Tag: startups

Know who will miss you & act accordingly

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Let’s imagine something horrible for a few moments. Let’s imagine that you die. That something unexpected occurs and your life is over. The plans you had, the lives you’ve touched would all be thrown into disarray. It is incomprehensible to imagine this, our own death. It’s as if we have this built in mechanism to avoid the mere thought of it. But if it did happen, what would happen at the company you work at? Deadlines would be missed. Some stuff wouldn’t get done. Co-workers would be sad or even shocked. Friends we’ve made would be devastated. There’d be a lot of upheaval, but here’s the over riding reality of you dying and if you work for a large company:

You’d be replaced in 4 weeks.

It’s even foreseeable that the process for replacement would begin the same day the news dropped.

Now let’s compare that to what would happen with your home and family. Lives would be devastated and irreparable. You would never be replaced and the pain of the loss would last a lifetime. Young children would be especially impacted. The hole could not be filled be anyone, anytime, ever.

So why is it that we work late? So why is it we put up with corporate bullying? So why is it we continue to work for jerks for career advancement? Why is it we give large portions of our waking lives to a faceless corporation?  Why would we give an inordinate amount of time and effort to an organisation when the ultimate reality is that we are disposable? The next time you have to make a choice to stay late, play the corporate game and over deliver to corporation  XYZ, and choose between the job and the family, maybe you should think about how they’d act if the unthinkable happened. Once you remind yourself of this you’ll know what choice to make.

It’s another reason why we need to listen to the call to run our own race, and create our own future and for independence. The people who deserve us the most, are those who couldn’t live without us.

 

Why Beacons will become the Pocket Spam of the web of things era

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

There’s a lot of talk about the amazing things beacons will be able to do at retail level. And all of it is true – at least from a functional perspective. For the first time products will be able to directly interact with potential customers at store level. Physical spaces people spend time in will be able to interact with the people inside those spaces. Department stores, farmers markets, concert halls and  football stadiums are all being filled with beacon technology. And it will give birth to a new era of pocket spam. I wonder if what we really need right now is more vendors shouting at us with offers we didn’t know we wanted? I doubt it.

So, here’s the startup opportunity for Beacons which few are focusing on just now.

How to stop them.

Yes, the spam filter equivalent for the intrusive beacon. And I know you’re thinking that this time it’s different, because it wont happen unless we allow push messages. But when was the last time you read all those terms and conditions for a web based service? Often we say yes to something before all the details emerge and when the world was slightly different. It’s our legacy decisions which get taken advantage of.

Often the market for the hotdogs around the stadium is bigger than what is on the main playing field. And there’s always less people watching that game while you set up shop on the sidelines.

Loving your customers – celebrity style

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

At Tomcar we seriously love our customers. It’s a highly personal interaction at this early stage in the business, so we both take it personally, and make it personal. We care about how our cars perform for them, and how they make their working lives better. We’ve recently been documenting the delivery of our vehicles and making some short films about it.

Yes, we know it doesn’t really scale as a business model.

Yes, we know that major car manufacturers would never do this.

Yes, we know that it makes us seem like small fry.

But here’s something else we know: Doing things which do not scale in the short term, is what gives startups a chance at scale later.

Here’s a little video of one such unscalable activity. Oh, and if you buy a Tomcar, you’ll get your personal movie made too.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQIrWHeU1UM]

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So a question you might want to ask is this – How can you treat your customers like micro celebrities of your brand?

Top 10 internet stocks – more than 1 trillion valuation

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

In a very short period of time, opinions of anything can change. It wasn’t so long ago that these statements were made about the internet as a commercial platform:

  • It’s for nerds. “Fine, you nerds can do what you want but normal people are never going to use this thing.”
  • It’s completely decentralized, which means you can’t trust it. No business is ever going to do anything on it because businesses won’t work on an untrusted environment. There won’t ever be any e-commerce.
  • There will never be any internet payments. No one will put their credit card on the internet.
  • It’s an open-source kind of thing so there will be no Internet companies.
  • It’s got all these technical deficiencies. It’s slow. It’s unreliable. It doesn’t work right. When you do a search, sometimes you get an answer back and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes when you dial in you get a busy signal.
  • What happen if your ISP goes out of business? Then you can’t get back online.
  • Once you get on the internet, even assuming you get on the internet, there’s nothing to do. There’s no content. Time magazine isn’t online, the New York Times isn’t online. It’s just a bunch of nerd stuff.

These classic soundbites come from Marc Andreessen in a recent interview while referencing those who think bitcoin will never be more than some kind of digital space oddity. While we are on the topic of economic change, it is telling to have a look at the market valuations of the top 10 internet companies. That is, companies less than 20 years old who could not have existed pre dot com. The US top 10 public companies now have an accumulated value of $1.168 trillion dollars.

  1. Google – $585 billion
  2. Facebook – $170 billion
  3. Amazon – $155 billion
  4. Ebay – $65 billion
  5. Priceline – $65 billion
  6. Yahoo – $36 billion
  7. Salesforce.com – $36 billion
  8. Twitter – $24 billion
  9. Linkedin – $21 billion
  10. Expedia – $11 billion

We can also add the upcoming float of Alibaba.com to this at anything between a further $120 to $200 billion.

This takes my mind directly to the potential of 3D printing, web of things and the solar energy industry. All of which are in their 1993 era. The only question remaining for entrepreneurs reading is this; What are you going to do about it?

Should we pitch first, last or in the middle?

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

A colleague who is in a startup pitch competition for an accelerator sent me this question:

Steve, In your experience, is it better to pitch first or last in a series of afternoon presentations? 

I answered him in two parts: There is a theory that says if you’re last, you’re only competing against the one they’ve already chosen to win up to that point. But, honestly – it matters much more to be awesome & not worry about the uncontrollable things.

I guess with most projects we have the same choice on where to focus, on superstition, or super performance.

Practical strategies for sacking your boss

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I’ve been doing some blogging and work in general for the good people at Pollenizer. My recent focus has been over coming the fear of leaving your job, and things we can do to reduce the risk and make the transition. I’ve written 3 posts in particular which I really think you guys will dig. There’s some links below and a little sound bite for each proving they are worth the 3 minutes each of them take to read. Remember we must first invest in ourselves before anyone will invest in us.

  1. The fast track, zero risk method to becoming an entrepreneur: This post is the ultimate startup life hack – and with a simple trick gets to you on the path to entrepreneurship in an instant. Serious.
  2. Startup training in a low risk environment: here I’ve written about ways you can up skill and help your self transition from employee to startup founder without risking anything. A must for those planning to escape their cubicle in corporate land.
  3. The worst case scenario for failed entrepreneurs: And finally a nice bit of entrepreneurial FEAR debunking, and reasons that taking the leap will not result in anything bad. This one will ease your mind.

Hope you enjoy these mind jams.