Every time I read about or return to Babson College I am more impressed by the caliber of students, faculty, administration, and staff. Yesterday I wrote about a handful of programs Babson has designed that work to “breed” entrepreneurs. Today I am spotlighting how Babson also breeds a network of adopters and supporters of startups at their early and, arguably, most critical stage.
Startups & Boston
This weekend I coached students as part of Babson College’s Coaching for Leadership and Teamwork Program. The program is designed to help first and third year students hone their oral communication, listening, teamwork, leadership, ethics, and decision-making skills. It’s one of the many distinctive programs Babson offers in addition to it’s truly unique, cross-disciplined business education. I’ve recently more keenly appreciated how Babson’s education fosters entrepreneurialism — regardless of if you decide to take specific classes in the entrepreneurship academic division or not.
Like most other startups using the lean startup methodology, we’ve become pretty obsessed with tracking data. We track all kinds of stuff, from internal product metrics to external referrals to conversions via the various funnels we’ve set up. We rely on these numbers to help us make key product decisions, to tell us where we should focus our marketing efforts, and generally to find out what’s working and what’s not. For a company still wiggling our way into product/market fit, these numbers are our currency, and it’s important that we get them right.
After a couple weeks of learning lean startup methodologies, I’m left wondering about the value of comparing user first impressions to developed use (and doing so across customer archetypes) in order to discover and validate our customer base.
The business opportunity Pinyadda has recognized is the need for an information system that leverages an individual’s unique social graph to filter the firehose of news articles and blog posts published each day and deliver only the ones that would be most valuable. The Pinyadda team has built a base product that addresses this opportunity and which we believe solves several problems.
Last February, The New York Times announced they’d be opening up their archives via an API. I was pumped. It was a really cool development that didn’t quite get the attention it deserved, and it made me believe that the Times “gets it,” something I often say about that institution when the newspaper industry comes up in conversation (if that doesn’t happen to you, well, just pretend – the point is that I stick up for the Times).
Dear Dominos,
Thanks for reiterating the critical feedback you received from customers in a $75mm ad campaign and subsequently not making the necessary changes to satisfy your customers taste buds. It’s a great example of how not to go about finding product market fit.
When I first saw Domino’s video ad (no, not the one from a few months ago where employees blew snot rockets on some very unlucky customers’ food) I gave immediate props for taking on their “harshest critics” and was interested (and hungry) enough to place an order for delivery. Result 1: Domino’s counts a $16 incremental sale, directly attributable to the campaign. The delivery smell quickly brought me back to my late-night, freshman fifteen and I was as excited as ever to try the new recipe. A few bites later, and the verdict: slightly spicier sauce, maybe less-greasy cheese and the same tasteless, cardboard crust. Domino’s ad campaign had tricked me into believing they had actually made a good pizza, but upon taste instead lived up to being a “sad excuse for real pizza.” Just about everyone I’ve asked has voiced similar sentiments. Result 2: Let down customer.
1. EU seen likely to OK Oracle-Sun deal: Oracle, an international company with more than $50 billion put in an offer to purchase Sun Microsystems, the creator of such open-source products as Java and MySQL. The purchase, which has been under investigation by the European Union based on anti-trust concerns, is now likely to go through because Oracle has claimed that it will maintain MySQL.
MySQL, which is currently Oracle’s main competitor when it comes to relational database management, is likely to see a significant drop in usage, however. According to a study conducted by the 451 group, MySQL usage will see a 10% drop over the next four years if Oracle-Sun merger goes through. How will this drop in usage affect Oracle’s decision to maintain the popular open-source technology? Only time will tell….
2. Google Public DNS: Recently, Google expanded another technological branch and opened its own public DNS service, a service they are offering free of charge. Basically, DNS acts like the internet’s Yellow Pages, matching up IP addresses (location of websites based on numbers) to their domain names (like http://www.pinyadda.com, for example). The major beef with the project thus far is performance. With the slow uptake of Google Wave, one wonders if Google’s product hot streak is coming to an end.
3. China to nuture open-source software development: Just as the title states. In appears that the Chinese yet again are making the correct technological decisions from the top-down.
This weekend provided some excellent Tech reads. Here are the top 3:
- News Corp, Microsoft want to lock Google out (Variety.com)- Basically, Microsoft wants News Corp. (owners of the Wall Street Journal and Fox just to name a few assets) to pull all of its content off of Google. If this went through, it’d mean no more Googling for Wall Street Journal or New York Post articles. This is a must-watch development.
- China Cyber Espionage Threatens U.S., Report Says (InformationWeek.com)- A congressional group claims that Chinese cyber attacks on the US will increase to 87,570 in 2009, a 60% increase from 2008. Some of these attacks, the group claims, will come from hackers not even affiliated with the Chinese government. Anyone else terrified?
- Google Chrome OS Depends On Hardware Partners (InformationWeek.com)- Google’s operating system Chrome (think Google’s version of Windows) is outlined in this awesome read. I see two tremendous advantages with Google Chrome OS. First, it will be open source so the creativity of all developers can be leveraged to make awesome programs and features. Secondly, it will be all in the cloud, meaning you’ll have access to your documents wherever you go.
When you have a great idea on your hands, it’s really easy to keep pushing the boundaries of what might be possible. In a startup, it’s one of the most important things you can do – more than a few companies have gotten their big break because they kept pushing forward, innovating, thinking up crazy schemes about how to their product could take over this or that market, be tweaked to fit this or that need. And often those other implementations turned out to be the real gold – PayPal and Twitter are the first examples that pop into my head. Pie in the sky sometimes works out great.
But what makes the entrepreneur different from all the other crazies with great ideas is one simple thing: execution. In business, just like in sports, execution is the simple key to success. You’ve to have a good gameplan, a good team, and be well prepared, but in the end it comes down to how well you play when all the marbles are on the line.
For us, it’s time to take a little break from dreamworld and get right down to it. Now that we have a working product with almost all of our core functionality intact, we’re concentrating on making it work exactly the way we want it to, with no exceptions. Until now, we’ve been able to get away with saying “of course, we’ll obviously fix that before release.” Not anymore.
And to a certain extent, that’s a really gratifying feeling, because we’re all invested in the product and want to make it great. Unlike a hulking corporation, we can see a problem and fix it with our own two hands. There is a direct correlation between how hard we work and what kind of results we see, and it has nothing at all to do with financial compensation. It’s about taking pride in your workmanship and owning the success or failure that comes along with it. That’s the real point of addiction in startups, and it’s why successful entrepreneurs go back and do it again even after they’ve struck it rich. It’s the thrill of self-reliance and the unqualified gratification of knowing you’ve built something wicked cool that actually works.
And on that note, it’s time to get back to work.