Have A Marketing Manifesto

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So the other day in response to my post on the money comes last a guy named Micheal Lang had an interesting comment.

I as read this, I was recalling that these words sounded a lot like the MindSpring manifesto (I was one of the very early MindSpring subscribers) and then I saw who wrote this and laughed.

First of all I love any early customer. However Michael is not exactly right. MindSpring did not have a manifesto per se, we had some values and led with them. But somewhere along the way we did develop a marketing manifesto. Essentially how we wanted to communicate with customers and prospects. If I generalize it looked something like this.

  • Tell the truth plain and simple.
  • Avoid ad speak. 
  • Talk with a voice that is your own. Make that voice someone you would want to go up and talk to again and again.
  • Promise only what you deliver.
  • Give people something to think about. Have a unique vision for the way the world should work. Let the world know.
  • Leave no doubt as to what is for sale.

I think it has stood the test of time.

Along with three or four good words and a solid positioning statement I think every technology company needs a marketing manifesto to ensure consistency in their communications. Not sure if the above holds for everyone out there but I could make a strong argument that it is a good place to start.

Every company should have a marketing manifesto. Seventy five words or less.

January 16, 2014  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Marketing

How I Work

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A couple of months ago the good folks at Hypepotamus asked if if I would participate in their “How I Work” series in which people share their daily routines. I was flattered and of course accepted. I am republishing the full text here with their permission. You can see the original article here. 

Lance Weatherby nCrowd Office

Lance Weatherby (@lance) builds thriving internet companies. His current focus is achieving aggressive and successful growth atnCrowd, the third largest company in the local offers market. Lance was previously a Startup Catalyst with Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), the organizer of the first Atlanta Startup Weekend (which is happening again this weekend), and co-founder of Skribit, Socialytics, and Twitpay.

Three highlights of your career (so far):
1) Well, the biggest career highlight so far has to be joining MindSpring when it was a startup, going through the IPO process, and growing it into a great company for a period of time. I scaled pretty well with the company and ended up running sales and marketing there. It was a special company at a special time and many people that I worked with there remain my closest friends today.

2) Another thing that I am proud of is to see people that I have helped along the way have some success. When I look around Atlanta I see people that I taught a little something to go on to bigger and better things. To know I played an important role in someone’s career development makes me very happy.

3) The third thing has not happened yet. I don’t know what it is but the best is yet to come.

What’s your current venture?
nCrowd, Inc. We operate online local commerce marketplaces that connects merchants to consumers by offering goods and services at a discount.

What’s your current role?
I am the COO. I have been with the company for about two and a half years. I came in as part of a $7 million venture capital round in 2011. During my time at nCrowd I have directly managed sales, marketing, product development, and technical operations. I joined to grow the business and in terms of sales we are about four times the size of when I started.

What time do you typically wake up?
Depending on what is going on the product development front some time between 4:00 and 6:00am. Much of development is overseas and if we have something big going on I get up and help out with the development/deployment effort.

Describe your typical morning routine:
I wake up before my family, grab some coffee and head straight to the computer. I work for a bit and then gather with the rest of the family to get ready for our day and the kids (I have a 15 and 13 year old) off to school. It is a special day when I get to take them to school and we get a treat. Then off to the office for a dev meeting and more work on that front. Around 11:00 am I start to shift my focus from development to sales and marketing activities.

Is lunch a time for solace or socializing? Why?
A little of both. I try to stay connected with my network in Atlanta and lunch is a good time to do that. If I don’t have that type of meeting I typically spend lunch at my desk working.

How often do you check email?
Too much. I make a habit not to let email take over my day. IM is even worse than that. Just because something beeps or bounces at you does not mean it deserves your attention.

How often do you check social media?
These days about three times a day. Morning. Early afternoon.Night. And when I am waiting for someone/something.

Describe your typical afternoon routine:
Afternoons are spent more with the sales team addressing their issues and meetings with outsiders.

What time do you go home?
Either before or after rush hour. If before I work at home for a period of time before returning my attention to family.

Describe your typical evening routine:
A little exercise (I play a lot of tennis these days), dinner with the family, and some down time with them as well. More often than not I return to the computer before I go to bed. The last is a bad habit I want to break.

What daily habits fuel your success?
Just showing up, putting in a good effort, and doing just a little more than the next guy is a big part of the battle. I try to stay up to speed on industry trends and opportunities to find the intersections of success.

