collistaeedwebstartup 100801213226-phpapp02
TRANSCRIPT
What Idea?
• Solve problems you’ve experienced
• Observe and looking for niches/problems
• Help people make money
• Not all businesses are equal
A Problem I Have …
• It’s hard to sell advertising for RSS and Email
• The market leader in RSS doesn’t provide Email Digests
• There is no one-stop RSS/Email/Twitter service for publishers
My Idea: A Service That …
• Helps people follow blogs with RSS, RSS Digest, Email, Email Digest, Twitter, Facebook, all automated for the publisher
• Helps bloggers make money with self serve advertising on RSS, Email and Twitter
BlogFollower
• Disclaimer: I’m not saying this is actually a great idea, but it’s a good example idea. And executed well, probably could work.
• Lots of ideas could be good if executed well.
• It’s not very glamorous or trendy, but it does fulfill a real need for a growing target market
Research
• Do other people think this is a problem?
• Is the problem solved already?
– Look fordirectcompetitors
– Look for similar competitors
– Ask around
• BlogFollower Competitiors:Aweber, Feedburner, Feedblitz, TwitterFeed, HeyAmigo (Defunct)
Identify the Audience
• Primary Audience: Bloggers
• Secondary Audiences: Readers, Advertisers
• Are these audiences growing or declining?
• How will you reach and capture these audiences? Do you know them well? Do you really know what their problems are?
• Survey them. They may tell you some surprising things!
Is There Money in This?
• How will you make money?
• How are competitors making money?
• Be pessimistic. To generate $1,000 p/m:
– $10-20CPM is possible … but $.5 - $1 is more likely. At $1 CPM, you’d need 1,000,000 impressions a month
– For example < 1% conversion for subscriptions. At $10 p/m subscription, you’d need 10,000 free subscribers to convert 100
• Of course you can do better than these numbers, but you should be assuming the worst!
Mission and Vision
• What are you actually trying to do?
• A mission should be something that inspires you to work, and should be the reason you are tackling the business.
• I am a blogger, I like blogging, I believe in individuals working for themselves. Therefore for me the reason I’d get into this business would be:To Make Independent Publishers More Effective
Start Planning!
• Carry a notebook
• Get excited
• Get obsessive
• Try out competitors
• Learn more about the niche
• Start networking
Personal Preparation
• You need to be ready to work hard
• You need to be prepared to carry it alone even if you are planning on having cofounders
• You need to have some money to start off and/or an income to subsidize you
Cofounders
• Find people you trust
• Find people who have different strengths
• Find people who work as hard as you
• Find people who you like and get on with
• You need to either:
– lead people
– join someone else’s team
– find cofounders who are happy to lead in different capacities (technical vsbusiness vs product)
Who is Going to Do What
• Money? Hours? Skills?
• How will shares be split?
• It's important that you don't look back and feel hard done by and that it wasn't fair
• It's like a marriage - you have to work at it, you have to be prepared to compromise
My Core Team
• My Wife: Project Manager, Branding, Organized
• My Best Friend: Detail Work, Money
• My Brother: Capable, Analytical, Business Minded
• My Father: Experienced, Risk-averse, Wise
• Me: Ideas, Instinct, Execution, Confident
Money
• Founder investment
– Keeps you focused
– 100% ownership
• Outside investment
– Time and attention consuming
– Less control
– Pressure to deliver ROI
• Debt
– Repayments and Interest
– You own it, but the bank is watching you carefully
Accountant and a Lawyer
• Essential in the long run and helpful with initial setup
• Get recommendations
• Meet a bunch of them
• Build a relationship
• Initially:
– Lawyer should advise on company setup and shareholder agreement
– Accountant should advise on company setup and creating your
accounts
Business Plan
• Think through assumptions and details
• Don’t get bogged down with them, but don’t skip them either
• More necessary if you need investment or debt
What is Essential?
