Nibletz Staff - 68/87 - Serious Startups

Listening to Employees Is Key for Startup Success

Getting a startup off the ground and running is a rare feat. Startups are unlike traditional businesses because they are often in untested industries and run by untested leaders. In many instances startup founders are new to having any sort of team to manage. This lack of experience does NOT directly point to guaranteed failure; it does however point to a guaranteed need for fast assimilation toward understanding what it means to lead. While being a “leader” is a broad concept and can take many forms, there are many basic necesities to leading a successful team. The most important arguably being the ability to communicate effectively. This is not “bossing” others, it is communicating (ie. clearly giving direction, and more importantly, listening).

While their are papers, books, and thousands of articles to read on this subject, there are some simple areas and reasons where/why listening to your team members will immediately provide valuable returns.

Understanding Their Knowledge of Your Company

Your team is responsible for running your startup’s day to day operations, and as a result, they are the most familiar with the business. They can offer more insight to which systems in place are helpful and which ones are not. A good leader employs intelligent systems that help operations flow; a great leader designs (or simply approves) these systems based on employee testing and feedback.

This means that, if there is a problem, your goal as a leader should be to utilize your employees to get to the heart of the matter. Simply saying something is wrong and that it needs to be fixed is not enough. Talk with employees about what is wrong, listen to what they think needs to be done, and make an executive decision to move forward with their feedback in mind. Giving them accountability on how issues are solved within the company will also help them become more engaged and focused towards your startup’s accomplishments.

You Win When Your Employees Win

Any solid employer-employee relationship is a mutually beneficial one. You provide them with a great work environment and benefits, and in return they deliver results and loyalty to your company. When this partnership is operating on all cylinders the outcome of a great company is virtually inevitable. Your team’s productivity grows when your employees feel respected and valued. By running an ethical business, your team reciprocates and is ethical. Josephson Institute has a great outline on the responsibilities between an employer and an employer. Having these expectations mapped out for your employees ensures that they understand that their efforts are valued and respected, making them more susceptible to want your company to succeed.

It Limits Turnover

Turnover is one of the biggest ailments of a poorly ran startup. Taking additional time to train and retrain new employees is time consuming and a productivity waster. As a startup, time is not necessarily always on your side. If you do not have an employee satisfaction and retention process in place, you are putting yourself at risk. Combating this risk can be as simple as utilizing services like Inforsurv that can provide you with direct feedback regarding employee satisfaction. By taking the time to get their feedback on how well they like working for you, you can curb potential turnover. Employees are more loyal to employers that take the time to consider the needs of their employees.

Focusing on your startup’s idea and mission are important. Ensuring your management skills coincide with employee satisfaction is even more crucial. After all, you cannot run a startup if you do not have an efficient team behind you. Listen to your team when they offer their views. Think of your employees as a wealth of knowledge on your company. Engaging them in some decisions will only increase their level of commitment and dedication to your startup. Utilize your team, create an ethical workspace, and have a great management team to create a world class-working environment. Gather employee feedback from time to time to see if adjustments need to be made. Including your team in making your startup successful is not only ideal, but is a great way for you to heighten your abilities as an entrepreneur.

How to Have Success in Your Online Business

Learn to Have Success with Your Online Business

You wake up one morning and you have this brilliant idea. You want to start your own business.

You’ve seen other people have success, and you have the desire for the exact same thing. If you are passionate about the kinds of products you will sell to others, you can have a lot of success. While there are always obstacles throughout the journey, if you follow the right steps and take several tips and pointers from other online business owners, you can make a name for your business. A business that is successful as it is well planned and executed.

Why You Should Start an Online Business

In case you didn’t know, there are nearly 30 million online businesses across the globe. There is also a good reason that many businesses have taken the initiative to go online and start their business from there. One of the reasons is because of the exposure. If you have a business where you offer services or products to others, you can reach a huge audience. You are no longer just selling to the locals in your area. You can reach tons of unique demographics. Most importantly, you can sell to people worldwide. It is a major step forward from initially selling to a small group of people who live around the store.

How to Make The Most Of Your Business

One reason you get into creating an online business is to have success. Some of the most successful online businesses have used unique tactics to set themselves apart from the rest. Some of the tactics that you might want to consider include:

• Thinking outside of the box

• Offering something you know people will need or use

• Building your business through social media

There are a lot of original ideas that you can come up with. For example, if you’ve always been a fan of fashion and love messing around with different fabrics, you could ultimately create your own fashion line. You can start of small by making shirts with cool and funny phrases and sayings. Once you have somewhat of an idea on what you want to offer, you can get the opinion of potential customers, especially while using social media.

Social media is important to use because it is a way to keep you in the loop on what is now hot and trendy. It is also allows you to speak with people who are interested in the brand you are trying to make for your business. Discovering more about your business may entice them to want to make a purchase from your online store.

