Entrepreneurs: Ready, Set, GO!

by John Maddox John Maddox in Featured
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entrepreneurship

Ever feel like you have the pedal to the floor, but the wheels are just spinning?

As an entrepreneur that is a very common feeling as our minds race and the roadway to accomplish our goals is so clear…and yet so far away.

Is there a time to plan? Yes. Is there a time to be patient? Yes.

I talked about this is in “The Harsh Reality of Launching A Startup” and “Do Good Things Come To Those Who Wait.” It’s very important to not push too far too fast, but it’s just as important to identify when the time for planning and patience is over. Go full bore and let the chips fall where they may.

Fortune Favors The Bold

In business, war, politics or love, there is always a time to take action.

As an entrepreneur, whether it’s your first go or 10th, take the time to get idea validation from potential customers and people of merit, put together your plan, then go for it.

Angel investor Pradeep Jaisingh wrote a great article “When An Investor Says “NO” To Your Pitch” which is all about how to respond to the negatives around you as an entrepreneur and to never give up. No one is right 100% of the time, and that goes for investors as well.

There will always be those around you who want to go slow and not take too big a risk, but in truth, every day in business has risk. Each day you hold back pushes the day you reach the mountain summit back. Each day that goes by is one less day we have on this earth.

When Opportunity Knocks…Answer The Door

So often people with great ideas miss opportunities to make a difference. Fast forward 5 years, and they get to hear about how Person X just sold the company or are in another phase of expansion.

We live in a world of simultaneous discovery. This is reality, and we can either accept it or live to regret it. When the stars seem to be aligned in your favor, stop looking for why you should play it safe and just go for it.

Everything is business is a leap of faith, but you must remember that none of us know what tomorrow will bring. As employees or entrepreneurs, nothing is guaranteed.

Go Ring The Bell

You’ve made a plan. Validated the idea. Prepared for the unknown. It’s time to take the leap of faith into entrepreneurship.

Get out there and join all those who have come before you. They’ve all experienced the same burdens and fears, stresses and failures before finally getting to ring the bell when their dreams came to life.

We live in a world of opportunity. So Entrepreneurs: Ready, Set, GO!

It’s Time to Rethink the Idea of Startups

by John Maddox John Maddox in Ops/Strategy
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It’s time we take a serious look at what a “startup” actually is. We have to stop chasing unicorns as investors and the concept of acquisition by Google or Facebook as the foundation of value as founders.

Stop Saying Startup & Start Saying Tech Enabled Small Business – Paul Singh

The Coming Tech Bubble

According to venture capital investor Bill Gurley, the average MONTHLY burn rate of startups in Silicon Valley is $4 million per month. That’s the burn rate!

The vast majority of entrepreneurs would dream of having $500k one time, let alone $48 million a year, all while not making a dime in profit.

This is leading to the next 1999-like tech bubble explosion, but we could be having a massive growth in technology as the cost to build MVP’s is going down dramatically. Unfortunately, because of the investor need to chase unicorns, tons of great ideas get ignored. There are so many amazing B2B ideas out there that never get built because they are only a $10-50 million business.

It’s only a matter of time before this catches up to us and institutional investors realize so much private equity capital has been wasted. The second the IPO’s dry up, that money is gone.

Bringing Back Traditional Business Logic

As humans we seem unable to learn from our mistakes. In this context we’re only 15 years from the last one, so there is literally no excuse. It’s time both investors and entrepreneurs snap back to reality and think about creating companies with a legitimate chance of success, even if it’s on a smaller scale.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never started a business without a plan to make money from day one. If that wasn’t in play, there was no point in taking the risk.

If I didn’t have a customer acquisition plan ready to go from day one, I didn’t move forward.

If there isn’t a reasonable chance of profit quickly, I didn’t move forward.

So much of this baseline logic seems to be applied to the extreme in some areas and completely ignored in others.

Creating Some Pipe Dreams & Crushing Others

It is completely realistic to build out MVP’s of most startup ideas for less than $100k these days. Don’t believe me? Call just about any development shop and ask them. I’ve owned one and know this is true. The cost is going down by the day.

Demand for B2C apps is going down dramatically while going up in B2B.

So why is it that we are constantly hearing about the latest funding of a startup that needs 100 million users to make money, but ideas that need 3,000 to be worth $50 million can’t raise $500k for scale.

