Startup Marketing Blog - by Sean Ellis

Potential

Sean Ellis — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:32:12 GMT

“Potential” is the most important concept in startup marketing. Startups are all about creating and then realizing potential. It is our "true north."

So what is “potential?” One definition is “capable of being but not yet in existence.” From a startup marketing perspective, I define potential as the combination of the size of the market and the intensity of the need for your product as it exists today.

A startup’s potential begins with the vision of the founders. Generally there is some tweaking of the vision based on research around the actual needs of potential customers and the competitive landscape of alternative solutions. The right business model can also extend potential by enabling you to cost effectively expand market need through demand generation marketing activities. Startups seeking VC funding must make sure that their potential is sufficiently large to be interesting to the VC.

Generally marketing leaders don’t join a VC backed company until the initial potential has been established. It is our job to fully realize this potential. An effective startup marketer is sickened by the idea of falling short of their startup’s potential. The only growth that is good enough is growth that rides the line of what is possible. Anything short of that creates an opportunity for a competitor. Each additional competitor reduces your potential.

Too often startup marketers push the rest of the company to extend potential through feature enhancements while they are falling well short of the existing potential on the marketing side. Avoid this vicious cycle of chasing markets without fully reaching the potential of your existing market.

The Best Way to Get Your Startup to Market

Sean Ellis — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 15:27:53 GMT

Among all the uncertainties startups face, perhaps none is bigger than trying to figure out their go to market strategy. Should they shell out big bucks and equity to a veteran marketer with domain and startup experience? Should they take a conservative evolutionary approach or hit the market hard with millions in marketing spending? Are there some key tasks to execute before aggressively acquiring the first customers? With all the alternative ways to go to market, it’s no surprise that startups are constantly second guessing their go to market approach and/or their marketing leader.

Over the last few weeks I’ve refined my plans for helping startups address these challenges. This is mostly based on feedback from several startup founders and VCs, but it’s also based on the time I had to reflect while on vacation.

To recap my "journey" to date, I recently finished a six-month interim VP marketing role at Xobni, which publicly launched its product in May of this year. Xobni is considered by many to be among the hottest startups in Silicon Valley. I am now a marketing advisor with Xobni. I limited the fulltime role to six months because of my belief that the first six months of marketing are the most critical to long term success of a startup. I came to this conclusion following two previous startup roles where I ran marketing for several years from launch to NASDAQ IPO filing.

It’s important to note that the most important marketing drivers were different in each of my last three startup marketing roles. It was the process of discovering the most effective drivers that was the same, as well as the steps executed before developing drivers.

While at Xobni I also read “Four Steps to the Epiphany” which supported my belief that there are patterns that most successful startups follow. The author, Steve Blank, also reached this conclusion as the founder or head of marketing at several successful startups.

As I mentioned in my last post, I plan to use a more leveraged approach with startups going forward. Each startup must have a passionate, talented marketer in the marketing leadership position and recently raised their series A round of VC financing. My role will be to help them focus their time and resources on the most impactful projects necessary to bring their company to market. Because of my previous experience successfully navigating this critical stage, they will have the confidence (both self confidence and from other execs and board members) to aggressively execute an efficient go to market strategy, without most of the second guessing that so often wastes time and energy at startups.

The key development since my last post is that I’ve formalized two specific programs for bringing these companies to market (at different price points). The goal is to concentrate my efforts in the areas where I can add the most value in the least amount of time. Both programs start with 2-3 days of intensive onsite progress assessment and planning. Essentially we assess everything that has happened in marketing to date and plan the sequence of what needs to happen over the next six months. Then we’ll review/refine the execution plans for each of the key projects for the next six months and consider external resources where needed. Finally we’ll schedule weekly phone calls to monitor progress and help with key challenges. The higher level plan will also include unlimited email Q&A.

