How Startup Valuation Works In An Infographic

If you were to ask 10 different startup founders how valuation works or how they got their valuation, you would probably end up with 10 extremely different answers. And all 10 of them probably backed by some bit of logic. As confusing at it is, valuation is probably the most important data for any startup.

Valuation is important because it determines the share of the company they have to give away to an investor in exchange for money.

“Say you are looking for a seed investment of around $100, 000 in exchange for about 10% of your company. Typical deal. Your pre-money valuation will be $1 million. This however, does not mean that your company is worth $1 million now. You probably could not sell it for that amount. Valuation at the early stages is a lot about the growth potential, as opposed to the present value.” Funders and Founders wrote on their blog.

In talking with startups everyday we hear so many different valuations. We talked with a founder with an iPhone app that hadn’t even hit the market. They had no users, no customers, and no early funding, yet they told us they were looking at a post money valuation of $10,000,000. We’ve also seen startups that had thousands of users, legitimate press traction, and small seed rounds raised value themselves at $1 million dollars.

The infographic below from fundersandfounders.com sheds some light on valuation and how to measure a company’s potential.

The infographic details the valuation process from early stage, through scaling stage, and then through exit.

Create the Work-Life Balance That’s Right for You

As a time coach, I talk to people who want to live a more balanced life on a daily basis—including startup founders. It can be a struggle, but my real-world experience has uncovered that founders can achieve work-life balance IF all five of the following conditions are met:

You Want It: Not everyone wants traditional work-life balance, typically meaning that you have enough time for basic self-care like sleep, exercise and nutrition and a connection with key people like friends and family members. Instead, as a time coach, I focus on trying to help entrepreneurs achieve their definition of work-life brilliance – meaning your time investment aligns with your priorities. However, I can’t bring about lasting behavioral change if you don’t intrinsically want it.
You Believe It: To have true work-life balance, you need to not only believe it’s possible in a theoretical sense, but also believe it’s possible personally for you. In my experience, this belief comes from a combination of seeing an entrepreneur whom you relate to experiencing work-life balance and/or starting to attempt it yourself and witnessing positive results. Without a sense of hope, it’s nearly impossible to stick it out through the uncomfortable process of breaking old habits and forming new ones. To make it through this difficult withdrawal stage, you need to have faith that the changes will really pay off in the end.
You Value It: We have a limited amount of time each day, and how we invest it determines what kind of life we create. Work-life balance comes at a professional cost for most people, but especially for founders. The choice to invest in activities outside of work may mean that you can’t start certain types of businesses, take on specific categories of funding, work with particular clients, or expand at as rapid a pace. For those who highly value life outside of work, these macro-level decisions that give them the opportunity to live a balanced life are worth the potential cost and risk to their business.
You Know How: Many people want, believe in, and value work-life balance, but they just don’t know how to change. If you’ve always seen startup founders work crazy hours, you don’t have good role models to show you how to behave in a balanced manner. And it’s hard to know how to think and act differently if you’ve always operated in one way. As the quote often attributed to Einstein goes: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
You Can: After working with clients around the world with many different personality types, including some with ADD/ADHD, I believe that almost anyone who meets the above four criteria can see improvement in their work-life balance. But for people who thrive in high-pressure environments, achieving traditional work-life balance and moving their company forward effectively may or may not be possible to the same extent as others.

For individuals who fit this profile, the best strategy is to clarify action-based priorities in key areas. This includes things like seven hours of sleep a night, working out five days a week, or having family dinner six days a week. Then you need to focus on making these priorities into routines that allow them to consistently invest their time in these core areas while still keeping up a fairly high level of intensity in your work during the remaining hours.

Work-life balance is possible for founders who meet the above five criteria, but for those who don’t, it’s not.

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is the founder and CEO of Real Life E®, a time coaching and training company, and the author of “The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success With Less Stress.”

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

Back to Basics: How Online Content Can Drive Business Sales

Each month, companies introduce hundreds of new tools to help business owners attract traffic online and generate leads and sales. Some business owners spend an incredible amount of time and money buying and learning how to use these tools, only to achieve mediocre results. Fortunately, one tried and true strategy — content marketing — remains a simple way to attract the targeted traffic you need to grow your business.

Sarah Ware, content marketing, startup tips, Markerly

What is Content Marketing?

Simply put, content marketing is the process of crafting and publishing engaging, useful content that your prospects want to read.

In most cases, the content is not an advertorial designed to sell your services or products, but an article or post designed to build visitor interest and keep readers coming back to your site. By publishing content that is useful for your readers, you can build a sense of trust that makes visitors want to buy from you.

whale2

For content marketing, trust is everything.

Advertising through content campaigns can take several forms. One of the simplest ways to distribute articles and other content is by publishing these pieces on your business website or blog. You can distribute press releases to hundreds of free and paid sites to tell potential customers about news, product launches, and other information related to your business or industry.

You can also promote and distribute content via social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. This gives you the added advantage of social distribution because people who see value in your content will naturally want to share your posts with their friends, family members, and business associates.

How Can Content Marketing Help Your Business?

Learning how to advertise through content offers several advantages that can help you build online visibility and attract new customers to your business:

Well-crafted content can help your site and blog pages appear prominently in search engine listings. When you write and publish exceptional content that provides information relevant to your business and target audience, search engines will likely place high value on your content pages. This means that they might appear on the first page of results for a particular search instead of being buried beneath thousands of other page listings. Of course, in order to rank high, you need to focus on one or two keywords that are relevant to your content. Resources such as the Content Marketing Institute can provide you with valuable information on crafting content and including keywords.

Engaging, useful content helps visitors perceive you as an expert in your industry. Helping people improve their lives through online content builds trust while establishing you as the “go to” authority to meet their needs. As a result, when it comes time to make a purchasing decision, your company becomes the obvious choice.

