Warning! This doesn’t apply to everyone who has tried to pitch me a story, but enough for me to write this blog post. Please don’t jump all over my head thinking that I am referring to you. When I started off as a part-time rogue blogger, I found it easy to write on things I found interesting. As the regularity and velocity of my blogging picked up, I found an interesting trend emerge. I now get a regular steady beat of requests to write about their start-up or a weird obscure thing going on in their company. Now don’t get me wrong,I come across a few real gems and legitimately interesting things going on. However, I drill down a bit further on why many of these companies are so actively seeking coverage (especially the ones that I find a bit dubious) and have found an alarming, but not surprising trend. Many of these companies are using coverage to mask the fact that their company has significant holes in it. It could be that their business is a “me too” company or that they are not nearly as far along as they claim to be, or even that the number of active users they have on their system just isn’t really interesting. Let me set the record straight: as a marketer, going after coverage is a perfectly acceptable and smart way to help advance the goals of your start-up. I am in the process of launching my own start-up right now (Printchomp – shameless plug alert) and PR will be a corner stone of driving user sign-ups and interest in the company. That said, if you are no where close to achieving product-market fit, your User Experience absolutely sucks or you’re a shameless knockoff of another site, maybe you don’t want to be pushing so hard for coverage. Even if all those items are fixed, you also have to make sure you have a compelling reason to actively pursue coverage. A veiled excuse to get backlinks from a major tech blog isn’t enough in my opinion. So before you send out an article request to piss off yet another tech journalist, ask yourself a key question. If you receive coverage, will it materially fix any of the day to day problems your start-up faces? It is like using wallpaper for structural support in a building. It looks nice, but it won’t keep your house from falling...
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As some of you already know, I have been working on a new start-up. I spent two weeks on the high seas back in February contemplating my next move after leaving my last venture. It was very liberating to sit with a blank piece of paper and a pencil and scribble ideas. While the ocean went by I would sit for an hour or two a day and come up with ideas, business problems or other problems that need to be addressed. In the following month, I took all of my ideas and started evaluating them in more detail. I came to the one conclusion: the customized goods space is under serviced on the internet. It is still nearly impossible to do good comparison shopping for competitive goods or to order them in an easy fashion. The first industry vertical we will be building this service out for is the print industry, hence our name “Printchomp”. We just got back from TechCrunch Disrupt in New York where we have begun to share what we are doing. I even got to share a beer up on stage with Michael Arrington and MG, what a cool way to start a company. Meet our Mascot! For the time being, we are calling our mascot Chomp! He is the master of ceremonies for all Printchomp related activities and was created by our awesome Art Director – Alysha Puopolo Now onto business! We hope to be launching V 1.0 of Printchomp for this September and encourage you to sign-up at our website www.printchomp.com to get the latest news as we prepare for launch. Recruiting! We are looking for the best and brightest in talent to help build out our team. Declan Whelan, our tech virtuoso, is looking for some awesome tech talent to join our elite force of coders. If you want in on the ground floor of this kick-ass bootstrap start-up and have the skills to pay the bills email me at joseph (at) Printchomp (dot) com. We aren’t just looking for tech talent. If you have other skills that you think will help us, please let us know. We need your help! We recognize we are only as strong as our users. We need your help! If you want to help us please do the following 3 things 1. Like us on Facebook 2. Follow us on Twitter Follow @printchomp 3. Sign-up for our updates – Sign up here...
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For the last 2 months, I have had my head down building the first start-up in which I was one of the founders. While I spent time coming up with the idea, figuring out how to make money with it, and deciding what it would do, I knew that I needed technical expertise. I started to spend time searching for a technical co-founder, because it is one of the most crucial hires that a new start-up needs. Here are some tips that I have compiled after spending time in search. 1. Run your search in parallel with all other activities – The search for a good technical co-founder can take weeks or months. Don’t try to get a bunch of other tasks done first before you begin your search. The best recommendation I can give is to run the processes in parallel. It will not only save you time, but you might get some fantastic advice along the way to help you further refine your idea. Also if the first person you find isn’t the right person, you might get some leads from them to send you in the right direction. 2. Know what skills you possess and vice versa – Mapping skills and deficiencies of you and your potential co-founder is essential. There is nothing worse than not admitting where your strong and weak traits lie. Do yourself a favor – be upfront with them and encourage them to be upfront with you. What this will do is foster trust and remove any ugly surprises later on in the process. There is nothing worse than assuming on either side you are good at everything. Once you have an idea what you both do well and what you suck at, you can begin to start mapping out additional hires or contractors to fill those potential holes. If you map everything out and find there are some pretty glaring holes, you have to take a long look in the mirror and figure out whether both sides are bringing enough to the table. 3. Skills don’t always equal a good technical co-founder – The person might have the skills that pay the bills, but does that mean they are a good technical co-founder? I would say definitely not. Beyond having the technical acumen to get you to MVP, does that person have the temperament to grow and scale a business? How would they react to a massive changes? When you hit a bump in the road, are they going to rise to the challenge or run for the hills? As much as they need the ability to write lines of code, their ability...
