Is a Start Up the Same as Gambling? I Hope Not

This week I’m in the city of New Orleans for a conference.  I’ve never been before and it has been eye-opening.  As with anything, there are pluses and minuses.  The minuses — the weather and 3 inch long cockroaches.  In fact I just left a fancy dinner, barely eating my food because one NO’s finest cockroaches scurried across my table. 

The upside to N.O.?  First, if I lived here, I would lose a lot of weight — as I don’t eat sea food.  The second: they have a great casino dowtown.  Last night I played blackjack for 2 hours, and I was thinking about joining a poker game. 

You often hear that starting a new business is a gamble.  Well I certainly hope that’s not the case.  I get the point that starting a business involves risk, but risk doesn’t equate to risk for me (so long as it’s a calculate risk).  Last night, as I was playing cards, it seemed pretty clear that most of what was happening was pure chance — no strategy.  I mean, you could have a betting strategy, but if you followed it perfectly, it still gets you to a coin-flip chance of winning. 

I don’t envision the same type of discipline (or lack thereof) with starting a small business.  Sure, you still may go bust, but that doesn’t mean strategy was essentially pointless.  With a business, a good team and idea should get you a better than toss-up chance to succeed.  Whether you recognize if you have a good team or idea is another story.  By the way, I lost $100 last night…so I hope I’m a better business person than gambler.

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Don't quit on me!

When starting a small business, everyone wears multiple hats and jumps in to assist where needed.  As your business grows, you work to hire people to fill specific roles so that:

1) the founders can focus on more strategic direction

2) to drive the business forward

3) effectively execute on key initiatives.

You proudly get your entire team staffed up and people are working hard in their roles and the business grows exponentially – everything is on the up and up, customers are fascinated with your product line and you have a backlog of requests to implement… and then, somebody quits.

So this perfect (well at least manageable) entourage you have created to implement your product roadmap now comes to a screeching halt, or at least imposes a very large mountain to navigate around. To keep business moving, you must revert back to wearing multiple hats, which in turn impacts growth and forces you to re-prioritize efforts, at least until you can back fill.

In larger companies, the back fill process can be lengthy and daunting.  What tends to happen is until the position is refilled, the tasks of the resigning employee are dumped on other employees… it becomes a juggling process to continue forward momentum.

While you cannot 100% prohibit turnover from happening, you can implement processes to ensure smooth transition in the event and also back fill (or redistribute effectively) so that you don’t end up pushing further resources out the door from overload.  People leave for a variety of reasons, but when building a team for a small business and growing your company, retention can be critical.  Then again, sometimes, that resignation is music to your ears…

How do you motivate your team to stand by you? What transition plans do you have in place in the event of a mutiny?

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When Virtual and Real Worlds Collide

Last night the real and virtual worlds kep colliding.  How did it start?  With a happy hour.  Which is always a nice way for the evening to start.  My good friend from my old workplace was in town.  He was there for a conference and met with some of the attendees after the first day. 

Here comes the first collision.  I didn’t get a call from my friend that he was in town…instead he tweeted me the location.  My wife and I showed up. 

The second collision was that most of the happy hour attendees knew each other from social media.  When I was asked how I was connected to the happy hour, my answer of being a former co-worker of the organizer seemed so antiquated.

I’m having a very nice time at the happy hour — talking technology, KikScore, other businesses (like BumperTunes.com).  At the end, as I was leaving, I realized that I knew the Twitter handles of people instead of their actual names. 

As we decide to go to dinner after the happy hour, we of course jump on our available smartphones and make a reservation on OpenTable.  We go to dinner and my buddy proceeds to take pictures of the food and outline what his Yelp review i going to be of the establishment. 

At the end of the night, we said goodbye and then my friend thanked us on Facebook and Twitter.

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Does Your Twitter Profile Picture Really Matter if You are a Business?

So we at KikScore have our brand name and a picture of our logo as our Twitter picture (avatar is shown above).  It has suited us just fine over the last six or so months as we have been on Twitter after we launched KikScore.  We really have not received many complaints or even questions about our Twitter profile picture.  Frankly that is not surprising as we would expect the Twitter universe to ask us other questions if they came across KikScore – like tell me more about your product, or what is your background or give us comments like you have a cool service and homepage etc (all actual questions and comments received on Twitter).

In a prior post, we posed a question whether it is better for your company to have a personality on Twitter?  We generally came out with the answer that a personality is good because it gives the community, your customers and your followers something to identify with when they think of your business.  For example, if you spark a conversation, express an opinion on matters, have funny tweets, retweet interesting content, it probably will be good for your brand as people know what you stand for as a business.  If your customers and the community know more about your company, the greater the chance that a bond/relationship can form between you and your customers.

So what about your company’s Twitter profile picture?  Should you have a your brand logo or should you put a real person in your Twitter profile?  I have now heard from multiple people at numerous events and conferences – these would be the social media gurus that live and breathe social media everyday – who almost all suggest having a picture of a real person along with your company’s logo.  They suggest the person pictured could be your social media manager, a group picture of some of the folks from the company or maybe even a rotating picture of different employees every 60 days or so.