Deciding Which Social Media Platforms You Should Use

Some business owners question whether they are using the right social media platforms. There are plenty of options, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Some business owners have taken time to create videos of their products and services, develop discussion with their customers, and post those videos directly to their YouTube account. If you are selling homemade beauty products, tutorial videos could turn into a huge hit on YouTube, thus resulting in more visitors to your online store. Linking cool social media ideas with what you have to offer is one way to see a positive outcome from your social media interaction.

Because you can write short messages that relate to your business on Twitter, gaining followers and tweeting about current promotions and special with your online store could help you get more attention. Getting involved in any social media sites and keeping track of messages, comment, and other assorted feedback from people is simply important if you want to have success.

Avoid Giving Up On Your Goals

Set goals for yourself and stick with them. Work your best at trying to achieve them by the specific date that you gave yourself when you made the goal. There are times where you might feel frustrated. It’s always normal to feel a bit overwhelmed while doing something as huge as setting up an online store and running it as your primary business. However, the hard work and effort put into developing your business will turn into a great profit.

You can have a successful online business. Come up with ideas that you like and stick with them. It doesn’t matter what you want to offer to the public, whether you plan to create a clothing line of your own or develop apps that people can use on their smart phones. Bring your ideas to life and start selling them. Make sure to have a website where customers can shop so that the transactions are easier on them and yourself. Create social media profiles and keep them active, which means posting up unique content and information on a nearly daily basis. Provide excellent customer service and always remember to put the customers first.

How Online Video Conferencing Has Changed Over The Years

Now, you can communicate with people anywhere in the world through mobiles, tablets, and laptops. The call can carry audio information and video information and it feels like the person is sitting next to you in the same room. All of this is possible only because of video conferencing says Heanet. Because of the Internet and video conferencing, it is now possible for you to chat with anyone, anytime during the day or night. However, do you know how this communication mode actually originated?

The Origin: A Brief History of Video Conferencing

stock_post1 Simple telecommunication networks have been around since the invention of TV says Nefsis. In fact, NASA also created a two radio frequency, video-based link that worked in both directions to communicate with astronauts during the first manned space flights. These networks were very simple and basic but expensive to set up and maintain. The technology behind the process was valid and very soon, companies started to adapt the basic technology to make telephone networks. These networks mostly failed as video compression techniques had not been invented. It was only in the late 1980s, that ISDN networks managed to make teleconferencing possible. The faster computers, small circuit boards and rapidly evolving technology resulted in newer and better systems over time but nothing became popular with the masses. It was only until the late 1990s that Internet-based videoconferencing managed to hit the masses and become popular.

In 1992, CU-SeeMe became the first successful public videoconferencing between North America and Africa. After that, there was no looking back. Video conferencing systems started to improve with leaps and bounds and by late 2000s, free systems like Skype and iChat were here to stay. Both of these systems became popular as they offered free communication, good-quality audio and video calls, and online availability that was free for everyone. Now, there are more than 2000 companies offering different types of video conferencing software all over the world. Life Size Communications showcased the first High Definition system at The Interop Trade Show in Las Vegas in 2005 and it created a sensation. However, the technology was quickly adapted into every system in the world and HD audiovisual communication is offered by almost all-video conferencing system.

As technology evolves, conferencing companies have managed to add mobiles and tablets to conferencing software. It is now possible for all hand-held devices to provide audio and video teleconferencing compatibility and the system is expected to improve even more. More and more companies are also offering cloud-conferencing features in which hardware is not required to make a call. The entire communication software is online and they can handle 2D and 3D broadcasting. Cloud based systems like Blue Jeans and Fuze are particularly popular with users right now due to the multiple features packed into affordable package deals.

The Future of Video Conferencing

Just so many things are possible for video conferencing. For example, Google Glass is one feature that can use video conferencing. However, there are several innovations planned for the future. For example, an European group is working to create a holographic presentation of people during video conferencing. Another Japanese firm has started using semi-transparent projection screens to display faces that are more lifelike. To prevent fraud, some companies are also working on two-way communication systems through ATMs. For example, through video conferencing, it is possible for customers to speak to a live teller through teleconferencing. Video conferencing is also being used for court trials. Courts accept remote witnessing now and it is expected to be a part of official court work. Researchers are also expected to create specific video conferencing programs to suit telemedicine fields like psychiatry. Holistic disease management is also expected to be integrated into a special telecommunication program. Another group of researchers is now working on ‘Star-Trek’-based beaming technology to improve telespace videoconferencing. Apart from cutting-edge tweaks, companies are also expected to lower costs for traditional conferencing software, find more compatible SIP-based UC environments for better user experience, and alternative deployment through managed services and non-MCU based models.

