Category: English

We need to talk

Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.
– Japanese Proverb

During the last couple of months I’ve participated in about 30 mentoring sessions. I was part of Ajujaht program with Achoo and attended a couple of events in Garage48 hub; this resulted in fruitful discussions with the likes of Jon Bradford and Andy Lopata. At the other side of the table I mentored Startup Wise Guys teams and have been insistingly offering my 2 cents to kid brother’s startup project and HoseWear.

And a piece of knowledge sunk in during this period. Which is that if there is such as thing as “the most important thing for early stage startups” it is not capital, office space, rockstar team or pitching contests.

The most important thing for startups is feedback.

The best source of feedback is customers, but at the earliest stages a startup team is often not too sure about what they do, and who for. Second best feedback sources are people that know technology, business, the process of customer development and/or other people. Mentors and advisors, that is.

Feedback is important for the same that you glance at a mirror before heading out for an important meeting or date. Because you’re _in_ your clothes you don’t see that this striped shirt (or hoodie, for this demographic) doesn’t go with those jeans. They just don’t match. Similarly, if you’re a team living and breathing your startup idea, you don’t recognise all the things that could be improved with your proposition, business model, technology, team, etc.

So, what should (new) incubators focus on

It’s become a popular meme to criticise the growing number incubator and accelerator programs that are popping up around the world. In my view more is better because natural selection quickly weeds out the best accelerators, as well as the best teams within each accelerator. I would just encourage placing focus on access to mentors and advisors, not on grants, foosball tables in the office and such. If startup teams have access to a pool of top mentors and advisors, results will come.

Ajujaht, Garage48, Start Smart and others that have given startups in the region access to great people so far – kudos for doing what you’re doing.

Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs amd Communications, that I hear is busy summoning an accelerator backed by the Estonian government, I hope you’re listening.

Instant proof of concept for Achoo

So last week we publicly launched Achoo which was kindly covered by TheNextWeb and ArcticStartup. It’s a big thing for me but until we have good lessons to share, I won’t bore you with details. I’ll share just one thing that made me smile the day before the launch. Someone contacted me on LinkedIn, saying:

Hi Andrus! In Ducksboard we are big fans of sales CRM company Pipedrive emails, and I saw in Achoo that you were responsible of the copywriting. Would you be interested in a freelance position as a copywriter?

So heartwarming! Being able to track down people behind work you like was one of the main reasons we set out to create the service. And not just to hire them but to know what they’re up to, learn from them and ask questions from them. If you’ve accompished something you’re proud of, and haven’t added it to Achoo yet, you may be missing out..

“Earn this” – Achoo, the €2000 prize and motivation

We applied to the Estonian Ajujaht upstart competition with Achoo, and got selected to pitch at the finals in May. This also earned us a €2000 prize that we’ll happily put to work for the site.

This vote of confidence had an interesting effect. It didn’t trigger a celebratory mood, because the success of this venture is not up to any jury to decide, but users (also, €2000 is not enough for three people to retire on). Rather, it had a positive effect on the motivation because failing to do a great public beta launch soon would not only make our team look a bit silly, but also the people in the jury that voted for Achoo instead of many of the other ideas.

The emotion wasn’t quite as strong as in the finale of Saving Private Ryan, but I like the effect this had, and cheers to Shy CTO for nudging us to apply to Ajujaht.

On a side note, we’re bootstrapping Achoo for the time being – but I guess I’ll know more about “motivation through indebtedness” if and when we raise funds for Achoo.