This is leading to so many entrepreneurs completely ignoring a great idea just because it doesn’t have crazy sex appeal to Techcrunch or the Valley. On the flip side, people with proof of concept and initial customer base who just need small investment to grow quickly are quite frankly wasting time trying to raise chump change in comparison.

Let’s Change The Argument

If great B2B ideas are going unfunded, it might be time to reconsider the system of business loans for startups.

Since brick and mortar business models can get loans from the bank, SBA, and other lending institutions, why is it almost impossible to get these same type of loans for technology companies?

Our economy is primarily based on soft assets not hard, just ask the Federal Reserve and Wall Street.

So why do not all the same principles of business apply? Office space, employees, customers, revenue, taxes, insurance etc.

Banks look at assets, personal credit, business model etc. Very often it’s time in business, but others it’s not.

Let’s look at the idea of collateral. If you put up say $10k personally toward building a working software platform that costs $100k, is that not collateral?

Repossessing the code has value. Putting working software on the market will lead to purchase. Perhaps at a small or big loss, but that applies to lines of credit and many other options available to traditional businesses. It’s ultimately no more risky than the new bakery down the street.

Tech startups often fail because of the people involved, not because it was a bad idea. This is true in any business.

If we just re-framed the argument from “startup” to “tech enabled small business,” showed the true value of the assets being created, and allowed personal responsibility to be applied, not only would burn rates go down, the potential economic growth is amazing.

Let’s face it, when you’re responsible for the money, suddenly every dime being spent matters and efficiency and focus to turn a profit goes up.

Why Entrepreneurs Need To Take Breaks

by John Maddox John Maddox in Featured, Startup Tips
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As an entrepreneur, it can be extremely difficult to take time out and re-calibrate.

Everything you are is focused on bringing your vision come to life, and making all of the stress, personal sacrifice and fatigue worthwhile.

But does it actually increase your chance of success to take a time out? Step back and make sure you’re making the right choices, and there isn’t a great opportunity staring you in the face. It is very easy to miss the obvious when you are buried in growing a company.

You must be willing to go over and above and push yourself more than the average person. No question. But what is rarely talked about are the physical and mental downsides of not taking breaks from your obsession.

Mental Downside Of Being Hyper-Focused

There is a never ending litany of people saying that the only way to be successful is to be focused, give it your all and it will all be worth it. I completely agree with this (and have lived it) but personally feel this needs to be further defined.

Studies show that optimal mental efficiency happens on 7.06 hours of sleep. There is significant decline with less than 6.47 hours or more than 8.03. Since you are making important decisions as a business owner, it is vital you operate at your peak mental ability as much as humanly possible.

Will this be possible all the time? Of course not. Just make sure you keep this reality in the back of your head. The last thing you want to do is make a dumb decision on a lack of sleep!

Physical Downside Of Being Hyper-Focused

I really don’t need to even dive into this. We all know what happens when we work to much and exercise to little, but did you know that stress has a direct impact on your immune system and rate of metabolism?

The hormone cortisol is released as part of your “fight or flight” response to stress. While there are temporary benefits to this, in the long term there is a significant reduction in both your immune system and digestive track. This leads to greater risk of serious diseases in general, and the slow down of your metabilism has been linked to things like diabetes and intestinal blockage.

Another study shows that AGE DOESN’T MATTER in how the body reacts to stress!

Personal Downside Of Being Hyper-Focused

Beating back weight gain, overcoming illness and getting caught up on sleep can usually be accomplished when you’ve either failed miserably or reached the mountain top.

The bad decisions made in business and more importantly your personal life are not so easily vanquished.

Losing clients, friends, significant others, or relationships with your children have serious impact on your mental health. While you may be able to suppress these issues in the short term, they will catch up with you.

There was a study released last year showing that married business owners had a divorce rate of 82%. With a national average of just under 50%, this is to great a coincidence to ignore.

In short, you need to think long and hard about how much these relationships mean to you. Not only can they damage you emotionally in the long term, destruction of your personal life will make business success that much harder.

Taking Breaks Doesn’t Mean Losing Focus

Having experienced almost everything mentioned in this article personally, I want to say that this has not turned off my entrepreneurial fire in the slightest.

It has just made me take the occasional timeout, re-calibrate, make sure the decisions being make are good ones, spend time with my daughter, friends and build great relationships with clients.

If you do the same, it will make those late nights and short term sacrifices easier to deal with and make them more rewarding when you have people to share them with!

