startup
Create value for your startup
Creating value for your startup is a repetitive process that you must constantly be changing and upgrading. Long term success is achieved by constantly creating and recreating value.
To Keep Your Startup Alive, Keep Creating Value
1. Create value – obviously the first step would be to create the initial value. You need to set your product apart from all of your competitors.
2. Capture value – next you need to choose business activities that your customers are willing to pay for, but still at a high enough price where your company can remain sustainable off of the profits.
3. Renew value – this is where you see companies that appear on the surface to be doing great drop out of the market. Renewing value is the most important of the three steps for long term success. Adapting to the market you are in is very important. (think about disruptive innovation)
If you take a look at the article, it discusses what happened with Blockbuster and the rise of Netflix. It then discusses how Netflix needs to keep an eye out for HBO and CBS due to their online streaming customers. What could Blockbuster have done to prevent Netflix from capturing their customers?
Do you guys agree that the third step is where successful companies need to focus on for long term success?
What other things do you feel are important in regards to value and startups?
Following the bulls to the bubble?
The billion dollar start up club.
I found this interesting graphic on the Wall Street Journal that got me thinking about start up funding today.
The start up boom is still in full swing and it seems like every time we turn around we are introduced to another billion dollar plus start up. Which begs the questions, are we on our way to the next bubble? Is Uber (valued at $41.2 billion) really worth more then Sony? Is Snapchat, a company that is still not sure how it’s going to make money really worth $15 billion? Are the venture capitalists brilliant or insane?
I don’t believe anyone is sure of the answers to these questions and with so much money on the line it is a safe bet that an army of people are out there somewhere doing the due diligence before handing out capital. I understand that money isn’t just being slung at everyone with a latte and an idea. Indeed start ups are on average getting older and more mature before they head out for a cycle of funding.Yet despite that the spiraling increases in valuation are worrying, they must reach a ceiling at some point. As venture capitalist are still bullish on start ups though its hard to tell if we are in sight of the ceiling yet or still far away.
Here is the article. Are we in the bubble?
4 Tips For Finding Funding For Your Startup
Forbes released an article discussing possible ways to fund startups. Having a great idea and product is only half the battle when launching a startup. You are going to need cash and a lot of it. Fortunately, in today’s day and age there are new alternatives to achieve funding. The article provided a few ways that may help you find the best route to go when starting your business.
1. Consider your niche – What makes your app special or stand out? Find this attribute and use it to locate investors that may be more inclined to investing in your product.
2. Find a grant – This may be difficult, but this will be a great way to get things rolling. There are grants for tons of different things, almost similar to the way scholarships are rewarded. There are grants for minorities, women, mothers, etc. This may be a difficult option, but it is definitely one that will provide great benefit.
3. Enter a contest – There are many contests now held to provide money for startup funding. If you chose to attempt this method you should focus on making your idea really stand out and being very clear when explaining your product/service.
4. Crowdfund your idea – These platforms are gaining attention from both businesses and investors. This has become increasingly popular in the past couple of years. Some of the popular sites include Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
4 Tips For Finding For Your Startup
Which tip do you think is the most helpful? Also, I am curious to everyone’s thought on crowdfunding. What is your stance on it?
Marketing your startup
Marketing for a startup can be challenging. According to this article, marketing success is determined by combining the right channels of marketing content and PR. Before starting to market a new startup it is important to develop a marketing strategy to build a foundation. The following things need to be handled first. Choose a market, define keywords, define success, set core metrics, estimate conversion rate, and setting a budget.
Next is using the social media outlets that work best for your company and using them effectively. This is the most common way used today to try and reach people. I am sure that most of us will be implementing some use of social media with our applications. When using social media you want to focus on these things: Choosing the right social media networks, defining the best times to post, using a keyword list, creating and using an influence list, and setting up a blog.
PR also play a huge role in releasing a startup. Knowing what to say, when to say it, and who to say it to are the main focuses of PR. When dealing with PR within your company remember to: Create meaningful position statements, define your startup sensitivities, identifying the right writers for a media list, creating a press kit, and reaching out to journalists.
Once the PR is handled you want to start to think about the content creation. Although, we will not formally go into content creation, the rest of the article talked about content creation. When creating content for marketing you startup[ remember to: Create a topic list, know what types of content to publish (Newsletter, video, webinar, etc.), have guest blogging, and capture emails.
Now your marketing strategy is in full effect. Also, down the road think about testing and iteration. Your company can set up analytic tools, measure against benchmarks, and brainstorm creative new ideas You may want to also think about what successful startups have already done drive success. Focus on selling the solution, having a compelling story , and using all of your resources.
Has your group been using any of these tools when focusing on the marketing side of our project? I know we are not formally marketing our products, but some of these things come in handy when developing a marketing strategy.
Article: The Ultimate Guide to Startup Marketing
The Five Marketing Must-Haves of an Online Startup
In our first meeting with our mentor, he expressed serious concerns regarding our marketing strategy. This was because we didn’t have one. Each of us may have had some sense of how we wanted to market the application, but there wasn’t a clear direction.
This Entrepreneur article provides five marketing tips for a startup.
1. Focus on customer experience
This means designing a simple application that is easy to use. No matter how good an application is, if people have difficulty using it, they won’t.
2. Cross promotions/exposure
Know your target demographic. Where do they usually hang out (online or offline)? Promote your products at these places.
3. Content strategies
“Establish your brand as a subject-matter expert.”
4. Build virality into your product/experience
How can you get people to share your startup naturally?
5. Media exposure
If you can’t get top-tier media exposure, getting blogs to write about you is a good start.
This is in no way a comprehensive list. Do you agree or disagree with these points? Are there tips that you would consider more valuable than the ones listed above?
So you have a great tech idea, where to start?
The convention has always been you get a new idea, you write a proposal, request funding, assemble a team, build it, perfection it and implement it then hope that it would work. Or if you’re an entrepreneur, you write your business plan, you seek funding build your idea, launch it and hope that it would work.
The problem with this approach is that no amount of surveys or data analytics can predict that your audience will actually use your new product; so you deplete a considerable amount of resources then hope that the end it didn’t all go to waste.
The cure for this problem is the new lean methodology approach. The concept is borrowed from manufacturing and applied to tech. It was made famous by Eric Ries in his book, The Lean Startup.
The ida is to seek validation before investing or building anything significant. The following article does a great job introducing the methodology.
This is related to what we discussed in class about the risk that comes with investing in big IT projects. If big organizations learn from startups and find a way to accurately test the validity of their ventures, they would reduce their risks to a more reasonable level.
Do you guys think that this method would be effective?
Is there any industries where this method wouldn’t apply?
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