Why Some Ideas Fly While Others Die
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Ben will be sharing some of Sift’s diabolical disasters, as well as tales of glittering growth! Ben's always taken the view that you learn more from failures than successes. Failed acquisitions? Failed partnerships? Losing $1 million? Ben's been there and got the T-shirt.
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Why Some Ideas Fly While Others Die
- 1. WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 2. Context Ideas are used by businesses to: ● Better approach markets ● Launch new products ● Adapt structures ● Incentivise staff ● Build brand ● Set prices WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 3. WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 4. “To create valuable connections for our clients with their audiences” WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE SIFT PURPOSE
- 5. WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE Business publisher Digital agency Marketing services platform 140 staff, £9m revenues, founded 1996, Bristol & Boston
- 6. Ethos ● You learn by sharing what hasn’t worked ● Openness is engaging ● If you’ve never failed, you’ve never tried anything new WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 7. Agenda 1. Online community case study - AccountingWEB 2. Cross-selling 3. Launching in the US 4. Acquisitions 5. Platforms 6. Communication 7. Conclusions WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 8. Finance Small business Enterprise
- 9. WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE Unique users 0.6m Profiled members 120k Page impressions 2.1m E-newsletter subscribers 80k Logged in members 18k Comments & questions 8k pm
- 10. WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE AccountingWEB revenues (£k)
- 11. WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE ● Organic & gradual ● Evolved not forced ● User-lead ● Engaged ● Authentic What went right?
- 12. WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE ● Expectations ● Business model ● Culture ● Forced What went wrong? InsightExec (BT)
- 13. Cross-selling How difficult can it be to sell something else to your existing clients? WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 14. WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 15. WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 16. WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE ● Launched Mar ‘14 ● Revenue £25k ● Loss £230k ● Closed Mar ‘15
- 17. ● Existing clients & Net Promoter Scores! ● New products ○ proper support ○ separate & dedicated teams ○ not just an add-on ○ careful launch ● Client relationships can be very specific ● Where is your strategic value? WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE Cross-selling learnings
- 18. Launching in the US 1. Launched AccountingWEB US in 1999 2. 5 different publishers 3. Under-performed (despite market opportunity) 4. We just wanted to copy the AccountingWEB UK formula! WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 19. WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 20. WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 21. Acquisitions 1. Fast track growth! 2. Sift has made 9 acquisitions WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 23. ● Allure ● Time-consuming and distracting in themselves ● Distract from core focus ● Buy-in? WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE Acquisition learnings
- 24. Platform adventures 1. Initial platform built in-house in Perl 2. Sales people decided it wasn’t ‘fit for purpose’ 2002 3. $1m .NET Norwegian adventure 2004/5 4. $1m Java in-house adventure 2006/7 5. Open Source (Drupal) from 2007 6. Sift Media publishing platform (Drupal) 2014/5 WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 25. WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE Initial Sift platform
- 26. Sift Digital clients 1998 - 2005 WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 27. Digimaker
- 28. • 35K+ developers • 30K+ contributed modules and themes • Powers 1% of the top 10,000 websites
- 29. Sift Digital clients 2015 WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 30. User profile Brand Profile Content marketing Campaign amplification Stronger site visibility Enhanced profile Standard package Premium packages Articles Press releases PDFs Webinars Videos Hubs Display Sticky content Content recommendation User profiling Email Social Stronger site visibility Tiered profiles Low barrier to sign up Incremental profiling Measurement Sift Media - new publishing platform
- 31. WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 32. Communication WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 33. Sift Update WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE ● Occasional ● Personal ● Open ● Honest
- 34. CONCLUSIONS WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 35. Engagement WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE ● Myth of great people ● Cause or consequence of success?
- 36. Sift Office WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE ● Carpets deep clean ● Beer & clear ● Kitchen refresh ● Stand-up desks
- 37. Greener Sift WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 38. Sift Cares WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE ● Community days ● Annual charity partner ● ‘Whole of Sift’ skills
- 39. ●An idea is only the beginning ●Don’t just ask someone to ‘make it happen’! ●Dedicated team ●Build team as if a new company ●Conflict with existing teams inevitable ●Learning first ●Gather evidence to validate expenditure ●Evaluate the innovation leader based on whether she has ‘executed a disciplined experiment’ WHY SOME IDEAS FLY WHILE OTHERS DIE
- 40. Ben Heald CEO Sift bheald@sift.com @bheald @sift +44 7710 428871