New Product Launch And What Internet Marketing Can Do

If you aren't yet doing internet marketing for your new business, you could be losing enormous opportunity to reach your target patrons and advertise your products and services to them. But if you are doing search engine marketing the incorrect way, then you use up both your investment decision by way of money and your target clients as well.

It's a recognized fact that so most people turn to Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines today to seek out things they need - from infant food to resorts and books and gadgets. The internet is a place to search out a myriad of markets across ages. Even the baby boomers have now caught up with the internet technology to find ways to provide for their miscellaneous needs.

The internet, being widely used worldwide data communications structure, is by far considered one of the easiest ways to market your business. Given its current popularity and the continual growth in the number of individuals utilizing the web, it is actually no doubt that every company ought to be involved in internet marketing.

If engaging in internet marketing, as with every kind of marketing idea, you've got to identify and study your target market. Utilizing the many available tools in the internet, perform a thorough keyword analysis to know which ones the internet users have an interest on. Be ready with virtual survey forms which could help you acquire your market's thoughts.

To know very well what's in it for you, analyze your competition. When engaging in internet marketing, it is essential to recognise and consider what exactly is already out there. It will certainly get you empowered as you mull over on other things that you can offer to the consumers, something that they've long been yearning for, something that isn't available until now. Be the very first to offer it to them.

Build your web site and do what it takes to get net clients to go to your site. Invest in SEO or search engine optimization services from a good company. You want your web site to be a part of the outcomes of such search engines as Google and Yahoo, right? Harvest this internet marketing advantage by way of appropriate SEO techniques to realize more traffic on your web site which would eventually convert to sales.

Other internet marketing processes you will be able to easily apply are email marketing and writing blogs or articles. Write ups in your web page that encompass relevant subjects in connection to your business will give you that most needed increase in ranking in Google or Yahoo search outcomes. If the proper key words are included, you invite people to visit your internet site.

The web is undeniably a large online global marketplace. Take advantage of the benefits your company can have from it via an aggressive internet marketing plan. The opportunity is yours to catch, use and keep.

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What Details Must Chinese Officials Include In Their Replica Of Greenwich, CT?

A delegation of more than 20 hedge fund operators, government officials and representatives of business organizations spent much of Monday visiting area firms and at a reception at the Stamford branch of the University of Connecticut, discussing their desire to establish a hedge fund community in FengXian, one of 18 districts that comprise Shanghai. Greenwich could be the example that the Chinese want to emulate, according to Zhang Xiaosong, a member of the Standing Committee and vice magistrate of the Shanghai FengXian Committee of the CPC People’s Government of FengXian District Shanghai. “Shanghai wants to be an international city and a center for hedge funds,” he told an audience at the reception. “We want to know how to create a good environment to attract the financial industry.” [Advocate via Daily Intel]

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What Should We Make of Peter Thiel’s “20 Under 20″ Education Program?

Several people have been asking me to weigh in publicly on the “20 under 20″ initiative announced by Peter Thiel in which he will award up to $100,000 to 20 people under the age of 20 who agree immediately to pursue entrepreneurship (the implication of which is that they’d drop out of university to do so).

Thiel and friends will also agree to mentor these young entrepreneurs. Here is their inaugural class.

So is this a good idea? My 2 cents:

1. This is a worthy goal and I applaud Peter Thiel

We need to take some risks in education and in innovation in this country so anybody that it trying to break through the traditional mold and try to create a new model ought to be lauded, not attacked. We have a severe shortage of talented engineers in this country, for example, and science doesn’t seem to garner as much attention & focus in the US as it does in some other countries. As a country we need to address this.

Read the opening quote from his initial press release on the program …

“Warning that America’s long term economic prospects are uncertain without radical innovation in technology, Peter Thiel this week launched the Thiel Fellowship to foster the next generation of tech visionaries.”