Over the past several weeks I’ve been introduced to about 25 startups (primarily via VCs) that have the right profile. Clearly this is a niche with a lot more need than I’m capable of meeting. Still, I believe my new approach will enable me to effectively work with up to two new companies per month (initially I'll cap it at one per month). By limiting myself to companies that are at a very specific stage, I will be able to constantly refine and improve the approach. Again, I’m focusing on startups that have recently raised their series A funding and have a talented/passionate fulltime marketing leader. These companies should seek the right balance of conservative and aggressive execution. It’s very easy to get too aggressive too soon when you have just raised millions of dollars. But eventually you must be aggressive to realize your full potential.

You may have noticed that some of my old posts are no longer available on my blog. Because I view my service as a key competitive advantage for the startups I work with, I’ve decided not to provide this information for free to their competitors through my blog. This was a difficult decision and hopefully my readers will understand. I will still post general information about marketing a startup on my blog as well as assessments of effective drivers, but will no longer include detailed posts on process. I may offer some webcasts in the future where it is easier to control the dissemination of information. For anyone who is looking for specific reading materials on process, I highly recommend Four Steps to the Epiphany. My approach incorporates some key element from this book, but obviously there are other things I’ve discovered through my own experience that aren't covered in the book.

I'm excited to start with this new leveraged approach at Eventbrite on Monday.

Advisor at Xobni – What Now?

Sean Ellis — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 15:42:28 GMT

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 and executing more challenging marketing projects.   Each startup recently received their series A VC funding and has a smart and scrappy (but less proven) fulltime marketer.

This is a different approach than I took with Xobni, where I was exclusively focused for six months on laying the groundwork for the public launch (May 5th) and building on the post launch momentum. By focusing on only one startup during this period I’ve been able to re-tune my startup marketing skills. I now feel more prepared to effectively help multiple startups.

In classic flip/flop fashion of a politician, I’ve change my perspective on whether a part-time consulting approach will work.   Back in March I wrote (http://startup-marketing.com/2008/03/01/the-startup-marketing-launch-process-is-broken.aspx) that a total immersion approach is better than a consulting approach. While this is probably still the case for the eureka moments of creating innovative customer acquisition programs, it’s less important for laying a foundation to maximize the impact of these programs and developing the overall go-to-market strategy. If a startup has the right marketing director in place, they should come up with the innovative marketing programs needed to drive growth. By limiting my time involvement, companies will be able to pay less overall compensation. And it works out better financially for me as well, especially since I’ll be able to diversify my equity.

I’ve already committed verbally to terms with three companies, but put off figuring out the contracts until I completed my fulltime role with Xobni. I also postponed meeting with other companies because it would cut into my time at Xobni. As a result, I have several meetings teed up over the next few weeks with other startups. I plan to cap my advising/consulting roles to four companies through the fall (in addition to Xobni). Once I understand my capacity I may add more.

I’m definitely in need of a vacation and excited to be heading to Thailand at the end of next week.

Three Key Lessons From The Slide/rockyou Facebook App Fallout

Sean Ellis — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:01:19 GMT

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 (http://assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event/3/Design%20Learnings%20from%20Viral%20Applications%20Presentation.ppt) describes their growth as resulting from the “Rise of open platforms + laser-like focus on metrics and viral channels."

But after today it’s clear that this growth sits on a shaky foundation. I believe there are three key lessons all online marketers can learn from Slide and rockyou’s challenging situation:

1) Don’t get too aggressive. When the key driver of your business is engineered virality, it’s tempting to keep pushing the envelope. Eventually you will cross the line and become annoying – particularly if it can be perceived that you are tricking users into inviting their friends. Some people will always be annoyed by viral tactics, but monitor this “annoyance” closely to ensure it is a very small minority.

2) Building your business on one or two social networks puts you at the mercy of these platform owners. Slide and Rock You have worked hard to diversify their platforms, so they will probably weather this storm. Rockyou even makes a good case on slide 8 of the presentation (mentioned/linked above) that they can help drive the overall growth of the platform.

