"It makes sense that he spent $35,000 on a commode. I guess he wanted a fancy new home for his reputation."
Gary Weiss
In an article entitled "John Thain, Public Relations Genius."
The InVenture Prize
Last night was the Preliminary Round of The InVenture Prize.
First a little background. InVenture was created by Georgia Tech to provide
incentives, resources, and structure for undergraduate student
innovation and entrepreneurship via a fun, high-profile event. Ray Vito, Vice Provost for Graduate and Undergraduate Studies, and my friend Merrick Furst's aim with InVenture is to foster a student entrepreneurial culture at Georgia Tech. Or said another way, they want students to start companies.
Over 60 student teams entered the competition. The screening committee weeded those down to the 14 teams. Those 14 team presented last night to advance to the finals on March 26.
It was a great, great program. One of the best events that I have been
to in all my time involved in the entrepreneurial community. Lots of
energy. Lots of enthusiasm. Young entrepreneurs giving it a good
college try. Giving a try that would put some professional
entrepreneurs to shame. Most using little or no presentation decks. In front of judges that were pulling no punches.
And what is the prize in The InVenture Prize? It looks something like this:
- Cash prizes of for an $5,000 individual and $10,000 to a team;
- Free patent filings by Georgia Tech Office of Technology Licensing (valued at $20,000 each);
- A paid summer internship to work on the invention with invitations to
free business services to pursue commercialization such as funding
opportunities, office space, market vetting, and mentorship by faculty
and industry entrepreneurs.
Something worthy of competition.
Georgia Tech has The InVenture Prize funded for the next three years so I hear. This could be big.
Best Social Media Marketing Presentation
Few people truly understand social media marketing. Marta Kagan does. If you want to understand it and know how to play the game, breeze through her presentation. Don't let the title scare you. It's good stuff. Don't believe me? Goog best social media marketing presentation and see what you find (Great to see Toby Bloomberg there as well!).
Know Your Audience
In the past couple of weeks a few thing have gotten me thinking more about social media marketing.
The first was a gaffe made by James Andrews, a Vice President, Director at Ketchum Interactive. He made a comment on twitter about Memphis, the home of FedEx, a major client of Ketchum. Well someone from FedEx read James' comment and got a little upset. Which led to some questioning and more questioning and even more questioning about Andrews' and Ketchum's knowledge of social media marketing.
The second was an article that David Eckoff pointed me to entitled "Social Media "Experts" are the Cancer of Twitter (and Must Be Stopped)." In the article author Michael Pinto refers to social media mavens as "zombies." Money quote: "Sometimes the social media and SEO zombies can mate to produce a marketing strategy monster, but most of these are harmless."
Now I have nothing against James Andrews or social media marketers in general. As a matter of fact one of the reasons that I started blogging was to learn more about how social media "works." And while I hesitate to call myself a social media marketing expert (if for no other reason that such positioning is off-strategy), when it comes to such things I know more then 99.999% of the people using the Internet.
And the biggest lesson that I took away from what has become known at the FedEx incident, is that just like in the real world when you go to give a speech, you need to know your audience and make sure you are speaking to them.
And you might want to have a simple strategy in place. Here's mine. For the blogs I control and the big three of social networking.
Corporate blog
I started and manage ATDC's corporate blog, PeachSeedz. While targeted towards entrepreneurs and the startup community, my assumption on anything that goes on PeachSeedz is that the president of Georgia Tech, a state legislator, or the governor of Geogia might read it. No politics here. Strictly business that fits within ATDC mission and advances it's reputation as a leading technology incubator.
Personal blog
On FoG I am a little looser. This is mine. I can pretty much say what I want. And I do. But I also do so with a mind that lots of people in my professional circles read what I have to say. Co-workers, entrepreneurs, employers, founders, investors, who knows. And my wife and kids too. And as the audience has grown I have found myself being more reserved in my comments while still maintaining an openness and my persona. Now over 3,000 people read FoG every month. I am mindful of that and write a bit differently then when the blog was much smaller.
Twitter believe it or not is where I am most guarded of all. A tweet can go anywhere. And they do. I have no personal relationship with the vast, vast majority of people that follow me on twitter. On twitter you have to assume that your comment can be seen by anyone and act accordingly. My follow strategy is to only follow those that I really know or seem really smart. Works for me.
I don't interact with Facebook much. My twitter stream is published there. I consider Facebook to be like a party. I only accept friend requests from those whom I either have or envision going to a party with. I ignore requests from business associates that want to friend me on Facebook. If they ask I request to connect on LinkedIn.
