Making Things Work Better

Fred Wilson - How to Build a Strong Company

In the April issue of Inc. Magazine, they had a full page picture of Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures (they've invested in companies like Tumblr, Foursquare, Twilio, Etsy, Zynga, and others). The quote that appears next to Wilson jumped off the page at me. Try and read this and not agree. Impossible.

This quote should be required reading for every manager, at every company.

Launch. Inc. Magazine. April 2012. Page 27

"You have to start with culture, values, and a commitment to creating a fantastic workplace. You can't fake these things. They have to come from the top. They are not bullshit. They are everything."

You read more from Fred Wilson, on his blog: avc.com

Responsys Interact 2012

Last year, I wrote a blog post recapping my attendance of the Responsys Interact 2011 user conference. This year, I'm lucky enough to find myself working for Responsys as a Customer Success Manager. As such, I attended the event again this year - in San Francisco.

Acquisition vs. Relationships
Of the many great themes presented this year - one stood out violently to me: Are you an "Acquisition First" or "Relationship First" company? As marketers, this will be the question of our time I think. Companies that get this right will find themselves left standing. These will be companies that reinvent customer experience and loyalty.

Acquisition First Companies:

Obsessed with the first purchase (ever say or hear "...yeah, but we just need revenue.")
You market the price/product (race to the bottom)
You have to sell your product (this is a hungry beast)
Use digital to drive traffic ("how many clicks did we get?")

Relationship First Companies:

Obsessed with third/fourth purchase (building loyalty)
You market the experience (how do your customers feel about their purchase?)
Your customers sell it for you (your best sales reps don't actually work for you)
Use digital to tie everything together (create one experience, digital and offline - together)

Tough questions that likely require transformational efforts to move from acquisition- to relationship-first.

charity: water (donate)
Last year, Blake Mycoskie from TOMS Shoes showed up and gave an amazingly inspirational speech about his charity and his one-for-one model. This year, Scott Harrison from charity: water matched Blake's enthusiasm for doing good. His charity works to provide clean water to communities in Africa.

After an extremely emotional presentation, I was inspired to donate my upcoming 31st birthday to charity: water. Please consider donating to this great cause and sharing this charity with your friends and family.

Earth, Wind, and Fire
Just like last year, this year's event entertainment was amazing. Six-time Grammy Award winning legends Earth, Wind, and Fire performed an amazing show open only to conference attendees. Here's a video I shot front row for the song Shining Star.

You can get a full recap on the event on the Responsys New School Marketing blog.

SXSW Recap: Learn to Code

Sixth in a Series

Learn to Code and Make the Software You Want
Nate Westheimer - Co-Founder, Picturelife Inc. (personal blog)
Vinicius Vacanti - CEO, Yipit.com (personal blog)

This session was lead by Vin and Nate, two self-described "business guys" who became technical founders of their own start-ups. They want you and I to become technical founders too, that why they put this session together. 100% inspiring.

Have an idea you want to put into action? Don't look for a technical co-founder. Try and build it yourself.
The only prerequisite is having an idea that you need to build. (Need to build, not want to build)
According to Nate and Vin, its easier than you think.
They both reported having a "sweat lodge experience" - where they took a 5 day chunk of time and did nothing but learn to code. This is all they did.
At its core, building something involves a user on one end, a server, and your app. (Dont over-complicate it).
In the beginning don't worry about security, scaling issues, beautiful code, or maintainability. None of those things matter if you're just learning.
If you don't know something - its okay, there are plenty of resources to help you!
Both consider UX the only thing that matters.
If you have a question you cant answer, wait 24 hours before asking for help. This will force you to learn.
Both had some great resources for just getting started:

No matter how many notes I include in this post, it wont capture the essence of this session, listen to the entire session on the SXSW website - link below.

If you have ever wanted to build something and didn't know where to start - this session was for you (and it still is for you, you can listen to audio of this session on the SXSW website.) As a matter of fact, this session inspired my good friend Chris Knutson and I to take the free online class, Programming Methodology, from Stanford.

SXSW Recap: Barry Diller & Ali Velshi

Fifth in a Series

State of the Content Industry 2012
Ali Velshi - Anchor & Chief Business Correspondent, CNN
Barry Diller - Chairman & Sr Exec, IAC

Barry Diller continues a storied career in media business. His conversation with CNN's Ali Velshi was humorous, pointed, and unapologetic. The conversation bounced around wildly and often deviated from Velshi's matter-of-fact style as Diller offered his raw opinions and thoughts on the industry. Notes below.

Diller stated that (rather obviously), Technology is providing the biggest and most radical shift in how people access content.
À la carte content delivery through multiple personal devices is the future.
Location-based technology has to happen.
He doesn't tweet - because his wife (fashion powerhouse Diane von Fürstenberg) tweets their entire life apparently.
Diller understands that sometimes you do things that maybe you don't even like, but you are able to add value - so thats what you do.
He seems excited about the new show Fashion Star - which connects those on the show, people watching, and retailers.
He doesn't really believe in the word "entrepreneur" - he called it pretentious, he says "it's work" and that's what everyone should be doing.
However, immediately after that he said if you're not an entrepreneur, you're not allowed to exist as a young person (think about that!).
In business, unless you're adapting everyday - you'll be wiped out! (are you listening Corporate America?)
Diller mentioned Hatch Labs, which is basically an incubator and 'hot house' for corporations.
Best quote of the whole discussion: "If there is no commercial purpose, then there is no purpose."
He's interested in the search of actual questions returning actual answers.
Finally, he wrapped up with a discussion on Aereo - a new service which lets you watch live TV on your mobile device without having to have a cable service subscription. Right now its available in New York City only for just $12 a month. Check it out here.