You can use content as the start of a “sales funnel” that naturally leads visitors to a purchasing decision. As noted above, your content should not be overtly promotional; however, skilled copywriters can weave in phrases and subtle “calls to action” that can motivate readers to take an additional step, such as signing up for an email newsletter, requesting product information, or attending a free webinar. You can also use tools like HubSpot to help you manage your sales funnel so you can more effectively guide prospects through the sales process.

Getting started with Hubspot:

hubspot1

Hubspot is an automation tool that allows the user to preset interactions with customers or site visitors. It starts with interaction. The first step is to draw readers in via social media or email. The next step is directing that traffic to the website or blog. The last step is to organize visitors for further actions. Hubspot isn’t alone in using this traffic flow. This is just how the cogs of content marketing turn.

hubspot2

Hubspot automates the process of sending emails, analyzing customers, and adding delays. The actual interface looks something like the screenshot above.

Online content can give you valuable information about your visitors. By inviting interaction via blog comments, social media posts, and feedback forms, you can learn about your potential customers’ needs and wants. If you provide them with valuable content, they will be happy to share their thoughts, opinions, and suggestions. You can also use analytical tools such as KISSmetrics and Markerly in conjunction with content marketing to learn even more about your visitors and prospects.

Getting started with Markerly:

markerly1

Markerly provides brands with detailed reporting on how different demographics engaged with different bloggers, quotes and photos. Markerly helps brands discover what is and isn’t working with their content campaigns, and uses that data to turn content viral.

Getting started with Kissmetrics:

kissmetrics-1

Kissmetrics allows users to get in-depth data on the customer. It looks something like this. It keeps track of how often the customer visits, what they buy, how much they spend, as well as activity before and after they signed up.

How Can You Help People Find Your Content?

In addition to social media posts and search engine listings, you can use a variety of other strategies to help visitors find your marketing content. You can add your blog to a directory such as BlogHer to put your content in front of interested readers. If you have time, you can increase visibility by writing guest posts for relevant blogs and websites. Also, visiting similar blogs and leaving thoughtful, relevant posts can attract potential customers to your site.

Getting started with BlogHer:

blogher1

BlogHer is a specialty directory that helps get blogs written by women out into cyberspace. Interested contributors simply have to meet the guidelines, apply, and get listed. Some of the guidelines include a 30 day old blog, written by a woman or a group of women, or certain exceptions for interested men. Choosing an applicable niche is a great way to get your blog out there.

Content marketing is not a shortcut to success. In order to make this strategy successful, you should commit to consistently publishing well-written, insightful articles and posts. There is no “magic button” for attracting traffic; however, content marketing is among the most reliable strategies available.

Markerly makes publishing tools that we’ve proudly been using since their alpha stage over a year ago. Right click on anything on Nibletz and watch Markerly go to work. For more info visit markerly.com

Why Brands are spending $43 billion on stories this year, and you should too!

Great Examples Of Good Tech Companies Destroyed After Being Acquired?

Businesses buy out other businesses. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and acquisitions are part of the grand game of business baccarat. Amongst the main benefits of an acquisition are:

Increased plant capacity
Product diversification
Reduced financial risk
Bigger share of the market
Acquisition of research, development and market expertise

If all goes according to plan, the newly acquired company ought to increase in value as investors see cost savings and revenue increases ensue.

But it doesn’t always go according to plan. There are often problems that only become apparent after the deal has gone through. Integration plans can be demolished by white collar turf wars and culture clashes. Brand dilution, incompatible processes and systems and lack of knowledge about the acquired company’s business methodology can all have an impact in the successful marriage of two corporations. Such failings may have an irreversible impact on shareholder value and see the stock price of the acquiring organization plummet. The ship sinks with all hands, and there’s not a lifeboat to be seen.

It’s a particular problem in the world of dotcoms. Corporate quicksand lies in wait to suck even the most seemingly healthy companies to their doom. Here are just a few examples of the good tech companies that have gone bust following their acquisition.

sixdegrees.com

This was the original social networking site and granddaddy of them all. Andrew Weinreich founded the company in New York while the dotcom boom was rumbling on, and it was later taken over by Youthstream for over $130million in stock. Within six months it was shut down. The legacy of sixdegrees however was awareness of the vast potential of social networking, and the likes of Linkedin and other SN platforms took up the baton and ran with it.

Danger

Danger was the creator of the T-Mobile Sidekick. Microsoft acquired the company in 2008. They actually prototyped a new product but then completely scrapped the development and platform in favour of the Windows Phone 7, leaving the product team in, as they say, a right old mess amidst a flurry of contradictory goals. The Kin was eventually launched and proved a total flop, and the original development team was dispersed to the tech winds. Just to finish the demolition job off, Microsoft shortly afterwards lost just about all of its Sidekick customer data late in 1999.

Lala

Apple bought up Lala, an online music store, for over $80million in December 2009 and a few months later shut the site down. They seem to have done nothing with the acquired technology and nor have they replaced it.

Goowy Media

Goowy Media, a Californian-based widget software firm, was acquired by AOL/Time Warner in 2008 and everything was fine until AOL split off from TW, when everything went haywire. According to Goowy staff, the TW staff whose office they shared barely acknowledged their presence and they were not assigned work for long periods of time. About a year after the acquisition Goowy was shut down, despite having a basically good product.

Flawed system

It’s worth mentioning that acquisitions and mergers often fail because of a focus on short-term gains by the acquiring company. What they’re mainly interested in is seeing the acquisition run smoothly and after that they often don’t much care about how the acquired company performs. This attitude seems to be inherent in the business world and may often be the fault of no one in particular.

Author:
Carlo Pandian worked at Adzuna, a tech start-up based in London. He is currently writing a tutorial on QuickBooks (accounting software for entrepreneurs), and has previously published for Techli, Killer Startups and Under30CEO. Connect with him on Twitter @carlopandian.

