Agile In Everything Web And Mobile – AgileStorm

When Android and iPhone came out, hundreds(if not thousands) of entrepreneurs must be thinking of of building a location-aware mobile shopping application:

• shop in store, use the phone camera to take a picture of of a product’s barcode, get back real-time pricing info
• type in the product you want, have the application search for the products close by your location, and then directly go to the store and buy

This all sounds very cool.  But where can you get real-time product pricing and inventory information?  You don’t want to mislead users to a store that doesn’t have the product in stock or has the incorrect price
Good luck in asking all the big retailers to give you real-time pricing and inventory info.  If you don’t have a significant amount of users, they don’t care (unless you won some developer contests like ShopSavvy).   But if you don’t get this kind of info, you won’t be able to attract users.   A typical chicken and egg problem.

Well, I went to the landing your first customer SVASE event and learned from Scott Dunlop from NearbyNow how he successfully solved the chicken and egg problem of attracting users and retailers back in the days(even before all the GPS-enabled phones came out).

Scott talked about how his wife loves to shop at mall and how he hated spending hours at mall.   He wanted to build an application that helps mall shoppers to quickly locate the products they want.  The way he did the user research was just plain simple but effective:  buy some pizza, give them out for free in mall during lunch time in exchange of people telling him what they want in their mall shopping experience and their pain points.

Thinking all along of how to get the real-time pricing and inventory info, one day he found the mall operator sign, he realized that retailers in mall have strong relationship with mall operators.  And there are only few mall operators in the US.

Through his well-connected friends(Scott has a good track record in building successful companies), he pitched to the mall operators to build a mall directory mobile application that a user can easily use to navigate the mall and locate products they are looking for.  Every retailer wants to be on that directory because no retailer wants only its competitors to be seen by customers.  They are also willing to provide real-time data to drive customers into their stores.  Therefore, mall operators are the catalysis to help NearbyNow acquiring retailers as customers.

Users can use NearbyNow to search for product pricing and availability within their area, reserve the products(store associates will be notified and get the products ready), and go to stores to try them out.

NearbyNow works particular well with products that users want to try out in person(clothes, shoes, jewelry) and that are very hot selling and with limited stocks(wii)

The real nice thing about NearbyNow is it bridges online and offline shopping(online->mobile->location) as it can drive and track online leads that turn to offline leads and sales.

Its business model:

• cost per customer driven to a store
• sponsored listing of products from retailers in the mall where the user is currently at

Since NearbyNow gets the real-time data which no one else has(eg: shopping.com), it’s another gold-mine that it can easily monetize(eg: build a API for accessing the info.  Tons of mobile applications would love to access).  In fact, thefind partners with NearbyNow to offer product reservation in local stores.

After reading the NearbyNow story, have you be inspired to find any catalysis to solve your chicken and egg problem?

admin Entrepreneur, Mobile Business model, Customer Acquisition, Local Shopping, Location Aware, NearbyNow, Shopping

Notes and thoughts from Startup-U SV: Landing your First Customers with CEO’s Scott Dunlap, Mike Maciag (Electric Cloud) & Dan Steere on Jan 27th, 2009:

• Customers often tell you a thing or two that you don’t know( customers are smarter than you think)
• It’s a brutal reality that people/companies are only willing to pay for must-have products
• Products that help people cut off cost, expense, operation cost and optimize on resources will excel
• Everyone should be a product manager.  Everyone should be in a customer call every month to understand customer’s pain-points and problems( this is so true, but few companies are doing it.  Many startups are very engineering-driven that there is a big disconnect between engineers and customers)
• Scott from NearbyNow shared how he solved the problems of getting the first retail customers on board with his location-aware shopping system( his lesson deserves a separate blog post from me).

Enterprise Sale

• For enterprise products, don’t give free pilot(or trial).   You force customers to consider pricing in the conversation.   It will also force higher-level management people to look at the product when it involves money transaction
• If you do give out free trial(100% discount), don’t tell any one
• Publicize the ROI if it’s met.  Case study is important
• Always ask people how it’s going(eg: proper account management, don’t just let it run on auto-pilot)
• Your first few customers may force you to change your business if you customize too much for their needs
• You should try to find out what initiative your customer is having.  Then try to attach your service to their initiative.

This was one great panel discussion.

admin Entrepreneur Customer Acquisition, Customer Management, Product management

Notes and thoughts from SVASE Digital Media Startups – Expectations and How to Achieve Them in the Current Market meeting on Feb 19th, 2009:

The majority of the discussion is on surviving the downturn(recession).

General thoughts:

• Be scrappy
• do more with less
• Save money, cut cost
• be data-driven
• the bar for VC series A is very high
• VCs will still bet on very viral products.  But you need to keep the burn rate down

Good points by Andrew Chen:

• Vcs tell you what’s hot, but they already invest tons of money into this space.
• Don’t build your business around corporate partnership – you can’t predict
• Execution always beats ideas.  Great team + mediocre ideas > mediocre team + great ideas
• No need to worry about cutting edges
• 6-9 months bootstrapping(then raise angel, then raise VC if you can or you need it)

It was a great discussion.

mo

admin Entrepreneur Entrepreneur, startup, survival, VC Funding

Notes and thoughts from the SDForum Mobile SIG in Feb 2009:

Skyfire

Skyfire is a mobile browser that can deal with rich content(eg: flash, AJAX) and work like what you’d expect from a desktop browser.   Whatever you request in a Skyfire browser, it goes to a Skyfire server which runs your request in a real Firefox browser, and the server sends back the interactive image to skyfire browser for rendering.