3) Try to aggregate loyal users on your own website. It may seem so 90's, but I think this is one of the key issues with the rockyou and Slide business models. By not offering a compelling trail back to their own websites, they have very little control over their relationships with users. At Uproar.com (in the late 90s) we used a viral widget with a smooth customer acquisition trail from our 40,000+ syndicate websites and even paid partner sites a bounty. While this was more expensive in the short run, we “owned” the users and could work to extend their loyalty and lifetime value - ultimately building the biggest gamesite on the web. This approach seems more sustainable and defensible than the current Rockyou and Slide approaches (though the growth rate was certainly slower).

Hopefully we can all learn as much from rockyou and Slide's setbacks as we have from their viral successes.

VP Marketing Compensation at Tech Startup

Sean Ellis — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:14:45 GMT

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).

Reading "Once You're Lucky. Twice You're Good."

Sean Ellis — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:06:56 GMT

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, Lacy indicates that many talented founders would likely have been ousted from their CEO position by VCs.  Who knows if companies like Facebook would be at their current nosebleed valuations if a seasoned exec were running things? The passion and vision of a founder often count for more than the experience of a replacement CEO. Other times this isn't the case.  Obviously when VCs push for a replacement, they firmly believe it is the best approach for the long-term success of the company. But sometimes they're wrong.

Reading about these successful companies has been both inspirational and educational. It led me to begin an analysis of the fastest growing startups over the last few years and try to reverse engineer the source of their growth. I've been verifying strong growth rates by looking at each company's Google search trendline and their Alexa chart. Caution: Sometimes Alexa doesn't capture the real growth of a company because their pages are https or they are distributing a local application. In this case, Google trends is a better indicator of user growth.

Most of the highly successful companies have relied on a key viral driver - either viral invites or a self replicating viral presence (think widgets).   I'm hoping to identify new growth drivers around which I can enhance my marketing skills. I tend to find the shelf-life of many successful online marketing programs is limited, so it's important to continuously refresh my knowledge. I'll post my findings soon.

@Calacanis RE: "The business model comes AFTER you get to scale."

Sean Ellis — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:20:56 GMT

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

http://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 the masses (say 20m+ users) as quickly as possible. This is how multibillion dollar businesses are created. And the Silicon Valley venture capital ecosystem exists to create multibillion dollar ventures.

Now comes the "but"... Unless it's viral (like Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Skype...) bringing life-changing technology to the masses costs money. A lot of money - think $50m-$100m in marketing to acquire 20m+ users. Jason points out that an endless supply of capital makes this possible. And again he's right. But a startup with $50m to $100m in venture financing will require a $1 billion+ exit to be considered successful. These exits are extremely rare. For a company that raises that much money, a more common scenario is an outright failure or an exit where employees and founders earn little if anything.

Wouldn't it be better to have a business model that allows you to spend the same $10m several times over a few years? This limits dilution and still lets you grow into the 10s of millions of users. It also offers a much broader range of attractive exit options. A self funding marketing program makes this possible, but it requires a solid business model and of course a product/service that people actually value.

I've been able to use self funding marketing programs to attract 40 million+ users across my last few startups. Many others have also used this approach to build valuable companies. GoToMyPC created the easy remote PC access category with this model. Dell is another company that used direct response marketing to build a massive business. Both of these businesses did it out of necessity - their cost per unit required a monetization plan early.

But even startups with zero marginal unit cost can benefit from this approach. Critical mass should be the goal of a VC backed startup and an ROI driven aggressive marketing plan is one of the most reliable ways to get there. This even applies if you are "a player with unlimited access to capital."

UPDATE: Funny timing... The same day I posted this, Jason made a related post called "Traffic buying strategies--a complete education on every detail." In it he acknowledges that he may be missing a "huge opportunity". He goes on to ask "What I'm wonder is, are there ways to buy decent/real traffic for .01 to .03 per visit. That would be $10 to $30 per thousand, so that we could possibly break even on buying the traffic." Here's a link to the full post:

http://www.calacanis.com/2008/06/05/traffic-buying-strategies-a-complete-education-on-every-detail/

More Freemium and Startup Marketing Thoughts

Sean Ellis — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:23:12 GMT

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...