5 Reasons To Startup In College

The catchphrase “you only live once” or YOLO is the modern-day version of “carpe diem,” and it usually involves doing wild and risky recreational activities. But an increasing number of college students have taken YOLO to the next level by doing something their parents may find even more unsettling — turning down cushy corporate jobs and internships, and starting their own companies instead.

For what it’s worth, I believe these graduates are jumping into entrepreneurship at exactly the right time. For one, most college students don’t (yet) have families to feed or mortgages to pay. And although they may not have much money either, that means they have very little to lose. Plus, college students are used to keeping their costs of living low — Easy Mac, anyone?

Personally, I couldn’t have started PerBlue without the resources college provided. It’s where I found my future employees, and it’s where I could make mistakes without much risk. For PerBlue, college was like a startup petri dish — sheltered from the toils of the “real world” — where smart people and crazy ideas ran rampant (and still do).

Here are some of the lessons I learned from starting up in college and how you can apply them to your own dorm room startups:

Hire your friends. Find co-founders and future employees within your group of college friends; they will be your most loyal and hardworking employees. In PerBlue’s case, my friends were the ones willing to skip class for two weeks straight prior to launch, and work for sweat equity during the early days to get the company off the ground. Starting out with a very passionate team establishes a strong culture that will be extremely valuable as you grow your employee base. The people you surround yourself with will both teach and help you along the way.
Use (free) campus resources, including mentors. Resources vary from campus to campus, but college is a great place to find free legal and financial advice, clinics and networking opportunities, every day of the week. If you’re starting a Web business, keep an eye out for Startup Weekend, 3 Day Startup and other hackathon-style events held on campus. Chat with your advisor or stop into the business school to get connected with entrepreneurial resources. And don’t be afraid to seek out and talk to students outside of your major — those studying engineering, business and other subjects can provide new perspectives and insights for your startup. In college, my mentors were both professors and other college entrepreneurs. Today, they are my board members and leaders of hugely successful companies.
Parlay your startup skills into other companies (or a “real” job). The experience you gain as a young entrepreneur, whether your startup grows or stalls, will be invaluable later on. Many leaders of successful businesses didn’t major in, or even study, business. But they had the passion and the ability to execute their ideas, rewiring their brain to start thinking and learning from a business perspective along the way — invaluable leadership skills in any job. For example, while I double majored in Computer Science and Computer Engineering, I’ve only coded a few lines in the past two years. Instead, I’ve transitioned to leading the PerBlue team and steering the vision for our products and business. Soon you’ll stop worrying and start strategizing instead. Get in this frame of mind by practicing negotiation, pitching your startup to friends, or even budgeting and balancing your finances — whatever it takes to get your brain focused on becoming a great leader.
Make mistakes early and often. Starting a business will allow you to wear many hats and pick up many new skills you otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to. You will probably stumble a little at one (or more) of these roles, but that’s where delegation and hiring great people plays into the equation. No matter what happens, know that you’ll still be learning more by spending a year working on a startup than you ever would working at an entry-level position in a big company. And even if you fail epically, failure is often the best teacher. You will be that much smarter when you set off on your next project.
Save the job offer for later. The experience of being a college entrepreneur is priceless. Maybe you’ve already been offered an attractive internship or full-time opportunity — some kind of nice, cushy job at a large, established corporation. Well, I challenge you to turn that offer down. Bootstrapping and building a startup is an exciting and sometimes rocky road. Yes, there will be long nights and weekends spent working, a steady diet of Ramen and Red Bulls, and times of absolute burnout. (To this day, the thought of pizza from the restaurant below our first office at 2 a.m. brings back a wave a nostalgia.) As hard and tiring as those days were, I miss them. No matter how difficult or exhausting the work is, it will be worth absolutely every minute. You always have the option go back and work a “real” job later!

Now is the perfect time to take the risk and start practicing the skills it takes to be an entrepreneur — or a leader. I think it’s a clear win-win for those brave enough to venture outside of their comfort zone. What are you going to do today that will enable you to take the leap and start your own company? After all, YOLO!

Justin Beck is the Co-Founder and CEO of PerBlue, a mobile and social gaming company in Madison, WI. PerBlue is best known for its flagship product, Parallel Kingdom. The popular location-based massively multiplayer role playing game for mobile and web platforms has over one million players worldwide. Founded in 2008, PerBlue is now home to 40 full-time software developers, artists, and business specialists.

Madison is getting a new startup epicenter called Starting Block, read about it here.

Is Downtime The Key to Success?

I think downtime gets a bad rap. In our startup culture, it’s all about hustle, late nights, and crazy schedules. We brag about how much we work, and we really don’t want people to think we aren’t passionate about our businesses.

I believe in passion and work and doing what you love. Hence, I left a crappy job to homeschool my kids. I landed a job I love at Nibletz, and my kids are being raised in a family culture that encourages finding your passion and working hard at it.

But there’s nuance when we talk about “hustle” and “passion”: a silent assumption that if you don’t want to work all the time, you aren’t really passionate. If you aren’t passionate, you won’t be a success. And, in the startup world, your “lack of passion” will keep you from succeeding, so there’s no point in anyone investing in you.

Yet, there are studies that show that time off is critical to job satisfaction. In 2009 two Harvard researchers studied the effects of enforced time off for a local consulting group. They found that, while initially resistant, consultants at the company ultimately became better at their jobs when they were forced to take time off throughout the week. It turns out that hunkering down isn’t always the best choice.

In an episode of On Being, Krista Tippett interviews neuropsychologist Rex Jung about creativity and the everyday brain. After studying both intelligence and creativity, he says that the two are very different and use different parts of the brain. Intelligence occurs when the back and front part of the brain work well together, firing information efficiently. Dr. Jung compares this to a superhighway. Creativity, however, is more like back roads, a meandering path that may seem inefficient but produces something new and useful. There’s even a name for this: transient hypofrontality.

Both are useful, but how do we increase the creativity part–the part that keeps us good at problem solving? Rex Jung says the answer is downtime.

