Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: Marketing/Branding/PR (Page 23 of 29)

Entrepreneurs: Work on Your Conceptual Metaphors!

February 28, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Being smack in the middle of Entrepreneurship Week, I can’t think of a better link to point my startup readers to today than this blog post by Will Price, which he published yesterday. Will is a VC at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. In this very thoughtful piece, he nails one of the most important, yet little talked about, aspects of preparing to pitch VCs. Okay, it’s somewhat academic — yes, we’re talking here about “conceptual metaphors,” people. But this is great stuff! And, after all, conceptual metaphors is really what mathematics is all about, right? So, startup founders out there who are programmers and engineers can especially relate. [There’s a reason, I’ve come to learn, that so many successful entrepreneurs and VCs were math majors, or had a heavy dose of it in engineering school. This piece kind of brings this reality home.]

I now have this post on my Recommended Must-Read List for anyone even thinking about ever approaching VCs for money. Save this link, friends, and learn and practice what it’s telling you. You will need it!

While we’re at it, there’s another great piece you should check out today on Startup Journal: Young Entrepreneurs Face Higher Hurdles — worth reading even if you’re not so young.

Blogs as ‘New Media’: The Evolution Continues

February 16, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Wow, some real interesting things are happening out there in Blogland lately! Specifically, new developments that keep raising questions about disclosure and the independence of bloggers. Marshall Kirkpatrick did a TechCrunch post yesterday about Microsoft hiring two respected industry guys (one an analyst, the other a tech journalist), to start blogging for the company. And it drew a hailstorm of comments — accusations of selling out to The Man, etc. But the question about ethics and disclosure isn’t just about big-company bloggers these days. Robert Scoble, who started the whole employee-evangelist blogging phenomenon at Microsoft, has been under attack at the small startup company he now blogs and “vlogs” for, PodTech. A post on his Scobleizer blog a while back drew a very heavy, sometimes downright nasty discussion about disclosure, specifically relating to Robert’s coverage of clients of PodTech’s. [Some of PodTech’s clients it calls “sponsors” and are identified as such on its web site. Robert also has one sponsor for his personal blog, which he says is Seagate.] His post on this topic was in response to Valleywag calling him out on being a shill. Scoble straightens out Valleywag on the details, but admits he doesn’t always give enough disclosure. He resolves to be more careful in the future. Dan Farber at ZDnet also weighed in on the flap.

But the arguments about what consitutes sufficient disclosure will surely continue. Who decides? The evolution to new media is not without its bumps. Traditional journalism has a code of ethics that takes up a whole book at some media outlets such as the NY Times (which hasn’t prevented some notable lapses by certain reporters and editors there in recent times). But bloggers now, more and more, seem to be getting held to higher standards — especially those of the so-called independents that are widely read. Those who have accepted high-profile positions at big-name companies don’t have disclosure issues, however. We all know who’s paying them, and simply apply that filter.

One great blog to read that covers this issue like no other — blogs versus mainstream media — is Mark Glaser’s MediaShift, which is hosted by PBS.org. I’ve written about it previosuly. You’ll find his coverage of the recent “WeMedia” conference interesting as well.

The battle for influence goes on. In the minds of most web users today, that influence now exists collectively in blogs, or at least in certain blogs that are respected and deemed to have influence over others. No question that blogs as a medium are gaining fast on traditional media. And don’t doubt for a second that corporate communicators and their bosses aren’t getting this, bigtime.

What makes a blog influential? How does one measure that? How much of it is quantitative vs. qualitative?

Some of the Awesome People I Met at DEMO 07

February 11, 2007 / / 1 Comment

Now that I’ve been back from DEMO for a week, it’s time to go through my humongous stack of cards again and say-hey to all great people I met at this very upbeat event. I’ve been sorting through all these cards on my desk today….

Once again, the whole conference came off very well — the logistics, the networking, the program, everything was great (even if the weather was a little iffy at first). Though it’s always hard to break away to attend these things, I’m really, really glad I did and would wholeheartedly recommend DEMO conferences to anyone in this business, whether you’re new to it or not.

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Normally, I’d have done this “people post” a little sooner, but it’s been the busiest post-conference week I can remember for a while. It seems the startup business is booming everywhere, and I’m hustling to follow up with a lot of blogging and consulting work, now that I’m a free-agent again! On top of that, I still have some blog posts I’d like to do on companies I met last week…which will make this a record in the elapsed time between the conference ending and my final posts. But there were just so many interesting companies and stories at DEMO 07, I really could blog about it for weeks.

