Oh ya, that’s the HubSpot

Instead of focusing on the “old school” outbound marketing strategies, HubSpot is a somewhat unique company that uses a variety of inbound marketing techniques to reach various customers.  Small businesses pay an initial startup fee along with a monthly fee to use the inbound marketing tools that HubSpot has to offer.

HubSpot states that the rules of marking have changed.  In my opinion there has always been inbound and outbound marketing.  For example; since the age of the caveman people have communicated to their family and friends what works well and what doesn’t.  The round wheel rolls nicely and it sucks to burn wet wood, thus the caveman entrepreneur that had the round wheel and dry firewood store made lots of money (or animal skin… whatever they traded).  This is inbound marketing at its earliest.  The entrepreneur caveman soon put a sign on his store, handed out some flyers and voila, outbound marketing was born.

I would tend agree with HubSpot, the rules of marketing have changed.  Today consumers are their own researcher, sales person, and purchaser.  The internet has changed the strategy and way people buy things.  Inbound marketing in the 80’s made up about 10% of the total marketing effort (yellow pages in the phonebook, etc).  Today people have the internet – the game has changed.  Outbound marketing has dwindled and inbound marketing now makes up more than 50% of the total marketing effort (my personal ecommerce observations and experience leads me to this conclusion).

Inbound marketing in not the “end all, be all” answer.  Outbound marketing still has its place and will remain to be an important piece of the marketing puzzle (at least if you want effective results).  HubSpot is currently practicing what it preaches and they only use inbound marketing to attract their customers.  I disagree with this tactic.  If I were on the board I would show data how inbound marketing is necessary and has increased over the past 20 years, but I would also maintain a strong outbound marketing effort.  Let the people decide and I guarantee that HubSpot have a steady flow of customers and potential customers.  If HubSpot uses a little outbound marketing it will not drive customers away – I think it’s asinine that HubSpot thinks so.

In a nut shell, HubSpot didn’t do much more than integrate a bunch of different inbound marketing tools together that spit out fancy graphs, reports and make data driven suggestions.  Maybe I should create a business that integrates a plethora of inbound and outbound marking tools and call it MarketMark…



VAK learning test – what it’s all about?

Is your learning style visual, auditory or kinaesthetic.  I get visual and I get auditory but I wasn’t too sure what kinaesthetic meant.  The VAK test is basically a simple 30 question test that categorizes you to one of the learning styles listed above.  Here’s the website if you want to check it out and give it a try:

http://www.businessballs.com/vaklearningstylestest.htm

After completing the test it turns out that I have a kinaesthetic learning style.  In other words I have a preference for physical experience.  I perform new tasks by going ahead and trying it out, learning as I go.  I like to experiment, hands-on, and never look at the instructions.  That was the category I rated highest in with 13 points, followed by Auditory at 9 and Visual at 8.  Sometimes I read the instructions first, I swear.

I think it’s important to have mixed learning styles in groups or teams that are building something new.  For example, if a team was developing a new technology it would be pertinent that the different learning styles clash to help foster different points of view and bring out the “thinking outside the box” methodology.  On the contrary, if the technology already exists and a group is in charge of a simple upgrade or maintenance it would make sense for everyone in the group to have the same learning style.  This would allow “the change” to be explained and understood quickly, thus the needed actions would happen promptly and efficiently.



Apple - Business Model Canvas

Below you will find the Apple business model canvas.  Please let me know if you can't read the small print and I will e-mail you a copy.  I haven't learned how to attach a file in blogland yet...

Shark Tank – Take a deep breath and jump in

Shark Tank is a show about entrepreneurs seeking investments from wealthy venture capitalist (aka the sharks).  I saw an episode the other night about a guy that invented a better, faster way to connect a fire hose to a fire hydrant.  Long story short one of the sharks made him a deal to buy his business for 1.5 million and gave him guaranteed employment for 3 years at 100K per year.  From an outsider looking in this seems like a pretty amazing deal.  There is so much stuff that happens behind the scenes that we (the people watching TV) have no clue what actually happens.

One of the sharks kept making “low ball” offers.  When the entrepreneurs rejected or countered the shark would go off on how greedy people were.  Really?  This bothered me – I could tell that the greediest people in that room were the sharks.  It was interesting how the conversations progressed and deals were finally sealed.

