why permission marketing is bootstrapping

his own experience learned seth godin, that old marketing rules are partly obsolete.

not the 30 second "super bowl" ad makes the difference any more. nor the top down political marketing campaign. bottom up is the "new" blue! but did not start.ups alway to do that - somehow?

back to the start. in seth godin´s book "permission marketing" he describes how he had the opportunity to spend $6 million in old style marketing ways. putting up big adds, tv commercials, big sponsorships. only to realize that the return on business was negligible. his conclusion he wrote down in his book in typical american business book style.

he finds out, that it is necessary for marketers to shift from attention to permission marketing. establish a customer relation in steps from light involvement to heavy. and always give back to the customer one every deepening of relationship.

this is nothing new for start.ups. let aside the internet bubble this is how start.ups are forced, limited by financial constraints, to approach their customers. it is called "bootstrapping". keep costs low, focus on your most likely target. approach it in the most cost effective way, such that a long term relationship can be established.

this might not please the egos of the big marketing spenders in the big corporations. their pr/marketing agencies will promise them to establish also permission marketing campaigns for them. "big" surely in money terms.

what start.ups can take from the ideas of godin is, how they can structure and monitor their way to approach their customers. to find out what is behind godin´s five steps is worth reading therefore for start.ups.

more incubators in uk and us

more incubators mean more opportunites to pitch ideas. and they provide ideas about current valuation of ideas. it is recommended to use those opportunities as long as they are that plentyful.

another chance to pitch your start.up: 7-8th march, london: startupcamp. 

in the us, launchbox digital is looking for innovative ideas. see also the respective techchrunch article. the start.up mindmap was updated accordingly.

five words describe your business

it requires severe effort to describe a business in five words. if a company, an entrepreneur or any employee can not do this, then big chunk of work lies ahead.

the idea to describe what makes a company unique and differentiates it from their competitors in five words gets quite some focus by jay conrad levinson in his book "guerrilla marketing". although being a 1985 first published classic marketing book, nothing of its relevance is lost.
how this simple idea often is ignored showed a recent information and telecommunications trade fair, the "itnt" in vienna.
what information does a potential customer get at an it-fair about companies describing themselves as "software solutions", "it solutions" or "the it company"? other then that they do what all the others do and that they are not anything special at all. one could even think, those companies do not know by themselves what they stand for. the rather do whatever you dare to give them money for.
there are exceptions though. a company called "comnet" for example. while already their name gives an indication, that communication and networking is their business, they describe their business as follows "connect-protect-controll". seeing that, one gets what they focus on. the bit extended slogan goes "we create value through networks". while their business is not of much interest here, it has to be acknowledged, that they are clear about their message. and if one counts, there are not more then five words to do that. there is room for improvement though. for example, what are they doing better then the others can not be seen.
five words to describe what a company does, how it differentiates itself from all the others remains a tough job. one worth to tackle though.

fatfoogoo´s financing success factors

@ the last barcamp vienna martin herdina, ceo of the austrian start.up fatfoogoo named three main success factors for their subsequent funding rounds:

1) use contact networks

they used their existing contacts for angel funding. and kept leveraging the angels contacts to acquire their first vc round. and guess how they are looking for their next investment? by using the network of their first round investors.

2) sell and convince

their contacts with the potential angel investors did not spare them the job to sell them the idea of fatfoogoo. they had to convince them about their visionary idea and the resulting business opportunities.

3) believe in yourself

strong believe in their ideas and abilities were and are necessary to push ahead successfully, not only in terms of financing.

there is nothing to add to that.

6 minutes to tell your story: demo08

again, demo2008, a launchpad for new high tech start.ups in the u.s. is running.
the idea of demo is, that around 70 start.ups unveil their companies in front of broad a venture and press audience. everyone gets around 6 minutes on the stage to tell their message.
besides all the press-fuzz, attending demo does not at all guarantee you bringing home plenty of vc money and it´s pricy.

however, there is a great thing about demo for every start.up.
all the pitches can be followed live (no firefox on windows though) or offline. that gives plenty of examples, how others present their company. something you normally would not get a chance to, because that happens in the closed offices of VCs.
there are good and bad examples, sure. but what a resource to learn to focus. to bring across the message in 6 minutes, how to present and make anyone want know more about you and your start.up.

for anyone who likes to search the archives, system one, an outstanding austrian high tech start.up, was there in 2006.

social entrepreneurship

enjoy the barcamp vienna january 2008 presentation on "social entrepreneurship".
please note that thanks to valerie there are now even more interesting books in the link list.

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barcamp vienna 01/2008 1st round up

barcamp vienna was a great experience again. werkzeugH was full of people, there were three parallel tracks running all through the day. meaning you always were missing at least on interesting session.

fatfogoo, recently successfully funded austrian start.up, showed how they use up to date "web 2.0" marketing to reach out with their idea of an traiding platform for virtual (game) items.

max kossatz´ hack for a better blog search gave the audience quite a bit to think. and his statement that to make a search engine like google is nothing special after all was brought forward with strong confidence.

the track about "social entrepreneurs" enjoyed quite an audience. thanks to the quite controversial standpoints of valerie hackl an me, there was a vibrant discussion going on.

the track "gläserner mensch dank social media" (transparent humans thanks to social media), of jana herwig, revealed the potential burden of everyones´s internet history and the need for a thoughtful use of social media. this stands for those who publish as well as for those which use data from the internet to "judge" about someone.

the discussion with paul böhm on "startup financing" was drawing a not too optimistic picture of funding possibilities for web start.ups in austria. thanks to fatfoogoo, interesting insights of a recently venture funded start.up were shared among the audience.

that one of the founding members of netvibes cames from austria, namely "capitan" alexander kirk came as interesting news to me. making the audience some appetite for the upcoming release ginger of netvibes, without handing out invites for the beta though. they are running their service on just around 40 servers. that´s a challenge.

thatmuch the brief roundup of the sessions i could attend full-time. interesting discussions all along the way were the "salt" in the already tasty "soup de barcamp vienna".

a big "thanks" to the sponsors and the organizers for their efforts and support!