Wow, I could have had a startup V8!

Sometimes it feels like I need to schedule my bathroom breaks it's so busy. There's seems like there's never a shortage of fires or even dull, menial things to do. The fires seem to grow out of control quickly, and no matter how long I procrastinate, there are no magic elves that complete the other daily tasks. I'm sure this is not just a startup phenomena but universal for any small and medium businessperson.

Dude! You spent your precious time doing what?!?

We find ourselves spending time working on tasks that are important but are not core to our business or do not add clear enterprise value. Still, we need to pay the bills. Employees like to work with lights on, it seems. It's excusable when there is no other option, but sometimes there are expert service providers at economical or even free prices that will do the work for you. You have people. This is especially true and important when it comes to real estate.

I've recently gone through two different office searches using a combination of drive-bys, online searches, cold calls, and office visits. I can't tell you how much time I personally spent driving around, calling, visiting and searching online. Yet, there are corporate real estate professionals that would have done this for me. They spend their time and expertise to filter and curate, for free. That's a 4-letter word that any entrepreneur can enjoy.

The sheer fact that its cost effective is great, but the biggest benefit is the time that you recover to spend on the task list items that are core to your business and your clients. Additionally, these professionals not only know the market better than you or I, but since:

1. This is their job, they know the latest before it happens and shows up on showcase.com.
2. They know how to negotiate, what to ask for, and what to look for in leasing agreements.
3. They are doing this for not only you, but for many others like you, so they have economy of scale and knowledge.

Here in Dallas, there are some local corporate real estate professionals, like Brian Brooks (Brian.Brooks@cnl.com) and Campbell Henry (Campbell.Henry@cnl.com) of CNL Commercial Real Estate that focus specifically on startups and entrepreneurs that not only need to worry about getting comfy, convenient and cheap digs that attract talent but have an eye to the future for when they need to grow or reduce.

It's always good to have people in the know, especially when you're struggling to find time for a bathroom break.

Remarkable

I read a great Seth Godin piece once that spoke about the need for products and services to stand out, to literally be remarkable.  That is, provoke people to say something about it.

As we look at all the marketing knobs from our top level goals down the creative and copy used in campaigns, it sure helps when what you are talking about is remarkable.

From a startup perspective, this is so critical.  Sure, you can always slap some lipstick on the pig.  What is much harder yet has much more impact is to look seriously at your product or service, the business needs, the user needs, and technology or real-world opportunities and limitations and truly improve it.

And, differentiate it in a meaningful way.

When your product is truly remarkable, it will speak for itself.

An Amazing Concept

When I grew up, we received 4 TV channels.  I remember my brother and I, in the winter, watching TV together, lying down in front the TV with our feet on the baseboard heater, probably much too close to the TV, which has undoubtedly caused permanent damage in later years.

free comic book...you know you want it...

As Seth Godin has said about the TV Industrial Complex, communication and marketing to consumers has changed.  When I grew up, when there was a commercial on TV for Captain Crunch, it was obvious that we needed to go to the store immediately and buy some Captain Crunch.  The TV said so.

In the current age of information overload, spam mail, spam email, and getting Groupon'ed to death with emails and mobile notifications, people don't have the time and patience for outbound marketing anymore.  We fast forward through most TV commercials.  We read out news in 141 character bites. It's a huge challenge for many brands, but I would contend that this puts the largest stress on the most important element for brands to keep their customers engaged: a great product or service.

I know.  I'm amazing.  Hold the applause, please.  Hey, having other reasons for customers to come back for great content is awesome, but if you don't deliver on the goods they care about the most, ain't no one gonna care anyway.

Lead by Error

I've been off the blog wagon for several weeks, and it's not for lack of interesting stuff to talk about, just that life in the startup has been all-occupying.  We've made amazing progress, yet, I keep looking up and the mountain is not getting smaller.  Yes, this is actually fun!

As with any multi-person venture, large corporation down to small startups, leadership is important.  Setting a vision.  Clear goals.  Passion.  Mentoring and improving the team.  Honest, data-based assessments.  Leading by example.

One of the most difficult leadership skills is admitting mistakes.  We always want our kids to tell the truth, admit their mistakes and clean up their messes.  To lead well, you need to admit when you err, correct it and move on.

Our employees are like our kids, and they don't necessarily learn from what we tell them.  They more often learn and inherit traits from what they see us do every day.

To Meet or Not to Meet

There's an excellent article from a few days ago in the Wall Street Journal about a growing trend for companies to adopt elements from Agile software development, including not sitting during meetings.  The idea is to force efficiency.  Just because Outlook defaults to 1-hour meeting increments doesn't mean that much time is needed, or that I actually want to spend that much time with you.

Who called this meeting?