If you’re constantly in knowledge acquisition mode, there’s not that quiet time to put it together.

The “putting it together” is critical. Your passion means nothing if you don’t have the downtime you need to really consider your path. Working just for work’s sake is stupid. What if the work you’re doing is heading in the wrong direction, or you miss a big piece of the puzzle because you don’t take time to look around? In that case, all the going going going is a detriment, not a help.

Instead, we should reconsider what we call “work.” Accomplishing tasks and crossing off to-dos are important. But so is a leisurely walk without a phone or iPod. Studying cloud shapes or reading a book solely for enjoyment are good for recharging, but it turns out they may also be imperative for your work itself. The connections your brain makes when you aren’t focus could be the ones that lead to breakthrough success.

Where to Find a Startup Job (Infographic)

If you read Nibletz, you’re probably interested in startup culture. You are learning about VC’s, lean methodology, exits, and IPOs. You may even have a niggling idea for a great company.

But, what if you aren’t quite ready to dive in to founding yet? This happened to me a little less than a year ago, and it’s how I met the Nibletz team. I had an idea, met with a local startup leader, started doing customer discovery and…it went flat. In my case, the idea wasn’t feasible in our area, and I wasn’t really the right person for it anyway. With 3 young kids, I didn’t feel comfortable going all in with this idea, and founders are nothing if not “all in.”

I was hooked on startups, though. I didn’t think too much about being hired by one, but when Nibletz needed an editor, I knew I would do whatever it took to land the job. For now, working at a startup is just as good as founding one. Besides contributing to a greater vision I believe in, I’m learning more every day about what it takes to start a company. I also have the freedom, for now, to play with my own ideas and research potential problems to solve.

Maybe you’re in the same boat. Love startups, but aren’t in a position to found one yourself yet. Landing a job with a startup could be a great way to prepare yourself for your future world-changing idea. The infographic below shows some great places and industries to consider when looking for that perfect startup job.

My advice, though: don’t sweat it too much if you aren’t in the “right place.” Keep your eyes and ears open, and the right job will present itself.

13 Startup Ideas We Left On The Table (For Now)

Question: In another life, what startup would you have founded?

Food Startups Sound Delicious

“In fact, I almost did start this business, but I changed course. This would have been a service of meal planning, making shopping lists, buying the food you need and delivering it to your door. I think a lot of busy people who want to eat healthy but don’t have time to sit down and write a menu plan for the week would dig it.”

– Nathalie Lussier | Creator, The Website Checkup Tool

Electric Cars Are the Future

“With fuel prices soaring and health/environmental concerns continuing to plague the US automotive industry, I think there’s a terrific opportunity for someone to create a sexy, affordable electric vehicle. Equally important, there must be a charging network in reach of nearly everyone. With built-in WiFi and a Siri-like assistant, this car would make traffic seem more like a treat!”

– Michael Tolkin | CEO, Merchant Exchange

Exploit the Ultimate Combo

“Two of my favorite things in this world are beer and ice cream. I’ve always fantasized about opening up a beer and ice cream shop or restaurant. The other day, I walked by a shop near me in San Francisco that sells only beer and hummus. Those guys are living my dream!”

– Pete Kennedy | Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Main Street ROI

Moon Tourism, Right?

“A flicker of my childhood dream to be an astronaut still burns in my heart. If I was born perhaps a few decades into the future, after the space tourism industry grows with players like Virgin Galactic, I could see myself planning incredible excursions to the moon. Whether it’s for a team-building adventure or vacation, a trip to the moon would be unforgettable.”

– Natalie MacNeil | Emmy Award Winning Media Entrepreneur, She Takes on the World

Spartan Races Win!

“When we get real with ourselves, running a software company isn’t what I dreamed I’d be doing when I was a kid. Sitting behind a desk and computer sounded boring. Don’t get me wrong, its a lot of fun, we have a great team and customers, but the ultimate job is what you’d be doing for work every day if you didn’t have to worry about money at all. Spartan Races would be mine!”

– Trevor Mauch | Founder, Carrot

Real Estate Is Really Great

“This is a tough question; I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Perhaps I would have been involved in a real estate investment firm or another type of business in the finance sector, as it’s always been an interest of mine.”

– Jordan Guernsey | CEO, Molding Box

Food Trucks Drive Success

“I’d open a Peruvian/Japanese fusion truck with my cousin from Peru here in San Francisco. We’d get the recipes from my grandma that already makes amazing Peruvian and Japanese food. My cousin and I would cook the food while my girlfriend took the orders. I’d start now if I had the time!”

– Jun Loayza | President, Ecommerce Rules

Media Platforms Make Waves

“I’ve always loved the media industry, so I probably would have launched a publication of some kind — which likely would have been a lovely failure! Talking to a large audience is the best way to start a real conversation, and having a platform to lead a discussion has always appealed to me.”

– Brent Beshore | Owner/CEO, adventur.es

Spinning Still Makes People Happy

“If I weren’t a photographer, I’d definitely look into the world of deejaying. I think it’s so amazing how music can lift people’s spirit. Just seeing them enjoy what I’m doing and dancing would be indescribable.”

– Angela Pan | Owner/Photographer, Angela B Pan Photography

Coworking Daycare Space

“Being an entrepreneur who works 15+ hours a day and who also has a 19-month old daughter, I definitely have thought about the idea of starting a coworking space that had attached daycare services. Entrepreneurs need dedicated work time, possible private office space for phone calls or meetings, but you might not want to leave your kids for 15+ hours a day!”

– Erin Blaskie | CEO, Erin Blaskie, Digital Strategist

Share Alike With a Bike

“Thanks to services such as Zipcar and City Car Share, I’ve haven’t owned a car for the past 4 years. I’d love to build on the idea of shared transportation and create a bike sharing service. We’d place pods all over the city and riders could pick up a bike at any pod and return to any other pod. This would be convenient for both locals and tourists — and a great way to stay fit!”

