Force of Good: a blog by Lance Weatherby

Secret Cabal

2010-02-09T09:44:11-05:00

I can't tell you how ironic it was when someone create secretcabal on Twitter. Ironic because there was one. Some time ago the good folks at Noro-Moseley Partners had invited me to a dinner meeting at White Space Gallery. The purpose of the dinner was an open discussion of what's happening in the Atlanta startup community. There was a request not to mention it online, which I respected. As did everyone else. Intriguing.

So last night the entire Noro team assembled along with about 16 people from the tech community. We broke out via dinner tables and Mike Elliott and Alan Taetle opened the proceedings with an overview of Noro. Essentially the firm focuses in a geographic area from Virginia to Texas. They talked a bit about their investing criteria. Noro plans to make about 20 investments across the region from Fund VI. Since that fund closed in 2007 they have made 13 investments. Not a bad pace.

Mike also spoke about the contraction of venture firms both locally and nationally. There is tremendous pressure on the entire venture industry to deliver returns to limited partners. Funding devoted to venture could shrink by another 40% in the future. VCs, including Noro, are fighting for survival.

On to the meat of the matter. All those assembled had two menus. One with food and wine pairings. And a second topic menu.

What's the state of the early stage and growth startup community?
What is the best way for all those assembled to work together?
What are Atlanta's strengths?
What needs to change to foster a stronger community?

There was some great discussion. I was fortunate to sit at Mike's table. I did not know him well before. He is smart and engaging. The table and the assembled group reached some interesting conclusions. Personally my biggest conclusion is this. It's great to see the Noro team creating conversation and showing community leadership.

Nothing sinister about that.

TINC.

Advisor Advice

2010-02-08T08:48:12-05:00

I was recently copied on an email exchange that took place between an entrepreneur and an investor.

It was brought to my attention that you have included my name and bio in your company materials as an advisor to your company. Both you and I know that I am not advisor to your company. We spoke at (event redacted) some months ago and that is the extent of it. Please immediately cease and desist from using my name and remove it from your business materials. Thanks. (name of angel investor redacted).

The probability of this firm ever raising an angel round just took a serious hit. At the very minimum it lost a potential deal lead. Depending on how this is handled the water could be poisoned across the entire angel community.

While having a small stable of advisors is extremely important for a startup, you need to form relationships with such folks and seek their permission before listing them as an advisor. And after you get them involved you need to keep them engaged so something like the following does not happen.

Lance: Entrepreneur of Newco tells me you are one of his advisors.
Advisor: Yeah, what's going on with Newco, I have not talked with them in a long time.

Getting good advisors is a bit like dating. You don't want to make it of the high school variety where you tell everyone that you are hanging with the hottie when that is not the case. She is going to find out and it is not going to be pretty. Your rep will take a hit and lord knows what her real boyfriend will do.

Taking My Own Advice

2010-02-06T08:35:28-05:00

I am killing the ATDC marketing circle and Internet circle. These were small monthly gatherings of startup types that were interested in either topic. I will continue to support Brandy Nagel who spearheaded the marketing circle effort.

If anyone wants to engage with me about either subject hit the BookNow button in the right side bar and make yourself an appointment.

Update: The marketing circle lives on. Brandy has moved the event to Friday mornings from 8:30 - 10:30. You can register here.

Instant Karma

2010-02-06T08:04:39-05:00

What in the world you thinking of
Laughing in the face of love
What on earth you tryin' to do
It's up to you, yeah you

John Lennon

Given the comment level and unique visitors at FoG the posts of the last two days have hit a nerve. And it is amazing what people conjecture and say.
Lance can't maintain his brand.

Lance is being all controversial on his blog to drive traffic to better sell sponsorships.

Lance please do get to know the value each event and it’s associated organization has to local startup execution and learn which events are startup-related and which are not.

Here is the real story.

I was driving to work one morning. I really don't remember when. But sometime in the last six months. The Beatles were a little hot in my head due to the release of the remasters, RockBand, and Sir Paul playing in the Piedmont Park. I had run through my Beatles collection and moved on. I was listening to Lennon Legend.

Listening to Lennon Legend in my car. Driving to work. Waiting for traffic to clear on 10th so I could make a left on Spring. Track 16 came on. Nobody Told Me. When John started the second verse that I opened my post with the thought immediately popped into my head "just like the startup community around here."

That's it. Why it popped into my head I don't know. A cognition gestalt.

