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

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The Best Advice I’ve Seen Lately On Using Startup Advisors

Seth Levine is a VC in Boulder, CO, a partner with Foundry Group. I kinda know Seth, through his connections to the Twin Cities (he’s a graduate of Macalester in St. Paul), though we’ve never actually met.  We’ve emailed quite a bit about goings-on here in Minnesota, after having just missed each other at the Defrag conference in Denver last November.  Seth and his fellow partners are quite the bloggers. One of his sidekicks, Brad Feld (whom I did meet at Defrag), has a very popular blog called Feld Thoughts. And they also run another blog that has high readership in the entrepreneurial community called Ask the VC.

Seth’s blog is called Seth Levine’s VC Adventure. And, recently, he began a series of posts on startup advisors, a topic near and dear to my heart. Advicedefinition
In a departure for Seth, the posts are actually written by a guest poster, Gerald Joseph.  Part I was good, but Part II is even better: The role of company advisors (Part II).

Here’s how Seth explained how these posts came about:

“One of the things I enjoy the most about writing this blog is the discussion I engage in with readers – both through blog comments and in direct emails.  Over the past month I’ve had a particularly enjoyable exchange with Gerald Joseph.  One of the topics we’ve discussed is the role of advisors in the life of a start-up.  I generally think of advisors as non-paid ‘friends of the company’ and as you’d probably guess, advocate a pretty deliberate organization and use of advisors.  Gerald’s view is a little more expansive as he thinks of ‘advisors’ as the larger ecosystem that surrounds (or should surround) a start up company – one that includes people you pay (attorneys, CPAs, etc) and the people who pay you (your angel investors) in addition to the business and industry experts that are the typical ‘advisors’ to young companies.  I like this line of thinking and offered Gerald the chance to put his thoughts into a post.  He took me up on that idea and came up with a four part series on the topic that I’ll put up over the next few weeks.  After the final post I’ll summarize some of my thoughts as well as comments from readers.”

For entrepreneurs at any stage, I think these posts are excellent. I encourage anyone who could use some…uh…advice on how to use advisors to read them all, including Parts III and IV yet to come.

Hello, Cingular? This is AT&T – We Just Killed Your Brand

The new AT&T next week will start phasing out the Cingular brand it acquired full control over recently, this after several billions of investment in brand advertising over the years, a Reuters story reported last night. Attcallingcingular It quoted a highly placed AT&T official and said the process is expected to play out over the several months, with communications in the interim showing dual Cingular-AT&T identity.

So, I guess the naysayers of Cingular being the choice of carrier for the iPhone deal now have something else to talk about. The brand slate is in essence being wiped clean, with the “new” AT&T really just building its brand. That’s nice for Steve Jobs and Apple, in my opinion, being partnered with a fresh new face in the cellular brand space. What’s ironic is that Cingular actually acquired the old AT&T Wireless, which had been a good early player but began having problems with an aging network. That company, however, has no connection at all with the new AT&T — which is really the old SBC. Got that? I can personally relate to this whole thing because I was an AT&T Wireless customer for many years, then went through the changeover to Cingular, and now will go through the changeover back to the AT&T brand.

Hey, how about that AT&T? What do us round-trippers get for hanging in there all these years? How about a free iPhone? [HAH! The cellular industry treats loyal customers like trash. All they care about is sucking in new customers, offering them the world.]

But where I really relate to this story is this: I was one of four consultants involved in the Cingular name development process, hired by their branding firm — back in ’99, I believe it was. That was fun. No, Cingular wasn’t one of my name ideas. Mine were much better… 🙂 I came up with some 50 of them — all coined, clear name candidates. I originally thought the word Cingular sucked (naturally), but then absolutely loved what the company did to build meaning around the brand — which was the work of their outstanding advertising agency, the New York office of BBDO. I thought it was really stellar branding work, one of the best new brand development efforts I’d seen in years. Of course, they had the budget for it, too, and they poured on the bucks — including Super Bowl ads. It was the kind of thing I’d put in the class of Apple. And, for that reason, I wasn’t surprised to hear in Jobs’ iPhone announcement that Cingular was part of the deal. Both firms get consumer branding, bigtime. Now I guess we’ll see how much the new AT&T (nee SBC) really does.

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