The document provides guidance for marketing in startups. It discusses the current economic environment which favors proven revenue streams and fast payback periods. It distinguishes strategic from tactical marketing and emphasizes the importance of understanding customers through conversations to develop and refine product concepts. The document advises marketing a solution to a well-defined customer problem and testing hypotheses directly with prospective customers.

1. MARKETING IN A STARTUP
Ron Carson - VP Marketing
Innovation Asset Group
March 18, 2009

2. ABOUT ME
• ~10 Years in Silicon Valley, ~5 Years in RTP
• Companies: Tandem, Compaq, Digital, HP
• Startups: patent troll and a B2B software company
• Industries: Healthcare, e-commerce, Pharmaceuticals,
Telecommunications, Banking, Biotech, Supply Chain, Intellectual
Property
• Roles: Business Development, Sales and Marketing
• Currently: VP of Marketing with a strong bias to market strategy,
business development and customer acquisition

3. WHAT I WANT TO SHARE
• Marketing vs. marketing
• Some start-up reality perspectives
• Things I would have wanted to know
• What I do, why I do it and how I do it
• I hope it helps

4. TODAY’S ECONOMY
• Angel Investors:
• “I’ve just lost 50% across my entire investment portfolio. Why would I invest
with a high risk, early-stage company when I could invest in beaten-down,
highly liquid stocks like GE or Apple?”“
• Can you be cash-flow positive in 6 months?”
• Venture Capitalists:
• IPO market is dry. M&A market is tight. No easy exit.
• May just let you die if you’re already in the portfolio.
• Only funding truly stunning business plans, preferably
with revenue already flowing
• Customers:
• “So, if I buy this, who can I fire?”
• Payback must be (way) less than one year.
ROI almost does not matter.
Spending is close to frozen.

5. MARKETING
"...Because its purpose is to create a customer,
business has two -- and only two functions:
Marketing and innovation. Marketing and
innovation produce results, all the rest are costs."
-- Peter Drucker

6. MARKETING IS NOT:
• Advertising • Search Engines
• Tradeshows • Press Releases
• Collateral • Lead Generation
• Websites • T-shirts
• Blogging • Coffee Mugs
• Twitter • Strategic Partnerships
• Channel Development

7. MARKETING
“There will always be need for some selling.
But the aim of marketing is to make selling
superfluous.
The aim of marketing is to know and
understand the customer so well that the
product or service fits them and sells itself.”
— Peter Drucker

8. MARKETING
Strategic Marketing Tactical Marketing
- Market Analysis - Lead Generation
- Market Sizing - Advertising
- Market Segmentation - Promotion
- Target Segments - Awareness
- Unmet Needs - Websites
- Competitive Analysis - Collateral
- ... - ...
Have to get this right... ...for this to work.
Alignment is Key

9. IF YOU GET IT WRONG...
• In this economy, you are dead.
You Bonehead! You’ve wasted your investors’ money
• Wasted time and your business is dead in the water.
• Wasted money
• Wasted credibility
• I learned hard lessons:
• Secure Electronic Transaction
• Electronic Health Record It’s Not OK
• Intellectual Property Management
• Others I continue to observe…

10. HOW TO GET IT RIGHT
Know Your Customer
To Know:
• To have knowledge or information concerning.
• To be absolutely certain or sure about something.
• To be aware of through observation, inquiry, or information.

11. Your opinion, while interesting, is irrelevant.
- Pragmatic Marketing

12. GETTING TO “KNOW”
Information Insufficient
Examples Useful For
Source Because
Broad trends, market
sizing, growth rates, Superficial, academic, in-
Industry Analyst Reports Forrester, Gartner
segmentation, actionable intelligence.
Third party validation
Usually too focused on
TD Ameritrade, Motley Trends, growth rates,
Financial Analyst Reports near-term investment
Fool competition.
metrics.
Hot Topic Issues. Identify Editorial calendars
Industry publications (incl.
IP Law & Business companies, people and necessarily shift. Hype
Blogs)
topics of relevance. sells - possibly misleading.
Broad trends, current
The readers digest
Business Publications BusinessWeek, Forbes events. General
version.
education.
Personal Conversations Danaher, Analog Devices, Dose of reality - needs,
with 30 prospective John Deere, Biomet, pains, barriers, Risk of short-term bias.
customers Cephalon, etc. opportunities