But as I continued to attend these events the thought kept returning. As people kept asking me to promote their events at an increasing level the thought kept returning. As I had to start mentally scheduling when I was going to promote events so that FoG (40% of readers are not in GA) and my Twitter stream (it seems the majority of followers are not in GA) would not become event spammy Atlanta focused the thought kept returning. As I noticed, as one commenter noted, that it was almost the same set of people that were attending these events the thought kept returning. I ran the "Always something happening and nothing going on" line by some entrepreneurs and they generally agreed.
I wrote the article. My motivation for doing so was plainly stated. I believe "we need to concentrate our event efforts and become more deeply engaged so that startups can focus on more important things than the event of the day" and "fragmented efforts need to form into a core that can create critical mass."

That's it.
No statement that events do not have value. No indication that I would cease to support events. No harmful intent. No evil power thing.
Peace out.

Your Pitch Sucks

2010-02-05T07:07:31-05:00

It's 6:28 am. I have not had coffee, and my wife is out of town so I am taking care of my 10 and 11 year olds. But I am going to pop something out real quick like here.
Yesterday I wrote a little piece about the inordinate amount of technology startup events in Atlanta and how a little thoughtful coordination might be of help. Despite the fact the majority of actual practicing entrepreneurs appeared to agree with my assessment I was called harmful and ignorant. I can assure you I am neither and the subject seems to be good for both conversation and traffic so I thought I would give a little more specific example.
Pitching events. These are events where an entrepreneur gets up on stage in front of a panel and gives a presentation on their company. The panel (or crowd), which is motivated to appear smart, then proceeds to rip the entrepreneur's presentation to shreds because that is what they are supposed to do. Sounds like fun no? To be fair some of these pitch events are great for getting entrepreneurs ready to pitch for real at CapVenture, GRA/TAG Business Launch, Startup Riot, and in front of angel groups (Update: Michael Blake rightly points out in the comments that this is the purpose of PitchCamp mentioned below). If the entrepreneur listens and incorporates the appropriate feedback then their pitches do get better.
Well any hoo there is MIT Run it by the Pros, OnStage, PitchCamp (not sure if it is still active so I won't count it), and Startup Gauntlet. There may be more and if so, please comment. But the way I figure it there are at least 27 of these events a year in Atlanta. Do we really need 27? It's fractured and diffused with oh maybe 50 people in the room at best. Instead of that combine forces and have 12 kick ass pitch events that are must attend for the the entire technology startup community so that they can see what is exciting and new. Have prep events for the companies that are presenting. 120 people show up. Boom baby! You got something real.
One plus one equal three on two. Ready, break.

Nobody Told Me

2010-02-04T10:17:11-05:00

Always something happening and nothing going on
There's always something cooking and nothing in the pot
They're starving back in China so finish what you got
John Lennon
I must be in a contrarian mood. But sometimes when people are zigging you have to zag. John would respect that thought.
SoCon, Startup Drinks, Ignition Alley Meetups, OnStartup, ATDC/TAG Entrepreneurs, ProductCamp, Mobile Monday, AWSome, Venture Pipeline, Startup Gauntlet, Startup Riot, StartupChicks, Atlanta Web Marketers, & StartupLounge Atlanta.
At least fourteen semi-startup focused events going on in roughly a month in Atlanta. Fourteen events that did not exist four years ago. And this is just the new stuff. You could literally go to something everyday. Often times more than twice a day. Good grief.
The vibrancy is great. Really great. These are all well-intentioned efforts. They are also fragmented efforts. Fragmented efforts that need to form into a core that can create a critical mass. The Atlanta startup community does not need more events. It needs more engagement.
My friend Josh Hallett recently wrote an article about the dashing from conference to conference by 'social media experts.' His thoughts apply to the Atlanta startup scene as well. Events make neither experts nor entrepreneurs. The pace is too much. The objective of all this activity is to move startups forward. If that is what we intend to do as a community then we need to concentrate our event efforts and become more deeply engaged so that startups can focus on more important things than the event of the day.
Things like creating products, getting customers, and building companies.

A Social Media Marketing Theory

2010-02-03T10:19:57-05:00

I have this theory. It's most likely not going to be real popular. But I have this theory. It's a theory about how social media marketing is going to evolve. The theory goes a little bit like this.

Social media is small part of the interactive marketing pie. It's growing fast. But right now it is small. In it's infancy even. A mere $700 million sliver of a $25 billion dollar pie. If you go back and look at Internet ad spending history the entire category was $600 million in 1997. In terms of social media spend it is 1997.

Think about 1997 and interactive marketing. DoubleClick was hot. Yahoo! was hot. Pointcast was hot. So hot that News Corp offered $450 million to buy them. Google was just a sparkle in Larry's and Sergey's eyes. That $600 in revenue was nearly all being spent on interactive display advertising. Advertising that was chasing online eyeballs. Social media marketing is a lot like interactive marketing in 1997 from a market development point of view as well. Conversations, engagement, followers, and fans are the eyeballs of yesteryear.