No 1. question came to my mind was that Skyfire is a middleman knowing all of my browsing data.  so how can I trust them with every piece of my browsing data?  Should I just throw my privacy down the drain?  They said all the data is encrypted in memory.  Well, it still sounds too risky as one disgruntled employee may choose to access to lots of data(how about credit card numbers, social security numbers?).

Skyfire clearly solves a big problem of people wanting to get rich content on their mobile phone.  I think one of their business models is to license the browser to carriers and let them customize it(eg: default the homepage, default search engine choice).

Zannel

Zannel is a location-aware “social network enabler with built in applications and outreach with viral consumer campaigns, LBS, iPhone applications and a dynamic Inauguration Channel that provided a front seat to Washington’s Historic Day”

Zannel provides instant syndication of your content from your mobile phone so that you can enjoy instant gratification of knowing your content and your moment being delivered to your friends and followers.

Examples:

• share photos/videos of an event instantly with your friends on Facebook, Youtube and Flickr.
• Real Estate agents share photos of new houses on market with his clients.
• Bands/artists share backstage footage with fans.

It’s like the Twitter model where you syndicate content with your followers!  No wonder they are called “the multimedia Twitter“. Zannel is smart not make user generated content locked down on their site.  It acts as a distribution tool.

Zannel also works with mobile phone carriers.  It has the ability to censor on media and can set content filtering per carrier per region.

Their business model is to partner with carriers, and monetize instant media network by selling targeted advertising opportunities, sponsored lifecasts, and other premium opportunities to reach the 16-34 years old who are addicted to Zannel and its snack size media updates.

I can also see power users like bands and artists are willing to shell out some money for a pro account to market and share rich media with their fans(followers), and manage the fan relationship.

admin Mobile Mobile phone, SkyFire, Syndication, Twitter, User-generated content, Zannel

While some people are still debating how soon mobile as an advertising platform can take off, the recent research around consumer mobile usage has told all of us in business that mobile is here to stay and is the next new and effective sales channel!

• Daily Mobile News Consumption Doubles in Past Year

“The number of people using their mobile device daily to access online news and information more than doubled from January 2008 to January 2009 and now stands at 22.4 million, according to comScore.

Among the total audience of 63.2 million people who accessed news and information on their mobile devices in January 2009, more than a third (35%) did so daily.

comScore also reports that the fastest growing activities for mobile web use are accessing news and information, social networking and blogging, stock trading and accessing financial information and seeking movie information. Notably, social networking and blogging are “growing at a torrid pace,” said Mark Donovan, SVP, mobile, comScore.” (See original post from MarketingChart)

• US Overtakes UK in Mobile Browsing, Spending

“The US now has 29% of the world’s mobile web browsing traffic, and has knocked the UK out of the #1 spot on the list of countries with the most mobile web use, according to February data released by Bango.

Bango also said that this growth in traffic is being matched by a corresponding growth in users paying for content on the mobile web, in part because of publicity behind the Apple iPhone, as well as increasingly improving payment experiences that encourage more people to buy mobile content.

“With 245 million subscribers, it was only a matter of time before the US became the number 1 country in the world for mobile web browsing,” said Anil Malhotra, SVP of marketing at Bango. “When it comes to payments though, the US is accelerating faster than any other country and now accounts for 57% of payments worldwide.”

The statistics also show that while some countries such as India and Indonesia have a good appetite for browsing on their mobiles, it doesn’t always convert into purchases. In fact, only five countries in the Top 10 browsing chart are also in the Top 10 payments chart – USA, UK, Portugal, South Africa and Spain.

No matter how high the browsing rate, it is only converted into a high purchase rate where people have a good disposable income and can pay for content on their phone bills, Bango said.  In regions such as India, South Africa, Indonesia and Egypt the driver for mobile browsing is a lack of fixed-line broadband and PCs for accessing the internet which means that the mobile device is the only way people can get onto the internet.” (see original post from MarketingChart)

admin Mobile channel, ComScore, Mobile, Mobile web, United States

Mobile Web will finally be realized the next platform after years and years of hype.   It becomes easier to browse the web using a smart phone(thanks to the revolutionary iPhone).   Location-based service on the go through mobile phone is a reality.

Mobile Web Usage Becoming A Daily Activity

The blog post highlights that twice as many people access mobile web with more frequency from Jan 2008 to Jan 2009.   Users are mostly interested in time sensitive news and information as well as accessing social networks and blogs.   “The demographic most active on the mobile Web are young males between the ages of 18 to 34 who consume mostly mobile news and information. Forty percent of females in the 18 to 24-year-old age group accessed the mobile Web at least once in January.”