Why do they recommend this?  I have heard psychologically that customers, the community and people in general will generally identify more with a person’s face than a picture of a company’s brand name.  I actually think there may be some merit to that.  Think about it. If you see a logo, it is generally nameless and faceless and has no personality.  It is just a logo and you really do not get much of a connection with that logo.  Logos can even become largely interchangeable after you see enough of them.  Now change that logo, even to someone that has a picture of a real person standing in front of a company’s logo and make that a Twitter profile picture – you will probably get my attention.  First, you get a sense of who is behind the Twitter account for that company.  Second, you can now in some ways put a face to a brand name.  Thirdly, I have to say this because I do this even now – when you think of that brand name you actually think of that person’s face.  So in some ways a picture of a real person with a logo could appear to create a great connection, even if it is just a subtle psychological one.

So where does this all lead us?  Look out as I think we will be changing our Twitter profile picture for KikScore later this week.  I will make sure its not a picture of me because that will scare too many people off.  Lets see if it makes a difference to people and if we get any reactions. We will let you know.

Do you think who or what is on your Twitter profile picture matters for a business?

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TECH Cocktail During DC Week Rocked – Event Pics & Wrap Up

With Digital Capital Week upon us, last night was a great time for the huge (and growing!) DC tech community to come together for Tech Cocktail.  As with previous Tech Cocktail events, this event was billed as a time for us all to “connect, educate and amplify” the local tech signal all while having a few drinks.  A number of startups also put on demos on the second floor of the party at Lux Lounge.  The great thing about this Tech Cocktail compared to others as it took place right in the middle of the first ever DC Tech Week.  DC Tech Week has been a week full of great tech related activities dealing with a whole range of issues from social media, government, future of media to a bunch of cool tech events, lectures even a 140Conference too.  It was also cool to have the backdrop of the World Cup going on too.

Here some of the pictures from last night.  The event got off to a great start and kept rolling.  There just was not enough time to talk to everyone, but it was great to see so many friends and meet a bunch of new people too.  I brought the KikScore force for our east coast team last night as our Colorado team will have to wait for the next one in Boulder.

Picture of Raj Malik from KikScore, Deanna McNeil from among others Ruiz McPherson, Steven Fisher from Appsolve, Browncoats Redemption and Network Solutions and Andrew Bates from Eye Traffic.

Picture of Keith Casey who is Austin bound and the CTO of Blue Parabola,  Steven Fisher a filmmaker and author and  Justin Thorp, Social Media Guru at ClearSpring.

Joe Loong from DelTek and the best title creator for a blog! and Jeremy.

There have been Tech Cocktail events now in Chicago, DC, Boston, Boulder, San Diego (look out Ron Burgundy) and Barcelona. So look out for one of these events coming to your city soon.  You will not regret attending. Thanks to Frank Gruber, the founder of Tech Cocktail, for putting on last night’s event.

Did you attend Tech Cocktail last night? If so, tell us your stories.

Pictures care of the Social Media Swami, Shashi B.

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Netflix Sounds Like a Pretty Cool Place to Work

This article about Netflix on TechCrunch gives a summary of a 128-page PowerPoint deck (that is also included in full at the bottom) that was apparently originally intended as a communication to new employees in order to share the “Seven Aspects of our Culture” at Netflix. 

Most of the ideas in this deck seem like they were written by asking a group of employees of any company, “What policies do you wish your company had?”  A couple of the Netflix policies in this deck that fall into this category would be the  “take as much vacation as you feel you need” policy and the “pay employees more than they could get anywhere else” policy.  These sound like great ideas if you are a potential candidate to work at Netflix but I think that these policies can only work in certain cultures where only the cream of the crop work.

There are also a few Netflix policies in this deck that really seem like good ideas no matter where you work.  One of the policies basically says that if you think about one person on your team that you would do anything to keep from leaving you should then look at the other people on your team and consider firing them so that you open a spot for a new “superstar” employee to take.

Another idea in this deck that is very interesting to me is that Netflix apparently doesn’t believe in offering their employees training or “career development” as they put it.  They think that they are helping develop their employees by simply allowing them to interact with their other colleagues at Netflix.  They also make a good point that high performance people are often very resourceful and will find ways to develop their own careers and should not rely on a corporation to do this for them.

There are a lot of other interesting ideas in this Netflix deck…check it out and let us know what other ideas you like.

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Elevator Pitching: Better than it Sounds

We’ve been talking to a lot of folks about KikScore these days: potential partners, press, associations and investment types.  They all want two things: (a) a “deck” — i.e. Power Point presentation; and (b) and “Elevator Pitch”  that they can carry back to others.  I’ve already made clear my general dislike for Power Point, but I think the Elevator Pitch is a good thing.  Why?  Well let me list the reasons:

1.  It forces you to think differently about your product.  When you’re working on a service or product, it’s all about adding features.  You’re constantly expanding the functionality in an effort to be the “best” or provide a more bundled solution.  The goal is to make sure customers can’t live without you and won’t stray for some piece of functionality that they may want from another source.  The Elevator Pitch makes you get away from listing out features and functionality.  Instead it makes you describe what problem you’re actually solving.  And if you’re not solving a problem, and this problem isn’t evident from the short pitch, you probably don’t have a very compelling service or product.