– Bhavin Parikh | CEO, Magoosh Test Prep

Run Away with Rosetta Stone

“As a linguist, I would have loved to have launched Rosetta Stone. Then I would try and learn all the languages and travel to every country in the world!”

– Nancy T. Nguyen | Founder/Sweet Sylist, Sweet T Salon

Starting Up and Serving Tea

“The dream that fell by the wayside is a tea startup. Years ago, I was very close to embarking on a journey called “60 Teas in 60 days.” It was going to be a web series that brought the audience along as I traveled through Asia — tasting tea, interviewing tea masters and exploring tea plantations. After the initial push, the goal was to create different tea blends and a weekly tea tasting show.”

– Nick Reese | CEO, Elite Health Blends

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

Here’s How Not To Pitch Nibletz, Or Anyone Else For That Matter

We get 100’s of pitches for coverage a day, especially on Monday’s and Tuesdays for some reason. As most of you know though, we are very committed to our mission of being “the voice of startups everywhere else” so we try to go through each and every coverage pitch, as quickly as we possibly can.

We get a lot of startup pitches from Silicon Valley. I left it out of the image above because it made it too obvious who wrote it, but this person is from San Francisco. We typically explain that we are “the voice of startups everywhere else” and as such we don’t cover Silicon Valley. If I’ve got a little extra time I may refer the startup to one of the several startup focused publications in the Valley. I am typically nice when we get a Valley pitch, but some things just grind my gears.

Don’t lie to the journalist or blogger you’re emailing.

Don’t flat out lie to a journalist, don’t say that you’ve read their work or their site if you haven’t. This makes me think back to a story a colleague of mine told me while we were producing Thedroidguy. She worked for one of the majors as an analyst and would regularly get emails talking about how much the pitcher enjoyed the stories they wrote. They never wrote any stories. But, their email address was easily accessible via Google and the junk mail poured in.

In our case I can understand some people getting confused about “everywhere else.” There’s a huge difference between a PR person or startup marketer who says they saw or read a specific piece or knew about a feature, but didn’t realize exactly what “voice of startups everywhere else” actually means. Then there are others too lazy to do any research or look at a website, so they fire off bulk emails.

Monkeys can’t sell you.

We love Mailchimp, and we use it to reach our readers with event information, newsletters, and more. Mailchimp and services like it are great, but not for your PR pitch, especially if you’re pitching your own startup. Your startup is your baby; it’s a part of you. Can you convey that through a form email? Instead, connect with a journalist in a new way, do a couple of seconds of Google research, and take a second to fire off your target a somewhat personalized note.

The guy above violated both of the above two rules, and you can see from the graphic just how much. Pure laziness.

Remember who had your back in the beginning.

While Nibletz is growing very quickly, we know we’re not the biggest dog in the pack. There are a handful of blogs ahead of us and a bunch below us. Coverage from the big names is helpful, but don’t forget the sites that actually talked to you in the beginning.

Maybe you have a great deal set up to give TechCrunch a runway (an exclusive period of time on an embargoed press release). You could easily give that smaller site that supported you early a secondary runway or the story a little bit ahead of time so they can write a bigger piece.

Relationships are very important in any business, especially this one.

Google has made it harder to reach most writers

Last week Google unveiled their new inbox tabs. This new feature allows you to have tabs for primary, social, promotions, updates, and forums. Ideally this makes it easier to get to inbox 0, and for that it is effective. It didn’t work out for me, because important emails were getting thrown into other buckets so I quickly did away with the tabs (see the graphic above).

That makes a personal connection or a relationship even more important. Now it’s mandatory to personalize your email messages.

With that I’ll tell you the story about my favorite email from the last year or so. California startup MyStorey had been pitching me quite some time on covering their startup. It was a busy time of year; I planned on covering them, but they kept getting pushed back. I know that can be frustrating.

Well, their marketing person had some big news, Rudy Gay, formerly of the Memphis Grizzlies (and now the Toronto Raptors) inked a deal with their startup to be featured as one of their celebrities. The startup allows people to see and then purchase items celebrities wear.

The guy at MyStorey had done enough digging to find out that I was both a Memphis Grizzlies fan (and season ticket holder) and from Baltimore, so a serious Rudy Gay fan, regardless of the trade. I was tweeting pictures from a Memphis Grizzlies game on my personal Twitter account, excited because the Grizzlies won. Rudy Gay was still on the team and had 20 points that night.

As I was walking out of the FedExForum on December 4th at 10:00pm, the startup wrote to me talking about Rudy Gay’s performance in that game. The next day they got the story. The information they had was easy to find, and they utilized it to strengthen our relationship, which led to coverage.

You don’t have to be that guy above. Take a little time to do some research, send journalists personal emails, and remember where you came from.

5 Ways to Save Your Startup From A Digital Marketing Rut

Digital marketing is sort of like milk – it has an expiration date. Despite a killer marketing plan, enthusiastic interaction with your audience may fade over time. Many small companies experience little engagement on Facebook, Tumblr doesn’t exactly foster relationships, and the lifespan of a tweet is getting shorter all the time. If you want to swim, not sink, in the digital marketing world, it’s imperative to not only have a multi-platform presence, but to do it right and stand out amongst the rest.

A well thought-out and strategic digital marketing plan is a must if you want to propel your business to success. The last thing you want is to fall into a digital marketing rut. Suffering a loss in strategy will without a doubt lead to a loss in business. Who can afford that?

Here are 5 tips to climb out of your digital marketing rut:

Go Back To Square One
Re-evaluate your company’s overall digital marketing goals. You can’t expect a digital marketing strategy to thrive if you don’t have specific goals in mind. Maybe your goal is to increase the amount of hits and traffic you receive on your site. Maybe it’s something as basic as how many positive reviews are being written on sites like Yelp. Or maybe your goal is to increase your following on social sites. Whatever your immediate goals may be, your ultimate goal is to garner sign-ups, increase subscriptions, or sell. Never lose sight of that. If you’re thinking, “but I don’t have any specific goals…not measurable ones” then now is the time to make some. If you don’t measure, you won’t grow. On the other hand, if you already have quantitative goals, now is the time to see if you’re meeting them. If you haven’t, what’s stopped you? Look at your analytics. You need input to generate output. What can you do differently if your current methods aren’t working?