That’s a goal I can get behind. And think about it – is it really that radical? He’s going to hand select a group of 20 very high potential individuals with really high IQs and presumably from prestigious universities and offer them not only fellowships but also the exact same kind of “social proof” that one gets from graduating from Harvard or working for McKinsey. Actually, they’ll get even more attention because this selection will put them in an even more exclusive peer group and will introduce them to even more connected mentors.

So I don’t mourn for their lost youth or their downside consequences if their businesses doesn’t succeed. In a way, they’ve already “made it.”

2. Do not try this at home

What worries me about “20 under 20″ is not Peter Thiel but the potential for lesser-quality knock-offs. Let me give you an example. In the US we now have some very well established incubation programs run by high-caliber mentors including IdeaLab, yCombinator, TechStars, BetaWorks and Launchpad LA. Suddenly everybody wants to be an incubator. I get approached literally EVERY week by some new person with no real outstanding track record wanting to launch yet another incubator. You know how this ends.

So while “20 under 20″ might encourage 5-10 similar initiatives I think the broader message isn’t necessarily the right one. Just because I think that it’s OK that a group of 20 Mensa candidates is hand selected to have access & guidance doesn’t mean it’s the right answer for the masses. It probably isn’t. When students drop out of a middle-tier university to join an also-ran copycat program of “20 under 20″ and when their startups aren’t successful they will likely find themselves in employment no-man’s-land. That’s not wise. Especially if they have 1-2 year’s college debt accumulated.

3. The value of a college education

I am very passionate and on record about the value of education. Yet ironically it’s not always the classroom experience that provides all of the value. Going to college is about creating independence. It’s about discovering who you are as a human being. What you think. Whom your lifetime friends will be. It’s about exploration. Having fun. Trying all sorts of new things. Gaining new skills. Education is self discovery.

And I’m very on record as saying that I learned more about leadership from becoming president of my fraternity than I did in any classroom. I was prepared way more for business success in my political science classes than in my economics ones (I was a double major). In Poly Sci I learned critical thinking and writing. I also become interested in geopolitics, which led me to a life of wanting to travel and work in different locations. I subsequently lived abroad for 11 years in 5 countries and worked in 9 countries. That would never have come if I had been more single-minded at 18.

Single minded is good for some. Not for others. Actually, not for many. As humans we need empathy. We need to draw on multiple disciplines to make better decisions. We need to study humanities, religion, politics, biology, economics as well as computer science. We become more rounded individuals.

4. The challenges of a system that aims to educate all equally

I do struggle still with our college education system in the US. I’m not sure how much sense it makes to be graduated from a fourth-tier university with an esoteric major and being unprepared for the workforce ahead. I somehow think a system that goes back to a model of “apprenticeships” or “trade guilds” might churn out people more ready for the workforce. But the other problem is equally important – not graduating students starting life with large amounts of debt. If you’re graduating without the perfect credentials and without the right skills for employment yet you have debt accumulated over 4-5 years you’re already starting life on the wrong foot. I worry that we create people who start their careers as indentured servants.

So while college needs to be an option for all, there has to be a middle ground between a 4-year university degree and somebody only employable in a low-income job. This is where training programs come into play. Maybe 2 years of computer training would suit some people better than 4 years of book study? Maybe off-shoring could become more on-shoring and helping drum up employment in places like Detroit.

5. Would I ever encourage anybody to drop out of his or her education?

99.9% of the time where people ask whether I think they ought to stay in school the answer is “yes.” If I’m counseling young people I often coach them to consider getting degrees that will be practical for becoming more employable when they graduate. But stay in school. Experience life. Discover who you are. Get that piece of paper that shows the workforce that you have a degree of discipline to start and finish something.