2.  Helps you with Messaging.  You’ve got to describe your service in a way that is free from industry buzz words or meaningless technical jargon.  The Elevator Pitch requires a generalist message.  For it to work, you’ve got to be clear, concise and persuasive.  We’ve already thought of some new marketing hooks while putting together our 2 lines of description on our service.

3.  Makes you think of what’s important to others.  You’re so involved in creating the product and serving customers, you sometimes forget what’s important to others (e.g. “what’s your business model”, “is it scalable”).  The pitch makes you think of things that you normally don’t consdier day to day.

Now the only question is how long really is an elevator ride.  Do you have any advice on the Elevator Pitch?

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3 Small Business & Startup Blogs That You Should Check Out

Over the last few months, I have come across three really good blogs that consistently have excellent information and incredibly useful tips for small businesses and startups.  Since KikScore’s blog is focused on both of those areas – and pop culture with our recent posts about the Human Centipede, AC/DC and Lebron James – it is great to see the great content that these blogs are putting out.  So I thought I would pass these blogs along for the community in case you have not come across any of them.

The three blogs are:

1. The Small Company Blog – This is an excellent blog that covers all things small business.  But it goes beyond that and focuses on providing real practical tips for operating your small business. For example they have an excellent post on Developing a Comprehensive Marketing Plan for your small business as well as this post on 5 Ownership Mistakes that Will Kill Small Company Growth.  That and many of the other posts there are worth a read.  Also follow @TSCB on Twitter, Eric Rudolf the founder of this blog put out some great tweets.

2. Startup Marketing Blog – This blog goes way beyond its name and covers much more than marketing.  If you have a startup, this is a must read blog because of the breadth of topics that it covers related to building and growing a startup.  Beyond covering issues for marketing, this blog also has great tips on startup strategy, approaches to running your startup and tips on bringing your product to market.   The caveat is this is not an every day blog that you check since the content is generally updated about once or twice a month.  Nevertheless, when there is new content, it is excellent.  The blog is the brainchild of Sean Ellis who has run the marketing for two startups that have gone from launch to IPO so he has super street credibility.

3. Keys to Growth Blog – This blog is focused on giving guidance for software startups and especially their CEOs, but I have actually found that the content is just as applicable for small business owners.  The thread that weaves through most posts is positioning yourself and your company for growth through having the right people and right leaders in your startup.  There are also highly practical tips that are included such recent posts on strategies to cutting your company’s expenses.  Adam Ross runs this blog and he has two mantras: “Call your shot, then execute”. “Leadership is action, not position”.  That spirit is the basis for this blog and that is why it made this list of ours.

As we come across other good blogs, we will continue to tell the world like we did previously in our Go To Small Business Blogs Part 1 and Part 2.

Let us know if you have any good blogs that you have come across lately.

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Vegas: Good For Business, Bad For Relationships

Here’s the situation:  Raj and I are going to be speaking at a conference in a few months.  It will be a great opportunity to talk about KikScore and learn from fellow entrepreneurs.  Sounds good, right?  Um, did I mention it is in Las Vegas?  Did I mention that my wife is not really into Vegas?  I guess she doesn’t mind Vegas in and of itself.  She minds me going to Vegas with Raj — unsupervised.  I’ll let it go that she thinks I need supervision and get to the main point. 

Sometimes what is great for business — e.g. new partnerships, conferences, new channel development — is not necessarily great for your personal life.  I’m not even talking about work/life balance (which i’m convinced is not every achievable).  Instead it’s a matter of value conflict.  Let’s say that KikScore could sign a lucrative deal with a deplorable company.  I would at least think about it.  My wife would be dead set against it — and I think she’d judge me a little for doing the proposed deal. 

So what’s the end result of my Vegas dilemma — I’m going to Vegas with Raj…and Raj and my wife.  Geez!

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Digital Capital Week & World Cup Start Tomorrow – Are You Going?

So tomorrow begins the once every four year madness of the World Cup. The 2010 World Cup will be played in South Africa and should be a blast if you are attending it.  For DC folks, on Saturday the first game that the US plays in against England will actually be broadcast live from Dupont Circle – they are calling it Soccer in the Circle – brought to you by the same folks that had the epic snowball fight back in February during the massive blizzard.  I will be there on Saturday afternoon.  It should be a packed house there for a great game.

About 12 hours after the World Cup literally kicks off tomorrow, the first ever DC Digital Capital Week gets rolling in Washington DC.  This more than a week long event is being billed as 10 days of Creative Technology Events.  There are some fantastic tech events that include Zappos.com CEO, Tony Hsieh a #140 Conference by Jeff Pulver, a large Tech Cocktail event and much much more. Check out the full schedule here.

I will be attending some of the DC Week events over the next week and am really excited.  Stay tuned for our updates on Twitter and here on our blog.

Which events will you be attending?

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