The future prospects of video conferencing are endless says Websigmas. The business is expanding rapidly and research companies have stated that the industry will be an approximately $9 billion industry. The industry has been seeing a 45 percent growth rate as more and more companies are investing the software to make their day-to-day functioning easy. Along with video conferencing software, vendors are offering multiple features like inter-office meetings, training sessions, surveys, polls, long distance meetings, etc. The technology is evolving rapidly and users are guaranteed a state-of-the-art system that can link anyone, anywhere in the world says Mwbex. As the software and hardware improves, users can be assured of the best products at the most affordable price.

Conclusion – Video conferencing has come a long way since its early days, today the technology is rapidly revolutionizing the world around us and its impact can be seen across businesses and homes worldwide. Moreover, with the technology still evolving; it is very likely that soon video conferencing will be the default way the world communicates in the imminent future.

OverDog Wins EE Tennessee’s Startup Ave Pitch Competition

Wrapping up the EE Tennessee Conference this week was the Startup Ave competition. OverDog was selected as the winner of the competition, walking away as the Heavyweight Champion of Everywhere Else.

EE Tennessee hosted eleven startups for the event, but only three companies would be selected by conference-goers to move forward to the pitch competition.

Over the course of the conference, attendees were able to visit each booth and chat with the companies before placing their vote (a poker chip) at their favorite booth.

Companies WedddingWorthy (represented by founder Tameesha Desangles), OverDog (represented by co-founder and CEO Steve Berneman), and WannaDo (represented by CEO Steve Buhrman) were selected to move forward to the pitch competition, a short but intense presentation of their company in front of three judges and conference attendees to compete for funding.

The competition was judged by Ben Yoskovitz, Mara Lewis, and Frank Nemanic.

The most common question asked by the judges was, “how are you going to monetize your business?”

WannaDo spoke about offering an events marketing service on the “street level”. Their monetization comes from partnering with local businesses and offering them a unique dashboard and access to user data and analytics to better promote their events.

WeddingWorthy functions off of a drop-ship retail model. Instead of charging the user for the wedding project management tool, the service partners with wholesalers to provide a one-stop-shop for bridal parties to efficiently purchase their wedding merchandise.

OverDog works off of a partnership model as well, but with professional athletes. The app also has a sponsorship model (just to “pay the bills” though) and noted that one out of three users made an in-app purchase, creating a decent revenue line for the company.

Laura Whitener is the Managing Editor for Firmology.com, a technology news and resource site for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Follow them on Twitter!

Jim McKelvey: I’m Just Lying To You

Jim McKelvey speaking at EE Tennessee.

Jim McKelvey, co- founder of Square, spoke at EE Tennessee today. Contradictory to the majority of the conference’s other speakers, McKelvey was adamant failure shouldn’t be an option.

McKelvey spoke about how startup culture is evangelized as sexy, even though the majority of startups tend to fail. So McKelvey made a list of the seven golden truths behind such sexy success:

• Seek Opportunities
• Ship Great Products
• Invent Something
• Work Fast
• Study Great Leaders
• Prioritize Tasks
• Be Bold

“I’m lying to you. I don’t believe in the golden truth,” McKelvey said. “I’m just messing with you. [We’re] being fed a lot of crap and platitudes at startup conferences.”

Instead, McKelvey offered seven alternative truths behind finding and achieving success with your company:

• Don’t Seek Opportunities. Solve Problems.
The most dangerous thing to pursue as an entrepreneur is opportunity, according to McKelvey. Instead, you should work towards solving a problem. What’s in the way of your success? An opportunity is an illusion, but a problem presents a tangible goal for your company to work towards. What can you solve for your company or your customers?

The common denominator with my success is that I’m always solving a problem. -McKelvey

• Don’t Worry About Shipping Great Products. Be Fast and Good Instead.
Don’t ship crap, but if your product is good, then it’s good enough to ship out fast. Your product doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to work. If it works, that’s really all your customer needs. Get your product out there and worry about softening the edges later.

We live in a “give it to me now” society. If you have a usable product, the faster you get it into the market, the faster you start creating a community of users for your brand.

Just because a product isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it’s not good. Speed trumps perfection. –McKelvey

• Don’t Invent Something. Assume Technology.
Invent when necessary, but don’t fixate on it. Technology shouldn’t get in the way of your success. Chances are the solution you’re thinking about inventing already exists, you’re just not looking hard enough for the product.

Don’t let technology get in the way of your success. Use what’s already there. -McKelvey

• Don’t Work Fast. Be Patient.
Timing is everything. You can be doing something right for five, ten, fifteen years, but think you’re doing it wrong because your timing is off. It’s your timing, finding the ability to be patient with your work and your method, that determines a successful result.

People work so fast, to the point where their product is ineffective. –McKelvey

• Don’t Study Great Leaders. Question Them and Everyone Else.
Just because it was wildly successful 10 years ago and made that person a thought leader doesn’t mean that idea will work today. Question the leaders. Question those methods. Questioning those methods encourages your ability to think creatively and find solutions that work today, even if they didn’t work yesterday.