Do Good Things Come to Those Who Wait?

by John Maddox John Maddox in Featured
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They say that “Good things come to those who wait,” but is it true?

Since shifting my focus from short term profit to a long term, multi-faceted game plan, I often find myself wondering if it’s worth it. What I’m doing makes sense assuming everything goes as planned, but that doesn’t make it easier to be patient.

So in an attempt to both pacify my own impatience, and hopefully share a few things I’ve learned in the last 18 months of being patient, let’s dive into a few reasons patience is worth it in entrepreneurship.

Meeting People of Influence

While I personally hate “who you know” being such a factor of success, it’s amazing what doors open when you take the time to build relationships with people of influence. In the past, I used sheer aggression in marketing and value proposition to build my companies.

Did that work? It sure did, but looking back I realized that the amount of time and energy spent should have been split in direct business development and relationship building.

This go around, instead of being consumed with trying to convince everyone my logic is the greatest thing since sliced bread, I’m taking the time to prove myself on a much smaller scale. This is leading to relationships with people who are opening doors that will ultimately make my long term objectives easier to attain.

As an added bonus, when I started to diversify my relationships, it became easier to find people who thought my logic was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Finding Better Ways To Communicate

As an entrepreneur, one of the biggest sources of frustration is not being able to convince everyone your idea is a good one. Very often that is because it’s hard to compact years of planning into 5 minutes of conversation and actually relay the big picture.

Convincing people who don’t matter in the big picture is easy. The ones that can make or break you is hard. If you can’t paint the picture quickly you’ll get shut down in less than 30 seconds.

Once you get over the slap to your confidence and accept that you can’t convince everyone, it becomes a worthwhile challenge to figure out new ways to be a communications artist. Not only does this have short term value in achieving your goal, being able to communicate effectively to different personality types is a priceless skill in leadership.

Learning To Suppress Ego

Being successful in a variety of areas makes you confident. While confidence is an extremely essential aspect of success, learning when to be humble is a hard but worthwhile.

There is always someone bigger and better than you. The quicker you learn that reality the quicker you will be able to connect and learn from them. This is not to say you should become a “yes man” and never challenge their opinion.

Learning to shut up and listen enables you to learn faster and also helps build a relationship. When others recognize you respect their opinion and experience, they are much more likely to help you in return. This applies to people of influence, your team, and potential partners or customers.

Building An Even Better Mousetrap

Looking back on the plan I’ve been working on for over 2 years now, the way it’s grown is remarkable. Different components of it are being implemented all over the world by other people, which just gives me more confidence that my logic is correct.

As pieces of the puzzle are confirmed, it makes it that much easier to convince those who I’ve been building relationships with that the macro vision being built is worthwhile. While it would be extremely satisfying to say it was my idea first, history proves that being the first to market doesn’t always mean you win.

It’s often those who build a slightly better version of the proverbial mousetrap who win.

So Is Patience Worth It?

As much as it pains me to say it, I think being patient will be worth it.

Spending time building relationships, learning to communicate better, and seeing what works and what doesn’t, enables you to put together a better mousetrap without having to convince everyone that it’s a good idea. Now you just have to convince them it’s a better version.

This leads back to learning to suppress your ego.

As an entrepreneur it’s extremely hard to not strive to be the man on top as quickly as possible. It’s the way we are wired and what separates us from those happy with the status quo and no drive to challenge it.

So I guess time will tell if patience will turn out to be a virtue. But I can say it has made me a better man. It has caused me to build relationships with people who will help turn my dream into reality, exposed my flaws and strengths, and given insight into becoming a person of true merit.

Financial success can be fleeting, but character built through patience is priceless.

3 Ways Business Success Requires Being Human

by John Maddox John Maddox in Featured
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Let’s face it. In the world of technology we’ve become so obsessed with the latest innovative way to solve a problem and lower human demand, we’ve forgotten these tools are all invented to help benefit our fellow humans.

This has led to significant issues in customer service, company culture, employee loyalty, and company growth. These factors combine to create failures which seem outlandish, but when looked at in depth clearly reveal a lack of baseline humanity.

In an attempt to streamline productivity, we have begun to view these tools as the most essential part of success and not the people behind them. Employees are treated as disposable cogs and not vital pieces of what the company is and strives to become.

So how can we counter this problem and leverage the amazing advancements at our fingertips without ultimately destroying our society?

