Start-Up School 101: Lessons For Big Brands

Digital networks - Except for how marketing & advertising agencies market products and build brands have changed everything

...and Companies are struggling “ Marketing is a $450 Billion industry, and we ...mak[e] decisions with less data and discipline than we apply $100,000 decisions in other aspects of our business. Instead they repeat old plans, depend on TV, hand off the planning process and focus on reach rather than behavior and intent Peter Stengle GMO Procter & Gamble

Start Up School101

Successful start ups do things differently “ Earlier in your start up, you need to acquire your customers for free Fred Wilson Union Square Ventures

Lesson #1 -Focus on the value of every customer interaction

Since start-ups don’t have marketing budgets, theydon’t have to put focus on decreasing the cost ofcustomer acquisition .... move from traditional to experience-enabled marketing view marketing view decrease increase the cost the value of customer of each customer acquisition interaction

How would your businesschange tomorrow, if your call centre wasn’tconsidered a cost centrebut a relationship centre?

Lesson #2 -Build your organizational structure from the community out

Start-ups focus on community as their core blurring the lines between PR, customer care and marketing, allowing community managers to deal with all three Public Relations Community Engagement Customer Marketing Care

“ You don’t start communities. Communities already exist. They arealready doing what they want to do. Thequestion you should ask is how you can help them do that better Mark Zuckerberg CEO Facebook

If you helped and supported acommunity from the beginning rather than it being an after thought, howcould you work with that community to build your brand, products and services?

Lesson #3 -Don’t just build a product, build an ecosystem

Start-ups try to enable and facilitate ecosystems by encouraging the connections between customers, creating open API’s so others can help grow their systems, and watching for emergent opportunities on an on-going basisConﬁdential and Proprietary © 2012 Gravity Partners Ltd. 15

If you believed that you were actually part of an ecosystemrather than outside it or managing it, how would your organizational philosophy change?

Lesson #4 -Your customers are your creative team

Customer feedback, community forums, beta groups, behaviouraldata - given to you freely by the world’s least expensive creativeteam, your users

If you saw your customers as part of your creative team vs. an army of free word of mouth marketers, how would your advertising efforts change?

Lesson #5 -Make connections between people not products

Consider how your products and services could createconnections, not only to your products and services but betweenyour customers

oh and refer a friend?... doesn’t count

If your brand enabled connections between people, how could it leverage that knowledge and information to grow and nurturedeeper relationships with customers over time?

Lesson #6 -Getting it right is better than getting it

With community and customer at their core, successful start-upsfocus on the overall user experience above all

On dropbox’s popularity “ After I left Syncplicity, I ran into the CEO of Dropbox and asked him my burning question: "Why dont you support multi-folder synchronization?" His answer was classic Dropbox. They built multi-folder support early on and did limited beta testing with it, but they couldnt get the UI right. It confused people and created too many questions. It was too hard for the average consumer to setup. So it got shelved. Issac Hall CEO of Simplicity - a Dropbox Competitor source: now deleted comment from Quora

We only use about 10% of our brain,and funnily enough, we tend to onlyuse 10% of features built into most software. What if we only focusedon being brilliant with the top 10% ?

Lesson #7 -Make people happy

It sounds almost too simple – make people happy – but if youhave them engaged, if they feel they are being listened to and ifyou focus on the things that make what they are doingseamlessly easy, they will be happy

On why Wesabe lost to Mint “ Mint focused on the user doing almost no work at all...and giving them immediate gratiﬁcation whenever they could... Instead, I prioritized trying to build tools that would eventually help people change their ﬁnancial behavior for the better....Changing people’s behavior is really hard Mark Hedlund Founder Wesabe Source: http://blog.precipice.org/why-wesabe-lost-to-mint

What if happiness was part of your business model?

Lesson #8 -Focus

Trying to be all things to all peoplemeans you end up being nothing to anybody.Facebook didn’t start as the social network for everyone, it was the social network for people with harvard.edu addresses

How much focus does your organization have? How wouldthings change if you didn’t try to be all things to all people and instead you were brilliant for key groups?

Lesson #9 -Everything you (think) you know is a hypothesis

There is an overwhelming desire to ‘have all the answers ’ at bigorganizations. Start-ups are often a best guess and ‘beta it and see’ cultures. It opens themselves to emergent opportunities on an on- going basis

“ The two fatal guesses for startups on day one is….I know what the customer problem is, I know what to build Steve Blank Author & Entrepreneur

What would change if youaccepted that you don’t have all the answers? What kinds ofprocesses and people would youneed to be open to the constant possibility of change?

Lesson #10 -Culture drives everything

Many VC’s and entrepreneurs don’t put much stock in the concept ofbrand. But some of them are the bestat building them. Why? they focus on creating culture at the heart of their DNA. It starts with Founders vision and is built one decision at a time.

“ The culture of a company informs every decision that a business makes. Once that culture takes root --- its values, folklore, principles, savoir-faire, style, manners, consideration, work ethic --- every decision thereafter is colored by that culture JLM Entrepreneur & AVC Community Member Source: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/05/ﬁrst-time-vs-serial- entrepreneurs.html#comment-195329057

How would you characterize yourcorporate culture? Do you believe it supports where you want to go as an organization and brand?

The Recap 1. Focus on the value of 6. Getting it right it better every customer interaction then getting it 2. Build your organizational 7. Make people happy structure from the community out 8. Focus 3. Don’t create products, 9. Everything you (think) you create ecosystems know is a hypothesis 4. Your customers are your 10. Culture drives everything creative team 5. Make connections between people not products

Final thought “ A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding Marshall McLuhan Media Theorist

The start of something that changes everythinggravityltd.com

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Start-Up School 101: Lessons For Big Brands

by Leigh Himel on May 13, 2011

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Start-Up School 101: Lessons For Big Brands — Presentation Transcript