The most impressive part of the show was the elevator pitches that were presented by the entrepreneurs.  No one choked or stumbled over their words – in my opinion the business ideas were convincing and well pitched.  It’s kind of interesting how someone could have a really great idea but if it’s not pitched well it would be bound for failure.  It’s kind of like have words to a really great song but if you’re a terrible singer you can forget about a record deal…

I-MOS: Why I wouldn’t invest

Suppose I was a venture capitalist with, oh…I don’t know, say 1 million burning a hole in my pocket and looking for a good startup company to invest in.  The folks from I-MOS stop by, give me their elevator pitch, show me some convicting analytical models and drop off their business plan for my review.  I take a few days to ponder over the business plan that describes this innovative and ground breaking semiconductor technology.  I-MOS gives me a phone call a few days later and gets right to the point:  Would I be willing to invest in I-MOS?  My answer would be ABSOLUTELY NOT!

 

Reason #1:  I-MOS states that they developed a disruptive transistor technology that reduces the static power dissipation by 1000x and provides a 30 percent increase in chip performance without increasing semiconductor manufacturing cost.  They don’t state this incredible breakthrough in chip technology once, twice, three times, four times or even five times.  They make this statement about 100 times throughout their business plan – talk about trying to amp up potential investors.  This comes off more like a used car salesman pitch where the same “great” point is reiterated over and over until you just say yes, fine, sure, let’s make a deal.  Except in the case of this business plan the “great” point is not understood by the average investor.  Which brings me to my second point…

Reason #2:  I don’t know enough about this technology to make a logical and reasonable decision.  It all sounds pretty convincing and don’t get me wrong, this business plan is well written and appears to cover all of the bases.  That said, I would never invest my hard earned money into a technology that I don’t completely understand.  As an engineer I would make it my mission to sign an NDA and go through every calculation until I felt comfortable that the new semiconductor chip technology made sense and would be feasible to produce in a very competitive and growing market.

Reason #3:  I-MOS states that they have extensive modeling and simulation results that show this new technology works.  It has also been proven at a micron level.  Sorry folks, come back when you can demonstrate your new chip works in a simple circuit board.  All too often analytical models miss very important variables that makes the concept look like a gem on paper but when it’s scaled up, the rubber hits the road and “real life” products get created it’s a whole different ball game (in a bad way).

To sum up my take on I-MOS:  I would like to know what the acronym I-MOS stood for – that’s never stated in the business plan.  I know that MOSFET means metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor but I’m not sure about I-MOS.  I thought the business plan was very well written and convincing to the average Joe.  It appears that they covered all of the main bases and I really liked the projected income statement…some serious profits could be made presuming the plan went accordingly.  I didn’t see any back-up plans or different tactics that would be taken assuming that things didn’t go as planned.  I understand you can’t predict the future but it is never a bad idea to have 2 or 3 escape routes just in case.

Product Innovation - Where has it gone?

I recently read an article that discussed how most companies face challenges and fall short when deploying new innovations for older products.  This is not a hard concept to understand.  When I first came out of school and got my first job I entered into my new “real world” engineering position and was ready to innovate, change, patent, and invent new ideas as they came to me.  Within my first two months of working I had at least 5 ideas that would make a part better, cheaper, the process flow easier, etc.  My first couple of ideas were brought up to senior engineers and shot down for various reasons – some of which included this is how we’ve always done it, shutting down the production line to initiate the change would take too much time away from production, the part can’t be made with that material because it has never been tested, no resources available to do the testing, etc, etc, etc…

 

I started to become frustrated as I realized that I was surrounded by old engineers who have worked at the company for 20 or 30 years and have become brainwashed to how things “have always been”.  They agreed that some of my ideas were good but they lacked the spark that it took for the idea to go from paper to reality.  They have become stuck in the “why bother” mode.  Assuming that they put in a little extra effort to think outside of the box and create a better process or part; they wouldn’t get more money, in fact, they wouldn’t get anything positive.  The company would benefit but who cares?  There mindset was go to work, put in enough effort so they won’t get fired, drink enough coffee so they don’t fall asleep at their desk and collect their paycheck.  Why would they want to listen to some young and energetic college graduate fresh out of school?

I quit and got a new job at a R&D (research and development) company.  For sure I would be able to come up with new innovative solutions that others would appreciate and implement.  Within no time I had some good ones.  Others agreed but once again they never turned into a reality due to big nasty process blockages.  You would think that an R&D company would be a fast paced, prototype environment.  Nope.  New management came in and insisted that we will be a production facility.  I’m not sure how outputting four products a year is a “production environment” but employees are buying it…after all, management says no lie, so it must be true. 