1. Remember Innovation Requires Imagination

While there is hope that someday artificial intelligence will enable us to be taken care of without having to work, and all issues will be solved without requiring human focus, that day isn’t here yet.

In the meantime, it is essential for us to remember on a daily basis that everything around us in the modern world is a result of human imagination and hard work. From the dawn of time, everything developed has required a reason which benefits mankind. Without creative thought we would still be living in the stone age.

So while we are rapidly creating things which remove the need for human sweat in many areas, we must not forget the new opportunities becoming available just open doors to leveraging the power of our minds. In reality, the demand for creativity may be greater than ever.

Without business leaders creating environments to help spark creativity, the ability to achieve long term success is drastically reduced.

2. Creating A Positive Work Environment

So many people think it’s just about how much you can pay in salary and benefits which controls how productive your company can become. While being able to remove employee financial stress is extremely important, most people will tell you when looking back on life that it wasn’t “the best paying job” which correlated with their happiness and productivity.

It was a sense of belonging. Being valued for what they brought to the table and accepted for who they are as a human being, not just viewed as an easily replaceable tool. Their favorite managers were the ones who listened and weren’t consumed by personal power and ego.

It’s actually quite simple to create this kind of workplace. First as a leader, subjugate your ego. Listen to others and admit you don’t know everything. Second, make sure those in positions of authority below you understand and follow this mindset. Third, reward those with initiative and ambition. While monetary reward is appreciated, in truth that appreciation is short lived. A kind word has more power than what can be bought.

3. Help Others Achieve Their Dreams

So often managers view productive employees as threats to their position. Business owners often fear losing a great employee to competition or entrepreneurship.

These things are just the reality of life and cannot be avoided, but if you have built amazing relationships on a human level, going separate ways can be less painful, partnerships can be created to benefit all parties, or even new avenues to greater success can be revealed.

What if that person comes to you with an idea that could change your business model or provide a new revenue stream? Should you be greedy and implement that idea without reward? While it may pay off in the short term, the next person with an idea will surely hide it from you. By default you have just limited your own success and likely created competition for yourself.

What if they get an offer they can’t refuse and move onto another company? Fast forward 5 years. They are now CEO and want to buy you out. That human relationship you built makes them want to make a fair deal rather than rip you off in desire for revenge.

What if hard times come and you can’t meet payroll, or need your team to rise to the occasion beyond just being a 9-5 employees? If you have created the type of human-to-human relationships and environments discussed, you will be amazed at how they will be there for you when it counts.

Failure and success have very thin margins of separation. Don’t forget this when you find yourself becoming consumed with ways to reduce the need of human capital. Find ways to maximize it instead!

Accelerating Startup Innovation Through Crowdfunding

by John Maddox John Maddox in Featured, Startup Tips, Startups
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Crowdfunding concept

Everyday I get pitched a new idea.

Choosing which to get involved in as a mentor, investor or connector is becoming easier as my personal network grows (many thanks LinkedIn) but more importantly because the ability to mitigate risk and prove viability quickly is becoming easier.

This is not to say that raising capital is becoming easier. For those of you who read “Open Letter To Angel Investors & VCs” you will understand where I’m going with this article.

In short, let’s quickly discuss new opportunities available to shorten the window of time needed to get seed stage capital, minimum viable product, and secure beta clients.

Crowdfunding Seed Stage Capital

Let’s face reality. Crowdfunding is the future, and if the SEC will ever get out of the way and allow equity crowdfunding to the masses, our current recession would be over in no time. In the meantime, while the regulators argue about how we can spend our money, let’s talk about leveraging this option to both raise initial seed capital to get proof of concept.

Putting together a great campaign is a skill in itself. It requires creative thought, excellent planning, significant time spent on PR strategy and connection with social media influencers. If you are able to put these pieces together with a great product or service, then communicate it well to the target demographic, it is reasonable you can get enough funding to build your proof of concept.

In the end, it boils down to your social media influence and public relations. If those two are accounted for, your chances of success are reasonable.

In the meantime, don’t forget to put as many things in place prior to the end of the campaign you will need to build the MVP. Whether that be vendors, manufacturers or advisers.

Building Minimum Viable Product

Now let’s assume your crowdfunding campaign was a success.

In the age of 3D printing, access to manufacturing globally and web/mobile development advancements, it never ceases to amaze me how so many startup founders REFUSE to quickly build an MVP (minimum viable product) and get to market.