Bottom line: Have measurable goals and periodically check in to see if these goals are being met. Though we all want to be successful, “success” is not a goal, it’s an outcome.

Check In With Your Customer BaseEvery good company has a target customer base or demographic. This is who they cater to. Thus, every marketing campaign your company produces should be directly targeted toward this audience or demographic. Who are you trying to market to? Minding your customer base is one of the reasons that data and analytics is so important. Using analytics platforms helps you understand trends, patterns and behaviors your customers will reveal through their data. The more your company grows and the longer it’s been around, it’s essential to make sure you know exactly who is using your services, and even to learn who’s stopped using your product. If you’re a newly launched company, ask a handful of valuable users to become case studies. You’d be surprised at how much you can learn about your product and opportunities for growth or new features by simply talking to people who already love your product.

Bottom line: Data and analytics are invaluable, but sometimes a little human connection is great, too. Don’t be afraid to ask customers for feedback. First hand opinions will be infinitely useful as your company grows.

Set Yourself Up for an Excellent Performance
The best businesses figure out exactly what works for them and their audience, then they iterate these practices. Maybe your company’s video posts are getting more social love than long form blog posts. Maybe your quick status updates are getting more attention than your visual posts are (not likely). Maybe another facet of your online presence is getting no love from your audience, and it’s time to decide whether it’s worth keeping or not. At the end of the day, what you want is engagement. In order to set yourself up so that everything you post performs as well as your most evergreen content, look at the numbers and see what’s performing best. Which channels are bringing in the most conversions? A truly successful digital marketing campaign will generate responses, start conversations, and keep your audience coming back for more. If you’re finding that your online activity is getting likes, shares, and increased traffic, then repeat the actions that led you there. However, if you’re finding that you’re losing traffic or engagement, go back and decide what kinds of content your audience seems to like best. Keeping the flame alive between your business and your audience is key to content marketing. Without them, you’re nothing.

Bottom line: Determine which kinds of content are most favorable to your audience. Create a system, and don’t let them down.

Pull Out Your Digital Map
Are you in the right place? Are you where you need to be? This is an imperative question to ask yourself when judging if your campaigns are working. After checking in with your user base and determining what kinds of content your audience likes, you need to figure out if you’re still limiting yourself by not being present in the spaces your target demographics love. You need to be in the right place and have the correct digital presence, if you want to reach customer base you’re targeting. However, it’s been said that young people are bothered when brands are unnecessarily on every channel. If you’re not a visual brand, don’t create an Instagram, or a Tumblr for that matter. If you’re content producers, but not content curators, don’t create a company Pinterest account. Think of it this way: if you want to meet someone and you’re scoping out the dating scene, would it be more fruitful to go to a bar or a library?

Bottom line: Know exactly who you’re looking for and where to find them. Be native, be where
your audience is. If you do this right, you should be giving them what they’re already naturally
searching for.

Differentiate Yourself
Digital marketing is a dog-eat-dog, hyper competitive world. It’s easy to see a company enact campaigns that turn out to be very fruitful and then feel the desire to use the same practices for your own business. You know…that whole FOMO thing. Though success may follow for you, too, you’re simply becoming part of the mishmash of digital marketing similarities. It’s easy for consumers to tell when one brand is copying another (Coke and Pepsi are in an eternal game of cat and mouse), but like Robert Frost said, take the road less traveled! In order for your company to exist, it has to be at least slightly different from other companies on the market. Feed into these differences.

Bottom line: As long as it works for you audience, don’t be afraid to go against the grain. You’ll never know until you try. Make it quirky, make it jaw dropping, make it easy to digest – whatever. Just make it you.

Rosie Brinckerhoff is a marketing intern at Spinnakr – a new kind of analytics that takes action for you. Rosie is a social media enthusiast and a rising senior at the University of Delaware, where she majors in Political Science and Journalism.

Startup Culture: Offering Your Courageous, Daring Employees Something Intangible

ProdigiArts, Startup Culture, Startup Tips, Memphis startup

(cultureclub photo: alanpringle.com)

Who would choose to work for some entrepreneur they met at a coffee shop, for little pay, unconventional hours, and without promise of Google-like fortunes? They may have a fantastic idea that will solve some great problem in modern society, but right now their eyes are bleary from too much caffeine and a scalding Macbook. It’s hard to believe in them.

Startups not only face difficulty in convincing prospective investors and clients, but also potential employees whose talents would make a valuable contribution to the ever-growing company. Capital might not be the greatest resource at your disposal, but your people are.

As entrepreneurs, it’s easy to fantasize about the kind of company culture you’d like to foster in the future: throngs of employees working diligently and creatively, in between collective games of Call of Duty. In reality, culture building happens the moment one other person says ‘yes’ to joining your crazy idea for a company.

The famed animation studio Pixar faced the same struggle to build culture. The production house that totes 27 Academy Awards on its mantle started out with sleep-deprived, passionate people who took a chance on an idea they believed in. Since its inception in 1979, Pixar has taken many directions, from producing special effects for Star Trek to working on a commercial for Listerine. Despite the change in vision, structure, or ownership, the individuals who were so passionate about their craft and creating a company notable for what it offered the world made Pixar great. By no means did this happen without investment and capital, but it started with the right people.

In James Collins’ celebrated book Good to Great, he emphasizes recruiting the right people, who are flexible and put in their time and energy day after day, even when the vision or direction of a company might take a detour. He says that while vision is essential when starting a business and gaining employees, “If you begin with ‘who’ rather than ‘what,’ you can more easily adapt to a changing world.”