Take a gander at Forrester's interactive advertising spend projections below. Notice anything interesting about it?

I do.

Look at the more mature categories of email marketing, display advertising, and search marketing. It's obvious that search marketing dominates. It dominates because of its direct response nature. What might not be quite so obvious, because you need to dig a little deeper into the underlying numbers, is that a steady state of 70% of interactive marketing spending is being used for direct marketing activities.

My theory on social media marketing is that it is going to mature to a state very similar to other online marketing categories. Most of the growth projected for the social media category is going to be spent on direct response marketing activities. The entire reason interactive marketing has grown is it is more measurable, less expensive, and more revenue focused than traditional media. If CMOs are going to shift their budgets into social they are going to demand the same type of performance.

It's really no surprise that marketers want to invest in activities that are both efficient and measurable. But there is another side of the coin, the side of the social media user. The common wisdom is that social media users don't want to be sold, they want deeper engagement. But no one wants to "be sold" in any medium from mass market advertising to one on one sales. People want to buy.

Regardless, eMarketer recently highlighted a study by Marketing Sherpa that addressed this issue.

Why many users are indeed interested in deeper engagement, the number one motivation why users followed/friended companies was to learn about specials and sales. This supported an earlier study by Razorfish.

Social media users want deals. If marketers are going to be successful they are going to have to give them deals.

Based on their behavior interactive marketers want efficient measurable revenue focused opportunities. Social media users want deals. But them together and you have social media looking a lot like other more mature interactive marketing mediums. Or so my theory goes. But is it just a theory.

Very interested in what the smart marketers and social media users that comprise the readership of FoG have to say about the matter.

Related articles
Interactive Markets are Growing at the Expense of Offline (blogs.forrester.com)

What Social Followers Want (emarketer.com)

Starting Up the Social Media Marketing Prediction Engine (marketingpilgram.com)

Call That Spam

2010-02-02T09:39:41-05:00

So I was having lunch with an entrepreneur that I respect recently. We started talking about email marketing. The conversation went something like this.

Entrepreneur: How do you feel about email marketing.
Lance: What do you mean?

E: Sending out emails.

L: Did they opt in to receive emails specifically from your company?

E: No.

L: Did they indicate in some way that they would be interested in receiving emails from your company?

E: No.

L: How did you get their names?

E: Purchased well targeted lists that have shown an interest in our category.

L: That is unsolicited email. It's spam.

E: Some marketing guy told me it was ok if it was well targeted.

L: It's spam. Don't do it.

Now I am surely not pure but if someone has not given you permission to send them an email, like double opt-in permission, don't do it. It is unsolicited email. It's spam.

My background working for an ISP and an email security may bias me quite a bit.

But if you ask me, I call that spam.

SoCon10: Social Media ROI

2010-01-30T08:30:09-05:00

Today at the sold out SoCon10 I am giving the presentation you see below entitled "Measuring Social Media ROI: An ATDC Case Study."

The genesis of the presentation is twofold. First and foremost in the summer of 2009 there was a lot of talk about how you could not or should not measure the return of your social media efforts. I do not believe either to be the case. Second, Stephen Fleming become the acting director of ATDC and decided we were going to change strategic direction. He announced this at a Monday staff meeting and wanted it implemented in seven days. That time frame pretty much limited our marketing efforts to online and we exclusively relaunched via social media This provided a great opportunity to demonstrate that social media ROI could be calculated and how to go about doing it.

Google's Master Plan

2010-01-27T11:20:43-05:00

Google's Master Plan, originally uploaded to Flickr by jurvetson. with a hat tip to Erika Brookes of JungleDisk.

I Can Find It For Free

2010-01-27T07:39:16-05:00

I have been involved in the Internet industry a long time. Much much longer than most people reading this ever heard of Netscape. Much much longer than most people reading this have been online.
Well a long time ago in a place far far away the evil empire with its death star logo known as AT&T came into the Internet access market and dropped prices by 40%, wiping out the profit margins for the startup where I was working at the time.
One of our strategies for fixing this problem was to create what we called incremental revenue. Revenue from things other than access. And we dreamed up all kinds of services that we could upsell our customer base on. And being good little marketers we toted this ideas into a room with M&M's and a one way mirror so that we could watch our customers reaction to our brilliant ideas.
Within minutes our plans were dashed. One participant pretty quickly declared "I can find it for free at..." to a quick discussion and nodding of heads. This was repeated over and over again. It has been repeated over and over again in every research project that I have been involved in on the subject. People don't want to pay for content on the Internet because they believe, they know, they can find it somewhere for free.
I bring this up as the fact that Newsday has garnered a total to 35 subscribers to its paywall service in the last 90 days. Nine thousand dollars in revenue on a web property that cost $4 million (an ungodly sum) to redesign and relaunch.
People will not pay for Internet content that they can find for free elsewhere. Trying to get them to do so is foolish.