If your campaign is a success, you have a potential customer base built in by default. Not only can you leverage the buzz created, you also have the ability to communicate with these potential customers and get their feedback on what they would like to see. Instead of hiding everything from them until launch, just ask questions.

It is better to make modifications prior to launch, than wait for the bombardment of feedback when you are slammed with customer service, fulfillment and the other headaches which come with company growth. Making pivots is a blunt reality in business. It is better to account for them as early as possible.

Leveraging Beta Clients

Growing your business requires getting an initial client base, whether you call them beta clients, early adopters or just plain customers.

By going the way of crowdfunding and heavy engagement with your backers, you have the opportunity to build a loyal customer base full of brand ambassadors. Not only is this vital to growing the company in the short term, in context of raising additional capital, being able to showcase a rapidly growing customer base enables proving market viability to investors.

While many investors shy away from crowdfunded projects in the early stages, this position is rapidly shifting as acceptance of crowd based idea validation expands. If you are able to prove how many backers have turned into ongoing customers, you now have an extremely valuable weapon at your disposal.

Accelerating Traditional Capital Raise

Since it realistically takes 6+ months to raise seed stage capital for 99% of startups, it makes sense to spend that same amount of time planning out your crowdfunding campaign with the next step goals as outlined above.

Not only does this enable you to be further down the road prior to raising traditional capital, you also have a much stronger position in equity negotiations and might not even need it. Investors are looking for proof of concept, minimum viable product, initial customer base and growing revenue. All of these are signals of risk mitigation on their investment.

By strategically leveraging crowdfunding, you have the opportunity to both accelerate growth of your company and the time spent raising additional capital. When risk is lowered, you will be amazed at how quickly the doors can open up.

This is just a top level of things to think about when planning your entrepreneurial journey in today’s world of opportunity. I would appreciate your feedback and ideas you can share with others getting ready to make the leap!

Ludovic Biyong Is Helping To Bring News To Cameroon

by John Maddox John Maddox in Everywhere Else
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Founded by the 29 year old French-born entrepreneur, Ludovic Biyong, Camernews.com is a Cameroonian news and classified ads-based website. A place for Africans to go to find up-to-date local, national and international daily news, from political and economic news through to the latest in sport, art, fashion and culture, it covers all the top trending stories.

A hugely popular site, Camernews.com also features classified advertisements, employment advertisements and even a virtual tour guide of Cameroon, encouraging tourism and investment for the country. And other major developments to help make the site even more user-friendly and reachable are already underway.

Camernews.com focuses on providing trustworthy and reliable news, information and services to every Cameroonian at every level of society, something that has not been readily available to many. Considered one of Cameroon’s top 10 websites, Camernews.com receives thousands of unique visitors each and every day.

With its increasing popularity, Ludovic Biyong has big plans to further expand the site’s influence by offering users useful services other countries simply take for granted. ‘Compared to many Western countries, everyday Cameroonians are fairly new to the vast world of the Internet and everything it has to offe,’ said Ludovic Biyong.

He is soon to launch an all-in-one platform that also provides Android and iPhone applications dedicated to Cameroon as well as a magazine promoting Cameroon and offering tourism information about entertainment, art, culture and fashion in Cameroon. Also soon to launch is the opportunity for Cameroonians to get more involved in their sports, with sport betting and related activities.

ludovicAn entrepreneur himself, Ludovic Biyong was born in France but has strong ancestral roots to Cameroon. Having spent much of his lifetime in Paris and London, Ludovic now bases himself in Cameroon, working in his IT company, PA2M. A renowned computer scientist and IT specialist, Ludovic was inspired by his early visits to Africa, where he felt a huge social responsibility to share his knowledge with the people of Africa.

Having studied Computer Science and then following on to complete a Master’s in Business Engineering, Ludovic Biyong’s extensive career includes working as a network and Software engineer with Unisys and as a research engineer at Winwise. He also is involved in working with AFNOG (African Network Operators Group) and AFRINIC (African Network Information Center), which has allowed him to be a key player in the development and advancement of the African Internet community.

Ludovic Biyong’s desire is to see all African people thrive in the area of technology and commerce by having the opportunity to harness available innovations in IT and computing, electronics and telecommunications. ‘The Internet has been deeply embraced by urban Africans, as they are driven by the need to connect with family and friends and by the increasing affordability and accessibility of Internet-capable mobile phones’, said Ludovic. He goes on to state, ‘building on this, I am focused on solving many of the social problems they face
using digital innovations not only in the areas of business, but also in the areas of health, education and agriculture throughout Africa’. Camernews.com is just one way that Ludovic Biyong is helping his native country.

