Monthly Archives: August 2010

Networked Blogs

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Facebook Fanpage Posting
If you are the owner of a blog, or the editor, and have a Facebook fanpage this may save you some time. Networked Blogs is an application that you add to Facebook and your Fan pages. You will be asked to validate that you are the owner of the blog. Once you do this you can authorize Networked Blogs to auto post to your Facebook fan page every time you create a new post.

Networked Blogs
Even if you do not want the auto-post capability you will still enjoy the application. You can easily follow multiple blogs through Facebook using the application. Per the application you can connect with others who read and write about subjects you like.

Seed Investments Taking Off

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Seed Investing is Taking Off
I just wrote about how Reuters mentioned that Seed Investors are Making Money and Why You Care. Then I read this article entitled The Seed/Micro-VC Trend: A Boom, Not A Bubble by Jonathon Tower who is a VC himself as a Managing Director at Citron Capital. His blog is a great read.

Must Read
To understand why seed investing and micro investing, as Jonathon also calls it, you need to read his entire article linked above. It is an incredibly well thought out piece which states:

In summation, there are fundamental changes at work in the venture industry which give significant and lasting advantages to seed and Micro-VC funds that can exploit this market opportunity. This “boom” in seed and Micro-VC activity is not so much a boom as it is a seismic shift in how technology companies will be founded and funded for the foreseeable future.

I have to agree for many reasons. Mainly because my business partner and I have been working for three years consulting for many online companies from our home offices in different states providing the best possible service to customers and spinning off our own micro companies utilizing talent from all over the world at a fraction of the cost it took to get started up 10 years ago.

Seed Investors are Making Money and Why You Care

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Seed Investors Making Money
In a press release Thomas Reuters put out entitled partially US PRIVATE EQUITY SHORT-TERM PERFORMANCE TURNS SHARPLY POSITIVE, they provide statistics on private equity investment performance. They track quarterly statistics of over 2,044 US venture capital and private equity partnerships totaling over $980 billion in capitalization. They provide 1 Yr , 3 Yr, 5 Yr, 10 Yr, and 20 Yr statistics on Early/Seed VC, Balanced VC and Later Stage VC. As a startup guy I like to see positive Early/Seed numbers. For the last year the growth was 4% for Early/Seed, even higher for the other VCs however over 20 years the highest performance is the Early/Seed VCs at 23.2% return. But why do you care?

Why You Care
You care because if these early stage funders are making money then they will invest more and attract more early stagers and seed investors, or so the theory goes. But I think it’s a pretty good theory that if 20 years of results shows the highest rate of return for VCs is early/seed stage investments then more capital will be available to pure startups in proportion to other stage companies. So keep doing what you’re doing if you are an entrepreneur because the money is out there and may be available if you need it and want it.

Game Design Degrees and Mobile Courses

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GMU Computer Game Design Degree
My Alma Mater George Mason University is offering a Computer Game Design Degree, a four year degree and I believe it is the only one in Virginia or surrounding area. I am not biased as I did go there for undergrad (Computer Science) and Law, I generally believe this is a great idea. They also have classes specific to mobile as well. This is a program that is apparently booming as the Washington Post has some enrollment numbers in their article about the degree.

Mobile, mobile gaming, gaming in general and many other industries need designers with the skill sets that are becoming increasingly more specialized. A four year degree, even classes in general is a great idea as it will become too much of a learning curve for companies to hire individuals that need to be trained from the ground up. A program like this allows the students to hit the ground running and become much more marketable upon graduation.

Entrepreneurs
Personally I am hoping to see multiple new start-up spinouts from GMU based on this program. Seed funding is growing recently and a program like this along with a hot seed market could create a nice startup industry in and around the Nations capital. Or so I can hope.