What daily habits hinder your success?
I love the Internet but it can sure send you down some rabbit holes.

What tools/tech are essential to you?
iPhone, Macbook Air, and of course the Internet. That is everything you need. You have those three things you can do just about anything.

What’s one piece of advice you wish you could go back in time and give to your younger self?
It is easy to say now but was hard to do then. Life is too short to spend time doing things that you don’t want to do with people that you don’t like. Do what you love with people that you like. I am very fortunate to be able to follow my own advice.

January 14, 2014  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Entrepreneurship, Fun, Management, nCrowd, Personal

The Money Comes Last

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Back in December I wrote an article called All About The Money. My basic point was that many great entrepreneurs are money motivated. And I have no problem admitting that I am money motivated as well.

The day after I wrote this Dave Willams came out with this Facebook post:

The problem with business is that the #1 goal taught is to maximize shareholder wealth. This can't be done without first focusing on maximizing employee, customer and corporate health first. Shareholder wealth is an outdated and shortsighted metric.

I agree with Dave 100%.

Being all about the money does not equal maximizing profit or short-term shareholder wealth. It does not mean putting the money first. The money is a single leg of a four legged chair.

First and foremost a company has to focus on doing an excellent job of serving customers. It all starts with customers. Customers are what create value.

Secondly a company must provide meaningful work for its employees. It must do this for no other reason than without providing such work for employees it will not be able to retain them. If a company can not retain employees it can not do an excellent job of serving customers. Moreover, customers can tell when the employees that they communicate with are not provided meaningful work. They can hear it in their words and see it in their actions. Employees are the brand. Treat them well.

Third, a company has to be a force for good in its communities. It has to be a good corporate citizen. It must do so to provide meaningful holistic work for its employees. Which is required to do an excellent job of serving customers.

Fourth, a company must deliver (or make a reasonable promise to deliver) exceptional returns to investors. Without doing so the company can not be an force for good in its communities, provide meaningful work for its employees, or do an excellent job of serving customers.

So being all about the money is really being all about the community, the employees, and the customers. It all starts with an intense focus and passion for the customer. 

The customer comes first. The money comes last.

I would be remiss not to mention that this point of view is heavily derived from the written misison of MindSpring Enterprises, Inc. and the beliefs that I developed during my time with the same company.

January 9, 2014  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Customer Focus, Entrepreneurship, Management

Improving Email Productivity

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Over on A VC today Fred Wilson shared that he was basically starting over on email in 2014. Archiving everything. Starting from scratch.

Given his position and popularity I am sure that Fred gets quite a bit of email, much more then me. But I was feeling a bit overwhelmed myself back in November as Black Friday approached and the marketing emails were on the rise. Back then I made a simple decision. I was going to unsubscribe from all emails. If it did not come from a real person I did not want to see it.

I am about seven weeks into this experiment. What a difference it makes. Instead of spending my first 20 minutes every day wading through mail I have about 10 fresh messages in the morning.

I do not have so much incoming mail that I need to do the nuclear option like Fred. Most likely either do you. Try the unsubscribe option. It worked wonders for me.

January 7, 2014  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Management, Personal

Every End Is A New Beginning

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It is amazing what nCrowd has accomplished since May of 2011 when I joined the company. At that time we were active in two cities and using an off the shelf e-commerce platform. Today we are a leader in the local commerce market with sales from Boston to Honolulu, have built a proprietary platform (along with a few mobile apps), and taken on the role of consolidator in this young industry. Leading our development, sales, and marketing teams over the past two and a half years has been a very rewarding experience. It has been fun. It has been challenging. We have accomplished a lot. I am extremely proud of how far nCrowd has come during my time with the company. 2013 was a record sales year.

However, it seems to me that I have done all I can do for the company. To quote Keith Rabois.

Every day matters. And it is better at this point for me to be doing something different every day."

While I remain excited about the opportunity before nCrowd I will be leaving the company in the near future. 

I will be forever grateful to Alan Taetle for introducing me to Brian Conley and having the conviction to lead our Series A. I am thankful to Brian for his confidence in bringing me on board to expand the business, the faith he showed in me when he increased my responsibilities, and his graciousness in handling my decision to leave. I am thankful to every member of the team that I had an opportunity to work with, learn from, and share a laugh.

