
in a room and asked them how to start a company, they'd say write a
business plan and go get funding. And then they'd build a bonfire and
throw the money into it. Admittedly, RightNow took expansion capital
after two years.
Both Om Malik and Rafat Ali, who have found ways to monetize content
online, were also bootstrappers in the beginning. Both came from India,
where VC money wasn't an everyday occurrence but hard work was, and
both are writers. Ali tells of how he named his blog PaidContent.org
because the .com name was taken, the Internet bubble had burst when he
started in 2001, and he had nothing else going. Om has worked so hard
at being a successful entrepreneur that he had a heart attack last
year, when only in his early forties. He has had to learn to let things
go a bit.
Ramu Yalamanchi's father was an entrepreneur, and was the FFF
(Friends Family and Fools) who gave him the first $10,000 to start the
social network Hi5. To avoid mistakes, he watched Friendster.
If you start a business that you think will get very big, plan for the
scaling issues in advance, he says, because that's what Friendster did
not do. He watched that company in the days when people couldn't get on
the site and couldn't register.
Mitra points out that Silicon Valley now is where Silicon Valley has
been many times in the past: the IPO window is closed, the M&A
market is adrift, and the VCs who can't see an exit will not make an
entrance. The economy sucks, and the layoffs have happened. The talent
is out there looking for something to do. The last interview in the
book is with Lars Dalgaard, CEO of SuccessFactors,
who decided during the last downturn to buy companies that were
struggling and turn them into successful businesses. Two of them he
actually bought at an auction in Redwood City. From the portfolio of
"stuff" that he bought emerged the company that's now SuccessFactors.
This book has some fascinating histories of the different paths
people take to entrepreneurship, and the difficulties they face. I
would only have wished each of the interviews to be longer and deeper,
because every story is worth the telling.
