Group items tagged

choosing to snack on an apple rather than a piece of cake

or larger projects like volunteering your time to a non-profit

users start to build a social identity based on their actions.

where users flesh out profiles based on their philanthropic interests.

This concept of a charitable social layer has taken off on other online platforms like Jumo or Causes.com. People are becoming more conscientious of how they’re perceived online. This social layer based on philanthropic interests is both an easy way to track causes and a positive way to self identify.

The more we narrowed our focus the less motivated we became.  We went from looking at a massive addressable market to a subset of people and a minimal product offering.

Focusing, as difficult as it was, was necessary given the reality that we were two

Write everything down.

best ways to drastically narrow your scope, it’s easy to list four or five options but having to pick just one and describe it fully really focuses things.

Pitching everyday

it helps you to iterate much faster.

People tend to love your idea when it’s vague, as they develop their own picture of what it will really be.  -- What we found to really work well was building a baseline pitch deck and iterating on it every day based on what we had learned.

Take all the “ands” out. 

We help parents to fix the problems in their child's daily routine and to encourage them to try new things

We help parents to fix the one or two main problems in their child's daily routine. 

It’s tough to not start writing code after your first positive interview.

Not because we found the best problem/solution mix, but rather because we found one solution that we can quickly test and on which we can iterate.

It must have mattered. Look how bad it was. Not only were the pages just ugly, they were peppered with database errors and CSS blowups

. It doesn’t prove design doesn’t matter, but it does suggest design may not be the deciding factor.

Can you see at what point in time we changed design?  No?  Must not have made a difference. Let’s look at time-on-site:

Nothing. But this is all superficial — what Really Matters is the Conversion Rate: are more or fewer people signing up each week:

Hmm. Looks like everything objective is saying “it doesn’t matter.” But as much as I respect and follow Lean Startup theory, objective measurements aren’t the only things that matter. Those customer emails matter too.

The other day we landed a large customer who said they could tell from our website that among our competitors we’re more mature and ready to handle a bigger customer like them. I can tell you — objectively — that we’re among the youngest of our competitors, and although I have a list of reasons why “we’re better,” the truth is that particular customer would probably be served just fine by several of those competitors. Was it the design that gave us that edge? Could be. Didn’t hurt, anyway.

Still, the more I look at the importance of design in the startups in my little career, the less it seems to matter.

Modern Lean Startup theory blares out from the red-tiled rooftops of Stanford: Seek the Data and Ye Shall Find! First the bounce-rate. If our website design was repulsive — literally — the bounce rate should now diminish. Here’s the data:

An even more extreme example comes from my second company ITWatchDogs. I displayed its old homepage at the magnificent Webstock design conference in Wellington earlier this year; the crowd whooped at our violent assault on the visual arts, complete with calliope menubar colors, two broken images tag above the fold, and a layout model that could be seen as a “grid” only after consuming a pillowcase of mushrooms:

But you’re anticipating the punch-line — ITWatchDogs grew every month, made millions of dollars, stole business from competitors with billion-dollar market caps (and professional-looking websites), and had a successful exit.

Of course it’s only fair to also point out some of the many instructive counter-examples: Hipmunk is the same thing as Orbitz or Travelocity — the only difference is amazing design, not just because it looks good but because it’s so useable. In the words of Joel Spoksly — the design “affords usability.” (P.S. Early Hipmunk team member Alexis Ohanian is so cool and smart and rich and funny and successful and good-looking that really he doesn’t deserve to be alive. (P.P.S. Hey flamers, for God’s sake it’s a joke! Don’t you realize I’m just sore from losing the Pecha Kucha competition to him?)) I always use and recommend Amy Hoy’s time zone tool only because it’s just nice to use and look at. (P.S. she also authors a terrific blog aimed at the solo entrepreneur.) Many people credit Mint’s smash success with their terrific design. Considering how many features were broken for how long, it’s hard to argue. 37signals documented — with data — how design changes results directly in more credit-card-swiping customers. It doesn’t get more “business value” than that. So where does that leave us in the “matters / doesn’t matter” question of design?

I think you can go either way, but you must decide whether or not you’re going to value design as core to your startup’s identity, and then act consistently. Here’s what I mean.

It’s clear from the outset that design is the only competitive advantage Hipmunk has over its competition. Specifically, by making the flight-search problem pleasurable and useable instead of feeling like you’re navigating pivot tables from Excel ’98.

They don’t have better data, better branding, better name, better SEO, or more money. Just better design, and not just easily-copyable incremental improvement, but a quantum leap better.

When design is that fundamental to the business — how it acquires and retains customers, garners attention and referrals, and distinguishes itself in the market — obviously design can be the most important thing.

Conversely, at ITWatchDogs the company’s internal and external culture was that we’re low-cost, friendly, approachable, regular guys, who understand exactly what you worry about, exactly what your budget is, and we nail it. The site might have looked bad, but our message couldn’t have been clearer.

