I decided that trying to go through every presentation was going to be more than I was capable of. So, to finish off my review of the conference, I am just going to talk about the presenters that were most pertinent to me an my business at our current stage of development. That is not to say that the presenters I don't mention were bad, it is just that their topics weren't directly applicable to my situation.
Day 1 (Continued)
The overall highlight of the conference for me was Dharmesh Shah from OnStartups.com and the founder of HubSpot. The guy is brilliant. It was clear he didn't have a set presentation but instead just some guidelines that he meandered through. It was all fascinating.
A lot of the presentation had to do with metrics. How much does it cost to acquire a customer? How much is that customer worth once you have acquired them? What is the typical lifespan of a customer? To all of these questions my answer was a solid, "I have no idea" so obviously I have some work to do.
He also talked about the Customer Happiness Index (CHI). The basic idea is to measure actions that tell you how much a customer is using your product and figure out what actions are likely to prompt them to upgrade or cancel your service. By doing this you can develop some very good financial projections and hopefully see what is/isn't working before it is too late turn that information into useful actions. Once again, we aren't doing much in this area so it is something that we want to start looking at right away.
Another great tip was to test the advertising of the product using Adwords before you develop/launch it. A little too late for our current product, but something to keep in mind for future ventures.
Another one I really liked was Jessica Livingston, author of "Founders At Work". In the book she interviews a bunch of founders. I read it last year and it was one of the best books on entrepreneurism I have ever read. The stories were all fascinating and contained the types of anecdotes that every founder craves. She mentioned that she might start looking at founders who weren't successful, maybe a book titled "Founders Who Failed" (my term, not hers)? I hope she does something along those lines. Information about failed startups would probably be more valuable than the stories of the successes. It is great hear about those who won the battle, but sometimes you want to talk to the guys who found the mines before your cross the field.
Finishing of the first day was Paul Kenny from Ocean Learning. He is a sales consultant from the UK. A lot of what he talked about was similar to stuff I had read in Jeff Thull's book "Exceptional Selling". He had some great tips but it all boiled down to, "Care about your customer and do what is best for them." If your solution isn't the right thing for them, tell them so. It will build credibility for the future. Don't talk to them about what your product does. See if you can sell them solutions to their problems. Great stuff that I really already know but don't always practice. He mentioned that there is a salesman in the UK that is quite a bit older than him but still comes to his conference twice a year. The guy says it is to keep his skills fresh because it is so easy to slip into bad habits. So true.
Day 2
Day 2 had more presentations that weren't directly applicable to our business right than day 1, but there was still some excellent stuff in there.
Tom Jennings from Summit Partners gave a great rundown of how venture capitalists work with founders and how they make money. He seemed like a very straight shooter and probably a great guy to do business with. I learned a ton. Don't know if I will ever be in the position to take venture funding but, if I am, I will definitely refer back to a lot of what he said.
Key takeaways for me were:
* Difference of Primary and Secondary money (Primary money is invested directly in the company, Secondary money is cashed out by the founders or early investors).
* Conflicts of interest that can exist in a deal - Is the VC investing in your competitor? Is the deal structured so that the VC has an incentive for you to fail?
* There is no exact science to determining the valuation of a company.
The presentation that caused me the most introspection was Noam Wasserman's pesentation on "Rich vs. King: The Founder's Dilemma". The basic premise is that as you start a company you will make decisions that will help you either:
maintain control of the company (be King), or
grow the company to it's maximum potential (be Rich)
He has some great research to back all of this up and the presentation was pretty compelling. It doesn't seem that either choice is right or wrong. You just need to be very clear with your partners about what your goals are and very conscious of the implications of your decisions. For example, if you want to be King then taking VC money would be a bad idea. This presentation prompted the most discussion for me and my business partner/brother Trevor after the conference.
Finally, there was Steve Krug's presentation on user testing. User testing can be intimidating and seems out of reach or impractical for a small company. He gave a great presentation on how to get really good information with limited resources. He suggests just bringing someone in once a month, set up a screen recorder with a mic and record the user as they use your software. We need to start doing this. The information we could get would be extremely valuable.
The last presentation was Joel Spolsky which I am sure was great but I had to leave early to catch my flight back to DC so I missed most of it.
The conference was excellent and I would highly recommend it in the future. I am looking forward to attending it next year. Now I just need to find the resources to implement all the ideas that came to me while attending.