Great tool for amassing your real life business connections. I have prettly completely created a professional profile. You should as well. But as others have written, it's not a butler. And it is a really, really bad way to communicate. Generally speaking people do not respond to LinkedIn requests (I have a 198 notifications in my "inbox"). If you want to connect to someone that one of your connections knows, send them a email or call.
Quote of the Week
My favorite 40 seconds of Barack Obama’s inaugural speech. Embedded using MSNBC’s new “Explore” transcript/embed service. Very nice.
What did our new President say this week that got you excited about the future of America?
Brand Identity
Last week I wrote a bit about how startups can create a brand promise. I also promised to address the subject of creating a brand identity this week.
A brand identity is the unique set of associations that you aspire
to create for your company, product, or service. The key word is aspire.
A brand identity is created via such simple tools as the name, logo, color palettes, design elements, taglines, and category defining phrases. It’s stuff that marketing people do. But there are two elements of a brand identity that are a bit different. It’s a company’s values and personality. Those are elements that are not controlled by marketing people. They are shaped by the person in charge of the company. Usually, the CEO.
Recently I had a meeting with Mike Eckert. A CEO by trade, Mike is also a pretty effective marketing practitioner. One of the places Mike was CEO was The Weather Channel. You may have heard of it. What Mike was telling me during our meeting was the person at the top of an organization had an opportunity, and even a responsibility to set the proper tone and culture for a company. Wise words.
But what exactly does company culture mean. I think of company culture simply as how things get done (here is a much longer definition). Company culture defines the company’s values. It’s personality. And to get the culture that you want in your company it needs to be proactively defined and practiced by the leaders of the company. And it has to be authentic.
To paraphrase Charles Brewer, the founder of MindSpring and it’s legendary core values:
If the leaders of the company do not practice what they preach, and if
they do not truly in their hearts believe those things which they
profess to be important, they will be ineffective. The values of the
company will ring hollow, and become an object of ridicule rather than
a source of guidance and motivation. People have incredibly accurate
bullshit meters. A false attempt at some stated values written on a
piece of paper but not practiced on a day to day basis is doomed to
horrible failure.
Charles is dead on right. I have seen both authentic and inauthentic management. The latter is dysfunctional.
But more importantly (at least to the people that don’t work at the dysfunctional company), the brand values must be rooted in the reality of the company because of the openness and transparency of the Internet age. Customers know what your real values are. They see them in the actions the company takes. And they can spread the word faster then a California wildfire. Because of this it is absolutely essential that the brand personality and values that you want to be known for are practiced throughout the organization. It has to be ingrained in all the staff with guiding principles so that no employee has a doubt on what the proper response should be to a specific situation.
So how do you ingrain this values throughout an organization? Articulating them is a start. But you have to live them. It is essential. Living the values you want your company to be known for is not easy. It is hard. Real hard. But you can’t let up. Even when it seems like taking short cuts won’t matter. It will. Employees will see what really matters. So will customers. A leader’s actions always set the tone.
The CEOs of successful startups guide values and culture to create brand identity. Not marketing people. It’s really that simple.
To sum this all up bullet point style.
- The most critical, elements of a startup’s brand image is not created in a marketing department.
- Startup brand values and personality are defined by the company culture.
- Culture is created by the CEO of the company.
- CEOs of startup companies need to proactively think about what values and personality that they want their company to be known for in the market.
- CEOs need to demonstrate the personality and values on a day to day basis so that it becomes ingrained in their company.
I see a new company every day. Less then 1% are proactively setting the culture of their company. Be the exception. It will make you exceptional.
And build the brand of you and your company in the process.
A Great Day
Yesterday was a great day in the history of America. A great day to be an American.
A great celebration of the power of our democracy. A peaceful transfer of power between two people that have the most power in the world.
A great celebration of civil rights progress. A celebration that it is possible for anyone to become president of the United States. In 2007 I would have said it was impossible for an African-American with the name Barack Hussein Obama to be elected president. In 2008 it happened. America has come a long way.
A great speech delivered by a great orator. But I am not really sure if many people heard what President Obama said. I don't think they wanted to hear the words. They were celebrating. The words were sobering. Change is yet to come to America.
What I heard President Obama say is that we needed to stop acting like children. Children label things so they can understand the world. Adults should not. The labels of Democratic or Republican. Conservative or liberal. Rich, middle class, or poor. They need to go away. Yesterday there was a disturbing mixture of hatred and glee directed toward George W. Bush. It's childish poor sportsmanship. Stop it.
