Wednesday, August 25, 2010Andy Payne - Angel Investor
Two years ago, Daniel Cozza and I spent a lot of time looking at location-based apps. We brainstormed tons of ideas and prototyped one. But we ultimately decided not to pursue it; the space (and the iPhone app space, generally), was starting to feel really crowded. Later, it also became clear...
Tuesday, August 24, 2010Gail Goodman - CEO, Constant Contact
1. Make sure everyone in the company knows your customers’ needs and challenges. Everyone. To make the customer the center of your business universe, you need to bring them into sharp focus for everyone in the organization. Identify personas. Tell stories. Send around case studies. Host an open house...
Monday, August 23, 2010Nathan Burke - Marketing Manager, Aprigo
Sometimes it is difficult to change your own prejudices. The moment I heard about Marginize, an app that lets anyone comment on any web page, my knee-jerk reaction was “Really? Another one of those?” In the past few years, dozens of apps have attempted to get people to comment on the “margins” of pages...
Monday, August 23, 2010David Cancel - Founder and CEO, Performable
How do you know if your startup is solving a critical problem? You can survey your users, conduct user interviews, and run a/b testing experiments to try to get your answer. No matter what method you use, parsing out reality is really hard, especially for entrepreneurs (see Reality Distortion Field...
Monday, August 23, 2010Keith Cline - Founder, VentureFizz
Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat...once again it was another ultra active week in terms of deals... a total of eleven! The big news was Zynga's acquisition of Conduit Labs in Cambridge. Nabeel Hyatt, Conduit's Founder, will become head of Zynga Boston. More and more acquisition hungry...
Friday, August 20, 2010Furqan Nazeeri - CEO and Founder, Virid.us
They teach everything else. Why, in business alone, you can get a masters or PhD in marketing (sales' evil cousin), finance, human resources and entrepreneurship (which isn't even a business function, but rather a business practice). In fact, for every head of a business function in a company (VP of whatever), there is...
Thursday, August 19, 2010Matthew Mamet - Head of Customer Development, EditMe
Here’s another take on a web startup – one that comes with a 7,000 sq ft storage facility and a fleet of delivery trucks. Meet Fetch Storage. Ok, it’s not really a web startup. As cofounder Jesse Mastro puts it, the team at Fetch is seeking to bring new technology, like personal online inventory...
Wednesday, August 18, 2010Ray Colwell - VP of National and Direct Sales, Collective
When building your sales plan at a start up these 3 things will contribute to your success. 1. Plan for the worse - As glass half opened people we tend to think we can do anything. The reality is much of what we do is out of our control. Product releases, market acceptance, economy...
Wednesday, August 18, 2010Richard Banfield - CEO, Fresh Tilled Soil
In the second of our series on Boston entrepreneurs we interview Jason Henrichs, COO and co-founder of PerkStreet Financial, a Highland Capital funded startup. Richard: You’re one of those few entrepreneurs that has also sat on the other side of the funding table. In fact you’ve switched from entrepreneur to VC...
Tuesday, August 17, 2010David Skok - General Partner, Matrix Partners
This blog post focuses on how B2B companies can optimize their customer acquisition funnels using a customer-centric methodology to analyze and remove blockage points. Acquiring customers in the B2B world involves using a variety of marketing and sales steps with the goal of converting...