 

Sadly many companies are getting away from rapid prototyping, inventing, and coming up with new and genuine ideas.  The economy today has squeezed companies hard and the first thing to get scratched off of the finance sheet is the R&D department.  The mindset is; Work on increasing output of the “good old products that work”, increase revenue and forget about the innovation departments.  Hopefully things turn around soon and companies begin to bring back the departments that are in charge of creating new and innovative products.

Sample Business Plan Q & A

After reading through a sample business plan for a fictional company called Startup Professionals, Inc. I had to answer that following questions.

Q:  How strong is the company’s industry position?

A:  After reviewing the Competitive Summary portion of Startup Professionals Inc. business plan one may find that 6 similar companies already exist.  It is unknown to me how thorough the search for similar companies was.  It is my opinion that Startup Professionals Inc. does not have a very promising industry position for the following reasons:  1) Many consultants are out there that offer services very similar to what Startup Profs are proposing.  They may not all have a LLC or an official company name but lots of help is out there and readily available. 2) It does not take a lot of capital investment to begin a company which helps startup entrepreneurs, this is one more reason why I’m assuming there are more than the one major competitor listed as www.CLevelEnterprises.com. 

Q:  How clear is the value proposition?

A:  The value proposition is not very clear to me.  The BP states that clients can benefit from Startup Profs by avoiding time delays and high cost but it is never quantified into meaningful values; e.g. Startup Profs never quantify or associate any timeframe to the plans that they offer.

Q:  How targeted is the customer base?

A:  The customer base is targeted to a person or people that want to begin a business venture.  That is about how narrow it gets.  The BP doesn’t specify that Startup Profs will have a competitive edge in technology based startups or fashion design.

Q:  How unique is the business model?

A:  The business model is not very unique for the following reason:  Many companies exist today and propose everything listed in the offering categories.  One may have to go to a couple of different places to complete everything on the list but the point is this - the only thing unique about Startup Profs is the fact that they are your “one stop shop”.

Q:  How protected is the IP?

A:  Per the business plan your IP is not protected.  Obviously this would be very concerning for someone who is trying to develop a new idea or product.  For $500 dollars you can pay Startup Profs to search to understand if your idea is novel and worthy of being patent protected.  That’s about all they offer – the $500 doesn’t get you a patent or even a provisionary patent.

Q:  How experienced is management?

A:  Per the Management background portion of the BP, both the Chairman and CEO appear to be very experienced in management “type” positions.

Opposites Attract - Applying this concept to my workplace

I recently read an article written by Katharine Miezkowski (Dec 1997) about design teams at Nissan Design International or NDI.  The idea behind the article was how auto designer Jerry Hirshberg, created some of the most world-renowned vehicle design studios - not by hiring the single best designers, but instead hiring a pair of designers.  In addition he wouldn't just hire two designers that got along perfectly with each other; he made it his goal to employ a pair of engineer/designers that "clashed" so to say.  As Hirshberg explained, he "believed in creative abrasion and hiring divergent pairs."  In his mind this lead to the production of “wonderful creative sparks”.

The idea behind Hirshberg's theory is not a crazy one by any means; in fact it has lead to many great automobile designs which have won many awards over the past years.  I believe this concept would be successful if applied at my currently company (United Technologies).  I don't think that the engineering/design teams should be limited to two people, but I also am strongly against having such a large engineering/design team working on a single project - this just leads to people getting in their own way and never making a decision and moving in a forward direction.  Depending on the size of the project, placing 3 "opposites" with 3 "opposites", creating a team of 6 would be beneficial.  I feel that it is important to have engineers that live, eat and sleep engineering and care about every minute detail but I also feel (as did Hirshberg) that it is important and in the best interest of the final product to pair these "nerdy" engineers with people that have an engineering degree but are realistic, don't discourage tweaking on the fly and think "out of the box".  With a team of opposites the engineering aspect would be challenged with realism and style.  Laws and standards would be broken and decisions would get made.  When the product is going through its development and prototype stages, a team of opposite would flourish.... That said, it probably wouldn't be a good idea for a product that is in its final prototype and production stage due to the fact that procedures and standards must be followed and maintained to ensure repeatability, quality control and last but certainly not least; the all important customer satisfaction.