Ludovic Biyong’s crowdfunding project is just one aspect of what he sees as the future for, not only Camernews.com, but also for his own personal projects with regard to helping Cameroon to move forward in all areas of society. ‘A lifetime goal of mine is to have an online platform, a crowdfunding platform, where young smart Cameroonians can seek investors in order to create and innovate the future of our country’, he said. As a young and successful entrepreneur, Ludovic Biyong believes that entrepreneurs are born, not made.

His desire is to use all his resources, including the success of Camernews.com and his crowdfunding project, to help advance Cameroon’s society at every level and in every industry. Biyong sees among young Cameroonians their hunger for greater involvement in the political, economic, business and cultural scenes of Cameroon. As the Cameroonian people start craving for prosperity in an emerging economy, Ludovic Biyong’s plan is to support the wealth of talent, passion and diversity that the people of his native country have to offer.

As the success and popularity of Camernews.com continues to grow throughout Cameroon and Africa, Ludovic Biyong is confident the people of Cameroon and further afield throughout Africa will benefit from all that the world of Internet technology, telecommunications and business has to offer.

 

The Case for a Chief Story Teller

by John Maddox John Maddox in
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The lines are often blurred between the roles of CEO, CMO, CTO, CIO and so on in regards to who is the chief of brand vision. Who we are. What do we do. How the public should perceive the company.

Does the buck ultimately stop with the CEO? Is the CMO’s primary responsibility to expand brand exposure and grow market share? Is every member of company leadership a part of what a company is and can become?

Of course they are, but maybe there should be a CST – Chief Story Teller – role added to a standard C-suite.

Let’s Look At Reality

At the end of the day, the buck stops with the CEO. If they don’t want the responsibility, then they shouldn’t have accepted the title. The ability to share vision with their team and customers is essential to company growth.

But is it reasonable to assume that with so much of their time dedicated to creation of that vision and making the hard decisions that come with it, the CEO also has the time to communicate the vision on a daily basis?

More important, is it reasonable that every CEO have this ability as one of their great strengths?

Should the CMO, who on a daily basis is overseeing the implementation of brand communication and customer acquisition strategies, creation of assets to deliver the message and the team to create them, also be the person on whom this role of Chief Story Teller falls?

I would argue that in the early stage of any company, of course it is one of the hats to be worn, but as a company grows, it is essential that this role be delegated (on a daily basis) to a Chief Story Teller who has both the passion and the ability to relay it to others.

What is a Chief Story Teller?

A good example of this would be Matt Cutts from Google.

While he is neither CEO, CMO or any other C-Suite title, he communicates of a regular basis with customers via videos, blog posts, and social media. More people know his name than Larry Page and Sergey Brin. His role is Head of the “Webspam” team, which to some may seem like not much, but the baseline of all that is Google is search. Without him communicating what is going on behind the scenes of the Google algorithm changes, many things Google does would not make sense.

In today’s world of instant communication, it is possible to share the true vision of a brand and learn from customers what they wish it would become. There is now no excuse in refusing to engage, then have frustration on misunderstanding of your brand by consumers.

Making CST A True Position

So often the role being discussed is foisted upon the CEO or CMO, without taking into account all the other responsibilities they have which interfere with this being their main focus.

If the responsibility of being the true communicator of the brand was handed not to just a public relations spokesperson, but to someone with both the high level expertise, knowledge of inner workings of the company, and the innate ability to communicate, there are amazing opportunities which present themselves.

It is my opinion that by removing the need for sales, while it will be difficult to track direct ROI, the ability to create relationships is greatly enhanced. If the sole role of the CST is to build relationships with no strings attached, then the basic human reaction is to lower mental shields.

Demand For This Role

If the CST isn’t trying to close a deal, only share the true inner workings of the brand, how it can be of benefit, and the true aspects of human emotion and experience, then it is in the customers’ best interest to be open. Not only to becoming a customer, but also to share what they would like to see and how to secure them as loyal followers.

This information can then be leveraged by the CEO, CMO, and others in the C-Suite to expand the company in so many ways.

Without this role, it is likely that much of the vision will never be adopted by the team. Just as important, the true value proposition provided by the company will not be understood by customers and brand ambassadors shall be lost.