One of the really important features of our company culture is a strong emphasis on trust and validation. In our industry most young, ambitious animators want to go work for the larger, more legendary studios in New York or Los Angeles, where they will probably be made to work longer hours and receive little credit.

While this is the reality of many recent graduates and young professionals in their career development journey, we try to value and recognize each accomplishment made, whether that’s with bonuses for especially noteworthy projects or getting taken out to lunch because someone forgot to bring theirs for the day. Every person, no matter how old or how young, desires a place in a community and to feel like their work is valued and contributes to something greater than themselves. We may not have the notoriety of a large studio, but what defines our culture is how satisfied and ambitious those brave souls are who have joined our growing studio.

Investing in human capital proves to be just as important as your real capital. Find those select few who invest their time, talents, and future in your company, because those are the ones who will be there at the end of the day, even when financial backers may not be.

Joshua Colfer is with ProdigiArts a Memphis animation, design and development firm. See what they can do for your startup visit them on the web at prodigiarts.com

14 Mistakes To Avoid When Pitching Investors

Question: What’s one dumb mistake entrepreneurs should avoid, at all costs, during their first couple of pitches to investors?

Smelling of Desperation

“When you pitch to an investor, don’t sound desperate. People like to invest and be connected to winning projects. If you come off as though this investment is the only way for your business to move forward, it seems needy and is unattractive to many investors, and can sets you up to be taken advantage of. You’ll end up giving away more equity then you should.”

– Raoul Davis | CEO, Ascendant Group

Thinking Only About Money

“When pitching an investor, you’re not just pitching your great idea. A relationship with an investor goes beyond the ROI and it’s important to focus on selling yourself as well as your business plan.”

– Raul Pla | CEO and Founder, SimpleWifi and UseABoat

Going In Unprepared

“Just because you have an idea and you think you need help does not mean you’re ready to raise money. Even if you get an investor interested, nothing will bring the conversation to a screeching halt quite like not knowing how much you want to raise and what you’ll do with it. The questions are core to justifying the investment and showing you’re prepared to lead an institutionally-funded business.”

– Jason Evanish | co-founder, Greenhorn Connect

Introducing the NDA

“Ideas are cheap. Chances are you’ll be laughed out of the meeting if you ask investors to sign an NDA. More important, anyone willing to sign an NDA in a first meeting is probably not sophisticated or serious enough for you to be considering as an investor.”

– Michael Tolkin | CEO, Merchant Exchange

What’s a Negotiation?

“It’s rare that an investor will, straight out of the gate, give you everything you ever wanted. You need to know what you can do with different levels of investment, and have an idea of what situations are bad enough to walk away from the table. A pitch to an investor is the start of a negotiation and you should treat it as such.”

– Thursday Bram | Consultant, Hyper Modern Consulting

Being Too Pushy

“The investors are already there to hear your pitch because they see something in you and your company. Those that push their product or idea too much cause most investors to immediately shut down and not hear the rest of the pitch. Be cool and confident, but not like a used car salesman. You only have one chance to make a first impression, and don’t blow it doing this simple thing.”

– Ashley Bodi | co-founder, Business Beware

Eagerly Meeting First

“Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of meeting with their best investor prospects first, yet their pitch only gets better with time. You will achieve your greatest odds by saving the best for last. Note reoccurring questions and concerns after each pitch, and revise your materials accordingly. By the time you get to the big guys, you will be confident and convincing enough to close the deal.”

– Christopher Kelly | Co-Founder, Principal, Convene

Taking Criticism Personally

“Most investors are direct and are going to ask you the tough questions. That’s a good thing; it means they’re thinking about your idea. Don’t take feedback our tough questions personally or as personal attacks. Answer directly and if you don’t know, say so. Don’t make something up.”

– Nathan Lustig | cofounder, Entrustet

Putting Down Your Passion

“You need more than passion to convince investors. You need a well thought-out business plan and a great product. Even with that, though, don’t be afraid to let your passion show through. It’ll carry you through the entrepreneurial journey, and investors know that, so don’t try to be all business by hiding that enthusiasm. Display it. It’s an advantage, not a weakness.”

– Nick Friedman | President, College Hunks Hauling Junk and College Hunks Moving

Leaving Without the Q&A

“Allowing time for questions will naturally create the need to have a concise and focused presentation, while also allowing the investors to partially guide the pitch. No matter how organized a pitch is, it may fail to answer certain questions your audience has. Planning for Q&A time allows your pitch to be clear to someone unfamiliar with your line of work.”

– John Harthorne | Founder and CEO, MassChallenge

Promising Too Much

“Don’t overpromise; go in with what you know, not what you think you can do. Investors will lose faith in you – that is, if they don’t see through you right away.”

– Jordan Guernsey | CEO, Molding Box

Too Diligent About Disruption

“Entrepreneurs often work on ideas in areas they’re passionate about, and along with that can come a sense of religion about changing the way a certain industry works. Disruption is certainly an ideal outcome for a new business, and investors are looking for disruptive ideas, but an entrepreneur that cares more about that disruption than building a sustainable business can often lose sight of the immediate decisions that must be made, even if they steer you away from your original vision.”

– Derek Shanahan | Marketing, Playerize

Don’t Make Projections, Make Plans

“Don’t put a freaking hockey stick graph in the presentation and expect everyone in the room to “ooh” and “ahh.” Projections are guesses that rarely come true. What’s more impressive is your plan to get there. Investors know that your strategy means a lot more than your pretty pictures.”

– Brent Beshore | Owner/CEO, adventur.es

Rushing the Pitch

“As nervous as you might be, try to calm down and speak from the heart. Memorization is often the biggest crutch during a presentation. Nerves get the best of us, and we try to rush through the words just to get it over with. Studies have shown that speaking more slowly not only allows the listeners to register what you’re saying, but it also makes you sound more confident and knowledgeable.”

– Logan Lenz | Founder / President, Endagon

This startup conference was designed for even bootstrapped founders.