Venture Capital Podcast

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Venture Capital Update
For those that are not aware we have a VC Podcast that is available through iTunes. We also have the Venture Capital Update site that provides information on VC for internet and new media companies. This is obviously a niche within venture capital fundings. Having raised venture money myself on both coasts for consumer facing online businesses I enjoy the niche, post stories weekly, and provide a podcast every Friday with the previous weeks fundings.

How to Get the VC Podcast
You can simply go to the iTunes web page for the Venture Capital Podcast at that link. I try to keep the podcast short and to the point, within 5 minutes you should be up to speed on fundings in the area. Advance apologies for my quirky humor mixed in. Here is the podcast description:

Internet and new media companies that have received venture capital are discussed on this weekly podcast. Each week the previous weeks fundings are discussed.

Venture Maps by David Lerner

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Early Stage Venture Capital Map
I ran across this Early Stage Tech Venture Ecosystem map created by David Lerner and Shane Snow. It is named, and can be found at VentureMaps.co. I have to say it is brilliant. There is no way to describe it in a away that does it justice, please just visit the link and see for your self. I have also put a link to David’s post here where he goes into detail about the map itself.

What is it? Why use it?
These two have mapped out all the early stage investors in particular areas. They started with New York. When you click on the city you will obtain a map of the various venture capitalists firms and the individuals at each. It is a visual map of each early stage vc firm in the area that you may want to speak to regarding your startup.

How is it Useful?
If you are looking to raise early stage capital in the cities he currently has mapped it just saved you hours if not days. The comprehensive list, and from comments you can see they are updating as individuals add more, is everyone you could speak to in that area. Obviously you can raise money anywhere but why not start in your own backyard. So the old school way of using it would be to print it out and use it as a contact list when you are ready to raise funding. Take a look at each of the firms online of course to assure they meet your criteria and they meet yours. If you do use it, or see firms missing let David know as this is one incredibly useful resource that he so graciously put together along with Shane.

Business Tips from a Pro

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GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons

In business it is always good to have individuals you can count on for advice. Depending on the stage of a company, for young entrepreneurs it is typically their board and/or investors. Usually it is the board, but as a small business owner that does not have or need a board it could be an advisory board. Not to get into details but an advisory board is often used so the members cannot control your company as they do not have a vote or official authority and as such the members may prefer “advisory” status as they do not have any fiduciary duties to the company and therefore no liability. I digress.

The point of this post is to introduce you to a vlog put out by the CEO of GoDaddy Bob Parsons. If you take a look at his background you will see that he is a serial entrepreneur. He has been successful multiple times, both with online, offline, and those businesses that span both worlds. Even as CEO of Go Daddy he owns a chain of motorcycle stores.

Successful Peopl Tips Episode
I love this particular episode, it is embedded below. However you can find them all at BobParsons.me as there are over 30 episodes. This episode is funny to me because I rarely answer my phone. It is not because I do not want to talk to someone but in most cases it just slows down my work product. Here is the episode and I encourage you to visit his site and watch the videos as it is much like having a general advisory board member.

Timing Your Email Marketing

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Email Marketing – What Day / Time is Best?
You may be wondering one of two things, “what is this guy talking about, timing of day/hour?” or “I know what’s best because I have read some reports”. I wrote this to say that none of it matters to you. The why is below. I had an online advertising startup in the 90′s. We created a banner ad network as well as a permission based email network. Clients would pay us to either reach the inboxes of particular audiences or to run their own newsletters.

What Times Worked?
We found that on certain days and times the number of emails opened was higher or lower. However the caveat is that we are talking about emails opened and not necessarily conversions. In some instances you may be happy with opens (branding campaigns I guess) but usually what is desired is the call to action is acted upon resulting in some sort of conversion. Interestingly enough we found Thursdays in the afternoon to have the highest open rates, that was 10 years ago. A study two years ago by Aweber found the same results, but again keep reading as it may be useless information for you.
email marketing
A 2008 study.