Written by Comments Off on “Earn this” – Achoo, the €2000 prize and motivation Posted in English, Startups

Marketing reading list

I was recently invited to a Sunday guest workshop/lecture about startup marketing for DDVE Master’s students. One of the questions I was asked was good books and other resources about marketing. Here’s the list I sent over, with some later additions:

  • Viral Loop by Adam Penenberg gives a good overview of evolution of viral marketing concepts from Tupperware parties to just before the time companies like Zynga took viral concepts onto a completely new level. Apparently every new employee in the Facebook marketing teams gets to read it.
  • Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. If you’re building anything on the web, you’ll want to read this. Perhaps not the latest thinking in UX and web design, but author makes some points that were just as valid 7 years ago than they are now.
  • Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. Not really a marketing book, rather a book about the applications of psychology into marketing and selling. A useful read nevertheless.
  • The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steven Gary Blank. Not one for a beach holiday – and I’m speaking from the experience. A bit textbooky, but the good news is that it covers the process of customer development so thoroughly it’ll probably stick with you forever. Must read for tech startup builders/marketers.
  • Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. Dharmesh is the king of inbound marketing but he only shares the very basics in this book. Great if you’re new to content marketing, a little light if you’re intermediate to advanced.
  • Clockwork Pirate (free ebook) by Kelvin Newman. The guy behing The Internet Marketing podcast has put together this short and very practical book on link building.
  • …and don’t forget the classic Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout.

    • All these were Amazon affiliate links by the way. If you choose to buy any of these books, I’ll use the proceeds on liquor, women and gambling, so don’t worry, this won’t result in more reading lists.

    When it comes to blogs then there are more good ones than a mortal could ever read. I try to stay on top of Conversation Marketing, SEOMOZ blog and Startup Marketing blog and count on twittersphere to bring me the rest of marketing news and trends.

    Also, I’m a big fan of podcasts because I can use my commute or otherwise “empty” time slots for consuming them. I regularly listen to Internet Marketing podcast which is practical and SEO-focused, and Six Pixels of Separation, which is a collection of interviews with authors and thinkers in the field of communication.

    Any good ones I’ve left out?

    Dilemma: gambling money vs. good causes?

    This week a UK-based link marketing agency emailed me and offered me 170 dollars for posting an ad for a gambling site. I don’t need or want to earn money from this blog, so at first I thought I’d just ignore the email. Then it dawned to me I could use this money for Kiva microloans, or just donate it to charity. But I couldn’t quite make up my mind whether this would be 100% kosher from the ethical point of view as the money is somewhat stained with an addiction that has ruined the lives of many.
    So hereby I turn to you, the four or so readers of this blog. Should I take the cambling companies money and use it for a good cause or tell them to take their money and … use it on cunning campaigns elsewhere?

    Update March 9th

    I’ve gotten some feedback face-to-face, on Facebook and here (cheers, Sepp!). And it seems I may have over-dramatized this offer. There’s little harm in having an online gaming company fund your Kiva account. So, dear /NAME REMOVED March 12th/, consider yourself linked to and thank you for letting me have a nice Kiva budget!

    Update March 12th

    The agency contacted me again and asked for the reference to the gaming company and agency to be removed as the advert that we asked you to place may come across a little negative to your readers. However, the email also said since this money is going to charity, we will still pay you the $175 as agreed. Though this partially motivated by not wanting any negative coverage by the sometimes-so-unpredictable bloggers , it’s still a somewhat kind thing to do. Kudos to the Gaming Company that wants to fund my Kiva account anonymously!

    Update March 21st

    I had removed the link and emailed my contact person in the unnamed Marketing Agency, but heard nothing back for almost a week. After my second somewhat sarcastic email last Friday I finally received 175 dollars on my PayPal account two days ago. Apparently the person making payments had been sick, silly me for starting to doubt their word [insert smileyface here]. I’ve now made my first gambling-funded Kiva loans to a micro-preneur in Mongolia and a farmer in Kyrgyzstan. To conclude:

    • I now feel a tiny bit more respect towards a certain gaming company and a certain marketing agency.
    • My blog has been useful in many ways, this was the first time the benefit had been financial. (Despite the money not going to me). If you like to write and don’t yet have a blog, you’re missing a trick.
    • Two people out there are closer to their funding goals. You too can contribute via Kiva, even without shelling out your own money when you use this link.
    • Marketing is not all bad, it seems.