How to Determine Your Startup Revenue Model

by John Maddox John Maddox in Ops/Strategy
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Software as a Service is a very alluring business strategy for a mobile web startup. In this model customers are dependent on the system, and tracking usage statistics is easy. It’s cheaper to add features than in the client-side model, and the all important code remains securely on private servers.

It’s also well-suited for mobile development, saving time and development costs. Responsive web design ensures service availability on a broad variety of devices, eliminating the necessity of developing apps for every device used to access the service.

As appealing as the model is, before providing even basic specifications to a team of app developers, it’s extremely important to have a well-defined startup revenue model. In order of increasing complexity, here are the most prominent revenue models for software as a service:

Advertisement

Advertisement is the simplest way to monetize a website. This model requires little back-end development; it’s unnecessary to keep a persistent database with personal information about customers. This method can also be used in conjunction with others to maximize return on investment.

On the other hand, advertisements can dilute branding and can distract customers from a site’s content. If there isn’t already a guaranteed user base, this may affect customer acquisition negatively.

Premium

This model allows the sale of memberships to a service. For enterprise applications with high demand, a business may be able to set the price of premium memberships at a level that will allow it to recoup costs and make a profit. In conjunction with the advertising-based model, it can provide an opportunity to expand profits by offering tiered service.
The development overhead for this model consists of a system for customers to create new accounts, a system to authenticate user identities securely, and a system for accepting payment.

Subscription

This model is essentially Premium, but with recurring payments. SaaS is very well-suited to this model, since customers need authenticated access to the service to use its features.

This model requires further back-end web development: the application database must track payment schedules and the business logic must include methods for expiry and cancellation of user accounts.

Customer acquisition will be more difficult with this model, especially for a startup, but may be more successful if the pre-launch strategy includes a well-received marketing campaign.

In-app Sales

This model allows the sale of goods or services, virtual or actual. In-app sales can be a cash cow… if that’s how the app was designed from the beginning.

In-app sales require a system for tracking what a user has purchased, and depending on what the application sells, can require additional infrastructure for new features.

Be Prepared

Choosing a revenue model should be a web entrepreneur’s top priority: putting off this crucial step or making last-minute changes can drive up costs and prolong development, miring a project in development hell. The revenue model defines how an application tracks its customers, and is therefore one of the first questions that needs to be answered.

The explosive proliferation of mobile devices and the growing demand for SaaS present a unique opportunity for mobile startups. The mobile startups that take full advantage of this opportunity maximize profits and minimize development time by choosing a revenue model before writing a single line of code.

Leadership Ability Starts In Childhood

by John Maddox John Maddox in Leadership
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giants

“Standing on the shoulders of giants” is one of my favorite quotes of all time.

While it was originally referencing scientific advancement, it also applies to personal success being impacted by the examples of those around us as children.

It concerns me greatly that so much attention to our children is being turned over to people other than the parents. We have become so consumed with material things as a society we are neglecting the future…Our children.

Where Is Our Time Going?

Does it not bother you that the average parent spends less than 8 hours per week with their children?

Does it not bother you that the average adult somehow finds time to watch 2.8 hours of TVeach week?

As a society have we become so enthralled by the here and now that we refuse to prepare for the future! Without examples they can respect, learn from and ultimately surpass in adulthood, how can we possible expect to make a better life for our children possible?

The Need Of Leadership Examples

Whether we want to accept it or not, our children learn from what they experience. If we are not around, then they are searching for someone to emulate. It’s just a hard truth.

Unfortunately the examples being projected by our media proclaim that everything will be handed to you. That you have nothing to fear and that everyone is a winner. I don’t know about you but I have won many times, but have also had many hard defeats.

Those moments of defeat are what forced me to become stronger, learn to adapt and prepare to face the unknown. How can we as parents not remember this reality and help our children become ready for the days when we are no longer there to defend them?

We Must Prepare

From a purely selfish perspective, when we are old, we will rely on our children to take care of us. Providing examples for our children should be endeavored just for self-preservation.

This however demands that overcome our obsessions with short term gratification and actually think about what we want to help our children become. We can either be the strong shoulders our children can stand upon, or be Atlas, so weighed down by debt, stress and impatience we are never able to be the leaders our children can emulate and ultimately, surpass.

I challenge us all, on both a personal and professional level, to make the right decisions and be the next “great generation” providing the ladder to a new era of enlightenment and success.

What do you think? Comments below on how you think we can overcome these challenges would be greatly appreciated!