Tag: tactics

Unsynergy

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Guest Post from Mick Liubinskas from Pollenizer.

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Department of Startups – Community Announcement

Unsynergy – where the whole is less than the sum of the parts. Often caused through too many features aimed at too many people with too much information.

86.3% of startups are injured or killed each day due to Unsynergy. Please help us stamp it out once and for all.

The worse thing about Unsynergy is that the person who is inflicted with it is unable to see the symptoms. They keep adding more things to their startup – more features, more content, more options – whilst they are slowly (or often quickly) committing suicide.

Most people on the outside, looking in (e.g. customers) can see Unsynergy for what it is. Though sadly, they rarely care enough to let the founders know. (Or can’t find the feedback button amongst the 100 other options.)

Founders, please understand, more is less. Less is more. Less is great.

To bastardise a great quote, “Great products are finished not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.”

Fight Unsynergy, Remove a Feature Today!

Thanks, Mick Liubinskas.

pollenizer.com
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Design Idea

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

What is the shortest path from the front door  to a smile. It doesn’t matter if we play in the web space, retail or have a factory… Once we map that out, we have defined our core utility.

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Don’t be boring

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

It’s not a boring category, industry, startup or company. You’re a boring brand run by boring people.

Exciting is a state of mind, if we have the courage to create, upset or even offend, then we can change our brand or industry forever. In fact, it might even be worth going broke or getting fired for.

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The law of focus

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

We can only beat the big guys with focus. It has to be so small the big guys don’t care. Big guys rarely buy big businesses anyway, especially not in the tech or web scene. They want it to fit tightly into their portfolio. We ought put all our eggs in a  tiny basket. In this way we wont get short short of resources, both human and financial.

When we do this in startup land, we have a chance of winning.

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Feed your conscience

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I’m currently working on a project with a social enterprise called Abbotsford Biscuits. Which I am proud to be involved with.

Abbotsford Biscuits is a social enterprise that had its genesis back in 2005. It exists to employ people who have been excluded from mainstream training and employment. Abbotsford Biscuits has an ambitious vision of becoming a self sustainable social business over a 3 year period. And I’ve been called in to help make it so. My part will be getting the company involved in digital media and getting people like you (those who care about stuff because it’s worth doing) involved.

First – how good is this tag line:

Second: I’m aiming on for some crowd sourced strategy ideas to supplement what I already have planned. So I’d love some input in the comments.

The current plan includes the following ideas:

  • A loyalty club. Where shareholders get paid in biscuits not money. Where members can get customized gourmet biscuits. Ideas include members own design or company branded biscuits?
  • Fund raising for other organisations utilizing AB products.
  • Customised biscuits for members which can be their own design.
  • Micro financing to support the brand and grow the brand.
  • Access to exclusive events with leading Australian chefs.

But it’s an open book, which could make this project a lot of fun. I’d love some input.

Here’s a couple of pics I took while on premise recently, they look like twitter biscuits!

Yummy!

Expertise is hands on

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The word expert gets thrown around lot. Everyone’s an expert these days, especially in the technology and media arena. My view on expertise:

Without implementation expertise is just an idea, and ideas are omnipresent.

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Why scoreboards matter

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Humans are compelled to count. We count everything. Days, weeks, months, years, birthdays, money in the bank, salary levels, years of experience. It’s part of the human condition, maybe it helped us evolve to a civilised existence .

As startup entrepreneurs we need to let our people count something. Whether it’s the savings they made or they friends they have, there needs to be a way for them to keep track. So our people know they have made progress. Commerce is an anthropological game of football. So we must keep score. But it must go beyond the corporate scoreboard of profit, share price, turnover, number of employees… it has to be an audience focused score. Like followers on twitter. It has to be about them, not us, it’s how humans roll.

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