But the truth is that there ARE outliers and I think that in my gut I feel the same way I image Peter does. I’ll give you a real world example. A friend of mine is currently pursuing a joint JD/MBA at Stanford. He graduated from Harvard undergrad. He’s already built several tech/media businesses and I know he is talented enough to do something significant in life – whatever he chooses. He is torn between finishing his degrees and starting his next entrepreneurial endeavor 3 years earlier (he is finished with year 1 of 4). He doesn’t want to practice law. What I said to him was,

“You’ve already got the credentials for success. You have the Harvard undergrad. You built a company at 22. You were accepted to Stanford Law School AND Stanford Graduate School of Business. That’s enough. Anything else you do in life you will always have that calling card. Being a graduate of SLS or Stanford GSB won’t give you anything else that you don’t already have. You’re not looking to practice law. You don’t need a network.

You’re more entrepreneurial than 99% of people in any b-school class. You have a stated goal of building your company. You’re not going to learn anything in that classroom that you wouldn’t learn better by doing at your next company. You have no debts to pay off. Why wouldn’t you start now?”

6. And finally …

I don’t give a shit whether you were graduated from college or not. If you’re excellent at what you do (coding, sales, marketing, leadership) and you can demonstrate that, I really don’t care if you went to or dropped out of college. At least not as an entrepreneur. Others might care so you should take that into consideration. I personally don’t. And I can attest to this because one of my leading developers at both of my startups never finished college. It never affected him when it was time to check in his code and I’d hire him again in a second.

Image courtesy of Fotolia

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What to do When a Tech Giant Decides to Eat Your Lunch

An edited version of this post originally ran on TechCrunch. This version has some additional details on a portfolio company I’ve invested in, which are disclosed below.

WWDC. The annual Apple event where no real hints about what products they plan to release are floated in the public domain in advance.

No private head nods are given to small startup companies to help them prepare. We’re in a market where 800-pound gorillas throw their weight around and the rest of the market races to react and survive.

Any company who develops products reliant on iOS spends weeks crapping their pants before WWDC. No vacation schedules allowed for weeks before or weeks after. The announcements come out in one day and then even if you survive the annual release announcements you often still have to scramble to make sure your product is ready to work on time.

It’s madness.

This happens with Google, too. Every change in the algorithm wipes years of effort off of the traffic numbers of affected companies as anybody hurt by the Google Panda release will tell you.

Or Twitter launches its own photo-sharing app integrated into their product.

What is a startup to do?

For starters, fear not. The world seldom ends. You just have to deal with some insufferable VCs and journalists for a while. They risk little but of course knew better all along.

It is the same movie I saw 10 years ago when every VC would say to me, “yeah, I get that you’re an online document sharing service, but what’s going to happen when Microsoft enters the market? You’ll be dead.”

Puh-lease. Tell that to DropBox. Or Box.net. Tell that to DocStoc, Scribd or SlideShare.

Right. Just like Microsoft stopped AOL from winning the early online wars. And AOL stopped Yahoo! from winning the Internet portal wars. And Yahoo! in turn killed Google when it came to search. While Google stopped Facebook in their tracks when they built a social networking company. And Facebook stomped out Twitter from building an open social network. And we know how Facebook stomped out FourSquare.

And on and on. eBay / StubHub. Amazon / Zappos. Twitter / Instagram.

Focus wins.

In your head you know that the reality is that bigger companies simply CANNOT compete effectively on all fronts. Focus by extremely talented teams beats breadth. It’s why we all exist.

The golden rules to live by are:

• Platforms are channels not businesses. Don’t confuse the two. If you put all of your eggs into one platform shame on you, not them. If their business torpedoes you, you should have been diversified.


• You need to be clear on what your sources of differentiation are from the biggest competitors or you’re dead anyways. If your product isn’t 10x better in your own mind, hang up your cleats now.


• You need to be “known” for your sources of differentiation so even when the press declares you dead because Facebook, Google, Apple, Twitter are going to eat your lunch they are describing the threat in terms of them copying YOU. When they talk about “check-ins being dead” it’s because you created them. Or “gamification.” Innovation has become synonymous with you.


• You need to stay focused. Have clarity of purpose. Don’t be scared. Be willing to shift positioning based on new market information but not lose your inner core.