Study the great leaders, but don’t always believe them. -McKelvey

• Don’t Prioritize Tasks. Make a Don’t Do List Instead.
Make a list of things you don’t want to do, that you don’t like, that depress you. Every time you add something to your task list, you’re deleting something else. Declutter your “priorities” and learn how to actually prioritize.

You can delegate other tasks and still have success, even if it’s not done “your way”—delegating frees up more time for you to focus on those real priorities.

Ignoring other opportunities creates more problems. Adding to your to-do list comes at an opportunity cost. –McKelvey

• Don’t Be Bold. Humbly Persevere.
Fear drives us. If you keep going, keep pushing through, you’ll eventually make it to the end.
If you have a fear of failure, then you have motivation to seek success. But evaluate the risks you take. Make smarter choices as you push through the speed bumps with your company.

There are no road maps. There are no experts. -McKelvey

Laura Whitener is the Managing Editor for Firmology.com, a technology news and resource site for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Follow them on Twitter!

Turning Your Failure Into Your Strategy

Building a company isn’t easy.

One of the common themes at this year’s EE Tennessee conference was that most of the speakers spoke about utilizing failure. The benefits to failing, it seems, can be the probiotics for your eventual success.

Jared Steffes used his failure to take his company to a new market. Nicole Glaros encourages failure as an entrepreneurship development strategy. Tony Monteleone used his failures in the corporate world to become the progressive entrepreneur he is today (even in shorts and a T-shirt).

A trail of failure can mean a launch pad for success if you know how to use it as motivation.

Here are the top four things you should take away from your failures according to the speakers at EE Tennessee:

• Re-Evaluate Your Strategy
Why did you fail? How can you correct those measures? Was it really a bad company idea or was the idea just poorly executed?

Steffes’ original strategy wasn’t working because his company simply wasn’t in the right market. So he moved to a new market, a market that had interest in what his company was aiming for.

• Develop Better Relationships and Learn How To Communicate
Glaros said that 65% of startups fail due to poor communication, which means poor relationship management. Monteleone’s first startup failed because he couldn’t communicate well with his other cofounders.

Your company will depend heavily on communication and good relationships. You have to be able to talk to your team regardless of whether you’re failing or succeeding.

• You Have To Have Metrics
How can you measure your success, or your failure, when you have no statistics? Why don’t you have users? Why aren’t you getting unique hits? Why is your bounce rate so high? But don’t strangle your company with those metrics. Choose one to three and use that data to move your company forward.

• Tap in to Resources
Community is key to bouncing back. Your failure will be the end of the line for your endeavors if you don’t have a support network, peers, mentors, and community resources to fall back on and help you bounce back up and get going again.

Laura Whitener is the Managing Editor for Firmology.com, a technology news and resource site for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Follow them on Twitter!

Nicole Glaros and Her 12 Tips On How To Be A Better Entrepreneur

Nicole Glaros speaking at EE Tennessee.

Nicole Glaros gave 12 pieces of advice on Thursday afternoon at EE Tennessee in her talk titled “How To Be A Better Entrepreneur Everywhere Else.”

Glaros, managing director of TechStars in Boulder, CO, spoke about how to run a tighter ship when it comes to managing yourself and your team.

It all boils down to how to be a better entrepreneur:

1. Be A Good Storyteller
Storytelling is the best sales strategy you can have in your arsenal. If you can’t sell your product, your service, the brand of your company, then you can’t win it.

Branding is storytelling. What’s the story of your business? How are you going to convey that without overselling your company?

If you can’t sell it, you can’t win it. Communicate the vibe of your business in a short, concise, powerful way. -Glaros

2. Be Intellectually Honest
You won’t get far if you’re lying to yourself or your team.

Be realistic about your skill sets. What can you do well? What do you need help with?
Be honest about why you’re starting your company. Is this a casual endeavor or do you want to push your venture as far as you can?

Surround yourself with a team that will keep you honest and motivated.

3. Create a Support Network
Along the same line of being intellectually honest, you need a team who will hold you accountable and rally around you when you need an extra hand.

Support yourself with a coach or by joining a peer group. If one doesn’t exist, start one. Surround yourself with people who can help you find solutions to your problems, help you create a better strategy, and keep you intellectually honest as you build your company.

You can’t build a startup alone. -Glaros

4. Listen
Learn how to ask the right questions, listen between the lines, and gauge the needs of your customers. Good listening is key to identifying your opportunities, and your opportunities will allow you to become a storyteller.

5. Making Communication a Priority
65% of startups fail due to communication issues. Sixty-five percent.

Communication issues tend to stem from entrepreneurs asking the tough stuff right up front. Who gets what? How much am I getting? What happens when I’m not meeting goals? When you’re not meeting goals?

Communicate, keep each other intellectually honest, and learn how to have a non-emotionally charged conversation to get you and your team over the speed bumps you’ll encounter.