Freemium will be a dominant business model in software and online services. It is easiest to execute when disrupting large existing categories with strong demand. It is more challenging to execute when growing a new category through aggressive marketing spending. Getting all the pieces right will dramatically improve your ability to market and grow a freemium business. Premium only is rarely a viable option - you will eventually lose to the company that introduces a freemium model in your category.
Early stage marketers that aren't looking at the full business picture likely won't be successful. Most of the obvious marketing levers are irrelevant without the right business model, product/market fit, tracking systems, etc. Early stage marketers need to spend time perfecting the whole economic picture. Marketing might not even be the right title to give this role, but the marketing function is a critical component.
The traditional Silicon Valley rift between engineering and marketing is shrinking. The increasing importance of analytics in marketing means effective marketers can more easily connect with mostly left brained engineers. Additionally, some of the most leveraged online marketing activities require close coordination with engineering (such as viral marketing and conversion optimization). The trend of great marketers coming from engineering backgrounds will likely accelerate (and no - I don't have an engineering background). Still, all tech marketers will need to have a good balance of right brain and left brain talents.

I plan to expand these thoughts in future posts.

Startup2Startup

Sean Ellis — Fri, 16 May 2008 01:30:44 GMT

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.

Xobni Meet LogMeIn

Sean Ellis — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:56:36 GMT

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).

Featured Freeware: LogMeIn Free

An Outlook add-on getting big buzz (Xobni Story)

I joined Xobni after 4.5 years of running marketing at LogMeIn. I love to see both companies featured on Download.com together!

On similar note, this appeared in the Xobni forum today:

it would be great to be able to turn off animation of the app - so that when you click it just "pops" to the next screen instead of pushing (wiping) across - I access my email using logmein remotely and the animation makes it painfully slow to use.

Xobni Launch In New York Times

Sean Ellis — Sun, 04 May 2008 23:17:38 GMT

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.

When is the Right Time for Startups to Hire the First Marketer?

Sean Ellis — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:05:28 GMT

I love the fast pace of working at a startup in a marketing role. There is always so much to do - particularly around customer acquisition.    Turn new campaigns on, scale highly effective campaigns, cut the bad ones…   Other campaigns can be optimized by testing new messaging and user flows to improve conversion rates, etc, etc… On the web it’s all very iterative and there is always something that can be done to improve efficiency and scale acquisition drivers. It is the dream job for any ADD powered entrepreneur.

But that’s post launch. Before that you have to lay a foundation to maximize your chances of hitting the ground running when your product emerges from private beta. Important marketing activities include ensuring your product meets real needs of a large addressable market and defining necessary tracking systems to manage and grow campaigns. I’ve outlined some of the critical pre-launch activities in this post.

So what happens in between these two stages? If you’re anything like me, it’s primarily a time of agitated chomping at the bit. It takes time for engineering to get a product ready for mass market adoption (fixing bugs is the main point of a private beta). There is only so much research and planning that a marketer can do before the marginal benefit drops below the marginal cost of their time. Managing a private beta, even a very successful one, takes relatively little time. And optimization is usually irrelevant during private beta, because most early adopters enjoy figuring out particularly tough product installations.

I've heard some argue that marketers offer little or no value pre-launch. I would strongly disagree with this. However, I am coming to the realization that it probably makes more sense for marketers to be project based consultants during this pre-launch stage.   As the product gets very close to public beta launch, the marketer can join in a full time intensive role.   Before that, they can spread the cost and benefit of their expertise across multiple startups. Their ultimate selection of a startup to join full time will be based on an actual understanding of the market and experience working with the team. This knowledge will help them make a better choice.