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WrestleMania has transformed itself from a small wrestling event to an international media spectacle. In its 28th incarnation, held at the beginning of this month, there were no signs of it stopping. The WWE did something unique last year – it announced the main event for Wrestlemania over a year in advance. The big match featured Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, a huge cross-over star, and John Cena, the current flag bearer for the company. Recognizing the challenges of trying to keep interest for the match a year in advance, the WWE turned to social media. I wanted to some of the people driving this initiative, both on- and off-screen. Jason Hoch, SVP of Digital Operations for the WWE, discussed his social media strategies for fan engagement and social TV. Since joining the WWE, Hoch undertook a huge project to re-launch WWE.com with a totally new UX with social media at its core. Rather than just putting as Jason says “plug-ins” or social areas, they have tried to build the entire site to be socially enabled. This included deep integration so users could follow their favorite stars on multiple social networks and interact with them seamlessly. Throughout the event, WrestleMania and related hashtags dominated Twitter. As they push hard into social, Jason specifically recognizes that social media fatigue is a key element that needs to be closely monitored to determine what level of interaction is appropriate and doesn’t turn off fans in its broadcasts and other media. I also interviewed Zack Ryder, who talked about how he has elevated his career due to social media. Zack has been one of the key individuals who helped push social onto the WWE radar and elevate its corporate importance. While he isn’t the biggest star in the WWE, his usage of social has elevated his position in the company and allowed him to better engage his fans. He points to this and says if he didn’t embrace social media and make some waves he would have likely been fired. This is a good example of how employees are using social media to elevate their status within a company and make themselves more valuable employees in the eyes of their employers. So far, their engagement strategy appears to be working. The WWE feels like they are more up-to-date and engaged. In many cases, WWE wrestlers were actively retweeted, followed and engaged by fans. One stat that is very telling was the number of followers and likes they have on Facebook and Twitter. The numbers behind this are impressive. Between all of the stars’ accounts, they have over 60 million Twitter followers and 20 million Facebook...
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It’s the eve of WrestleMania 28, and I got a chance to meet with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. What does that have to do with tech? Well, in the video interview, Johnson shares his thoughts on how social media has changed the game, what is his favorite tech and how he uses it to engage his fans. Johnson says he launched his Twitter account a little more than a year ago, and that it’s “one of the greatest things” he’s ever done, because it gives him a way to connect directly to fans. “A lot of people would have had a team coming in … these great business minds, but I wanted to strip away the business of it all,” he says. You can see more, including a peek at Johnson’s iPhone, in the video above. (The background noise is a little loud at first, but Johnson comes through loud and...
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Ten Days on the High Seas with Oceania Well, the sad truth is that after spending over 10 days on an amazing cruise ship the journey is over. These past days have been fantastic on a number of fronts. When you are constantly moving, you rarely have time to stop and reflect on life. This trip was truly the opportunity I needed to stop and take stock of where I have been and where I need to be going. I enjoyed the time away, and here, in a nutshell, are some of the highs and lows of the trip: Top 5 things about the cruise Spending some undivided time with my best friend and wife- After our first year of parenthood, spending time as a couple is often more luxury than reality. For 10 days, we got to spend time together as a couple. Even just having the chance to speak together for more than 5 minutes uninterrupted was amazing. It was hard to leave our daughter at home, but I think it was a much-needed break. Our Cruise ship – This was our second cruise on the Oceania cruise line. This time, we were on their brand new flagship boat, the Marina. This ship didn’t disappoint. While it is smaller than some of the floating cities offered by other lines, it was large enough to provide amazing amenities while still feeling intimate. The staff was great and the whole cruise was very inviting. We will definitely cruise on this line again. Fantastic meals – One of Oceania’s claims to fame is its food. Laura and I are foodies and we didn’t want to go on any old cruise with a crappy buffet every night. Oceania provided some amazing dining options. The first was Red Ginger, a Pan-Asian Restaurant that gave us tons of options and kept us coming back for more. Jacques, the new signature French restaurant had many well-prepared options. Finally, La Reserve was a restaurant with a 7-course tasting menu, each course paired with amazing wine from around the world. Wonderful excursions – We had three lovely excursions on our trip. The first was a snorkeling adventure, where we went via chartered boat to a reef. We adventured at two sites, seeing fish of all colors. The second was a zip lining adventure where we zipped over tree tops from platform to platform. The third was easily Laura’s favorite. We went horseback riding on a beach and had the horses take us for a ride in the ocean. Warm Caribbean Air – It was nice to walk around in a t-shirt. While we haven’t had a bad...
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