Imagine being able to increase your business’s chances of success by sixty-five percent just by being a better communicator. -Glaros

6. Be Productive, NOT Busy
There’s a difference between working and getting stuff done and working for the sake of saying that you’re busy. The glorification of the concept of busy is overworked.

What’s the point of working a 15 hour day if you can’t quantify or even identify what you accomplished that day?
Glaros had three key pieces of advice for accomplishing tasks instead of just “doing stuff.”

Block off your time. Schedule yourself. Set aside a specific time block for email, for meetings, for working with your team.
Assign priorities 1, 2, and 3. Hold yourself accountable to complete your tasks. If you can’t complete P1, then stop everything else until it is complete.
Gut-check yourself. Where are you spending all of your time? Are you coffee dates eating in to your ability to complete your tasks? Are you spending too much time on email? Are you cutting out of work early?

7. Embrace Failure
Failure is not the end of the world. Encourage risks, failure, and encourage your team to get back on their feet from those failures. Use your failures as fuel for the courage to try again.

The only way you can be a great startup, the only way you can achieve greatness in this world, is by risking things. The only way you’re going to risk things is by taking on failure. –Glaros

8. Be The Best In the World (but have a plan on how to get there)
You have to aim your company somewhere in order to reach for a goal. The higher you aim, the more risks you’ll take.

Aim high and then create a plan on how to get there. Where do you want to be in a month? A year? Five years? How are you going to get there? Who is going to be on your team to help get the company there?

9. Love Metrics
Metrics can help guide your business. How many users do you have? What’s your conversion rate? What are the key drivers of your business?

How can you evaluate how your company is doing if you can’t track that data? The answer is that you can’t.

Put three metrics in place and work with your team to track, change, and evaluate them.

10. Establish a Rhythm
Block out your time, keep to a schedule, and maintain your momentum.
Do things consistently with your company—your meetings, your content, your reports, your communication.

Those that do [have a rhythm] outperform those that don’t. -Glaros

11. Hire A-Players
You’re A-team isn’t necessarily going to be comprised of people with the most experience or expertise. They might have a lot of knowledge, but will they have that raw talent or enthusiastic work drive?

Hire someone who has a lot of raw talent, passion, and willingness to work hard for your company.

12. Give First
Give without the expectation of return.
When you do, you’ll gain people’s trust. These people will become your community, your supporters, your loyal brand users.

When you give without the expectation of compensation or reward, you’ll surprise people. They’ll want to help you and see you succeed. -Glaros

You can follow Nicole on her Twitter @NGlaros

Laura Whitener is the Managing Editor for Firmology.com, a technology news and resource site for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Follow them on Twitter!

Founder-Driven PR: Why It’s Important To Drive Your Own Campaign

Paul Andren speaking at EE Tennessee about founder-driven PR

When driving visibility for your venture, whether you’re still a startup or a profit-generating company, having a strong PR campaign is crucial.

But, as Joel Andren (founder and CEO of Press Friendly) spoke about today at EE Tennessee, hiring a PR agency isn’t actually your best bet. Driving your own campaign is the best way to create authentic, consistent visibility for your business.

Reporters, those people who are going to give you press, want to talk to the founders, the people who live and breathe the business. Not some PR rep who will only push out rote message or forward on boring press release copy.

Managing your own campaign gives you control over the message and image the press gets of your business.

Branding methods, and PR campaigns, are changing. Consumers now are looking for a story behind their business. They want someone relatable, trustworthy, and genuine to connect with. Consumers don’t want a faceless business that touts a customer focus… yet isn’t focused on the customer.

Andren talked about how working with multiple PR agencies, trying to find “the right agency” who will “get” your business, can create an inconsistent view of your business: each agency will tell you that they have the answer to your campaign, meaning that your message and image changes each time you change PR agencies.

Constant change doesn’t exactly instill confidence in the consumer.

Owning and driving your own campaign creates the direct connection with your customers because reporters are now speaking with the founder of the company, the face of the business who was there from the very beginning of the story.

Your business isn’t a sound bite or a press release. It’s a business. You have something to offer, be it a product or a service, and you know your business better than any PR agency ever will, no matter how many meetings you have.

Laura Whitener is the Managing Editor for Firmology.com, a technology news and resource site for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Follow them on Twitter.

Community Building: Vital To Moving Everywhere (Else)

EE Tennessee attendees mingle at Startup Ave.

Community size can flux, but for entrepreneurs it’s not the size that matters, it’s how real it is. Community means vitality, which means loyalty early and later down the line.

At EE Tennessee, the first three speakers of the morning all spoke about one common idea: community being vital to a business. Jared Steffes, founder and president of FuryWing, Ryan Hoover, co-creater of Product Hunt, and Mike Muhney, co-founder of ACT!, all spoke about tapping in to community, pre-existing or not, to build their success.

