entrepreneurs Archives - Page 14 of 80

Persuasion & Startups

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

This video was a nice reminder of what motivates people in life. I dig the animation, but I did think that the examples were kind of naff. In the spirit of de-naffing – I thought I’d list out the 6 key motivators, and then give an example of how a startup can employ it in a cool way that makes sense.

According to the science these are the key drivers that persuade people to take action.

Reciprocity
Scarcity
Authority
Consistency
Liking
Consensus

Reciprocity: Be the resource first. Give to an audience something valuable, without asking for anything in return. Advice, information, news, utility. When I think of this, I think about the freemium model. I think about Google serving data points and monetizing later. How can your startup help in the first instance?

Scarcity: One of my favourite marketing strategies is when brands who know they have something cool and limit the distribution of their thing. Invites to Google+ and Pinterest come to mind, as does the retail strategy of many premium goods. This also has an important impact on our ability to price more profitably.

Authority: People want to deal with experts. One thing smart startups can do these days is build credentials in related spheres to what they sell. Smart brands do thought pieces on their industry, share intimate knowledge they have learned, and even give away perceived trade secrets. This is a smart way to fast track reputation and gain authority. A company blog is a great start. Talking at relevant industry conferences, getting articles published and mini doco’s are also great ways of developing a brand as an authority. Another old school method is gaining borrowed interest via sponsorships.

Consistency: In a world of exponential change and category fragmentation, it would be easy to think we desire unique and changeable experiences. But the opposite is true. While our tastes are becoming more niche, every niche experience we have we want to be consistent with our expectations. In technology Apple does it extremely well with their interface. But the true master would have to be McDonalds. When it comes to homogeneity of experience, they are the true masters. A simple question we can ask ourselves is this: How will the system we are building facilitate a ritual? Humans are creatures of habit and certainty – brands that serve this, have a chance at generating loyalty.

Liking: While this doesn’t appear in many strategy documents, people do business with people they like. The science says we like people and companies that are similar to us, and co-operate with us. When it comes to startups, a fast track to doing this is to personify the brand. Have a set of values that people can relate to, to stand for something politically and environmentally. The days of corporate fence sitting and both party political donations are over. The best way to be likable is to take a stand and find the people who value what we do. The others are irrelevant.

Consensus: With humans being social animals, we look for decision validation within our reference group. This doesn’t mean that the wisdom of crowds is right. In fact, it might mean the wisdom of a closed group of people we trust. My best current example is that the popularity of Facebook and its ever growing user base assures me that it isn’t right for me.

While it is hard to do all of these, it’s a nice reminder of the type of activity we need to undertake to inspire people to take action.

What are some of the methods that you’ve used?

How invention timelines distort

Posted on January 23, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

The screen culture era that we have entered is clearly here to stay – but it does represent some interesting nuance in human perception. Given that we are in the middle of a technological upheaval there is a default belief that everything newer is better. And often it is, the real challenge is for us to train ourselves to stop and compare the new option with the existing method. Once we start to do this, we might surprise ourselves to find we adopt a lot of new technology for reasons that defy relative utility.

This short doco I was watching on the future of connections got me thinking about it more deeply. Our current obsession with the screen as the default to every solution to every business flow problem. The idea that UX is seen as a screen issue, that we use digital to replicate analog, and the fact that we even make ebooks look as though they are turning paper pages, says that our we are distorting the true utility of the tools we are using.

So let’s imagine for a minute that the digital screen was invented before paper was. That paper, and printing upon it had just arrived today. I have no doubt that the same level of excitement would bubble around this as a technology. We’d all be very quick to point out the benefits of the printed word and visual over the screen:

It doesn’t need electricity
You can drop it without breaking it
It’s super light
It can be incredibly thin…. “paper thin?”
It can have a superior resolution
It’s flexible and can be shoved in a bag, folded, rolled etc
It can be compiled into multiple sheets or bound together
It doesn’t take memory to scroll through, or load up, you just turn directly to a particular page
It can be written on with almost any writing device (which probably wouldn’t have been invented yet!)
It’s very low cost to produce single or multiple copies
Data can be generated on it and stored with or without computing power
It can be sent without risk (although mail probably wouldn’t exist – but it would be a ‘hot’ startup vertical!)
You can tear out a page or square and give it to someone

You get the picture…. and I’m sure you can make an equally compelling list in reverse which is ‘pro digital screen’. And the irony is not lost on me that the current battle in screen technology is for one that can can flex without breaking.

