Category: Marketing Insight

Technology transfer

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Meet Trev.

 

 

Trev is small.

Trev doesn’t like going much faster than 120km per hour.

Trev only fits two people and two bags.

Trev can only travel 150km before he needs a recharge.

But Trev is efficient. He only costs 1.1cents to recharge per kilometer. Trev makes petrol look silly.

 

Here’s the thing. Trev is only possible because of advances in mobile phone battery technology. A classic case of technology transfer. The question entrepreneurs should be asking is what technology can we utilize from industries adjacent to us?

 

You can read more about it here.

Your secret idea

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Has already been thought of.

 

Is already being worked on.

 

In all probability already launched.

 

Maybe they are entering phase 2 of their launch?

 

 

 

Best we get over it, share our secrets and improve them. Heck, launch them anyway, maybe we’ll do it better.

Boostrapping live

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

When rentoid.com was launched. I believed in the concept, the dream and the process. (still do).

 

So in order to make the site work I had to put some stuff to put up for rent. Stuff I didn’t even own – yet. Once the site went live, it needed stuff on it. But at that stage we had no members, so we had to populate the site. Content was and is King. Included in my listed stuff was a home gym. A rental came in for it. So I went and bought it.  It cost me $400 to buy. I rented it out for $140. Then Sold it on Ebay afterwards for $280. (We now have other suppliers of gyms for rental on rentoid)

 

 

 

Net result:

A good user experience for a new member

A $20 profit

 

And I felt the excitement that goes along with bootstrapping; finding creative solutions,  and most importantly, inventing transactions.

Ebay, Paypal and arrogance

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

You’ve probably heard that Ebay is about to enforce the use of it’s wholly owned payment service “Paypal” on every Ebay transaction.

 

The blogosphere and government regulatory bodies are up in arms about this. As they should be. In fact the ACCC (Competitive regulator in Australia) has just made a draft ruling blocking the move as Anti-competitive. Although Ebay claims it ‘significantly enhances protection of buyers and sellers against fraud” – which it may well do.

 

Here’s the thing Ebay – you’re clearly using monopoly power to force people to use a service you own, to extract more revenue. And your customers know this.

 

 

 

Startup blog says – Ebay should be true to the launch platform of being open, transparent, a market where users decide, what to pay and how to pay.

 

Never let the arrogance of success change how you treat those who made you successful in the first place.

Watch this

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Next time you have 30 minutes available – instead of wasting it watching TV, watch this instead:

http://www.justin.tv/hackertv/97862/DHH_Talk__Startup_School_2008

It’s a keynote speech from one of the 37 Signals team. It’s the perfect reailty check for web startups and gives some great perspective on stuff like:

  • Your chances on being the next facebook / Youtube
  • Why a million dollars is better than a billion
  • Why selling stuff, gives you more chance of success than giving stuff away
  • How to win small
  • The truth about viral marketing

It’s really funny and enjoyable too. Start up blog says: get on it.

 

Virtual ‘Radvertising’ – Heineken

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

This is ‘radvertising’ for many reasons.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M2mABv2RAI&feature=related]

  • It highlights a single minded product benefit – nothing artifical
  • It leverages historical brand postioning & authenticity – so it’s believable
  • Chooses a topical juxtapostion which is easily understood
  • Has broad appeal which can cross the chasm of age demographics
  • The creative idea is strongly linked to the consumption environment & category
  • It’s sneezeworthy (worth spreading / has viral potential)
  • It’s entertaining. Which by the way is never, ever an objective of ‘radvertising’. It’s a BONUS.

Forest Gump & Badvertising

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

To me it wasn’t worth a mention. But since I’ve been asked about it so many times, here’s the startup blog view.

Terrible. Pathetic.

It’s Forest Gump advertising: Stupid is as stupid does. Saying they’re anti-adwank, is not the same as not doing it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v89M3lhlKA]

Oh ,one more thing CBA. ‘Tag lines’ don’t mean anything unless they represent reality.