But it's time to move on. 

Every end is a new beginning. I will be writing about my next adventures soon.

January 1, 2014  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in nCrowd, Personal

Entrepreneurial DNA

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If you have not heard just yet the Founder Institute is coming to Atlanta. Applications for the Winter sessions starting in January are due today.

I got roped into this thing by innocently walking down the hall one day at the Atlanta Tech Village. I am going to be guiding some of the Founder Institute company founders. While looking things over I noticed that there was a predictive admissions test that the Founder Institute administered to determine a person's DNA profille. I asked if I could take it and they obliged.

Entrepreneur DNA Profile: Lance Weatherby 

  • Your Overall Predictive Score is in the 87% percentile of 15,000+ worldwide applicants. According to our test, you have a very high probability of becoming a successful entrepreneur. 
  • Your strongest entrepreneurial trait is your high level of Openness. This means that you are a very curious and creative person, you seek change and adventure, and you can easily adapt to new norms. 
  • Your second strongest entrepreneurial trait is your high level of responsibility. 
  • Your weakest entrepreneurial trait is that you may have an overly negative outlook in very high stress situations, which could prohibit you from performing at your top capabilities in those situations.
  • You have no major personality flags, such as Predatory Aggressiveness, Excuse-Making, Deceit, Emotional Instability, or Narcissism.
  • You have very high Conscientiousness, which means that you are very organized and goal-oriented. 
  • You have medium-high Extroversion, which means that you are considered to be friendly, enjoy being the center of attention, and may be considered a thrill seeker by others.
  • You have a moderately-low Agreeableness, which means that you have a high degree of skepticism and suspicion, but not to the degree of being unfriendly or uncooperative.
  • You have medium-high Fluid Intelligence, which means that you can quickly learn a rule set and apply the learned logic to solve novel problems. 

Interesting stuff. It feels accurate to me. I once had a colleague characterize me as Eeyore, something that I protest to this day.

But the more interesting stuff is that the Founder Institute has given this test to over 15,000 applicants of which 2,500 joined the program and over 1,000 graduated. They claim that it is 85% accurate in predicting entrepreneur success.

They have found that professional experience, high fluid intelligence, high openness, and moderate agreeableness are the traits behind entrepreneur success. All those personality flags mentioned above are bad. Surprisingly conscientiousness and IQ show little correlation with founder success.

December 22, 2013  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Entrepreneurship

All About The Money

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Yesterday my friend Mike Marian over at Synapp wrote a post entitled "You might not be an entrepreneur if."

I agree with many of Mike's points. There is one however that I believe is 100% wrong. 

Before I go on I have to tell you that I have never referred to myself as an entrepreneur. Many years ago I had a conversation with Elan Amir, currently Chief Product Officer at Prosper Marketplace, that went something like this. 

Elan: "What are you? A sales guy, a marketing guy, or a technology guy?"

Lance: " I'm a business guy."

I still am. So while others might define me as an entrepreneur and society somewhat glorifies the title these days, I don't really refer to myself as an entrepreneur. I am a business guy. 

With that out of the way here is where Mike is 100% wrong.

I have never met a great entrepreneur that did it for the money. Every successful entrepreneur I have met has either had money or did not care if they had any money. Don’t misunderstand me; I love money. I think it's great. Exceptional entrepreneurs aren't driven by money. Money is a byproduct of the actions they take, not what drives them."

Here are a few local entrepreneurs that I have met and from my perspective did it for the money. John Imlay, Cam Lanier, Tom Noonan, Said Mohammadioun, Garry Betty, Jay Chaudhry, Tripp Rackley, John Baumstark, Reggie Bradford, Wain Kellum. All about the money. I don't know Jeff Arnold but he seems money motivated from afar. You think that David Cummings is doing the whole Atlanta Tech Village thing out of the kindess of his heart? You are not looking close enough.

Spreading the reach a little farther to the most successful technology entrepreneurs of our time I would argue that Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Jeff Bezos are all about the money. Even Zuckerberg, who always claims that it is not about the money, is in the process of pocketing a $1 billion of his Facebook shares. Larry Page and Sergey Brin started off not caring about the money but that changed along the way. Steve Jobs seemed to not care about the money. But then again there was that backdated options scandal at Apple. 

