How to Write an Elevator Pitch. If you're like most entrepreneurs, you think an "elevator pitch" is a one- to three-minute sales pitch that you could presumably give during a very long elevator ride. If that's what you think, I'm sorry: You've been completely misled. Let's start with the basic fact: Nobody listens to sales pitches. (Do you listen to them? I don't. Especially if they are coming from some bozo I just met.)
To make matters worse, when most entrepreneurs give their "elevator pitch," they talk really, really fast so as to cram as much as information as possible into a short a time as possible. In professional sales, this is known as the "spray and pray" method. That being said, you're crazy if you don't have an elevator pitch, providing you realize that it's not a sales pitch, but a way to turn a casual conversation into a sales opportunity. What It Should Really Be The original idea behind the elevator pitch was to have something that you'd say to a potential customer whom you happen to meet by chance. 1. 2.
How to Make Your Startup Go Viral The Pinterest Way. On Thanksgiving, Pinterest’s co-founder Ben Silbermann sent an email to his entire user base saying thanks. It was fitting, as Pinterest was born two years ago on Thanksgiving day 2009. Ben had been working on a website with a few friends, and his girlfriend came up with the name while they were watching TV. Pinterest officially launched to the world 4 months later. Some startups go crazy with hype and users right after launch. And some don’t. I don’t know the founders, but I thought I’d take apart Pinterest’s story to discuss growth and virality in consumer web startups. Pinterest was not an overnight success. Take a look at Pinterest’s one-year traffic on Compete from Oct 2010 to Oct 2011, which is the picture in this post, and shows Pinterest rising from 40,000 to 3.2 million monthly unique visitors.
Backing out of Compete’s numbers, we see Pinterest grew about 50% month over month from a base of zero since its inception (on average, smoothing the curve). Groupon Vs. Zynga: Which Company Will Be More Valuable Post-IPO? ‘Tis the season of the IPO. So far, 2011 has seen companies like LinkedIn, Pandora, Yandex, Zillow, and RenRen come to market. As you’ve heard, Groupon and Zynga are next up in the IPO pipeline, with both companies arriving on public markets within weeks of each other. Groupon, barring some catastrophic event, will begin trading publicly on NASDAQ November 4th, with shares set at $20 a pop at a valuation of $12.7 billion.
Zynga, too, is expected to trade on NASDAQ beginning the week before Thanksgiving, and according to its revised S-1 filing with the SEC, a “third party” has valued the company at approximately $14 billion. So, the question becomes this: Notwithstanding their potential overvaluations at the time they go public, which of the two companies stands to be the most successful and the most valuable in the long run, post-IPO?
That being said, both companies have waited out the stumbling IPO market and remain (far and away) the market leaders in their respective neighborhoods.
Cashflow Management. How a few simple push notifications helped data shrinking app Onavo go viral. One of the great things about Onavo, the hot mobile app that compresses your iPhone’s data, is that most of its magic happens in the background. But while that makes Onavo a breeze to use, it also makes it easy for users to forget that they’re receiving the benefits of the app. The company’s solution: simple push notifications, powered by the mobile services company Urban Airship, that keep Onavo users in the loop with the app’s data saving progress.
After implementing the push notifications, Onavo reported a 75 percent increase in awareness and 50 percent increase in overall satisfaction from its users, according to a case study released by Urban Airship today. “Being a utility app that runs seamlessly in the background can be a doubleedged sword: users can easily forget about your service,” said Onavo director of marketing Dvir Reznik in a statement. Onavo is based in Tel Aviv, Israel, and has raised a total of $13 million from Horizon Ventures and Motorola Mobility Ventures. The 7 Best Times to Start a Company. Now that you know my belief that starting a company is your best hope of living the life you want, here's the next logical question: When should you get started? 1. You're young The best time to start a company is when you are young.
The younger, the better. Youth is a beautiful thing. Blogger Michael Arrington recalled a conversation with a venture capitalist last year that "entrepreneurs are like pro basketball players. I don't agree with the blanket statement, but I do agree that it's easier to pour your life into a company when you're young, creative, fresh, and fired up.
When I graduated from Northwestern in 1996, my primary asset was time and passion. Starting a business killed two birds with one stone. I've never met an entrepreneur who said, "Wow, I wish I hadn't started so young. " 2. Life is too short to sit behind a desk and be miserable. I've always believed that misery loves company for a reason. 3. Let's be clear, everyone who is laid off should not start a business. 4. 5. 7 Undeniable Truths of Employee Pay. Your employees are your business, so ignore the following truths at your peril: 1. Policy, schmolicy: Employees talk. Many companies actively discourage staff from talking to each other about their salaries. I even know companies that require employees to sign agreements stipulating they won’t disclose pay, benefits, etc. to other employees.
Doesn’t matter. Employees talk. I did, both when I was “labor” and when I was “management.” Never assume raises, bonuses, starting salaries, perks—basically anything related to compensation—will stay confidential. 2. Employees think about pay all the time. Each week spend a little time thinking about ways you can improve employee pay and benefits. 3. Then the employment honeymoon wears off and the employee feels you took advantage.
Never take advantage of a naïve or desperate employee. Plus it’s just wrong. 4. Saying, “That’s just how our system is set up,” is a cop-out. 5. Great employees are worth a lot more than their pay. 6. We all want more. 7. Building a Premium Product? Check Your Price Ceiling.