This is a change from my earlier recommendations on the ideal marketing process for startups.  I have approached my current role with the goal of figuring out an optimal marketing process – rather than applying firm preconceived ideas of the perfect way to bring a company to market. I still believe marketers should specialize in either early stage startups or companies that have already achieved firm traction.  Mastering the first part is nearly impossible without lots of repetition and focus.

Blockbuster/Circuit City Not That Bad

Sean Ellis — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:10:23 GMT

CNet Buzz Outloud jumped on the negative bandwagon about the Blockbuster/Circuit City merger in yesterday's podcast. Rather than a private conversation with my iPod, I figured I'd blog about why I think the merger actually makes sense - at least from a marketing perspective.

It boils down to this:

Blockbuster = store traffic

Circuit City = impulse purchases (when enough foot traffic)

A perfect analogy here is movie theaters and malls. Movie theaters pay much lower rent per square foot than retailers in a mall because they add value to all the other tenants. The retailers that receive the bulk of this value are those that sell impulse purchase items.

Personally I rarely go into an electronics store without making an impulse purchase. Also, every time I go to Blockbuster, I get bored standing around as my kids take a long time picking out a movie. If I could browse a section of electronics (think Sharper Image type stuff) while my kids are browsing movies, I'd likely make some impulse purchases. Of course this requires putting smaller cheaper electronics near the movie rental section to draw you in... Occasionally I'd even wonder over to the bigger ticket items.

Check Out the Signup Process at TripIt.com

Sean Ellis — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:18:58 GMT

Jamie Siminoff recently suggested I check out the sign up process for TripIt. I highly recommend you go check out the TripIt sign up process if you haven't already. It is absolutely brilliant and highlights how important it is to think about marketing as you are building your product.

Here was the comment I posted on Jamie's blog comment:

One word - "Smooth!"

I'm blown away by the signup process. Very easy, low commitment. After you have received some value, they encourage you to register - to get more value.

Also some interesting viral marketing/social networking angles. Just when I thought I wouldn't be tempted to join another social network, I think this one would actually be useful. I added you as a friend, so it will notify us when we are in the same city.

Thanks for pushing me to finally check out TripIt. I've been hearing about it for a while. Definitely some stuff to learn from these guys.

Why So Long Since My Last Blog Post?

Sean Ellis — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:27:22 GMT

It has been hard finding time to make blog posts recently. As anyone who has been through a startup knows - there are never enough hours in the day. To make things even more challenging for me, I moved up to San Francisco to join Xobni while my wife and kids stayed down in Southern California to finish up the school year. So most weekends I'm down South and most weekdays I'm up in San Francisco. That pretty much rules weekends out for blogging - I have a lot of missed time to make up for with the family. But I'll definitely be posting as often as I can - it's fun and helps me to crystallize my thoughts...

The 2 Most Important Questions to Ask Before Launching a Startup

Sean Ellis — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:02:14 GMT

“Can this startup be marketed profitably?”
“Can the profitable marketing scale?”

Of course you can't definitively answer these questions until you try marketing the product. But, if you aren’t pretty confident that the answer to these questions is yes, you shouldn’t launch the business. Too many people start trying to build a product and believe they'll figure out the marketing piece later. Some get lucky, but the majority fail.

If you start your business with these questions in mind, you are much more likely to build a successful business.

Hiring Unproven Talent for your Startup

Sean Ellis — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 18:14:19 GMT

Building the right team is critical to the success of any startup. You can pay a significant premium for proven talent, or take a risk and get a deal on unproven talent. My best hires have usually been relatively unproven when they joined the team.

But how do you gauge the potential of these people? I may have figured out a critical interview question to ask when hiring unproven talent (and maybe proven talent too). The question is: “How would you react if you felt like you were underpaid in your position?”

I came up with this question based on a conversation with my younger sister. She was recently promoted and very disappointed that she didn’t get a pay raise with her promotion. Most people would lose motivation and begin putting less effort into their work. A few of us though would take the exact opposite approach. Defying logic, we would actually work harder, figuring that our salary will eventually catch up to our valuable contribution. We understand that being underpaid gives us enormous leverage and eventually a smart employer will give us a raise for fear of losing us.

