Startup One Stop

Good morning, All,

Last week, our friend Murat Aktihanaglu was watching television, trying to find news about the protests in his native Turkey. It was nowhere to be found on the major news outlets. He found it on a grassroots station. And on twitter. CNN Turkey was airing a documentary on penguins. Seriously? Unable to sit by passively and despite the fact that he’s anything but political, he was motivated to act because people were getting hurt: They were being gassed and hit by water cannons. He crowdsourced advice (via twitter and facebook) and within an hour of finding that grassroots station, he’d launched an IndieGoGo campaign to raise money to take out a full page ad in The New York Times. Donations started pouring in from at least 50 countries, across six continents at the rate of $2,561 an hour. It was one of the fastest-growing campaigns in the platform’s history. By 11 the next morning, enough money was raised to pay for the ad – and then some. That’s when the press started paying attention: not because of the cause, but because of the virality of his campaign. Murat shifted the spotlight back to where it belonged: on the events transpiring in Turkey. We covered the story in AlleyWatch. The media wanted to make it about Arab Spring. Despite the fact that the Turkish population is heavily Muslim, it isn't about Arab Spring: Turkey is a democracy and has been for a very long time. It’s about a government out of control and a free people fighting for their rights because they are only too aware of the fact that once you lose those rights, they’re very, very difficult to get back.

Attention must also be paid to what is happening closer to home: Namely, abuse of power on a massive scale: U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program Justice Department Fights Release of Secret Court Opinion Finding Unconstitutional Surveillance There’s a coup taking place. Our privacy is being decimated. We are seeing the erosion of our civil liberties in the name of safety, by the same government that ignored intelligence that might have prevented the Boston Marathon bombings. The talking points are doublespeak, and coming from both sides of the aisle. We have a government that’s gone rogue, enabled by technology and their abuse of power, and operating outside of the system and the laws that they swore to uphold. In the words of Baudelaire: The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist. Onward and forward, but with both eyes open. Read More...

Good morning, All,

Since taking on the position as Editor in Chief at AlleyWatch, we’ve gotten any number of press releases in any given week. Same when we were in the music business. Press releases are fairly boilerplate. Which means that they becomes white noise. Which is why most press releases, especially from new/unknowns are routine and summarily ignored.

How many versions of your deck/executive summary/talking points have you written? The point is to capture the attention of the investor, hopefully in the first sentence and essentially in the first slide or two. Essentially, for you, or you’ve pretty much lost them. Newsflash: the same holds true for your press release. Don’t tell us how excited you are to have INSERT NAME HERE on as WHO CARES? Tell me a story. In other words, pretty much write the press release as if you are writing the article itself. Not that reporters are lazy: just that if you tell a good story, and a compelling one, you are much more like to get their attention/intrigue them to follow up with you and maybe even give you a bit of press. We realize that press releases have been written a certain way since time in memoriam. That doesn’t mean that it works and if you’re going that route, you’d better have a great PR firm behind you, in which case, they’d have written the press release themselves and that doesn’t mean you have to accept the status quo and sign off on it: if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten. You need an angle. If you don’t have an angle – that thing that differentiates you as having something besides just another company launch announcement – you don’t have a story. Not one that’s likely to be readily picked up, anyway. Read More...

Good morning, All,

Yahoo’s back and Marissa Mayer seems for all intents and purposes to be on a buying spree. Last week it was Tumblr and now they’ve thrown their hat in the ring to acquire Hulu. They supposedly bought Tumblr to attract a younger audience, and it is highly unlikely that they took the time to view this infographic before they dropped $1.1 billion to close the deal. Yeah, right. At last week’s CM Summit, Yahoo CMO Kathy Savitt reminded us of something that we had forgotten: that it was Yahoo that first made the web a daily habit. All of those websites out there and there was no way to find them, unless you knew the URL. Yahoo was a game changer. When they went public, they went on a buying spree and tried to be all things to all people: broadcast.com, geocities, to name two. They missed out on eBay and tried to build their own. Remember Yahoo auctions? Didn’t think so. They cast too wide a net too early on and it was unmanageable. The field was wide open and enter Google (which Yahoo passed on, just for the record). As for Yahoo’s acquisitions, closed and pending, let’s not forget that besides search, Yahoo is and always was a content company. Content and search were always Yahoo’s core competencies, and they seem to be returning to those roots that first made them successful. This time, with an eye to the future: native advertising (Ok, we know that contextual advertising has been around for a while and that only the name has been changed to deceive the clueless, much as the cloud is networked computing by any other name: gotta love the marketing department, and see what a little strategic marketing can do? A ‘new’ category is born.’ Take heed). But Mayer needs to give Tumblr time to continue to build their audience, and focus on long-term goals rather than short-term mandates.

