entrerpeneurs Archives - Steve Sammartino

Innovation is an attitude

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

Last night we announced at Tomcar Australia that we’d be accepting bitcoin as a payment method when selling our vehicles. Not surprisingly we got a lot of coverage globally in news and technology circles.

The reason I came up with this idea was multi-layered. Firstly, as a new car startup (the first in over 30 years in Australia) our budgets are skinny and our brand awareness is low. It was a damn cheap way (a few dollars on coding in bitcoin payments to our e-commerce platform) to get many millions dollars worth of PR. But there is more to it than that. And this is the key reason:

Innovation is just not about what we make. It is an attitude.

At Tomcar Australia we are hell bent on disrupting the auto manufacturing industry because the model is broken and it needs fixing. It needs not only new cars better suited to their environments, but new go to market methodologies. While we know our cars are best in class, we want to be best in class in our approach to everything. To push the boundaries of commerce. Ideas and methods that seem flunky today, become the norm tomorrow. I’m old enough to remember when credit cards seemed like a crazy and risky way to take payment from customers. One of our favourite questions is this: What would the legacy auto industry never do? It’s very cool to be involved in an organisation that embraces and considers the possibilities of every suggestion, and finds a way to make it work.

A key question for start up entrepreneurs is this: where can we innovate outside of what we actually sell?

How to be remarkable – Mr Price

Posted on September 10, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

Do stuff that people just have to tell their friends about. This I am about to do.

On Monday I had the pleasure of being invited to a restaurant for lunch with colleagues. The place is called Mr Price. It is run by Mr Price himself.

Upon entering you know you are about to have a different experience. An experience which is extremely unlike any other restaurant meal. The decor and mixed demographic alone is evidence of this:

As you can see from the photos above it could well be your favourite Aunties or Grandmas. But it’s Mr Price. And what Mr price does is open his restaurant (home?) in North Melbourne at lunch time only, 5 days a week. He only serves who ever gets the four tables he has – that’s it. Each table gets served once. He decides what to cook that morning which will include 1 entree and 2 main meals. if you don’t like it – too bad. (Believe me you’ll like it).

Mr Price comes out and greats your personally and provides you with the menu of what is available on the particular day. It will be given to you on a hand written piece of paper which he writes himself. He has very neat hand writing. He’ll have a nice old chat and is a very well spoken articulate man. Once you choose your meal, he retreats to the kitchen to cook it. Oh, he’s also the waiter.

At the end of the meal he comes around the tables and has a little chat. It was during this time that he told us that he likes to sleep in and after doing the dishes, he shuts the doors and goes home until the next day.

Mr Price is a nice guy. Mr Price provides an experience. Mr Price isn’t like other restaurants. Mr Price is remarkable.

What are you doing to make your startup remarkable?

Invested customers

Posted on July 20, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

Something strange happened when I updated my preferred twitter iphone app ‘Twitterific’.

The default twitter photo application changed from www.twitpic.com to www.yfrong.com

Here’s the problem: As a customer (albeit non paying) I am hugely invested in twitpic as an application. I already have well over 100 photos of my digital life, ideas, observations and witty comments live in twitpic. Whenever I take a new pic and post it to twitter I’m hoping people will browse through some of my other cool photos, ideas and adventures. My personal brand depends on a consistent distribution channel. Which in this case was and ‘is’ twit pic. Not Yfrog. I can’t have a ‘fragmented effort’.

Once I found out I could change the preferences for pics in the twitterific app, I did so immediately. Even though there was some effort and research involved. I did this because I am ‘invested in Twitpic’. I don’t want to start again. I don’t want to lose my old pics. I don’t want to lose my compound effort. I don’t want my digital stuff to get lost. I don’t want to lose my fans. The switching costs are too high for me.

The question for start ups and webpreneurs is how do we get our customers invested in our stuff?

Business Pitch

Posted on May 13, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

The other day I was involved in pitching my business rentoid.com – I wanted to stay true to my beliefs and present a largely visual presentation to what I expected was an ‘info hungry’ crowd. The type who don’t mind a page full of words and numbers. My rule was no more than 6 words per slide. Some had only 2.

I think the format is pretty useful, so I thought I’d share it. Basically in each chart just change the word ‘rentoid’ and insert ‘your business’ and I think it would be just fine. It was for a pitching competition (I know they seem to be the trend of the day) and we made it to the final after a few stages so I guess it’s a method which has worked. It’s only 5 slides. I think talking to pictures works because it makes people listen, not read, and it shows you know your business.