From the inception of my career, I have always taken this approach when I felt underpaid. And I’ve always preferred to be underpaid than overpaid (much better job security). I have a feeling that this is a key characteristic of most people that have had success in their career.

It will be interesting to hear the reactions when I use this question in interviews.

Startup and Online Marketing Secrets Exposed

Sean Ellis — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:33:08 GMT

This presentation by Dave McClure is the best concentration of online marketing information I have ever seen. It is a direct contradiction to my recent rant that startup marketers are too protective of their ideas. Dave is definitely open to sharing his very valuable online marketing insights. Almost everything you need to know about online marketing is included in the presentation.

I wish I would have had a presentation like this when I began online marketing. Of course in the mid 90s no one had accumulated this knowledge yet.

It also expanded my existing knowledge - particularly the last few pages on viral marketing.

I plan to start following Dave's blog very closely and I'm sure I'll learn lots of new marketing tricks.

Startup Marketers Hoarding Mediocre Ideas

Sean Ellis — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:10:41 GMT

Why can't marketing be more like the rest of Silicon Valley who have long shared ideas, resources and processes across startups?  Engineers have been doing this for decades and the open source movement takes this to a worldwide level. Startup founders are also forming alliances (often facilitated by common VCs or groups like Y Combinator). The startup stories of Apple and other companies show that many great technology companies came out of “clubs” of people that were passionate about technology.

But us startup marketers have stayed on the sidelines protecting our mediocre ideas and processes. If we pulled together, we could dramatically improve our contribution to the success of startups.  Many of us have become complacent about accepting a flawed marketing process for bringing companies to market - as long as we're better than the other guys we'll always have a "job opportunity". But successfully bringing a startup to market is much bigger than any one job. Knowing you've built a sustainable thriving company is a huge accomplishment and can put you in a financial situation that means you never have to worry about a "job" again.

In an earlier post I explained why I believe the startup marketing process is broken. In a nutshell, today’s “long term” comp packages prevent effective startup marketers from specializing in the traction stage - the most important stage in building a valuable company. Specialization and repetition are the ways to get really good at this “traction” process. Shared learning will help all involved improve their processes much more quickly.

The startup marketing blog is my attempt to share my experiences and get the ball rolling on collaboration with other startup marketing leaders. I really like that I’m now getting some great comments from readers. Most of the comments begin with “I wholeheartedly agree” or something like that – which is great. But what would be even more valuable is “I disagree and here’s where my experience has been different…” Here's an example of a really helpful comment from Rajiv Kapoor (scroll to bottom).

I'm also starting to connect offline with other startup marketing leaders who share my passion to develop a better startup marketing approach. I share detailed process documents and get great feedback from these new friends. Please consider this an open invitation to any other marketing leaders from VC backed startups that want to contribute to and learn from this effort. I'm always open for a phone call or if you are in SF, a coffee. Drop me an email at seanwellis (at) gmail (dot) com. Of if you prefer to get a snapshot on my latest thinking on the key early startup marketing milestones, see this post.

Thanks Jay for your recent comment praising me for my openness. It helped to remind me why I started this blog.

Brand Like Starbucks (for Startup Marketing Success)

Sean Ellis — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:09:07 GMT

Like millions of other people, I'm working at a Starbucks today (on my PC, not behind the counter). Despite some recent financial hiccups, Starbucks has built an amazing brand over the last 20 years and rocketed the category of high end coffee shops into mainstream existence.

Starbuck's process of building their brand is a great example for any startup. There was no heavy spending on brand advertising. At Starbucks it's all about the brand experience. They obsessed over everything - from the quality of the cups to the quality of the toilet paper. The music, colors, furniture... It's all an orchestrated brand experience.

The cost of this brand building was nothing compared to the losses someone can incur on massive brand building campaigns. Starbucks is a great concrete example of why spending a lot to build brand awareness is a waste of startup resources.