DEMO remains the best venue to see all the new innovative ideas coming out in the tech business, year in and year out — actually twice a year. And it proves that innovation can come from anywhere — even, I’m out to prove, Minnesota (if not this time). In that regard, I volunteered to help Chris Shipley connect with promising startups here in my adopted home state in the future. I’m hoping she can do one of her “Innovation Day” meetup events sometime soon in the Twin Cities, and hear pitches from a bunch of our local startups. Though we didn’t have a Minnesota-based company presenting this time, there was one from our neighboring state of Wisconsin — Jyngle, which gets my vote for one of the best, most memorable brand names to come out at DEMO 07. These things are important, people, when you have to stand out and be remembered amidst the information-overload of 68 startups all hyping their wares! (Just a taste of what such startups will face out in the real world.) Smart companies take the time to get this naming thing right. Now if Jyngle could just have a memorable tagline to go with its cool name. As Guy Kawasaki says, you have to “make mantra” — meaning boil down to a few words how you make a difference in the world. Again, not easy, but if you can’t do it, how do you expect your users or buyers to “get” what you’re doing? Without mantra, you can just slowly drown in all the hype of the marketplace. I would describe mantra as “messaging on steroids.” [Hey, Guy — there ya go. As a marketing/branding/messgaging dude, that would be my three-word-mantra wrapup/takeaway of your great talk in Minneapolis a few weeks ago.]

I don’t mean to pick on Jyngle — they’re hardly alone in this. And Business Week liked their service enough to include it in a post-DEMO story. But I sit here looking at their cards again and see a huge missed opportunity — no tagline, no mantra ringing through to me (pardon the pun). Sure, when you go to their site, you see the words “Mobile Group Messaging for the Real World” — but that doesn’t do it for me. Now, a tagline like “Message Your Group, Fast” sure would. What’s cool is the Jyngle service lets you do this group-messaging with either voice or text.

Time savings — it’s ALL about saving time today. That’s a major investment theme of one of the smartest, most successful guys in tech investing, Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners. He wasn’t at this DEMO, nor was his partner Bono (though there was a sighting of the latter at the last DEMO, which turned out to be the most masterful PR trick of that event). So, here’s a lesson for startups: when Roger (the Man) McNamee talks about stuff like this, listen!

But I digress. How did I get off on this tangent? Such is blogging. Back to the people I met. First, I’ll list some of the people I already knew but renewed friendships with (no particular order, just as I kinda ran into ’em). I’ll start with the former Minnesota people I talked about in my opening-reception post, noting where they are now…

• Steve Larsen, CEO, Krugle Inc., Menlo Park, CA
• Beth Temple, CMO, Magnify.net, NYC
• Charles Wilson, consultant to Mission Research (SalesWorks), Lancaster, PA
• Charles Beeler, General Partner, El Dorado Ventures, Menlo Park
• Hany Nada, Managing Director, Granite Global Ventures, Menlo Park
And these other friends I saw again, some of them just a few weeks prior at BlogHaus and CES:
• Robert Scoble, PodTech
• John Furrier, PodTech
• Shel Israel, co-author with Scoble on “Naked Conversations”
• Stewart Alsop, Alsop Louie Partners
• Renee Blodgett, DEMO PR guru, Blodgett Communications
• Julie O’Grady, another DEMO PR guru, here for Boorah
• Gary Bolles, Conferenza
• Dan Farber, VP Editorial, ZDnet
• Rafe Needleman, Editor, CNET
• Brian Ziel, PR guru, Seagate
• Becky Sniffen, who handles PR for DEMO
• Chris Shipley, DEMO Executive Producer
Plus all these new peope I met, at least the ones I got cards from:
• Christine Herron, Director of Investments, Omidyar Network (whose tagline
I love: “Every individual has the power to make a difference”)
• Tom Sly, Manager of New Business Development, Google (a newly minted Harvard MBA;
I told him he was the second Google guy I’d met a conference…the other was Larry Page)
• Aydin Senkut, President, Felicis Ventures, San Francisco (an early Googler)
• Alan Kelley, Managing Director, SJF Ventures, NYC
• Luis Villalobos, Founder & Board Member, Tech Coast Angels
• Jeff Cohn, Investment Screening Director, Tech Coast Angels
• Laura Paglione, Director, Knowledge Management/Entrepreneurship, Kauffman Foundation
• Charlie Crystle, CEO, Mission Research (SalesWorks), Lancaster, PA
• Wendy Caswell, CEO, ZINK Imaging, Waltham, MA
• Wim Sweldens, VP, Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, Murray Hill, NJ
• Andrew Horwitz, Senior Director, Market Development, Seagate
• Rhonda Shantz, Senior Director, Consumer Communications, Symantec
• Mike Bradshaw, Partner, Connect Public Relations, Provo, UT (for Symantec)
• Esteban Sardera, CEO, PairUp, San Francisco
• David Jennings, Cofounder & COO, Yodio, Bellevue, WA
• Katie Perry, Marketing, Jyngle, Milwaukee, WI
• Tom McGannon, Founder & VP Operations, Nexo, Palo Alto, CA
• Gina Jorasch, VP Marketing, Nexo
• Benjamin Levy, VP Marketing, Vringo, Beit Shemesh, Israel
• David Goldfarb, CTO, Vringo
• Michael Bates, CEO, iqzone, Scottsdale, AZ
• James Feguson, President, iqzone
• Eric Moyer, CEO/Cofounder, Boorah, Palo Alto, CA
• Ramsay Hoguet, Founder, MyDesignIn, Marblehead, MA
• Eric Sirkin, President/Cofounder, BUZ Interactive, Palo Alto
• Tamara Stone, Partner, Rainmaker Communications, Mountain View, CA (for BUZ Interactive)
• Brian Smiga, CEO, Preclick, Atlantic Highlands, NJ
• Tony Davis, CEO, TeleFlip, Santa Monica, CA
• Christian Gammill, VP Product Marketing, TeleFlip
• Julie Mathis, VP, CarryOn PR, Los Angeles (for TeleFlip)
• Brian Solis, Founder, FutureWorks Inc., San Jose, CA
• Marc Orchant, Blogger and Storyteller (the ‘Office Evolution’ blog/ZDnet), Albuquerque, NM
• Sue Orchant, artist
• Victoria Barrett, Associate Editor, Forbes Magazine