The Business of Software Conference (Part 2)
I decided that trying to go through every presentation was going to be more than I was capable of. So, to finish off my review of the conference, I am just going to talk about the presenters that were most pertinent to me an my business at our current stage of development. That is not to say that the presenters I don't mention were bad, it is just that their topics weren't directly applicable to my situation.
Day 1 (Continued)
The overall highlight of the conference for me was Dharmesh Shah from OnStartups.com and the founder of HubSpot. The guy is brilliant. It was clear he didn't have a set presentation but instead just some guidelines that he meandered through. It was all fascinating.
A lot of the presentation had to do with metrics. How much does it cost to acquire a customer? How much is that customer worth once you have acquired them? What is the typical lifespan of a customer? To all of these questions my answer was a solid, "I have no idea" so obviously I have some work to do.
He also talked about the Customer Happiness Index (CHI). The basic idea is to measure actions that tell you how much a customer is using your product and figure out what actions are likely to prompt them to upgrade or cancel your service. By doing this you can develop some very good financial projections and hopefully see what is/isn't working before it is too late turn that information into useful actions. Once again, we aren't doing much in this area so it is something that we want to start looking at right away.
Another great tip was to test the advertising of the product using Adwords before you develop/launch it. A little too late for our current product, but something to keep in mind for future ventures.
Another one I really liked was Jessica Livingston, author of "Founders At Work". In the book she interviews a bunch of founders. I read it last year and it was one of the best books on entrepreneurism I have ever read. The stories were all fascinating and contained the types of anecdotes that every founder craves. She mentioned that she might start looking at founders who weren't successful, maybe a book titled "Founders Who Failed" (my term, not hers)? I hope she does something along those lines. Information about failed startups would probably be more valuable than the stories of the successes. It is great hear about those who won the battle, but sometimes you want to talk to the guys who found the mines before your cross the field.
Finishing of the first day was Paul Kenny from Ocean Learning. He is a sales consultant from the UK. A lot of what he talked about was similar to stuff I had read in Jeff Thull's book "Exceptional Selling". He had some great tips but it all boiled down to, "Care about your customer and do what is best for them." If your solution isn't the right thing for them, tell them so. It will build credibility for the future. Don't talk to them about what your product does. See if you can sell them solutions to their problems. Great stuff that I really already know but don't always practice. He mentioned that there is a salesman in the UK that is quite a bit older than him but still comes to his conference twice a year. The guy says it is to keep his skills fresh because it is so easy to slip into bad habits. So true.
Day 2
Day 2 had more presentations that weren't directly applicable to our business right than day 1, but there was still some excellent stuff in there.
Tom Jennings from Summit Partners gave a great rundown of how venture capitalists work with founders and how they make money. He seemed like a very straight shooter and probably a great guy to do business with. I learned a ton. Don't know if I will ever be in the position to take venture funding but, if I am, I will definitely refer back to a lot of what he said.
Key takeaways for me were:
* Difference of Primary and Secondary money (Primary money is invested directly in the company, Secondary money is cashed out by the founders or early investors). * Conflicts of interest that can exist in a deal - Is the VC investing in your competitor? Is the deal structured so that the VC has an incentive for you to fail? * There is no exact science to determining the valuation of a company.
The presentation that caused me the most introspection was Noam Wasserman's pesentation on "Rich vs. King: The Founder's Dilemma". The basic premise is that as you start a company you will make decisions that will help you either:
He has some great research to back all of this up and the presentation was pretty compelling. It doesn't seem that either choice is right or wrong. You just need to be very clear with your partners about what your goals are and very conscious of the implications of your decisions. For example, if you want to be King then taking VC money would be a bad idea. This presentation prompted the most discussion for me and my business partner/brother Trevor after the conference.
Finally, there was Steve Krug's presentation on user testing. User testing can be intimidating and seems out of reach or impractical for a small company. He gave a great presentation on how to get really good information with limited resources. He suggests just bringing someone in once a month, set up a screen recorder with a mic and record the user as they use your software. We need to start doing this. The information we could get would be extremely valuable.
The last presentation was Joel Spolsky which I am sure was great but I had to leave early to catch my flight back to DC so I missed most of it.
The conference was excellent and I would highly recommend it in the future. I am looking forward to attending it next year. Now I just need to find the resources to implement all the ideas that came to me while attending.