Social Publishing

2010-01-25T08:45:00-05:00

Social publishing is an interesting area of the Internet these days. By social publishing I am referring to web sites where users can post their original documents and share them with the world. These documents can then be commented on, downloaded, embedded, indexed, ranked, and shared by others. The services are typically integrated with the big three of social media so that with an engaged audience the documents can get fairly broad distribution. Two of the more well known social publishing services are SlideShare and Scribd.
A couple of years ago I waded into social publishing on SlideShare. I uploaded a presentation on the GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition Work. To my surprise the rather ordinary deck garnered hundreds of views. I then put my BarCamp presentation "That's What You Twittered." This much more interesting deck has over 1,000 views. All in all my the presentations I have uploaded to SlideShare have garnered over 8,000 views.

Well during the last makeover of FoG I decided to make some changes to the about section. Specifically I wanted to change the way my formal bio and resume were presented, primarily to make them more of online reputation management devices. Through Marta Kagen's SlideShare presentation, What The F**K is Social Media I had come across her personal site. She had her bio and resume on Scribd. I liked it, it seemed to rank well, so I decided to do the same. It worked. The resume consistently ranks as a top search engine result and has been viewed a thousand times in the last year.

So last Fall when we were doing a major overhaul of atdc.org to fit the organization's new strategic direction, Blake Perdue uploaded eight of ATDC's resource documents to Scribd. Our primary objective is doing so was brand building, to make more people in the startup community more aware of ATDC and the type of things it does. Those documents have had nearly 30,000 reads in just over five months. These reads are being driven by Google search results. The docs are top results on the search phrases executive summary template and positioning statement among others. Strong stuff that is helping to build the brand of ATDC as a leading technology accelerator. We are currently in the process of tweaking the docs a bit to determine how to best use them as online reputation management tools as well.

These experiences demonstrate that social publishing is an effective tool that can work well for both individuals and organizations. You should make it a part of your online marketing mix.

Related
ATDC Scribd (scribd.com)

Lance Weatherby Scribd (scribd.com)

Lance Weatherby SlideShare (slideshare.com)

Dev Needed for Multi-Touch Startup

2010-01-22T07:58:00-05:00

I am working with a small are a small seed funded start-up out of Georgia Tech's College of Computing that is investigating an approach to take advantage of modern, large scale, multi-touch displays. They are looking to hire a small number of programmers to help develop an innovative multi-touch document visualization and interaction system.

Right now, they are interested in hiring on an approximately 3 month contract basis, although they may be interested in extending that if circumstances allow.

Required:

* Two to three years of professional development experience.
* Two to three years experience with .NET and C#.
* Extensive experience with object oriented software engineering, design patterns, and the software design life-cycle.
* Extensive experience with Windows Presentation Foundation.
* Comfortable with basic linear algebra.
* User Interface development experience.
* Strong experience with collaborative development.
* Proactive and independent worker.
* Although you can work from home, you should be in the Atlanta area.

Desirable:

* Experience with computer graphics development.
* Multi-touch development.
* Expertise with text/document layout and rendering.

The software project is in an early iteration and has recently been tested thoroughly with potential users. The results of the evaluation pointed to numerous modifications and additions that must be made to the software--so we are interested in hiring someone to help us re-architect and significantly add to this application. Currently, the system is entirely client-side, written in C#, and largely built on WPF.
Multi-touch is pretty hot at the moment. This could be a really fun project. If you are interested contact me and I will get you connected with the company.

Developing A Marketing Plan

2010-01-21T07:52:00-05:00

Last night I had the pleasure to present to a group of folks that are in the Georgia Tech College of Management Business Plan Competition run by Alan Flury. I have been involved in past years. It is a great program that has been the start for operational companies such as Accelereyes and Sentrinsic.

The topic of the night was developing a marketing plan. That is a really challenging task to undertake for a new venture. Too many unkowns. Unkowns that are best solved via the customer development process. Regardless it is a business plan competition. They have to write something. Hopefully the audience walked away with some good thoughts on how to write a rational well thought out marketing plan that will help them in the competition and move their business along. More importantly I hope they got the message to get out of the classroom and go talk to customers.

Related articles
Are Business Competitions Good? (weatherby.net)

Steve Blank's Customer Development at Startup2Startup (slideshare.com)