Building a community, or falling back on one, is the best survival tool a startup can have tucked in their belt and there are four key components to building up and maintaining one of the best assets for your startup:

Be Genuine

Branding yourself as the guy who simply sends out a spammy Tweet or email with a link to “read more!” won’t get you far.

Meaningful relationships, or at least communication, is the foundation for gathering a community of potential users, early adopters, and brand loyalists.

If you don’t have something meaningful to say or if you can’t put in the time to maintain a conversation with someone, are you really contributing to a community or are you spam marketing?

Don’t Be Afraid To be Accessible

Just because you’re based in Chicago, Silicon Valley, or New York doesn’t mean that you have instant access to a community who is ready and willing.

No one can be everywhere at once, but you can be mobile and move to where your audience is. Host a meet up. Go to a conference and mingle.

Making yourself visible and accessible opens a lot of doors for community builders.

Find Your Best Means of Communication

Can’t meet up in person? You can still maintain genuine contact. Email or other one-to-one sources of getting and staying in touch can promote a more personal feel.

Even if you’re sending out a simple form-style email, by directly addressing that member of your community, you’re more likely to get a response because you’re establishing a connection instead of automating a process.

Gather Loyalty Before the Product

Building your community before your brand means gathering the loyalists before a product. Your community can be a vital tool for bringing your business from garage-based startup to office-based success by simply hosting conversations about your brand.

Involving your community from the beginning gives both you and your followers something to talk about, which gets other people talking. Drive interest by creating interest. Those early adopters can drive the voice and the life of your community.

According to Hoover, a loyal community member is the best marketing for your business: they’re more likely to Tweet about, Facebook about, and talk about your business, and with a little schwag you even can make them feel like a valuable member of your business’s community.

Without community, or clients, or users, or customers, businesses don’t work. Build a better community to build your brand.

Laura Whitener is the Managing Editor for Firmology.com, a technology news and resource site for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Follow them on Twitter.

5 Tips For Nurturing Company Culture At Your Growing Startup

As an entrepreneur, your startup probably began as a one-man show.

You made all the decisions — from the product to the budget to the logo. And when the time came to determine the kind of culture you wanted to build the company upon, it was merely a matter of self-reflection.

But as your business gained momentum, you needed more manpower to sustain it, so you began bringing on team members to accommodate rapid growth. With more employees, more processes, and more customers, your system became more complex, and all the components — including your company culture — became harder to control.

You might fear that the culture you envisioned is impossible to maintain, but company culture is a dynamic component of your organization, and it’s supposed to grow and change with your company. In fact, if your culture doesn’t grow and change, your company won’t survive.

Here are five practical tips for growing your culture with your organization:

1. Support Your Tribe

Your procedures, policies, structure, leadership, decisions, and products catalyze the culture you want to develop, but it’s simply impossible to create real culture. It can’t be imposed on your team, and it certainly can’t be paid for. Real culture happens naturally.

As you grow, you can’t forget about the employees you already have. They helped build the culture you have today. While some initial employees might be ready to move on to other career opportunities, it’s important to receive feedback from and show support to those employees who have been with you for an extended period.

In the book Tribal Leadership, great leaders are recognized by their ability to build and scale their “tribe.” The tribe is the muscle of the company, and its strength depends on that of the culture. Harness your tribe’s core ideals and skills, and measure the success of outcomes based on its goals and intentions.

2. Find the Right Fit

If you want to confidently build on the culture your original team constructed, you must hire people who align with it. This proves increasingly difficult as you speed-scale during your growth phase. You’re tasked with quickly evaluating candidates’ job qualifications while simultaneously deciding whether they would be good culture fits.

Ask culture-specific questions during the interview process that will indicate whether candidates would be a good fit, such as “What work environment do you thrive in best?” or “Do you prefer clearly defined tasks or clearly defined problems?” Depending on the stage your business is in, these two different answers could mean very different things culturally.

3. Welcome Feedback

Opening feedback loops in your company is instrumental to culture growth. It’s the best way to find out what’s working in your company and what isn’t. Odds are employees will identify anomalies that you’re completely unaware of.

Crunched for time? Construct the process so your team can give quick, simple feedback. The metrics of the feedback process will directly correlate with your company’s values and purposes.

Gather the data monthly or quarterly, and segment the feedback into categories by locations or team. You can also evaluate the company from a big-picture perspective. There’s no right or wrong way. You can even use tools such as TINYpulse or iDoneThis to gather team feedback.

4. Open Your Mind

When you were on your own, your culture was simply an extension of your own values. You could mold it into whatever you wanted because it was you. But as the company grows, you have to treat it as its own person and allow it to take on its own identity. Confining the culture to your original, narrow scope will only stunt its growth.

Review the feedback you collected with an open mind. Not all suggestions are feasible, but by considering them, you let your employees know that their opinions matter. Share some of the results, set targeted goals, and even implement logical recommendations.