• Focus first on the essential, core of the product
• Nice-to-haves can be added later
• You should have a vague idea of how you think the product will grow, but don’t over-plan or over-spec
• How you can break the product into iterations?
Blog Follower Features
• Essentials:
– Takes an RSS Feed and pushes out RSS Digests, Emails, Email Digests, Twitter Notifications and Facebook Notifications
– Facilitate Banner Ad Sales on RSS and Email
• Nice-to-haves:
– Self Serve Ad Marketplace
– Analytics
– Advanced Theming and Styling for Emails
– Multiple Payment Methods
Concrete Monetization Plan
• What exactly are you selling?
• Who are the buyers? Who are the users?
• How much will it cost?
• Are there fixed costs you need to account for?
• How much would you need to be selling to break even? To reach your ideal profit?
BlogFollower Monetization
• Option 1: Subscriptions – charge the publishers
– Lots of small increments
– Easy to estimate and plan around, lots of conversion information out there
– Easy to develop and account for
• Option 2: Advertising cut – take a portion of ad sales
– Potentially very lucrative
– Hard to develop and account for
– Only really works if your publishers are all selling lots of ads … hard to estimate and plan
• Option 3: Charge per email sent, per RSS feed published etc
– May be necessary for emails
– Easy to develop and account for
– Could be lucrative
• Option 4: Mixture
Iterations
• Iteration 1:– Publisher Account System
– RSS -> Twitter and Facebook
– RSS -> Email
– RSS -> RSS Digest
• Iteration 2:– Digest Settings
– RSS -> Email Digest
– Email Subscriber Management
• Iteration 3:– Fine Tune and Testing
– Publisher Subscription Billing
– Launch Iteration 1 & 2
• Iteration 4:– Banner Ad System
– Basic publisher directory
• … and so on
UI & Development
• Wireframe out the application
• Assume that UI and Development will be harder and more expensive than you’d planned
• Contractors? Founders? Staff?
DON’T underestimate marketing
• Lots of little startups build decent products
• … but go nowhere
• A mediocre product can go far with good marketing (and you can improve it as you go)
• A great product may market itself … to some extent (but often is teamed with great marketers – e.g. 37Signals)
Branding
• A brand should:
– Be memorable
– Have personality
– Is more than just a logo
– A good brand has a story
• The easiest brand path is to tie it to yourself – be the voice of your site/app/service. Be the spokesperson, the evangelist, the story…
BlogFollower
• Personal brand through
– Blogging
– Personal emails to users about new features and personally responding to support requests
– Evangelizing and networking with the target audience
• Get interviewed on sites and talk about my experience with blogging to create the back-story for the brand
• Position as the anti-Feedburner (be the little guy)
How Will You Find Users?
• Advertising (how much will you spend?)
• Blogging (what will the blog be about?)
• PR (what is the story?)
• Networking (how will you reach out to people?)
• Social Media (e.g. 0atmeal)
BlogFollower Marketing
• Networking with bloggers, particularly bloggers whose audience is other bloggers and internet marketers
• Try to get reviewed, interviewed, run giveaways, send T-shirts, …
• Start a blog aimed at helping bloggers promote themselves
• Try some social media promotion with linkbait articles and giveaways (e.g. free icons for bloggers)
There’s No Finish Line
• Launching is not the end … it’s only the beginning.Now you have to build a business!
• “If you leave and everything stops, you don’t have a business, you have a job.”
• You need to be systematic in replacing yourself while still ensuring that everything keeps moving.
Stay Focused
• Focus on your users
– Marketing to new users
– Improving the product for current users
– Providing great support for current users
• Focus on revenue and numbers
– Accounting should be solid, watch out for cash flow!
– Make sure you have an instinctive feel for what actions correlate
with what numerical results
Continuously Improve
• If you stand still, your competitors will pass you by
• There is a never ending list of improvements and fixes and upgrades you can make. Be prepared for this
• Improving isn’t always ‘adding’, sometimes it’s removing stuff or streamlining