Google started on a different path: Remember ‘Don’t Be Evil?’ (Google's Broken Promise: The End of "Don't Be Evil") That went down the same rabbit hole as did their privacy policy, monitoring your every keystroke while you’re on any and every google product, all in the name of giving you a better online experience, and never mind that they’re facing yet another anti-trust probe over their display ads. Speaking of the old days, head’s up, Google: push technologies didn’t work. Read More...

Good morning, All,

When you’re starting a company, everyone tells you what to do – put together a deck, talk to customers, talk to investors. We’ve seen the lists ad nauseam, but what about a list of what not to do?

1. Produce a product or technology that no one wants. It’s called ‘buy-in’ because the idea is to get people to buy. 2. Not have a revenue model from Day One. You might not implement it immediate – but it better be there. 3. Spend all of your time fundraising and not enough time on developing your product 4. Build a pitch instead of a business 5. Listen to investors, chapter and verse. We all go to pitch panels and get investor feedback. Question: how many times have you attended one such event, heard an investor sing the praises of the company - and witness him/her write a check, or heard that they wrote a check not long afterwards? Thought so. 6. Not listen to investors. Some do know what they’re talking about. We know both of them. 7. Think that sales and marketing are not as important as product development. Every chair needs at least three legs to support it. 8. Lack the determination and resolve to realize your dreams. 9. Start a company for the wrong reasons – your product is cool, but is it compelling? And are you the one to do it? Know your strengths and limitations. 10. Give up too easily: of course it’s hard to do – if it were easy, everyone would do it 11. Not have a clear message or product. We go to a lot of pitching events. Half the time, we’re not sure what the company is about – and neither are the investors. Do one thing and do it well. And be able to describe it. 12. Have a grabber. Example: BMW – the Ultimate Driving Machine. FedEx: When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight. Clear. Simple. Effective. Multibillion dollar company – and they got there almost overnight. Be memorable. Read More...

Good morning, All,

We’ve heard it ad nauseam: the VC model is broken. There is certainly no shortage of posts on the subject. At TechCrunch Disrupt, Fred Wilson called the VCs sheep, saying they all wait, then jump into a deal together, usually when it’s too late. Most VCs, said Fred, are not forward looking. Question: do they really know the industry?

Investors are usually: 1. Entrepreneurs who made good 2. Entrepreneurs who got lucky (right company at the right time – early hires as opposed to key players: we know a junior project manager who went to a startup. It was her second job out of school; eighteen months later, the company was acquired and she was a multimillionaire before her 25^th birthday) 3. Investors who invested well or again, were in the right place at the right time. 4. Those born with lucky sperm; no experience required. Read More...

Good morning, All,

Is it OK for multimillionaires like Zach Braff to panhandle for money on Kickstarter? “Crowdfunding has helped countless creative projects get off the ground, but if we continue to allow it to be hijacked by the rich and famous there will be no chance left for the little guy,” the piece begins. Remember: donors get nothing; if the film is successful, the producers get yet another opportunity to show up at a restaurant and take that table that you’d been waiting an hour for. Braff already had a financing deal in place. But he felt it was more important to take the $25 from that kid in Brooklyn. He’s disrupting the Hollywood system. We understand that. He’s also disrupting a system that might otherwise produce the next Stanley Kubrick – someone whose vision is so far afield, it’s way beyond the scope of the traditional Hollywood financing clique. How long will it take before a Shawn Fanning or an Evan Williams decide to launch their next startup through kickstarter? Would that not diminish the chances of an unknown with a possible groundbreaking technology?

