Category: Marketing Insight

Game Changing

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Sometimes we convince ourselves in the early days of our start up that the fun stuff is most important. Yes it’s seriously important, and it’s partly why we decided to leave the cubicle.

 

But the biggest reason we left cubiclesville was because we wanted to win. We wanted to do something, change something, prove something and achieve success which other corporate plankton couldn’t claim on our behalf.

 

That said, we ought ask ourselves this:

 

Is what we are doing Game Changing?

 

Will what we are spending investing our time on today be the thing that ensures we win the game in our web domain, category or industry?

 

 

Fact: When Youtube launched there was over 450 other video sharing websites. Youtube won video sharing for these reasons:

 

1.      They had the simplest user experience

2.      They had the most videos uploaded

 

That’s it.

 

So – are we investing our day on Game Changing activities, or just passing time?

Entrepreneurial Focus

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

We’re entrepreneurs – we’ll have different objectives. but generally we’ll want to do one of the following:

 

Build a business (revenue focus)

Change behaviour (social focus)

Introduce a new method (technology focus)

 

It’s important we know which ones apply. The we ought remain focused, and ask ourselves if what we are doing today leads to revenue, creates social awareness or drives usage of our technology.

 

 

the old school

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I love lots of stuff from the old school, including but not limited to:

 

Old school break dancing

Old school pinball machines & arcade games (think Galaga)

Old school computers (think Commodore 64)

Old school rap music (think Grand Master Mel)

Old school Airline service & the general airport experience

Old school hamburgers from the local greasy Joe’s

Old school cartoons

Old school slow food & home cooking

Old school architecture and buildings

 

 

The truth is the new versions of these are often better, more advanced, cheaper and more useful. (some not)

 

The reason we love old school stuff more than the new versions is this:

The original version was ground breaking. And ground breaking is exciting. So it builds an emotional connection.

 

Startups out there – become the old school 20 years from now, by being ground breaking today.

Rentoid on techcrunch

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

We finally got ‘crunched’ – with a little spiel for rentoid on Tech Crunch.

In the first instance it’s given us a large membership boost and a very positive response. But it’s also given us our share of negative armchair experts, naysayers in the comments.

We say:

“That’s Ok – revolutionaries like us don’t care what naysayers think.”

But it’s a few thousand more people that know about rentoid.com too.

Actually we do care about what they think as it pertains to ideas to improve the service. We turn their negatives into a positive. But we always ignore an attitude which says something won’t work. It won’t for them – their attitude has already predetermined that!

In fact, some context here: We had many more positive comments and only a few negative. Also, both our membership and listings have been boosted as has our unique visiters today. But I thought I’d make this ‘blatant piece of self promotion’ worthy of a startup blog story by providing some insight!

You can check out the story here.

And add some comments here on the Crunch Base or on the story. We want to hear negative and postive sentiments. We want to improve our offer.

Losing the plot – MTV

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I found out the other day that MTV used to play music videos… here I was thinking that the ‘M’ stood for ‘Miscellaneous’

 

But seriously, they have lost the plot a little. It’s rare to turn it on and find a song playing.

 

It’s one thing to diversify revenue streams it’s another to forget why you are there in the first place. And this is why alternatives like VH1, Music Max et al had room to move into the market in the first instance.

 

I get my music from youtube now – on demand. Simply because none of the music channels on cable (pay TV) cut it anymore.

 

 

Sure, evolve, but don’t forget why your business / brand / startup exists.

Flexibility and entrepreneurs

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The strategy is malleable. For entrepreneurs it must be. If it isn’t – revenue might stagnate, or even worse… not happen.

 

But the question we must constantly remind ourselves is this:

 

At what point does flexibility diminish our startup, concept or reason for being?

 

Many businesses end up being something totally different from what we originally intended. A good example is Flickr which started as an on line virtual world game. But unless we’re scientists, technicians or  inventors driven by the widget – does it really matter?

 

Although, we may never answer the question on flexibility, we must continue to ask it. That way we can ensure we’re carving a path which still leads back to why we started and we won’t just become an ‘adhocracy’.

Naming rules

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Firstly – there’s many great brands with average names and vice versa. One could argue if we have success under certain name it must be good. My view is that it’s the meaning you create under the name which counts.

 

A discussion on naming yesterday with a young entrepreneur inspired resulted in the following.

 

Ross said:

 

 A byproduct of my naming rules is that my (more recent) names are easy to track, in google or twitter etc. I can track “yabble”, but it is hard to track something like boost  juice. I think being able to track the conversation about your brand is going to be VERY important over the next few years as the  conversation moves even further away from places brands control (their feedback form, etc) and towards places like twitter where the conversation is hard and fast.

 

Then I added:

 

It’s also good to have a word you can own. What does ownership mean? Nothing exists which uses it. Which these days includes web and other forums you mention. A made up word is good, simple to say and it’s great if gets both the left and right brain thinking.

 

Tells us your startup name.