Great Marketing Is Not The Enemy of Great Product

In some circles, “marketing” is a four letter word.

For some, it’s as if marketing is the enemy of product, and they believe a great product will somehow find a way to sell itself. The implication is that marketing is needed only when the product isn’t good enough.If you need marketing, you’re doing something wrong.

While it’s true that good marketing won’t go far in helping a bad product, I think the product-marketing distinction disregards the value that can be created when the overlap between product and marketing is realized and exploited.

This false dichotomy happens for a few reasons.

First is that the term marketing is too broad to be instructive when working with early-stage companies. Discussing the constituent parts of the process is much more useful. Distribution strategy and user adoption, branding and naming, messaging and copywriting, pricing strategy—these are much more meaningful than “marketing” as a category.

In a similar vein, product is dangerously broad as well. As marketing has constituent parts, so does the concept of product. User stories, back- and front-end code, UI design and copy, transactional emails, the overall look and feel—these are all constituent parts of product.

In startups, as in most companies, there’s a portion of product and marketing activities that bridge the gap and live in both worlds.

Elements of marketing can augment elements of product, and vice versa.

Real value can be created in the cases where facets of marketing and elements of product overlap.

There are many examples of this overlap. Here are a few:

Copy in the UI: does it align with the voice and tone of the brand as established in the brand platform, on the marketing site, and on social accounts?
Transactional emails: are they sensitive to the realities of user behavior as seen within the app?
Overall aesthetic: is there design consistency between the personality and texture of your name, logo, marketing assets, and user interface?
Blog posts, white papers, case studies, and other marketing assets: do they reflect the attitudes and beliefs of users? do they account for data about usage and allow that data to influence the direction?

In a world where the earliest interactions between user and product occur within the context of an app store–first with app icon and name, then with screenshots–the separation between product and marketing is an increasingly false distinction.

Couple that with the necessity of building in effective viral hooks along with other growth hacking techniques, and it’s clear that the monolithic categories of product and marketing are rarely meaningful.

Thinking in separate product-marketing silos, then, e.g. “we need to start thinking about marketing now that the beta is live,” is harmful to the growth of your product.

So take time to dig a bit deeper past the abstraction of high-level categories. Proceed with caution when you hear someone waxing poetic on the notions of product or the dangers of marketing. And take advantage of the product-marketing overlap to strengthen your experience and further endear yourself to users.

Still need help? I’m offering free 30-minute Google Hangout office hour sessions to take questions about startup branding and messaging. No strings attached. Get in touch if that interests you.

Patrick Woods is a hybrid ad man/startup guy. As director of a>m ventures, he connects startups with awesome branding, PR, and marketing strategy.

*Nibletz is an a>m ventures portfolio company.

**This post first appeared on Medium.

Is Your Crazy New Startup Idea A Home Run Or A Dud?

Four years ago, I started a company based on the notion of wearing T-shirts for living, IWearYourShirt.com. More recently, I set up an auction for a business to buy the rights to my last name, BuyMyLastName.com.

Needless to say, I come up with a lot of crazy ideas. In my car, in the shower, heck, even in my sleep. All of them get written down somewhere, and I revisit them at a later date when I’m not mobile, wet, or unconscious. After taking a second glance at my list of ideas, about 95 percent of them are complete and total garbage. The other 5 percent have a small shot at becoming something worth acting on. How do I know the difference? I ask myself five simple questions first.

Whether it’s your next big business or a unique marketing campaign, when that next ambitious idea hits, ask yourself these five questions — and if the answer is yes to all five, well, roll up your sleeves and make it happen!

Does my idea solve a problem? What’s that saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention?” Ideas that are born out of needs come complete with a built-in demand. It’s harder to sell someone something they don’t need. In the case of BuyMyLastName.com, I knew that marketing — especially online — was becoming so congested that businesses were having trouble finding ad space that makes them stand out from the crowd. By offering such a unique venue for them to do so, it fulfilled a need for them to maintain an element of surprise and creativity. Does your idea do the same?
Is this an idea I can execute? The worst thing you can do is get your heart — and any investment money — set on an idea that you simply can’t pull off in the end. Give yourself the time to really think through how this idea is going to work. Do you have the resources? Do you have the time or the budget to make it successful? Challenge yourself to ask the hard questions, and get specific.
Is this idea something people will talk about or share? The best ideas are ones that market themselves. You want to pour your effort into something that’s going to make people talk or something that’s going to “turn heads” virtually. If your idea has that surprising element or share factor built in, it is much more likely to be successful. Word of mouth is king!
Does this idea have a shelf life? Maybe it seems like a good idea today, but is it something that will be a good idea in six months or five years? Think hard about where your market is now and where you think it’s headed. Does your idea still solve a problem down the road or will it still be shareable? For example, you know that technology will probably only get more and more advanced as time progresses. Knowing this, does this make your idea more valuable in the future, or less valuable? Put your idea in the context of some of those future external market conditions or internal business conditions and then evaluate it.
Is the value of this idea worth the investment? Crazy ideas can be crazy smart — or a crazy waste of everyone’s time, depending on the idea. If you’ve already answered yes to the previous questions, sit down and ask yourself if the outcome is going to be worth the input. Will your idea bring enough value to the end user that you have to make it happen? Some may say that selling my last name is a gimmick, but I truly believe that it has the potential to be a huge stage for the right company and I feel strongly about the value it can bring them. Do you feel as strongly as I do?

I can’t say that every idea I’ve ever tried has been successful, but I can say that I don’t regret pursuing a single one. I’m the guy that will always believe in crazy ideas.

You can’t guarantee a new business idea will work, but you can make sure it has every chance possible to be a home run.

Jason Sadler, Official T-Shirt Wearer at IWearYourShirt, hasn’t always been wearing T-shirts for a living, but has always been creative. Fox Business has called him the “Entrepreneur of the Century.”

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

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