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Rachel Chaikof

10 Questions That Create Success - 0 views

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    Great questions to ask yourself about becoming successful...
Daniel Benoni

On the (un?)importance of design - 0 views

  • On the (un?)importance of design
  • We recently underwent a Cinderella-like transformation: A total redesign of the WP Engine website from despicable steaming pile of hideousness to a designed, thematic — dare I say artistic? — sleek new look. Does it matter?
  • It was such a contrast, customers emailed us saying “Thank God you fixed that horrible website. I was embarrassed when referring you guys to friends.” But hold on. They were still customers. And they still were referring us to friends. So I wonder, did it really matter?
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  • 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.
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    Design, important or not
Daniel Benoni

How to Increase Internal Corporate Community Engagement - 7Summits Blog - 0 views

  • 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.
  • Q. So how do you activate your internal community to reach a positive ROI? A. Facilitate Employee Engagement within the platform. A successful company and a thriving corporate culture doesn’t come from an org chart and people identified by numbers it comes from HUMANS, community, and allowing other users to benefit from each other’s expertise. Successful internal community participation directly and indirectly helps users across divisions and regions achieve their goals, find experts, and collaborate efficiently.
  • Successful internal community participation directly and indirectly helps users across divisions and regions achieve their goals, find experts, and collaborate efficiently.
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  • 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. 
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    great article to support the need of an internal collaborative tool facilitating community engagement!!!
Daniel Benoni

Dan Shapiro » Vesting is a hack - 1 views

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    Startups are a lot of work!  He quits AcmeCorp and takes a cushy executive gig at a fortune-500 tech firm.  Jill's left solo. Years pass.  Jill first works without salary, then pays herself a pittance.  She bootstraps the company, starting with consulting and moving on the develop a highly successful web service.  As she brings on staff, she issues stock to new employees, ultimately handing out a half-million shares of the company.  Eventually she's the CEO of a 50-person firm, pulling down a respectable $200k per year as the CEO; nearly as much as Jack's pulling down at his gig (not including his benefits and bonuses).
Rachel Chaikof

The Dirty Little Secret Of Overnight Successes - 0 views

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    Here are some encouragement for you guys :)
Rachel Chaikof

Don't Fall Asleep at the Wheel: Successful Entrepreneurs Have Lives - Business - GOOD - 0 views

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    Good tips for aligning your duties as an entrepreneur
Rachel Chaikof

12 Things Successful People Do Differently - 0 views

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    Great tips!
Rachel Chaikof

Top 5 Ways Of Achieving Blog Success By Helping Others - 0 views

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    Great tip on how we can write blogs that encourage others to help -
Daniel Benoni

Facebook Launches Non-Profit Resource Center - 0 views

  • Facebook is launching a resource center to help non-profits use the social network.
  • The site will include educational materials, tutorials and a downloadable non-profit guide geared toward raising awareness and funds for causes specifically through the social network.
  • how to create a Facebook Page and explains how to set up events and use discussion boards to connect with an audience
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  • he Resource Center will also include a spotlight section for successful non-profits and a success stories app where Facebook will showcase best practices and try to build a community around shared stories and advice.
  • The resource center is clearly meant to provide non-profits tools, but it’s also a sign that Facebook is taking social good seriously. Facebook has been a home to online philanthropy for some time, but it is not the only game in town.
  • t’s important from a business perspective to establish Facebook as a hub for non-profits online, but ultimately the cause — and social good — should come first.
  • The page has already raked in more than 410,000 Likes and only seems to be growing. Has social good hit the mainstream? Should more companies create resource centers?
Rachel Chaikof

Pinterest's First Investor Explains the Secret to the Startup's Success - 0 views

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    Some good tips for a startup...
Rachel Chaikof

Viral By Design: Teams in the Networked World - 1 views

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    A must to read on how to create a successful viral product by design
Daniel Benoni

Why Top Brands Are Investing So Much Time In a Social Media Leaderboard - 0 views

  • Why Top Brands Are Investing So Much Time In a Social Media Leaderboard
  • Massive brands like Intel, Audi, Microsoft, Ford Motor Company, Toyota and AT&T have also invested in EA and are quickly rising up EA’s business leaderboard. The real-life success of a company seems to directly correspond with EA’s scoring algorithm. The Fortune 500 ranks public companies by the most after-tax revenue for the year, but how does EA determine its scoring? “We really look at the following: Activity (how much and what you do), audience (who’s listening) and engagement/interaction (how are people engaging you),” Dups said. “So if you can break down any network in that way, you can figure out what we listen to.”
  • Getting In Early
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  • 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
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    Potential partner, they could use our score in their algorithm, we could ask them some question about their algorithm, we offer them a social value in their score and they drive us really interesting traffic and brands! To check soon!
Daniel Benoni

Build, market, measure in parallel - LaunchBit - 0 views

  • First-time web entrepreneurs often tell me "Oh we're moving really quickly...we're launching in just 6 months."
  •  The trouble is that product traction isn't just about getting a product out the door.
  • Your biggest competitor isn't any company or individual.  It's time -- the duration you have before you run out of money, morale, and the enthusiasm your significant other/family has for your endeavors.
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  • 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.
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