But it is useful to decide where you come down on the question of design in your startup, because if it’s important you’d better work on that right now and develop a consistent culture of valuing design through-and-through, and if it’s not important you’d better decide what is important and nail those things all the harder, because you’ll be competing with people who are using superior design to cover up their lack of competency in those same areas.

each of the ten fraternity chapters on campus agreed to sign on and to collaborate on a philanthropic endeavor this semester and in the future

all fraternities will collaborate philanthropically around an agreed upon theme, sharing resources and co-sponsoring fundraising events together

Because fraternities at Tufts are already so busy with their individual chapter philanthropic activities, it was initially challenging to get all the chapters to sign on

However, once everyone came to the understanding that this was not intended to be a burden but rather a supplement to their ongoing activities, things began to develop well.

ollaboration really has great potential for better utilizing our manpower to maximize the effect we can have

hopes the partnership will help change some of the stereotypes about fraternities.  “While the point of this project is to increase the philanthropic activity of chapters, it is also very much to improve recognition of the philanthropic work chapters have been doing for a while now,

reek chapters participate in or host multiple philanthropy events a semester and the campus doesn't always hear about them, so by bringing all of the chapters together it is hoped that awareness of fraternity charitable activity will increase.

So if brands aren’t necessarily going by their EA network score to judge their return on investment, how do they know if their time is well spent? Robert Scoble thinks it’s too early to say whether brands will see a major return on their EA investment. “It’s something fun to play around with, but that’s all I’d be doing right now if I were a company,” Scoble said. “That said, you could get a lot of PR by playing around with services in early stages of the game. Everyone remembers [the companies that were early to] blogging and Twitter. No one cares about the 3,000th one there.”

Intel is seeing results from being an early adopter. “As one of the first Fortune 50 brands on EA, we got first-mover credit,” explained Rhoads. “People noticed we were participating and were able to interact directly through the game with a very active, pre-existing community. It’s very satisfying to invest in that community and I think gratifying and perhaps surprising when a brand re-invests back in you. As far as results are concerned, it’s hard to tell.”

While larger companies are always among first adopters for new social networking sites because they have more resources and staff, the true test will be if smaller companies will flock to EA as they have to Facebook and Twitter. Most companies will likely need harder evidence of return on investment in order to justify getting into the game

“My brothers and I don’t volunteer for just another trophy on the shelf,” said Matt Ziegler, a UNF electronic media junior and vice president of fraternity Pi Kappa Phi. “To have peace of mind knowing I am devoting my time to people who appreciate my help is the real reward.”

When properly and strategically implemented, CSR does not lose money, it makes money. Over the long term, it is a viable business strategy that focusses on long-term sustainable impacts (including profitability). Arguing against reducing energy, water and waste costs, along with fines, meeting onerous regulatory standards imposed due to improper actions, etc. is as foolish and short-sighted as arguing against oil changes for your car (it costs money) or the installation of safety devices that protect consumers (such as safety belts and airbags) because they increase the cost of the vehicle.

“A lot of people said, ‘I didn’t want to appear to be bragging, I see volunteering as something that I do on a very personal level and I don’t expect to be rewarded for it on a professional level,’”

“There are a lot of people that keep it private because they do it for themselves and i respect that,” Williams says. “But at the same time, I think there’s something to be proud of with your commitment to causes.”

400,000 employees, roughly 40% of whom work from home or on the road, gaming is a way to help colleagues connect and stay engaged, explains Mr. Hamilton.

found that employees trained on video games learned more factual information, attained a higher skill level and retained information longer than workers who learned in less

Still, gaming experts say there are some pitfalls for companies when implementing games internally. Companies need to make sure that the games are designed to actually reward desired behaviors and are not just doling out meaningless awards or badges.

The trouble with my last company was that our experience in software development came from large companies, where your job is just to ship code.

So we thought that a launch was just about writing the code.  And, we did that in 6 months.  But, what we didn't account for was that in a startup, you don't have a ready large group of users just waiting to use your product. So, your launch time must also include a cycle of user experience and marketing.

So, if you do everything in series in a drawn out way like we did: build, market, measure, it's a cycle that can turn months into years.  Eric Ries suggests that shortening an iterative loop and going through such a loop multiple times quickly is the key to success.  I would take that a step further and suggest not only cutting activities to shorten that loop, but to do as much of this loop in parallel.

Our workflow looks like this: get your Unbounce or LaunchRock page up from Day 1 and start marketing before you have a product.  You can gauge interest and get signups from the very beginning until you're done with the first iteration of the product.  Start getting the Craigslist posts out there on Day 1 to get feedback and potential customers immediately.  Once you have enough of an idea of what to build, start mocking up your idea.  Get those mocks back out to potential customers to make sure you're on the right track.  Iterate as much as possible on paper before building, because it's much faster to re-draw than to re-code.  "Delete features" on your paper prototypes as well, reducing what you need to actually build in code.  Try to code as little as possible to shrink that build time to about 1-2 weeks.  By the time you're done building your first prototype, you've already acquired users from doing marketing in parallel.  This puts you in a position to start measuring usage and gauging interest immediately before iterating through that loop again.