5. Maintain Core Values

Your brand promise and purpose should remain constant. Core values should be fairly constant as well, but can evolve over time — carefully. While cultures do naturally change, it’s your job to make sure that your company culture is still aligned with these integral factors. Being flexible is one thing, but compromising your values is an entirely different ball game.

Your company culture will develop many new facets as it grows, but expanding away from your root values should be limited or handled with extreme care. Too many deviations from your ethics will make your team doubt the company’s integrity. Openly discuss any necessary adjustments with team members to assure them that you haven’t lost sight of the company’s true purpose.

Company growth is exciting for any startup. You’re finally growing your team, creating revenue, launching products, and gaining new customers. Although balancing new business, hiring, and day-to-day operations while trying to nurture your company culture may seem impossible, it’s not as hard as you think. Leaders shouldn’t try to define and impose culture. Instead, they should plant the seed and water it, knowing it will grow on its own.

Zach Ferres is the CEO of Ciplex, a full-service interactive agency that helps clients succeed online by creating award-winning digital solutions for online marketing, E-commerce and content management systems, and social network platforms. Follow them on Twitter.

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Canadian Startup Raise Your Flag Connects Students With Post High School Jobs

1) What’s your startup called?

Raise Your Flag

2) What’s your big idea?

Approximately 45% students in Canada and the US go to work as their primary post-secondary destination. These kids leave school feeling like they failed the system. What if we celebrated the school-to-work pathway the same way we celebrated opening a college acceptance letter?

Raise Your Flag helps work-bound students find a job that’s connected to a career path they’re excited about and helps them find companies that could hire them.

Raise Your Flag allows work-bound students to declare their post-secondary pathway and celebrate the possibilities.

3) What’s the story behind your idea?

For the past 8 years, I’ve been traveling speaking to high school students (over 750,000 to date) and wrote a book to help them make decisions about their post-secondary lives (http://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Own-Lunch-Epically/dp/1402297033)

3 years ago I was speaking at a conference for work-bound students. After my presentation a student named Michael came to introduce himself. Chin-quivering, he thanked me for being there and then told me that none of his friends or family knew he was at the conference. When I asked “why?”, he responded, “do you have any idea how embarrassing it is when all of your friends are opening college acceptance letters and you’re the loser in the corner not knowing what you’re doing with your life?”

Raise Your Flag is built for Michael and the MILLIONS of students just like him.

Michael deserves to be excited about his pathway.

4) Who are the founders?

Ryan Porter + Scott Walkinshaw

5) Where are you located?

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

6) What’s the startup scene like there?

Strong. We have some great companies up here doing great work and building companies that are changing the way things are done. Toronto was ranked world’s 8th Most Active Startup Scene: http://www.betakit.com/three-canadian-cities-ranked-top-20-most-active-startup-scenes-infographic/)

7) What milestones have you reached?

Accepted and completing JOLT accelerator program, v2.0 launch, confirmed our first major national employer partner (announcement coming soon), earning revenue.

8) What are your next milestones?

Announcement of more major partners, US expansion, hiring employees 1, 2 and 3 and raising a round of funding.

9) Where can people find out more?

www.raiseyourflag.com

Manalto Wants to Solve Social for Enterprises

What’s your startup called?

Manalto Social Media ERP

What’s your big idea?

Manalto is changing the way social media is managed inside enterprise.

We’re enabling organizations to manage social media content with greater efficiency and alignment to their operations, with seamless integration with marketing and communications processes and activity.

Manalto is an end-to-end social media management platform, powered by an innovative backend technology which has been engineered for enterprise. Our cloud-based social media management solution allows SMB’s and multi-site or multi-brand organizations greater control to create and efficiently manage fully customized Facebook pages, regulate user permissions, and monitor and engage with local communities on Facebook and Twitter from a centralized dashboard.

Manalto enables

o Improved brand management across organizations of different sizes and structures, from a single business to a multi-site, or multi-product enterprise

o Greater agility for an organization to manage operational and reputational risks, through built in system controls expected of an enterprise system

o Increased delivery of operational efficiencies

What’s the story behind your idea?

Manalto formed from the need to address a significant challenge and barrier-to-entry facing multi-site, multi-brand organizations wanting to adopt social media into their existing traditional-digital suite of sales and marketing activity, but not able to find the right solution that delivered the same level of rigor, brand control and granular-level user management controls. Manalto is positioning itself as a mid-tier to top tier social media management software provider, architecting enterprise-grade solutions for single and multi-site organizations – such as a franchise group, wanting to sustainably and efficiently integrate social media management into their core operations and marketing activity.

Manalto also offers a robust SMB solution. SMBs are a critical market for Manalto given SMBs make up a large percentage of the business sector. The Manalto SMB solution which enables a business to manage a single social account using Manalto, offers the same management features as the Enterprise solution.