    I guess all is well that ends well, especially when the events unfold in such interesting manner like they did this time.

    The one Google Plus profile I really hate

    Recently I looked at a Google Plus profile and immediately wanted to punch the owner of this profile to the throat. The problem was, it was my profile. All that’s there is a bunch of more or less promotional messages about various start-ups I am involved with. It all smelled like a guy with a shiny haircut and crap shoes on a trade fair.

    My logic at the time of posting was I’m not really using G+ that much and my friends are not there, so nothing to lose. And if someone takes action after seeing my post, it’s all gravy. There’s some sense in thinking like this but the fact is I have turned into a social media spammer. I have shat into a communally shared backyard, which to be fair I don’t use that much myself, but which is an important picnic spot for some of my online neighbours. Furthermore, as the result of this was near-zero, I had wasted my own time.

    Google Plus is full of such opportunists, as is Twitter and some of it even happens on Facebook among “friends”.

    Work wise I can’t quite ignore Google Plus but this was sobering. Not quite Saul to Paul moment, but I’ll aim to either remain a passive observer (which seems to be the most popular G+ user status anyway) or improve my shit-to-backyard to share-the-love ratio. AJ Kahn sums it up in his comprehensive post about Google Plus SEO.

    Really use Google+. Using it for the express purpose of SEO won’t be successful. Do or do not. There is no try.

    Everything I’ve learned from marketing in 10 years (5 years later)

    In the process of moving this blog from the old rusty diesel engine to the new shiny WordPress engine, old post drafts popped up like dead fish in a pond after an accident involving lots of chemicals. One was titled Everything I’ve learned about marketing in ten years. It didn’t have an ending or a beginning yet, it was just a sketchy list but surprisingly it made a bit of sense. So I dusted it off and edited it to be readable, but didn’t add or remove anything. Here goes:

  • Stand for something. A little bit better than the competition leaves everyone cold. If you have nothing to say, there’s no need to shout about it.*
  • One message at a time.*
  • When conducting market research, ask only whether the message you are sending out has been received as intended, and nothing else. The one thing you definitely shouldn’t ask your customers is “what would you like to have”. *
  • Always put 10% of your budget in risky channels and promotions ie. where they might bomb but, if successful, that generates a healthy ROI.*
  • Work for a boss that wants big change.**
  • Test where the limits that shouldn’t be crossed are, with advertising or whatever you have to play with. ***

    • None of the above tips apply if you just want to sell a bit of goods, and not do something remarkable.

    Footnotes AD 2012:

    * Fully agree to this day, I thank the year 2007 version of myselt for the reminder.
    ** 2012 addition: or be an entrepreneur that wants big change.
    *** Back in 2007 most of my marketing career had been in media or FMCG, where there’s hardly any disruption in the business itself. So it made a lot of sense to push the limits with communications, because this was all there was. With startups, you’re so much closer to disrupting businesses and business models and there’s much less of a need to do scandalous communications.

    Please help me complete the commandments of marketing. What have I missed?

    This blog has a new home

    As you might have already noticed, my blog is now here at purde.net. Also, it now finally runs on WordPress because MT stopped cutting it about 4 or 5 years ago. RSS feed remains the same and includes add-ons like my Flickr feed and the hip quotes I post on Other people’s thoughts. If you don’t like to see my photos (I don’t blame you), you can get the normal feed from the corner of the address bar. I guess that covers the housekeeping stuff. Shoutout to Jens who helped with the move.

    One thing I absolutely love about the blog move is that it brought old post drafts to surface. I just stumbled upon a draft from 2007 called “Everything I’ve learned from marketing in 10 years”. It’s totally worth translating to English and posting here as the first proper new post, to showcase both the wisdom and the naivety I possessed five years ago. Just watch this space.