Here are some examples.

FourSquare – I was recently asked on Quora whether I thought FourSquare was dead now that Facebook was going to launch “Places“. Others feared Yelp. Me? I chuckled. Sure, if Zuckerberg thought that check-ins were the single most important part of his future business and put 200 engineers on the problem and all of their market might, they’d squash FourSquare like a bug. That’s not going to happen.

In reality Facebook will have a small team on it. They’ll have to integrate with every other initiative on Facebook and adhere to common internal standards. They’ll fight for resources. End users come to Facebook to share photos, chat with friends or play games. Checking in is an afterthought for most. FourSquare is a different and unique product.

I can’t tell you whether FourSquare will end up being a huge and lasting company or not. I’m not on the inside. But I feel confident that its future is its own to execute and innovate on and whether it succeeds or not will have little to do with Facebook itself. I have on several occasions said publicly that I felt the biggest challenge for FourSquare is to know what comes after the check-in. What is the next major innovation. They seem to have several interesting ideas.

It will certainly be interesting to watch.

Group Messaging –  We just came off of another annual WWDC. In it Apple announced its new iMessage product. Apple built the product, so no doubt it will be freakin’ awesome. I’m sure I will personally is it as we own 2 Macs, 2 iPads, 3 iPods and 2 iPhones. Yes, we’re a fanfamily. The New York times came out with their list of companies impacted by Apples new releases and all of the major group messaging companies were on the list of companies in need of checking their shorts.

The major players are GroupMe, Kik and TextPlus (I’m an investor). Actually, I wouldn’t consider all of them “group messaging” companies but ever since SxSW that seems to be what the press wants to talk about.

Let’s look at some simple facts:

• Apple will let you communicate seamlessly with all of your other friends using Apple devices. That’s a lot of people.


• But the much larger market for smartphones will be non-Apple and all of the app-to-app messaging companies allow you to communicate with a much broader set of smart phones. iMessage will not. At least not initially. It does for the Apple world what BBM was for the RIM world. KIK became large in the first place specifically because BBM wasn’t interoperable across platforms so you know the market is broader than one closed ecosystem.


• Some services like Tango already do video calls. This is already better than what Apple’s Facetime provides out-of-the-box


• TextPlus also lets you communicate with ALL of your friends for free. How? We terminate to SMS. That means you can message to all of your friends who don’t have smart phones or iPods. The majority of the country and world are still on not-so-smart phones. Apple won’t address this anytime soon.


• TextPlus also gives users phone numbers. That matters to the millions of iPod Touch users who don’t yet have phones. Their TextPlus phone number has become their identity.


• The WSJ recently talked about how messaging was a wedge that was leading to a decline in the lucrative telephony SMS business. They cited Skype (now Microsoft). Here are some interesting stats for you: Last month TextPlus generated 1.3 billion messages between 8.2 million of our 17.5 million customers. We estimate that this messaging volume is more than 30x larger than Skype’s mobile messaging. Why? Again, focus. We’re a mobile first company. Skype is an amazing web company.

BBM will have another major push and we expect an inevitable Google rebuttal to iMessage. Purely being “group messaging” will be stuck in the cracks of the giants. Expect big competition in the group messaging market.

But shitting our pants? Hardly. We’re focused. We know our purpose. We know where we’re going. It will be differentiated. It will be hard for the largest players to compete with our vision. If we don’t get there one day it will be our lack of execution. We can’t be babies and cry about the big boys. If there are no big boys – you’re in the wrong market.

Bit.ly – Remember when Twitter announced that they would be embedding their own URL shortening and the Bit.ly obituaries were written in the first 24 hours? As far as I can tell Bit.ly is still around. In fact, they continue to be the dominant URL shortner and provide a plethora of analytics data to go with it. Next market moves? I dunno. But dead? Hardly. I still use them nearly every day.

