Category: strategy

Business relationships & startups

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Entrepreneurs must build all types of relationships.

  • Relationships with our suppliers and the value chain
  • Relationships with our buyers & resellers
  • Relationships with our staff and business partners / investors
  • Relationships with our audience & evangelists

In fact, when we are small have little or no revenue, the only thing we can do is have conversations and build relationships. These will lead to action and revenue. While having dinner with a colleague the other night, John Colbert of Corporate Edge training he gave me his view on relationships.

He said:

There are two important factors in relationships – frequency & proximity.

How frequently are we engaging the other person? Where frequency, is any type of conversation, communication or interaction.

And what is our proximity to this person? Where proximity pertains to the physical closeness and real world interactions we have together. Do we meet in person? Are we getting to know each other without the use of technology? Simply meeting in the same location?

The more of the above two things we have the stronger our relationships come. If we for a moment think of who we have strong relationships with, we’ll see we have both Frequency and Proximity.


The reality is humans want to deal with people they like, trust and know. This is what relationships build.

So if one of our important business relationships (those listed above) is flagging, maybe we should have more frequent interactions, get closer or do both.

Long ‘to do’ list

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Quite possibly the most whined about thing in business. The never ending to do list.  We hear it from both corporate cubicle dwellers and entrepreneurs alike.

So before any of us choose to complain about all the things we have to get done we might consider the antithesis for a moment – An empty to do list.

Firstly, it’d mean we have no business ‘upside’. That we’ve run out of ideas on how to move forward. Or worse it’d mean we didn’t have any goals.  By definition we would not be engaged in, or have action plans which will improve ourselves or our business. This is the worst possible scenario I can imagine.

In fact the longer the list – the happier we should be. It should be the most exciting time in business and startup land. A time when we can be prolific and achieve the most. The long list ensures we can win because we have so many ideas to test and options we can take. The trick is not to obsess with all the stuff we aren’t getting done, but promoting the game winning activities to the top of the list and implementing as quickly as possible.

In the end it’s what gets done which matters, the projects we finish. Not how many new and groovy ideas we have waiting.

Brand Manners

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Brands are the personification of things and services. In fact they are the amalgamation of a group of people, which creates an organizational culture and eventually, a set of brand values. Values which in real terms are like those of a person.

In the spirit of the reasoning above here’s an interesting question:

Does your brand have good manners?

That’s actually what we’ve been getting at during this Business 2.0 Post Industrial Complex Devolution. We’ve been getting back to basics. The basics of acceptable behaviour. Moving away from the school yard bully – (read here – large inconsiderate conglomerate) – to something which deserves our attention.

In case we happened to forget – here’s a ready reckoner of ‘Good Manners’

–          Listen to others
–          Have patience
–          Wait your turn to talk
–          Never interrupt
–          Ask for permission
–          Always say ‘please’ and ‘thankyou’
–          Be honest, truthful and pure
–          Be punctual
–          Be tidy
–          Never be rude to anyone – older, younger, richer, poorer
–          Keep out of bad company
–          Be kind to those around you
–          Don’t be selfish, but share your good things
–          Don’t cheat
–          Be polite at all times

Here’s the ironic thing…. some of these sentiments and ideals came directly from the Children’s National Guild of Courtesy – a Good Manners chart which was distributed to elementary / primary schools in UK and Australia from 1898 until approx 1950.

You can download the PDF here: goodmanners

And yet it’s akin to the language we are now hearing from business re-inventionists. In real terms, we’ve just realized that often with success comes bad manners and attitude. Then after the bad manners and attitude comes the inevitable decline. This is why the new world brands are winning – they simply have good manners.

Startups – if we personify our brands, then let’s ensure they have ‘Brand Manners’.

Critical thinking

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Many entrepreneurs start their careers working for big business.  There are many things we can learn from big business. One of which is Critical Thinking – the ability to analyse a set of circumstances and make a commercial decision.

Every startup has gaps. Gaps in strategy, gaps in the launch campaign and gaps in financing the venture.

Gaps that would usually be criticized in large conglomerate X during the mandatory ‘Critical Thinking’ session. If we want to get our startup off the ground , then we simply must ‘unlearn’ some of the things which we have leanred and adopted from our life in the large corporate sector. Critical Thinking is one of them.

What we need is Complimentary Thinking.

Pointing out the good and building on the parts that will work. Is what entrpreneurship is about. To criticise anything in the embryonic stage is counter productive. Critical thinking aims at protecting revenue – not inventing it. Critical thinking leads to finding a reason not to do something. Complimentary thinking builds on what we have, it finds a way to make things happen and accept imperfection.

Our ability to unlearn ‘critical thinking’ is really one of the important differences between being an employee and becoming an entrepreneur.

Silicon Beach with yours truley

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Silicon Beach Australia [siliconbeachaustralia.org] was formed with no plan, just a question:

“How can we bring the Australian technology community together?”

“Silicon Valley has a supporting ecosystem that makes Internet innovation thrive, so what can Australia do? How can our big island with the best beaches in the world, harness the passionate, intelligent individuals who care to do more?”

It’s a very cool initiative and hopefully something which will harness the intellectual capital our country is renounced for. Instead of losing it to countries who appreciate and embrace innovation.

One thing is for sure – it all starts with conversations. I was fortunate enough to be invited into the conversation yesterday for their 3rd Podcast to discuss a bit about rentoid, and all things entrepreneurship…

I was fairly candid with things like my corporate exit, business philosophy, the financial crisis and just the way I like to go about things. You can check it out by clicking here.

What do investors invest in?

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

While dropping into Startup Camp in Melbourne last week I started chatting with Jonathon from Melbourne Angel Investors. I asked him just one question:

What is more important in their investments, the team or the concept / product?

His reply was a simple one and here it is:

We’d invest in an A Grade team with a B Grade product, but we wouldn’t invest in an A Grade product with a B Grade team.

Startup blog agrees. Though I did here that he was pretty ‘anti-tech’ as far as their investments go…

But the first piece of advice is worth adhearing  to. Above all things build an A Grade team, be an A Grade entrepreneur.

And so again we hear that the people in your startup are way more important than the secret sauce. It is without irony that A Grade teams more often than not find A Grade ideas too.

Small Companies vs Big Companies

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

If I could give one piece of advice for anyone who has reently escaped their cubicle of the large corporate scene to start up it would be this:

Do the opposite of whatever large companies do.

…and be quicker than they are.

if your startup is in the same industry you worked in…

Do the opposite of what you ‘were told to do’ within your large company.

To beat them you must focus on momentum. We most not do what they do, we must not compete on their level.

To gain momentum, we simply cannot behave the way they do.