Here are my 4 rules of meeting invites:
1. Have a goal:  If I don't see a goal in the meeting invite, then I am calling and asking for one.
2. Have an agenda:  Lord knows that we might mention the Super Bowl, or the latest Damn You Auto-Correct or People of Walmart post, but a framework helps march the team towards the goal and keeps the animals in the zoo, contained.
3. Invite the Necessary, Spare the Innocent:  'Nuff said!
4. In-and-out, no one gets hurt:  If it only takes 5 minutes, you're my hero!  I try to book meetings in 15 or 30 minute increments to force the issue, but if it really doesn't even take a meeting, just walk over or pick up the phone and save everyone the time and effort.

Forcing people to stand and taking away tables so they won't be playing Cut the Rope during the meeting is fine, but hopefully, you work with adults and not the chimps from the CareerBuilder Super Bowl commercial.

The old adage that time is money is too simple to explain the impact, though.  First, you are not only wasting your time (T = $), you are multiplying the time waste by how many people you've invited (T x N = $$).  Also, all time spent meeting is time not spent on opportunity (T x N - O = $$$).  Finally, when you really need to discuss and communicate in a structured format, you are likely trying to make important decisions that affect business, so doing it well is critical.

Save a dollar, kill a bad meeting.

Taking the Plunge, Again

Only now, as I look back, do I realize how fortunate I was to work for a startup so early in my career.  It was part-MBA, part mom-and-pop shop, part family, and a whole lot of fun.  It engrained so many values into me and I learned so much.  A lot of long hours, hard work, lifelong friendships, and some occasional stress as pressure mounted, especially that last Christmas holiday before we were purchased trying to get the product ready.  I didn't know, when I returned from vacation, if we would still be in business, so I took a programming book with me to study in case I needed to find new employment.  Who can resist such adventure?

Because...when you eat, they eat, too!

So, when I started to look around for new challenges, I knew I wanted to get back to the startup vibe.  My friend and the CEO of my first startup experience (Pixel), Jim Fontaine, introduced me to Andre Angel, the founder and CEO of TangoTab (and founder of CODEKKO, NTRglobal, and Work Meter).  Andre founded this venture that not only promised the excitement and challenge of building a new business, but an innovative service that uses a portion of its proceeds to fight hunger.  Wow!  And, it revolves around restaurants and dining out, a couple of my core passions.

TangoTab is a marketing tool for restaurants that allows them to make a controlled amount of offers to their customers, many times the same offers they are making anyway, and only when a customer redeems an offer, they pay TangoTab.  No risk.  The fun part starts from there, as TangoTab then donates a portion of the proceeds to the local food banks and hunger charities in the cities where we are deployed.

So much fun.  So useful.  So gratifying.  And, that is why I have taken the plunge, again.

Go check out TangoTab yourself and learn about the fight against hunger.  We're still working out some kinks, so register and access us via the website, as we need to post a fix for the iPhone app.  If you are in an area that we currently serve, try the service, and I'd love your feedback and your wish list of restaurants.  If you are in an area where we do not currently serve, let me know, along with your favorite restaurants, and I will let you know when we launch in your area.  You can reach out to me via twitter.

Because...when you eat, they eat, too!

Privacy

Waves of articles about the embedding of the Carrier IQ quality of service agent in phones in the past few weeks have captured the attention of media and mobile phone users.  It's raises the topic of privacy and the importance of clear disclosure to end users.  Because the bottom line is this: if the phones visually notify the end users of what data they were capturing, what they are going to use the data for, and how the end user can opt-out of such measurement, this is a non-issue.  These 3 privacy commandments are critical not just for market research but for any mobile and internet startup, as well.

Now, in the case of CIQ, this all may have been done, in all cases.  From the press articles, it seems that there may have been some breakdowns between all the parties responsible for delivering the end solution.  Given that the situation has attracted the attention of Senator Franken, and the Senator still does not seem to have received all responses or seem to be happy with those he received, there will likely be more disclosures to the public to understand more.

The commandments sound simple enough, but its amazing how the smallest and the largest companies don't do justice to them.  I have met with startups who gloss over this when we discuss privacy, and when companies are small, they want to focus on building the framework of their business, expecting to plumb the details when money is flowing in.  Fair enough, but the early investment likely does not cost much, if anything, and the importance of embedding the edicts of user privacy are important to seed early and often.  Large companies often do everything legally required, but often embed disclosures and  how to opt-out in the middle of much larger, user agreements that no one ever reads.

The reality is that most users are willing to make the trade-off.  Given clear and definable value, they will let you use their information for benefit and profit.  Actually, being very up-front and transparent about privacy and data usage helps users gain more confidence in companies.  Thinking about opt-outs, data storage and removal, and breaches up front and early is infinitely cheaper early on.

Tell the user up-front and right away what data you want to use and why, make it clear and easy to opt-out, and if you give a service of value, they will give you invaluable access and demographic information.  Win-win.