And, finally, here are some people I would have liked to meet but somehow didn’t, including the first two guys listed who were attending from a Minnesota company (how’d I miss them?):
• Mark Dunn, CTO, MakeMusic, Eden Prairie, MN
• John Paulson, CEO, MakeMusic, Eden Prairie, MN
• Marshall Kirkpatrick, Splashcast
• Michael Arrington, TechCrunch
• Oliver Starr, MobileCrunch
• Katie Fehrenbacher, GigaOM
• Barry Bonds (yes, that one), who appeared for Bling Software

That’s it for now on DEMO. More soon on some other things I saw there that I liked…

DEMO, I Miss Ya!

February 9, 2007 / / 4 Comments

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Okay, I especially miss your weather! Palm Desert was sooo nice…I recall fondly as I gaze at some quick photos I took, like this one of the palms and the mountains, while I busily hustled between conference sessions and networking opportunites at DEMO…..

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Then I had the misfortune, late last Friday, of returning to Minnesota — just as the coldest temps in seven years were moving in! I’m talking several days in a row where it never even got above zero, all day long (!!)…and lows overnight all this time have consistently been down between minus 10 and minus 20 F.

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This is insane! I should be in California. I have a place at the beach I can work from for cryin’ out loud! Trouble is, most of my client base is here in the Twin Cities. And yes, friends, I am now officially back out blogging and stirring up trouble consulting, fulltime. Wish me well! [Or should I say: startups beware! Graeme’s on the prowl again… 🙂 ]

But note to self after the past week: “Expand your client base, Graeme. Sign up one or more California-based clients — soon! — before you turn into a block of ice.”

Ideas and leads for those client relationships gladly accepted, o valued blog readers (especially you California ones). Graeme’s for hire! Whether for new-media consulting, marketing strategy, messaging and communications, content development….and, well, you get the idea.

Now, let me get back to thawing out my feet!

[By the way, I have to mention some very cool link-love I got from my DEMO attendance and coverage last week. These two were especially nice: the post Brian Solis, of PR2.0 fame, did on the opening DEMO party….and DEMOletter’s Complete DEMO 07 Coverage, which appeared soon after the event. On the opening day, I even made it onto TechMeme’s home page at one point, thanks either to Katie Fehrenbacher of GigaOm linking to me, or Gabe Rivera doing so — haven’t figured that one out yet.]

DEMO: Stealth Company Eyejot Comes Out

January 31, 2007 / / 4 Comments

Lots of video stuff here at DEMO. Eyejot is the first and is about “video messaging in a blink.” It uses Flash and is client free. It works with any web browser, including mobile phones. Here’s a screen shot from the demo, showing a message David Geller, CEO, quickly created before our eyes. And it has business applications, too, he said. Eyejot_1

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