Speaking of disrupting systems, we attended TechCrunch Disrupt this past week, and saw a number of companies exhibiting who had gotten their start through kickstarter programs. Meanwhile, investors on the panels seven floors north of them were complaining that there were no more big ideas. We did note that, after the investors finished their panels, they disappeared. We didn’t see them mingling among the startups. Hard to notice something that starts as a speck on the landscape, from an ivory tower. They’re looking for the next Jack Dorsey or Evan Williams, meaning, they’re waiting to see what Jack Dorsey or Evan Williams come up with next and honestly, how many groundbreaking ideas can one person or two people come up with, after all? Cuil and Color had A teams. Yet Cuil lost millions – not Cuil, and Color disappeared before ever really launching, leaving many an investor (they raised $41m) in the red on that deal. Which, in all fairness, is a Color, too. Read More...

Good morning, All,

Above you’ll notice that we have our first sponsored ad. If you find the service useful (they can help build your Minimum Viable Product), please do support a fellow SOS members and thank you so much!

We personally do not own a tablet/iPad. We do consider them from time to time: they’re infinitely portable - we spend a lot of time on the move. But they do not offer the most important functions we need available on a computer, so came to the conclusion that it’s a half computer – pass, and claims of the death of the computer are wholly premature. Read More...

Good morning, All,

First, you’ll notice that we have our first sponsored ad – it’s one our SOS members! So, if you’ve been looking forever for a technical cofounder to help you build your MVP, click on the banner above, get it done, and support a fellow member and this newsletter!  And thank you so much!

We are aware that we do spend a lot of time here talking about the importance of revenue models, so we shelved it for a bit. The big news in New York tech recently was that Foursquare raised a $41m round and released a new version of its iOS app as well.  The round was mostly a loan to keep the company afloat. The release of the new version of the app was meant to deflect the less-than-stellar funding announcement. Read More...

Good morning, All,

We wrote a different editorial, before yesterday’s Boston bombings. It feels inappropriate to post it today. As someone who lives in a city that also suffered an attacked, I know how difficult it is and how incomprehensible it feels. Our hearts go out to the city of Boston and to those who were affected by the violence of yesterday’s events. Here is the link to Google’s Boston person finder and we sincerely hope that you and yours are safe. What struck us is that, amid the horror and the mayhem of yesterday’s bombings, and despite the uncertainty of not knowing whether more bombs would go off (several more were later found, undetonated), people ran towards the screams to help their fellow man. Nothing justifies an act of such wanton violence, and in the horror of such sudden devastation, one would think that the first reaction would be to flee. That did not happen yesterday in Copley Square.

It was the day of the Boston Marathon: Patriot’s Day, commemorating the start of the American Revolution, and a day when strangers come together to cheer on strangers. Yesterday, strangers came together to help strangers. Doctors who were there to treat dehydration treated wounds and performed triage. Marathon runners changed course and ran towards hospitals to donate blood. In a civilized society, humanity prevails. And we will hopefully go onward and forward, taking steps to ensure that this does not happen again to more people and to other families. Read More...

Good morning, All,

Two things: first, a warning: college graduation is just around the corner and that means that a new crop of Millenials are heading our way. They’re not all the same although if you believe that the recent unemployment numbers have humbled the supremely entitled among them at all, newsflash: contrary to popular misconception on the part of many a millennial and in all fairness, not all, technical literacy does not fast-track you to the corner office. Oh, and you had me at hello: ‘unlimited days off and free lunches’ in the startup world? Not that we’ve noticed and while we’re on the subject, can we not pretend that we live in a parallel universe that revolves around each and every one of us?

Ok, we’ve steered clear of ‘Lean In,’ to date and full disclosure: we haven’t read the book, nor do we intend to. We’ve have seen the platitudes and – going for the money shot: has it occurred to anyone else that Ms. Sandberg was having her Marissa Mayer Moment here, meaning, she’d been the go-to example of the Successful Woman in Tech, keynoting and being quoted ad nauseam but was somehow not tapped to be the CEO of Yahoo! We recently attended a panel discussion where the keynote was a representative from the Lean In movement. We were curious about the movement’s next steps and what they were planning to further empower women, but she talked about herself and her career. The audience was predominantly women and yet no words of advice for the room. No game plan mentioned. See conclusion of the above paragraph. Read More...