Build, market, measure should happen as much as possible in parallel to reduce your launch time and keep your money, morale, and support up.

Field said one major attraction for companies is the chance to align their employee volunteer programs with the objective of their business.

Volunteer programs are tied efforts to retain two major employee groups, younger workers looking for work-life balance and ready-to-retire older workers who want to serve their communities,

Bramhall, 29 agreed the Development Partnerships program is a retention tool for Accenture.

Workers who are part of Gen Y say they want a job that lets them also exercise their personal values and beliefs, according to a study by Deloitte & Touche USA LLC. The study shows 62 percent of Gen Y respondents between the ages of 18 and 26 want to work for companies that give them a chance to use their skills to help a nonprofit.

Lupe Garcia, associate general counsel in the legal department at Gap, Inc. said her supervisors have recognized the fundraising and communication skills she developed in her volunteer work have increased her skills

Employees at Gap can spend up to five hours of paid time each month on a volunteer activity. If they spend 15 hours of their own time volunteering, Gap will give $150 to the organization, as well as matching any employee donations.

"An important driver in wanting to do this was really a desire to do something with my skills that had a broader impact, that had a deeply social impact," Coghlan said.

Internal communication and collaboration within intranets has documented solid ROI’s encouraging companies to look to it more and more for increased innovation and decreased costs. While many organizations have achieved these positive ROI’s, the process to realizing them is often challenged. Activating the community, and getting users to interact with each other becomes a difficult behavioral change, but one that is invaluable to the company as a whole and its employees

No one is participating because companies are simply using a different communication medium for the same old message. The voice of a community should reign relevant to the workers, not the executives, a common mistake we see with many failed internal community and intranet projects.  The fastest way to make a community relevant and to gain participation is to make it human and to upgrade the messaging to fit the distribution tool.

Identify ambassadors/ Experts: Don’t ignore those able to deliver genuine knowledge, identify them, embrace them, and give them room to speak in a HUMAN voice. Engagement breeds engagement. People who are most likely to contribute include natural leaders, employee’s active on other social networks, and members who had a say in the initial community planning stages,

Recognize these experts: Thank users who do participate. Many companies build communities prompting “Find an Expert” “Ask a Question” but the true value of the question and answer feature is getting people to answer those questions.

Invest in Information Architecture and User Experience: We’ve seen several communities that are lacking engagement because it is unclear to users HOW to engage.  Investments in information architecture are often over looked, even though they are vitally important. 

Current Dollar Fair Market Valuation Pro bono work should be valued at Fair Market Value (FMV) and recorded as non-cash giving in CECP Survey Question 9.  FMV is the hourly or project cost that a paying client would incur for the same service. Companies are encouraged to use the three scenarios below to assist in determining the FMV of services rendered.  The dollar values in the scenarios below are based upon current U.S. salary data adjusted to account for geographic differences and typical fee-discounting practices.  CECP is currently unable to provide dollar-value assistance for non-U.S. pro bono service. Paid-release-time service that does not meet the pro bono criteria should be recorded at a dollar value that is appropriate to the skills involved in CECP Survey Question 22 (do not include pro bono hours in Question 22, as that would be double counting hours recorded in Question 9). When in doubt, the current Independent Sector rate is appropriate.

For companies with minimal pro bono tracking capabilities In the absence of employee skill area data and internal billing rates, CECP recommends using an estimate of $120 per hour for pro bono service projects. This is based on a rounded average billing rate for mid-level employees across disciplines, highlighted below. For companies with moderate pro bono tracking capabilities Companies that track the seniority level or skills deployed in pro bono projects should use the following chart to value pro bono hours if internal rates are not available.

For companies with robust pro bono tracking capabilities Companies should use their best internal billing information to determine the FMV of services rendered. These valuations should be adjusted to reflect billing differences by: geography, seniority level, rate discounting, employee skill area, etc. To do this, companies must track project metrics that affect billing rates so that an accurate, defensible valuation for pro bono contributions can be recorded. CECP strongly encourages companies to track pro bono to this level of specificity whenever possible.

4. Optional: Determine which outlet gets the scoop In today’s media landscape, a story covered 15 minutes ago by another blog can already be considered old news. Therefore depending on the type of news and the market you’re in it might be wise to give one specific media channel the scoop.

8. Distribute your press release In a previous step you set up draft emails for all your PR contacts, now is the time to send them.

6. Write draft emails In the previous step you have probably only sent out the news to a handful of contacts on your contact list.

7. Make the announcement When the day finally comes, you can publish your press release (or have it published automatically if you’re using the schedule option).

5. Send personalized emails to journalists, under embargo If you decided not to give the scoop to a certain blog you can still let journalists know about your announcement before you actually make it public.

9. Thank the people that covered your story Congratulations! Now that your press release is out in the open you should see some coverage happening. Be sure to enjoy all the free publicity your company receives and thank the people that cover your story via a personal email so you can start building a relationship with them for your future press releases.