While the DIY SMB solution and DIY Enterprise solutions are available directly through the Manalto website our primary approach to the SMB market is through the ISP and Hosting company channel. Where an SMB is going to be able to purchase and use the Manalto software using their hosting account.

Who are the founders?

Anthony Owen

Where are you located?

Currently in Melbourne, Australia; and Santa Monica, CA

What’s the startup scene like there?

The start up scene in Australia is alive and active. There are a lot of innovative companies, talent and technologies in Australia that have both a local and global focus.

Australian-founded technology companies that make their foray into the USA are generally highly-regarded. However, unfortunately not everyone takes the leap into the USA market and choose to remain with a local focus.

I think one of the challenges facing start ups in Australia is the lack of Seed capital and Series A investors available locally. Typically, early stage companies in Australia are expected to be generating substantial revenue to attract investment interest and hence tend to source lead investors, in particular, outside Australia.

What milestones have you reached?

Manalto has achieved significant traction and successes in its short life to date.

Since it build and launch in Australia 12 months ago, the team has released two substantial upgrades to our software and is at now at version 3 and soon V3.1. The solution has come leaps and bounds and we work closely with organizations to shape our solution to solve problems.

We relocated the business to the USA in December and have been rapidly building momentum, ramping up our sales and marketing activity, expanding our team and creating a footprint for Manalto in the USA.

What are your next milestones?

Manalto plans to continue to drive our growth in the USA and cast the net wide – extending the solution to as many organizations and developing our distribution channels. We will close a Series A Round, and look to expand inside European and Asian markets, while accelerating our growth in the USA.

We have a comprehensive and innovative technical development pipeline that will see the Manalto solution integrated with more social media platforms, CMS tools, advertising management tools and e-commerce solutions.

Where can people find out more?

People can follow us on Twitter (www.twitter.com/ManaltoInc) and/or FB (www.facebook.com/ManaltoInc), and go to our website (www.manalto.com).

3 Quick Lessons from the Startup World Series

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Last weekend in Houston, TX the best young entrepreneurs in the world gathered for the annual Rice University Business Plan Competition (RBPC), called the “Super Bowl and World Series for student entrepreneurs” by FORTUNE magazine. Since the competition began in 2002 it’s helped launch over 150 businesses that collectively raised $850 million. One of those businesses, Auditude, was started by SIVI co-founder, Nik Seet, and the company became the largest exit in the RBPC’s history when it was acquired by Adobe in 2011. The RBPC is not another academic exercise for “wantrepreneurs”; it’s the real deal for aspiring entrepreneurs.

The RBPC is also the spark that started SIVI. SIVI’s founders, Nik Seet and Ashok Kamal, met as RBPC alumni after returning to the event as sponsors and speakers. This year, Nik and Ashok also organized the inaugural RBPC Alumni Award as a way for former competitors to give back to the current crop. For more history and some startup advice watch the SIVI team present the Alumni Award at the RBPC’s culminating gala.

Photo by the awesome Shau Lin Hon of Slyworks Photography

Events like the RBPC provide a real-time case study for startup success. Here are 3 lessons distilled from this year’s competition:

ABC (Always Be Competing) – When you’re at a competition, conference or informal event, always be on. That doesn’t translate to annoying people with your pitch or requests for a meeting; it means treat everyone like a potential asset and every situation like an opportunity to connect. Be alert and respectful whether you’re presenting, eating lunch or going to the bathroom (keep your hands to yourself!). A former RBPC company, Scan, loves to tell the story of how they were waiting in the lunch line when they met the girlfriend of the guy who led them to raising several million dollars. This year, BetaGlide, a team from India, missed the finals of the competition but still turned a $100,000 prize into a $1,000,000 syndicate by networking with investors at the RBPC.
Move The Crowd – When pitching your startup, explain it in simple, concise and, dare we say, fun terms. Nobody likes a complicated, mechanical or canned pitch. People tune out fast if you don’t keep the language short and relatable. Practical references and visual aids also help to rise above the noise. The Elevator Pitches at this year’s RBPC ranged from amazing to dud. The most memorable ones were clever, clear and clean. Everyone remembers the pitches featuring the coin flip,banana and spit cup (seriously). For better or for worse, pitches are like gladiator fights; entertain in order to win.

Be Agile Without Being Wobbly – The more you present the more you get feedback. It’s critical to listen carefully and make adjustments. However, lots of feedback can lead to chaos, not clarity. The more people you speak to the more opinions – often contradictory – you’ll hear. To avoid whiplash look for patterns and listen most to your potential customers and the people who know your market.

Cheers to all of the 2014 RBPC participants and aspiring entrepreneurs everywhere!

Ashok Kamal is a social entrepreneur and co-founder of Bennu and SIVI. Connect with him on LinkedIn to discuss all things entrepreneurship, sustainability and fantasy baseball.