Mobile Browsing by Platform Market Share – iPhone takes 66% of market shares in Feb 2009

No wonder there’s a gold rush to iPhone apps and iPhone specific web sites.

Scarborough Research finds that El Paso, Salt Lake City, Dallas and Memphis are the Top Text Messaging(SMS) Markets in the U.S.

“Text messaging could be largely disproportionately appealing to marketers because it delivers a
young, multicultural audience. Additionally, texts can provide a very locally targeted vehicle for
marketers wanting to reach people in the right place at the right time, ready to make a purchase.”

“Texters are more likely than the average cell phone subscriber to live in a household that owns – or plans to buy – a wide variety of hi-tech items, from HDTVs to MP3 players to video game systems. ”

“Texters are also leading online spenders. One-fifth (20 percent) of Texters spend more than
$1,000 online annually, versus 17 percent of all cellular users. They are avid online users overall,
as Internet applications permeate all aspects of their lives, from household tasks (such as bill
paying) to entertainment (such as downloading movies or TV programs) to interaction (such as
blogging and downloading a wide variety of content).

When not online or shopping, Texters are active, on-the-go consumers. They are 37 percent
more likely than all cellular subscribers to have played basketball (as a leisure activity) during the
past year; 29 percent more likely to have gone jogging/running; 29 percent more likely to have
played tennis, and 23 percent more likely to have practiced yoga.

Their interests reflect their youthful demographic and active nature. Texters are 12 percent more
likely to have attended a professional sports event, and 57 percent more likely to have gone to an
R&B/Rap/Hip-Hop concert during the past year.”

admin Mobile iPhone, Mobile web, SMS

Entrepreneurs often come to AgileStorm with great ideas and visions and are very passionate about them.   They have some ideas about their competitors in general.   We often advise Entrepreneurs to do more in-depth competitive analysis when we feel the ideas and visions can take more time to be flushed out.

It’s super important to do user/market segmentation.  You may think you compete with a company on all fronts, but you may be able to target different user bases and market segments once you have done the competitive analysis.

There are lots of free resources on the Internet that you can use to do competitive analysis yourself.  Let’s say your main competitor is The Motley Fool:

• use QuantCast to see The Motley Fool’s user segmentation, monthly traffic figure, the traffic trend, what other sites, and what categories of sites The Motley Fool’s visitors are likely to visit.
• use Google Web Site Trends to see what search terms drive users to The Motley Fool, the traffic trend, which regions or countries drive most of the traffic,  and what other sites The Motley Fool’s visitors are likely to visit.  Some shortcomings of Google Web Site Trends are that it doesn’t work on sub-domain(eg:  mail.yahoo.com), and it doesn’t have any stats for Google itself.  If you already signed in with your Google account, the traffic figure in absolute value is also shown.  You can also compare traffic on different web sites:

• Use Compete to see traffic snapshot.  The free version of Compete doesn’t give out much good stuff though.
• Definitely check out Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Google Trends for Websites

One of the nicest things using these tools is the ability to find out more sites that are related or similar to your competitor.   Often, we find lots of sites that we didn’t know about.

That’s it for this post.  We’d love to hear how you are doing competitive analysis.

admin Competitive Aanalysis Competitive Analysis, Google Trends, Quantcast

I went to the Stanford Entrepreneur Week event in Feb. One session is around “Pitching and Presenting Workshop: How to Make Your Story Compelling”.  The session was so crowded, but it’s really good as I practiced my pitching skills in a couple of the round in a group fashion.   Here are my learning and thoughts around a good pitch:

1. What is pitching? In Silicon Valley, it’s very common for entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas to VC for funding.  But pitching actually has a much broad meaning.  The goal of pitching is really on how you can get enough attraction from telling your story to generate new relationship or to get some one’s buy-in .  It is actually such an important and common task that we deal with every day on about everything.
2. Pitching is not just a business activity. It happens at work, at home, at movie theatre, among colleagues, between wife and husband, among friends, online and offline…  When you and your friend were discussing if they would all go to the movie you want, it’s your pitch. You want to persuade your husband or wife to buy a Graco car seat versus a Chicoo brand, it’s a pitch. You have an innovative idea on how to improve one project and you need to get your boss’ buy-in, it’s a pitch. You run into a person at a bar, who could be your potential client, and you want him/her have more interests in your offering, it’s a pitch…  You can practice your pitching skills whenever
3. The secret of a successful pitch is so simple, yet so few people know how to make it work. There are three basic elements of a good pitch, and the goal is to make these three elements clear and short! Below is a great presentation from the session:
   • what is the problem you are trying to solve
   • why it matters /why it is a problem
   • how you are going to solve the problem and why it’s different
   Stanford E Week 2009 Pitching&Presenting Workshop

   View more presentations from agilestorm.
4. A very practical way of practicing pitching that I found useful is: have a live elevator pitch for yourself (who you are & what you do). Practice this often (daily or weekly); write it down in a piece of paper; keep it in your pocket; revise it while you are in a car or waiting for lunch…

Have a great pitch next time!

admin Entrepreneur business, Elevator pitch, Entrepreneur, pitching, Stanford University, startup, VC Funding