Monday will be my last fulltime day in the interim VP marketing role at Xobni – then I switch to part-time advising.  Xobni’s progress is definitely on the highest end of my expectations when I went into the role.  I’ll miss my day-to-day interaction with the team, but will be on site a couple of afternoons per week to trade jabs. 

Many people are asking me “what now?”  Through fall I'll be working with a few other startups using a more leveraged approach.  I’ll help them set the overall marketing priorities and then provide ongoing assistance refining their go-to-market strategy ...<< MORE >>

Well it was only a matter of time before Slide and rockyou pushed things too far.  Facebook’s crackdown on aggressive viral tactics has exposed a key vulnerability of these businesses.  Facebook has banned some apps and shut down two of the three most important viral channels for others (invites and newsfeeds).  And according to this TechCrunch article the growth of these apps has been dramatically squeezed as a result. 

Despite their mistakes, both rockyou and Slide should be recognized for their pioneering role in advancing viral marketing.  Through metrics and iteration both companies have achieved unprecedented user growth rates. This rockyou presentation from April '08 ...<< MORE >>

While working on recruiting the next marketing head at Xobni (either VP or director level), I stumbled across a great blog post on the typical compensation packages for VPs of Marketing at Tech Startups: http://www.mikevolpe.com/bid/3858/.  I haven’t downloaded the actual report which may provide more data (you can see it here https://www.compstudy.com/).  

Percentile	Cash Compensation	Stock Option %
80%	$225,000	1.65%
60%	$200,000	1.25%
40%	$175,000	1.00%
20%	$160,000	0.75%

Unfortunately Mike’s post doesn’t give many details on compensation by startup stage (I assume these probably weren’t available in the report either).  In my opinion pre-series A has more risk and should give the marketing VP more equity (all other qualifications being equal).  Also 1% of a pre-series A company is worth much less than 1% of the same company after the series C round (because of dilution).

      

Wow…  It’s been a crazy five and 1/2 months at Xobni.  When I joined as Interim VP Marketing in January, I dug into the less than thrilling baseline marketing tasks needed to build a sustainable growth foundation.  We honed the value proposition and positioning, implemented a tracking/reporting and testing infrastructure, optimized conversions and then finally publicly launched the product. 

Xobni’s incredible growth rates have taken us all by surprise.  Press coverage in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Lifehacker and especially TechCrunch got things started.   Virality built into the product and strong ...<< MORE >>

I've been reading "Once You're Lucky. Twice You're Good." by Sarah Lacy for the last few days and I'm really enjoying it.  It gives a useful overview of the whole Web 2.0 scene, but mostly I just find it an entertaining read.  It's amazing how many influential Web 2.0 companies were connected to PayPal alums.   Slide, YouTube and Yelp were all directly connected, and Facebook has early investors that were alums. 

The book highlights the value of the Silicon Valley ecosystem for starting new companies.  Without the help of startup vets, the book suggests that many talented founders would likely have been ousted ...<< MORE >>

I stumbled across this old post on Calacanis.com that Jason Calacanis wrote back in January. 

www.calacanis.com/2008/01/02/the-three-business-models-that-make-twitter-a-billion-dollar-bus/

In discussing Twitter, he made some strong statements about when a startup should focus on business models. He recommends spending some time in Silicon Valley where the prevailing wisdom is that you should reach scale before obsessing over a business model.  

I can see his point... Everyone can name a company like YouTube that was acquired for billions before they ever figured out a viable business model. 

I agree with Jason that a small profitable business is not what VC-backed startups are all about.  It's generally about bringing life-changing technology to ...<< MORE >>

Same excuses for a lack of meaningful blog posts recently...  But the good news is I'm nearing the end of my immersive interim VP marketing role, and will soon transition to a part time advising role.  This should free me up to spend more time with the blog.  

Until then, here are three very raw startup marketing thoughts that have been running through my head lately...

<< MORE >>

Dave McClure organized an excellent gathering at the first Startup2Startup dinner tonight.  The evening started with a great presentation called "Speed: the ultimate startup weapon" by serial entrepreneur Mike Cassidy.  Then each table had an organized round table discussion on critical startup topics.  The guests at each table were prearranged to ensure a good mix of veteran entrepreneurs, first time entrepreneurs, angel investors and VCs.  This was followed by casual mingling.  The whole evening was fun, educational and very collaborative.  I saw some old friends and met some great new people too.

      

I was excited to log into Download.com today and see that LogMeIn and Xobni were both featured in "Download News and Updates" (back-to-back).

      

It's a very exciting night over at Xobni.  We just pulled the trigger on the Xobni public beta launch.  This coincided with a great article hitting NYTimes.com announcing the Xobni launch:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/technology/05xobni.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Of course the Microsoft Yahoo fallout is stealing some of our thunder, but it's still amazing for a 14-person company to get our launch covered in the New York Times.  Huge kudos to Sutherland Gold for getting us the New York Times (Jeff Bonforte was right - they are awesome).

The biggest credit goes to Matt and Adam for founding a great company and the rest of the engineers for executing an awesome product.  We still have a lot of work to do, but we've had an amazing private beta with very passionate and helpful users. 

On the marketing side, Xobni already kicked up a lot of interest before I arrived.  My goal has been to ensure that we harvest this interest and build on the great momentum.  Now that we're publicly available for anyone to download, we should really be able to optimize conversions.  

I expect great things from Xobni and I'm proud to be part of this incredible team.