Monday – 13.67%
Tuesday – 13.21%
Wednesday – 14.07%
Thursday – 14.52%
Friday – 13.25%
Saturday – 12.09%
Sunday – 13.26%

Also the time was that 2-3PM Eastern Time also had the largest open rate.

However none of this matters to you.

What Day/Time Should You Send Your Newsletter?
I happen to be a big-disbeliever in information I read. I always want to run my own tests and either validate or disprove what I have been told by studies like the above. The study above is correct in the aggregate and matches what I found after running an advertising network for many years. That is, that in the aggregate the open rates are higher on Thursday afternoons (EST).

Don’t Believe It
But when does the aggregate matter to you? The answer is rarely (I want to say never but that’s not entirely true). We operate multiple sites in completely different industries which have entirely different audiences. The audiences vary in gender, age, income, education, employment, etc. We have found that each one has completely different reactions (open rates, click rates, call to action conversion rates) depending on the time and day. Therefore we send our newsletters out on different days and times depending on the audiences.

Your Audience is Unique
Therefore the reason I say that the aggregate does not matter to you is that your audience is unique. You need to determine the best day and time to send your newsletter and it may surprise you.

Measure Yourself
Using a system like Aweber’s which tracks open rates and clicks, you can run your own tests. Ultimately you will want to track the open, click and conversion rates. Keep a spreadsheet with a matrix of days and times. Then send your newsletter, or other correspondence, on a different day and time. Track the open, click and conversion rates for each. Once you have narrowed in on days and times that have the best conversions for you then test again to validate your findings.

I am a big believer in testing, measuring and analyzing. Below you can test drive Aweber with a free trial, or use any of the other online newsletter tools to automate the process and start your own tests. Good luck.

Give Aweber a Try
I use Aweber for our newsletters. It automates everything for you. There are templates for your newsletter such that you only have to add the text and it sends both text or html. It takes care of the sign up forms for you as well as the unsubscribes. The emails are sent in a matter of minutes. Also you will see the breakdown of open rates and clicks on links, as well as which link was clicked. You can set your newsletter to be sent in advance, choose a day and time and it will be sent accordingly. They also have an auto-responder – a nice to have along with the newsletter functionality.


Can You Have More Sales, Too?
Helping over 75,000 businesses like yours raise profits and build customer relationships using AWeber’s opt-in email marketing software for over 10 years.
Take a Free Test Drive today!

Entrepreneurs Fail and Google Fails Too

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Google Wave Shutdown
Google announced that they are shutting down what was known as Google Wave. This link takes you to the official Google blog where they discuss the termination of wave here. There are two interesting statements in that post, quoted here:

But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked.

Wave has taught us a lot, and we are proud of the team for the ways in which they have pushed the boundaries of computer science.

These are two interesting statements for entrepreneurs.


Even the Best Fail
The two statements above are very interesting if you read them without considering who is saying them. For those entrepreneurs out there that have been involved in many different businesses and startups these are words they have heard often or uttered themselves. Many times ideas, products, services, are thrown at the wall and some stick and some do not. Much like Google Wave did not obtain enough user adoption. Never stop trying because as you can see even Google can fail.

Great Teams
The second statement that grabbed my attention was Google’s acknowledgment of their team. Individuals involved in the business are one of the greatest assets a company has. Creating a great team is very difficult. It is always tough to find those that are passionate about what they do. It is even more difficult to find good managers which I have learned over time. Managers can be a huge asset or a huge liability. A good manager will assure their team has the tools they need to succeed, the rewards, and maintain their passion while helping them see the big picture and relevancy of their work. A good manager is also a good leader. However a poor manager can ruin a company, effecting not only those they are responsible for but also those around them. I have seen amazing individuals leave a company due to a poor manager. So it is nice to see Google acknowledge their teams efforts as I am sure they were passionate and hard working regardless of whether that particular project succeeded.

Lesson Learned
Even big businesses fail, a great reminder for entrepreneurs. So never give up.