Last night I was watching Shark Tank with my kids. Kevin O'Leary, a guy that sold his company for $3.8 billion, unabashedly exclaimed "I'm all about the money."

So are many, many exceptional entrepreneurs.

December 20, 2013  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Entrepreneurship

Managing With Strategic Priorities

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Planning at a startup, like most things, is hard. Conditions are rapidly changing and the amount of real information that you have is smaller than in larger more established companies. One tool to use to help in planning is the creation of strategic priorities. It is kinda like a big company three year plan. But due to the rate of change and unknowns startup strategic priorities need to be set about every six months.

Not sure if Charles Brewer or Mike McQuary came up with this strategic priority scheme. Perhaps they came up with it together. All I know is that it works. Here it is listicle style. 

1. Assemble the team off site.
You need to gather up the senior team and get them off site for a day or so to focus. Depending on the stage of the company this could include board members, investors, advisors, co-founders, or senior management. Plan on a day and a half. You need some time to think about things overnight.

2. State of the company address.
The girl or guy in change opens the meeting with the state of the company and the purpose of the meeting. The purpose of the meeting is to come up with a set of three to five overarching objectives for the company to meet over the course of the next six months. It's a team effort, the guy and the girl should not get too deep into the below at this stage. It would taint the outcome.

3. Review past strategic priorities.
If this is not your first time at the rodeo, doing a post-mortem on the previous set of strategic priorities is a must. Grade the results just like in school. A – F. Talk about the why. There are both good and not good reasons for not achieving an objective. Know which type is at work. If it is a not good type discuss how to improve the cause of failure going forward. Have a scribe to capture this and all other discussions at the off site.

4. Macro environment discussion.
Have a discussion about the big environmental factors potentially effecting your business. The economy, politics, change/potential change in government regulations, the financial markets, other technology areas to name a few. These are not really things that the company can control but discussing what everyone is thinking about concerning the wider landscape helps to provide some perspective as the team starts drilling down. 

5. SWOT analysis.
Have a SWOT analysis discussion. Or if you prefer a Porter five forces analysis discussion. Once you do this, combined with steps 2 through 4 above it is time to determine the strategic priorities.

6. Strategic priority selection.
Have everyone present the three things that they feel the company needs to focus on during the next six months. By the second or third person themes will start to emerge. Combine them into some smaller number. Have the team debate what is really the most important areas for the company to operationally focus on during the next six months. Pick five give or take one or two. Have no more than seven. For each strategic priority appoint an individual at the meeting that is accountable for its delivery. More often than not strategic priorities are focused on customer experience, product development, and revenue generation.

7. Set strategic priority measurement criteria.
The last thing before getting back to the work of the day to day is setting measurement criteria for the strategic priorities selected. These metrics will be used in the weekly progress report and to grade the work toward the objectives at your next strategic priority meeting. The person directly responsible for delivery of the strategic objective should lead the discussion on the appropriate metrics.

8. Create drill down objectives for every employee.
Every employee needs to understand the strategic priorities and how their actions contribute to it every day. Explain the priorities to those (if any) that were not at the off site. Jointly come up with goals and measurements for each and every employee. Either one on one or in teams.

9. Discuss progress every week.
Every week as part of an internal team meeting set aside time to discuss progress against the strategic priorities and what adjustments need to be taken to meet the objectives. In my experience sharing this with the entire company during company meetings is very powerful. Having the person accountable for achieving the strategic priority provide these updates works best.

10. Rinse and repeat.
Managing via strategic priorities is a great tool. Do it once then rinse and repeat. Adjust as necessary for your company.

December 18, 2013  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Management, Startups

Why Do You Want To Connect?

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"You are a master craftsman of social media."

Someone sent that to me in an email. I told them I was going to use that quote on my blog someday. Today is that day.

I don't know if I am a master of anything. I do know I have an even 600 invitations in my LinkedIn account. Every single one of them is from someone that I do not know. Every single one of them says this:

"Hi Lance, I'd like to connect with you on LinkedIn."

The stock LinkedIn provided text. The reason why they are sitting there is that I don't know the person or what the person wants. I am sure I am not alone in this behavior.

If you are reaching out to someone you do not know on LinkedIn personalize the message and tell them the purpose for wanting the connection. It will result in a much higher response rate.

December 11, 2013  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Networking, Social