So why does this matter? Because it is time we started again to focus on utility, not newness for the sake of it. It is time we appreciated the variety of tools at our disposal and used them interchangeably or together based on suitability. But most of all it’s time we started to remember why technology matters, which we can do by reminding ourselves of the definition according the Oxford Dictionary:

Technology: The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes.

Or put another way, the thing ought serve the purpose, the purpose is not the thing – unless of course it’s the thing we sell.

As far as startups and entrepreneurs are concerned, there’s a clue in all this. The only way we’ll ever get adoption of our technology, will be if it ‘practically’ supersedes the alternative.

Scribbles from a note pad

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

Yesterday I was cleaning the remnants of 2012 from my desk when I found an old note pad. I was flicking through and found some thoughts and ideas I had written down during meetings, while listening to some talks and just reading articles. While many of them are ‘oldies’ I still think some are worth sharing and creating a digital foot print for.

– Being busy is not the same as being effective.

– We should begin every project as if there is no budget.

– 1 billion dollars laid flat in $100 bills would fill a 1 meter deep 1300 meter square space. (Swimming pool?)

– To get a good answer, we need to ask a great question.

– The average Australian has 1 testicle (be careful with averages).

– Get T-Shaped people to work in your business. A broad set of experiences. Arms that reach wide into the world. People that can go left or right. people who are centered and balanced.

– It’s worth asking “why” 5 times if we want to get to the real reason of something.

– There are only 7 major plot lines to a story: Overcome the monster, Rags to riches, The quest, Voyage and return, Farce, Tragedy, Re-birth. Even our startup needs to choose one of these.

The downside of the internet

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

I was recently watching this documentary about break dancing and its evolution in the Bronx of New York. You may remember from previous posts that I was very much into the activity, before the main stream media and taste makers decided it was over. They pulled the albums from the shelves, stopped showing it on TV (I had 3 channels to chose from) and let it evaporate into history as a fad we can all look back on.

What you probably don’t know about break dancing is that it was around for about 10 years before it hit the mainstream. In fact, it was pretty much developed on a single housing block in the South Bronx. It didn’t move from this single location for the best part of a decade. The 3 tenants of Hip Hip: the break dancing, the Music (DJ’s & MC’s) and the aerosol art – all thrived and evolved in one physical space over a large number of years without any external influence or involvement. A small community lead by people like Kool Herc, Fab Five Freddy and Afrika Bambaataa added layers to their micro culture into a form of self bootstrapped art and entertainment. The period of development was iterative, local and very long before it blossomed into something amazing and beautiful. Hip Hop cultural was the veritable flower growing through a crack in the pavement. It didn’t appear in discotheques of Manhattan until it had fully developed. Only when this flower began to germinate and turn into an garden of undiscovered originality and urban culture – did any taste makers and marketers start to take notice. Only when it was fully developed could it turn into a global phenomenon where big dollars got made via the TV Industrial Complex.

I don’t think that this could happen today. The connected world just wouldn’t allow it. And while, I’m a technology evangelist, it’s true that all technology has some negative outcomes. The lack of isolation is one of these technology negatives. Certain things need the condition of isolation in order to develop to their true potential. To develop in a single environment without external influence. The exact kind of environment that Hip Hop culture both needed and thrived in. It’s why it was so pure and so real. It had to find its way with limited resources. The reason the 3 tenants of Hip Hop are what they are is because the founders were poor. They couldn’t afford instruments – so they used record players and microphones as an instruments. They used spray cans and train sides as their canvas. They took the only nutrients their environment of urban decay provided.