What I heard President Obama say is that the people that take risks, the people that do things, the people that make things are the people that make a difference in the United States. I agree. And the United States can not take away the incentives for individuals to make this country great.
What I heard President Obama say is that each citizen has a responsibility to this great country of opportunity. A responsibility to work hard. A responsibility to be fair and honest. A responsibility to be tolerant.
What I heard President Obama say is that the greatness of our country must
be earned. That we all have a responsibility to make it happen. It takes work. Hard work. And sacrifices. Americans did not want to hear that yesterday. I hope in the days ahead they will.
America is a great country. A country that can adapt. President Obama provides an opportunity for renewal and change. My hope is that Obama makes a great president. I hope for real change.
Feedscrub Filters RSS (Invites)
The problem of information overload has long held great interest for
me. Primarily because I suffer from it. Even introduced a concept
called “The greatest application never built” during Atlanta Startup Weekend 2
that drew some interest. It also still has not been built. The comment
that “I didn’t come here for a new job” pretty much ended that
discussion.
To provide some insight to the depth of the issue I currently have 124 subscriptions and 4,517 unread articles in my RSS reader, NetNewsWire (which I consider the best reader out there). I think you could say that I am beyond a social consumer of RSS feeds.
So I was excited when I met Jason Ardell some time ago and he told me about FeedScrub. Feedscrub describes itself as a spam filter for news feeds. I was an alpha tester of the product as well as an early private beta tester. Last week Feedscrub extended its private beta. Both AtlanTech and Mashable did reviews.
To add to what those folks had to say, the product is coming along nicely. I used the pro feature of importing my NNW feeds into Feedscrub via OPML and it went off without a hitch. I tried then to
import my Feedscrub feeds into NNW but that process returned errors. So I set about manually bringing them into NNW. The process is time consuming and cumbersome for 124 feeds. I told Jason about this and
his response was just to import those feeds that were overwhelming. Fair enough. And one day I may get around to doing just that. But I don’t know if I will or not. Mainly because, as AtlanTech pointed out,the process of training the filter slows the reading experience. Slows it to the point with NNW that it is borderline usable.
But one has to remember that this is a private beta product. Feedscrub’s development effort thus far has been focused on NewsGator and Google Reader. If you are using either of these as your RSS reader I suggest you give Feedscrub a try.
Use invite code “forceofgood” to sign up.
I am going to keep my eye on Feedscrub. It’s showing promise.
Quote of the Week
"The difference between success and failure is the ability to adapt to your enemy."
In the opening episode of the seventh season of 24.
Wheego Whip
This past weekend while the North American International Auto Show kicked off in Detroit I had my own little personal auto show. I spend the weekend tooling around in a prototype of the Wheego Whip by RTEV. It was a fun experience. When I brought it home both of my kids exclained "cool." And boy did it generate a lot of attention and spark several a conversation over the course of 72 hours.
The Wheego platform and body is manufactured by Shuanghuan Automobile in China and then shipped to the US for final assembly at the RTEV manufacturing facility in South Carolina. While the production car will eventually be capable of speeds of up to 60 mph, it will be launched as a Low Speed Vechicle (LSV). LSVs are generally capable of speed up to 35 mph and allowed to travel on streets with that same speed limit. The prototype I tested was an LSV.
The Whip is a "plug-in" all electric vehicle. To charge it you literally plug the car into a normal 110 or 220 volt electrical outlet. A single charge was getting me about 20 miles in the prototype. The production vehicle is expected to get 60 on a single.
In place of the fuel input there is a male electrical receptacle. It is so easy to charge that a fifth grader is capable of doing it.
The dash on the Wheego is straightforward.
Almost as straightforward as putting the car in forward or reverse.
Before the weekend was over we were using the Wheego as our main vechile to run errands or ferry the kids to sports practices and sleepovers. It's fun to drive in a way that is a lot different from my power laden and gas loving 540. I was mostly just hanging out in the right lane of four way streets while cars buzzed around me (in Atlanta a posted 35 mph means go 50). But what I began to notice was that I was pulling right up to these cars at the next traffic light, pretty much making my way at the same pace. And I spent not a penny in gas.
The Wheego Whip is expected to be available in May of 2009 at a price in the $20k range.
Update: dNeero has whipped up a survey. The access code is “lancewheego” What do you think?