Bottom line is this: Barry Diller has a serious track record of success and he's focused on things that create long-term value, even though he isn't on Twitter (which obviously hasn't hurt him one bit. Are you listening 'social media gurus'?). He's also the Chairman of one of my former employers, Expedia, Inc. You can listen to audio of this session on the SXSW website.

SXSW Recap: Real Time Data

Fourth in a Series

Does Real Time Data Make Us Better Consumers?
Josh Reich - CEO, BankSimple

I love data. It doesn't get the mainstream coverage like social media - until lately that is. For over two years I've been talking about how "...data is the only thing that matters..." much to the delight of those around me I'm sure. Now though...data, big data, and enterprise data are words that you read on blogs, in magazines, and hear about everywhere. This session was basically made for me.

This was set up as what SXSW calls a 'Core Conversation' where the attendees are expected to help lead the session and guide the discussion. In attendance was Felix Salmon from Reuters, he had some great input. Felix is probably one of the most well known finance bloggers. I had the opportunity to meet him last year at a session he was moderating on innovation (or lack of) in online banking.

The conversation kicked-off by yours-truly talking about real time data and its impact on the health and fitness industry. New gadgets like Fitbit and the Nike Fuel Band now provide real time feedback in our search to be healthier. This was quite serendipitous, as Johan Voet from Foodzy was in attendance to discuss his platform and how they use real time data.

Other applications were discussed and services such as Chartbeat were talked about. Chartbeat actually provides real time analytic data for multiple industries. Data visualization as a whole was briefly talked about and how it provides much needed context for often overloaded 'data consumers' - now that so much data is available.

Because so much data is available, and so many things can be measured, there was some lively talk about measuring the right things. What is the impact on behavior with so much feedback? Are we effecting change on the correct behavior? Deep questions with only an hour to discuss.

There's no getting around it - there continues to be tremendous investment in data resources and I think the wave of start-ups focused on leveraging and finding new uses for data will grow exponentially.

"Data: it's the only thing that matters!" - Me

SXSW Recap: Creating User Demand

Third in a Series

Give Me an Invite! Creating User Demand at Launch
Eric Vishria - CEO, Rockmelt
Erick Schonfeld - Editor, TechCrunch (recently departed)
Michael Seibel - CEO, SocialCam

I had pretty high expectations for this session, given the speakers and the topic - but, I found it to be a little light and more conversational than I expected. Regardless, the information shared was valuable (and a good reminder) of things to consider when launching a new project.

Understand what strengths you have and which channels best communicate these.
Ask the question: "How can we get the users we want?"
Launch and find bugs with a tight Beta test group.
Craft a statement about what you want your product to be (a product mission statement).
Usually, the traffic obtained from a PR push will end up being worthless - real value usually comes from the second wave after the initial buzz.
What are the different user types for your product? How will they use it?
Never underestimate the amount of traction required to get something up and running.
Social sign-on (or login) works well for some products because it reminds people who they know that might also be interested in the product and lets user's 'hook up' their friends.
Build something and launch it, dont wast a lot of time and money on stuff until you know your product works and people like it. Seibel shared an example from Justin.tv where he said they ultimately ended up wasting a lot money on stuff that was too early.
Know what your minimum viable product is!
Vishria said that initially they had ignored the audience outside of the United States - which was a mistake as most of their users are from other countries.

Overall, a good session.

SXSW Recap: A Better RFP?

Second in a Series

OMG Your RFP is Killing Me
Joe Rinaldi - Director of Business Development, Happy Cog
John Stephens - Marketing Director, Dell
Todd Nienkerk - Partner, Designer, and Developer, Four Kitchens

Before I went to this session, my depth of knowledge of RFPs was not exactly encyclopedic. I knew that companies put them out and vendors reply with as much (or as little) information required. Companies (clients) often use them to distill vendors down to a common denominator, usually price.

For the leaders of the panel, that was the creative equivalent of a straight jacket. They had some ideas about building a better RFP.

From a vendor's perspective, there is often a tremendous amount of effort that goes into preparing an RFP. In one example a firm spent 30-40/hours per request and had an opportunity cost of $5,000 - $7,000. The numbers continued to tell a story when only 16% of their work actually came from responding to RFPs. 84% of their work came from their personal network or word of mouth. Furthermore, they could actually go on a client visit and pitch work for $2,000 or $3,000 - much less then the opportunity cost of responding to RFPs. The vendors at this panel actually found that they got drawn into RFPs from 'sexy brands' and the likelihood of getting that work is already small.

They had some suggestions for both clients and vendors on improving the process.

For clients:

No spec work.
Allow for technical or creative responses.
Don't "level the playing field" - let people be themselves.
Require speaking to the people that will be working on your project.
Beware of low bids.
Pre-select, research, and evaluate vendors before putting out RFPs.

For vendors:

Ask how many other vendors are invited to bid.
Ask yourself: "is it really worth the time/effort to respond?"
Are vendors with existing relationships already invited to respond?
How did the client find out about you?
Require a face-to-face meeting
Offer alternatives (the evaluation process itself is often negotiable)
It's often okay to ruffle feathers in a procurement department
Ask: "What is the budget?" (if there is no budget, the project may be unfunded)

At the end of the session - everyone agreed, RFPs bring in a small, but not insignificant, portion of work - but, it really all comes down to personal relationships. Which is true for so many things in life!