Today the entire connected world is looking for something interesting to blog about, to tweet about, to post on their youtube channel and start a tumblr page on. Anything that looks remotely interesting gets posted about, mashed up, promoted, storied, and presented to the world before it has even taken its own shape. The original community of anything different and interesting can’t own it and nurture it like they could pre-web. And I’m starting to think that we might be missing out on some of the cultural benefits which evolve from simple unadulterated time to develop. If the first blossom of a new species is picked, re-planted or re-purposed will we ever really see what that species might have turned into?

While we are urged to promote and share all that we do and find, maybe it is time to consider the opposite. To cocoon our idea in development until it has evolved into something worthy. The let the startup actually ‘start’, and find its place and take its own shape before others start to re-shape it on our behalf. Maybe it’s time for us to step back and let some things be, before we interrupt them.

The key to the success of all technology, is knowing when not to use it.

The future is in 'Sight'

Posted on January 5, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

Every now and again a cyber punk film comes along which is futuristic, yet plausible. That’s when I get excited. And I’m very excited about the short film Sight. Based on the simple idea of living a fully connected life, yet the execution is pure genius. Think smart phone, think geo-locating, think facial recognition, think the Google glass project…. think all this and more. I very much dig the fact that this was a graduation project from an Arts School – more proof that the tools are in everyones hands today, and that creativity is greater than resources.

In the end we always build what we imagine first… and we imagine things which are within the realm of our reality.

As far as I can tell – this is inevitable, that time just hasn’t elapsed yet. Enjoy!

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/46304267]

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Value yourself

Posted on January 5, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

As the new year starts we all set goals and have ambitions to make it a year to remember – as we should. But sometimes we need simple philosophical shifts too. Small shifts that can have a dramatic impact. One of mine is to ‘value myself appropriately’. As startup entrepreneurs an important part of the process is to be a bootstrapper, to maximise the limited resources we have to gain the momentum we need. This often leads us to doing it all ourselves. To be our own courier, printer, door knocker, community manager, clerk, mail room assistant…. anything and everything which is possible to do ourselves. And this is one of the greatest false economies in startup land. A simple rule to circumvent such folly is this:

Never do a task which can be outsourced at a lower hourly rate than what the open market would pay you for that hour.

While it’s easy to argue that we aren’t actually paying ourselves the market rate, it is certainly true that we should be creating the value of our market rate. And this is usually at least double the pay rate. Hence a person earning $100 per hour, should be generating at least $200 per hour for their organisation. Every hour wasted doing a menial task, has more impact than we actually think. Let’s take this simple example:

If we work 60 hours a week for 50 weeks for 2 years and end up with an equity stake valued at $3 million our hourly rate comes out at $500.

Which doesn’t leave many tasks that are worth doing ourselves. Startup blog says value yourself in 2013!

Goals and cars

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Steve Sammartino

I’m a strong believer in the importance of setting written goals. However, it does seem as though for every person I meet that agrees with their ability to influence life outcomes, there are an equal number of people who dismiss the concept of goal setting as having an impact on achievement.

So here is the simplest explanation I can provide for how goals work: Setting a written goal creates selective perception. Written goals subconsciously program our mind to be aware of opportunities relating to the goal as they cross our path. All of sudden we see how things might work. This does two things: Firstly, it reminds us of the task we’ve set. Secondly, it helps us find ways to make it actually happen. After that, it’s just a question of effort and tenacity.

It’s kind of like your car: Have you ever wanted a new car, or just bought a car only to notice how many of them are driving around on the roads? This is selective perception at work. It’s a beacon for stuff that matters to us – for what is relevant in our world. We only see what is out there once we purposely place ‘it’ into our life or desire it.

One of the most powerful things we can do is set our brain to work in the background – and if we know it works on simple things like noticing cars, imagine what it can do once we set it to notice opportunities.