Boxee – I remember talking with Avner Ronen before the announcement of the new Apple TV last year and just as Google TV was ramping up their marketing messages. Boxee had gone from marketing darling to dead man walking in the press in a matter of months. Avner was so calm. He pointed out that Apple would build a closed system that would appeal to part of the market. Ultimately a small percentage of his total opportunity. Boxee was about being open. It was about freeing up content to be displayed on big screens regardless of the source or content type. Where Apple would veer toward control, Boxee would bend toward open.

And whenever you see closed systems all of the major players not invited inside the velvet rope will search for technology partners. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. So every OEM not included in the Apple TV universe now knows they’re on notice to innovate. And no TV manufacturer with a brain doesn’t see that Apple will likely one day have its own Internet TV that will be scooped up by adoring fans like me. They already have beautiful monitors that are practically TVs. So hardware players need some software friends. Boxee might just be what the doctor ordered.

And GoogleTV? Yeah, that would slow down his discussions with OEMs whom he hoped would be building on the Boxee software stack more quickly, but he said to me,

“Mark, we’re not looking to build a quick flip. We have a long-term vision that video content will be widely available whether you produced it and it sits on your computer, whether it’s the sports you love but is currently only available on a content bundle or whether it’s long-tail content that appeals to large audiences of people who currently can’t get it over the Internet. And we’ll build the best discovery engine to find the best content.”

Will he get there? I’m not sure I’d easily bet against Avner. He really does have a great vision in a market that will undoubted be disrupted. But his story doesn’t map to an easy headline. Let’s see if he can put up the numbers over the next 3-5 years.

Summary

It’s not a sufficient strategy to think you’re going to win because you’re competing with big, dumb companies. They’re usually much smarter than you think. But they’re not nimble. They can’t take as many risks. They can’t iterate as quickly. They can’t easily have a focused set of marketing messages and a user experience that will have clarity of purpose for users.

You must figure out how you deliver real differentiation. What you’ll stand for, be known for. You have to have a core. You can’t let the market machinations and press proclamations worry you. The big guys can’t crush you as easily as others think. Be a cockroach. Be indestructible. And remember that competing with the big boys is not for wimps. Fight hard. No cry babies. The big boys will do what the big boys will do. And if you raise VC make sure your backers have a long-term vision and the internal fortitude to last the periods where it seems that the big boys will eat your lunch.

Good luck.

Image courtesy of Fotolia via @ryanborn

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What Wall Street Can Learn From The Southwest Pilot Suspended For Sizing Up Colleagues While Mic’d Up

Thinking about taking a few minutes to evaluate the attractiveness of your co-workers to the guy or girl who sits next to you? Maybe don’t do it over the PA system? Or into a bullhorn? Or near a recording device?

In the raunchy rant, the unidentified pilot unleashed a slew of expletives as he ripped into his co-workers’ sexuality, age and size…”There’s 12 flight attendants…Eleven (expletive) over the top (expletive), (expletive) homosexuals and a granny,” the pilot said, clearly unaware his cockpit microphone became stuck open. “Eleven. I mean, think of the odds of that. I thought I was in Chicago, which was party-land. “After that, it was just a continuous stream of gays and grannies and grands.” Seconds later, the pilot offered his unsavory views of Houston flight attendants. “Now I’m back in Houston, which is easily one of the ugliest bases,” the pilot told his co-pilot in the recording obtained by Houston TV station KPRC. “I mean it’s all these (expletive) old dudes and grannies and there’s like maybe a handful of cute chicks.”

The diatribe, broadcast over the Houston air traffic control radio frequency on March 25, blocked communication between air traffic controllers and other pilots for more than two minutes, ABC News reported. At one point, the air traffic controller in Houston tried to interrupt the onslaught. “OK, whoever is, uh, transmitting, better watch what you’re saying,” the controller said.

Southwest Airlines suspends pilot after sexist, profanity-laced rant broadcast across Texas airspace [NYDN]

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