13. TALK
TO YOUR
CUSTOMERS
The phone is your friend.

14. WHAT TO TALK ABOUT
• Formulate hypotheses for:
• The problem, the product/solution
• Test hypotheses
• Talk to prospective customers, present problem - listen
• Incorporate into product/solution concept - test & listen
• Refine (repeat as necessary)
• Verify - problem, product, business model
• Go/No Go

15. CONCEPTS TO KEEP IN MIND
(THINGS I WISH I LEARNED EARLIER)
• Business Equation Concept
• a.k.a. Ecosystem, value chain, life cycle, etc…
• Bottom Line: track the flow of dollars through a market or company
• Who is going to make money or save money?
• Buying Processes
• How will the purchase be made? Who will make it?
• Competition
• never under estimate.
• Probe for alternatives.
• Fast Fail - always look for this

16. COLD CALL BASICS
• Write down your objective
• Script your opening pitch
• List questions you want answered
• Rehearse
• Pick up the phone (don’t read your pitch)
• Take notes
• Request permission to follow up
• Refine

17. “WHO YOU GONNA CALL?”
• You have a target market segment, a problem theory to test, a
solution concept to bounce off of someone -- so who do you
call?
• Tap the local network.
• Use tools success the ones below to find relevant people and
their contact info:
• DO NOT rent or buy lists!

18. SOME STUFF WE DID
Top-down and Bottom-up
Named Companies
Named Contacts
Built Marketing DB
Low Cost Marketing
Tangible Results

19. EXAMPLE
Primary Target Market Sizing
• Primary Target Market Top-down
• Companies with a degree of IP complexity to be managed.
• Number of companies with SIC codes which correspond
• Complexity can come from the number of assets in the to IP-intensive industries: 46,000
portfolio, the number of incoming and outgoing obligations
associated with the portfolio and from company specific IP • Estimated percentage in our primary
workflow automation. target market: 10%
• As a rule of thumb, we look for companies with more than • = 4,600 companies.
300 patents in their portfolios, and over $300M in revenue.
• These are companies in need of an IP management
solution, and with the financial resources to pay for one.
Today: 2,500+ named companies and 5,500+ contacts that
are candidates for one or more Decipher Modules:
• Secondary Target Markets Innovation, Portfolio Management, Commercialization.
• Medium sized companies with between 100 and 300
patents in their portfolios, and less than $300M in revenue.
• These are companies who understand the strategic
importance of IP and are actively seeking an integratd IP
management solution. • Adding contacts from the
target audience (5,500 and
• We do not activley prospect in this segment at this time. growing)
• Manually compiling list of named companies
• Target Audience within our target market. (2,500 and growing)
• Within the target market companies, we seek the person
responsible for corporate intellectual property strategy. • Initial list of companies with more than 300 patents = 1000
companies (Calculated this list to be under estimated by a
• Common titles include Chief IP Counsel, Vice President of factor of at least 2x-3x)
IP.
Bottom-up

20. EXAMPLE CONTINUED
• Marketing Foundation
• New Website - describes solution in (mostly) terms the market used to
describe their needs/wants.
• SEO Optimized
• Direct Marketing Infrastructure & automation -- track & measure
everything.
• ~3,000 target companies in marketing database
• >10,000 contacts - multiple departments can influence sale
• 40,000 lower quality contacts in newsletter DB

21. METRICS
New Leads Generated Growing Visbility IP Currents Conversions
90
35 120
Downloads, Demo Requests, Contact Us
Raw Leads from Events, Datasheet
80
White Paper Downloads & Subscriptions
30
100
70
White Paper Downloads
25
60
and Call-ins
80
20
50
15 60 40
10 30
40
5 20
20 10
0
July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan 0
0 Nov'07 Dec'07 July'08 Aug'08 Sept'08 Oct'08 Nov'08 Dec'08 Jan'09
Month
July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan
Month
Month
Direct e-mail Campaign Performance
Conversion Rate
10%
•Multiple keywords on Google first page.
6% •SEO leads generated include multiple
Industry
Benchmark
& Performance
Fortune 500 companies.
Target = 3%
IPO CEO - MIT CTO- CIPC - Cost IAG-
•Faster Sales Cycles
Innovation Control Dennemeyer
Cost Control

22. COMMENTS?
QUESTIONS?

23. BACKUP SLIDES

24. SWOT ANALYSIS TEMPLATE
Strengths Opportunity Implications for my company
• -
• --
•
Threat
• -
Weaknesses
−