Chip Schooler

By Chip Schooler

Talking to potential customers is one of the most important activities an entrepreneur conducts on the road to success. As Steve Blank notes, “Facts exist outside the building, opinions reside within.”  So when the opportunity presents itself to interact with future customers, what topics should an entrepreneur address?

The discussion needs to feature a combination of research and validation. Customer discussions are a loop-like process: information uncovered by research is taken back, “munched on by the team” and then validated in another conversation with the next (or same) prospect.   According to Jakob Nielsen, “the guru of web page usability,” six customer discussions are the right number to confirm validation. To define the ideal balance between research and validation, set goals for the feedback before the meeting.

As you meet with potential customers, remember to discuss the three “Ps” – Product, Pricing and Peers.

Product
An entrepreneur (and team) should be constantly validating product assumptions and revising the business model based on customer response.

The most important validation: does the prospect have a problem that the proposed product solves? Garnering feedback from multiple sources significantly improves the value proposition (i.e. the problem and solution).

Don’t wait for a finished product to begin this process. Solicit input at every opportunity. For example, user interface experiences can be tested in the conceptual stage through techniques as simple as sketches on paper.

However, it is important to keep feedback in perspective, especially during this early stage. I recommend using Geoffrey Moore’s Technology Adoption Life Cycle to determine the type of customer you are interviewing (innovator, early adopter, early majority, etc.) and set expectations to appropriately weigh the feedback.

Price
Pricing discussions entail more than just presenting a dollar amount. All technology is sold by some kind of capacity measurement, including by user, machine, core, site, IP address, minute or gigabyte.

What is your prospect’s response to the intended capacity? What issues do they raise? How long does it take them to understand the pricing model? What are the pricing models of competitors? If the product is a service, then the type of capacity selected can have a significant impact on other areas of the company such as billing.

In addition to the pricing model, another part of the discussion should cover your product’s value assumptions. Learning how a prospect currently solves the problem you plan to solve – as well as its attendant cost – sets the stage for your marketing strategy.

Discussing the problem and solution may also reveal that the prospect values non-product feature capabilities such as annual billing or specific purchase terms.

Peers
A key element to growth is precise market segmentation. The most important aspect of this process involves developing a segment that can be reached through profitable marketing techniques. Now is the time to start defining both the segment (VPs of customer service for a packaged goods company, for example) and potential marketing strategies to efficiently reach the individual buyer. Research might include questions about professional association membership, the trade shows or webinars that were attended and relationships with like-minded peers in both competitive and complementary segments.

By covering these three Ps, an entrepreneur is taking a structured and comprehensive approach to one of the most important tasks in a startup – producing a successful product that a market segment will purchase.

A Community Catalyst at the Advanced Technology Development Center in Atlanta, Chip Schooler is a 30-year veteran of the technology industry focused on the commercialization of technologies that can be used to solve real-world problems. Chip has brought to market products as diverse as enterprise-wide laptop backup, security appliances

© 2012, TechJournal South. All rights reserved.

Yahoo! Sites ranked third with 53.3 million viewers, followed by Viacom Digital with 45.8 million and Facebook.com with 42 million.

More than 43 billion videos views occurred during the month, with Google Sites generating the highest number at 21.9 billion. The average viewer watched 23.2 hours of online video content, with Google Sites (7.9 hours) and Hulu (3 hours) demonstrating the highest average engagement among the top ten properties.

*A video is defined as any streamed segment of audiovisual content, including both progressive downloads and live streams. For long-form, segmented content, (e.g. television episodes with ad pods in the middle) each segment of the content is counted as a distinct video stream.

Top 10 Video Ad Properties by Video Ads Viewed

Americans viewed 7.1 billion video ads in December, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at nearly 1.5 billion, followed by Adap.tv in second with 1.1 billion. Tremor Video ranked third with 942 million, followed by BrightRoll Video Network with 872 million and Specific Media with 496 million.

Time spent watching video ads totaled more than 3 billion minutes during the month, with Adap.tv delivering the highest duration of video ads at 636 million minutes. Video ads reached 51 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 46 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 46.

*Video ads include streaming-video advertising only and do not include other types of video monetization, such as overlays, branded players, matching banner ads, homepage ads, etc.
**Indicates video ad network
†Indicates video ad exchange

Top 10 YouTube Partner Channels by Unique Viewers

The December 2011 YouTube partner data revealed that video music channels VEVO (53.5 million viewers) and Warner Music (31.7 million viewers) maintained the top two positions. Gaming channel Machinima ranked third with 22.7 million viewers, followed by Maker Studios with 10.4 million, FullScreen with 9.7 million and Big Frame with 8.3 million.

Among the top 10 YouTube partners, VEVO demonstrated the highest engagement (67 minutes per viewer) and highest number of videos viewed (782 million), while Machinima exhibited the second highest engagement (64 minutes per viewer) and number of videos viewed (340 million).

*YouTube Partner Reporting based on online video content viewing and does not include claimed user-generated content

Other notable findings from December 2011 include:

• 85.3 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The duration of the average online content video was 5.8 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.
• Video ads accounted for 14.1 percent of all videos viewed and 1.2 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

© 2012, TechJournal South. All rights reserved.

This category recognizes the Georgia company that has developed and/or introduced the most innovative new hardware, software or a technology-service in the state in the past 18 months and can demonstrate the success of that product over the past 12 months.

The finalist companies include OpenStudy, Cardlytics, TripLingo, ViziTech USA and SoloHealth.

One of the winners from last year, Nanolumens, went on to compete at the national level and ended up beating others in its category, including Microsoft Kinect.

The winner of the “Cool Technology” award will be determined by onsite text voting at the Spirit of Endeavor Awards ceremony running from 7:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. on December 9, 2011, at TWELVE Atlantic Station in Atlanta.

The Spirit of Endeavor Awards recognize and celebrate innovative technology companies and individuals in Georgia that drive new ideas, invigorate the community and lead people through technology.

“Each of our finalists in the ‘Cool Technology’ category represent some of the most innovative thinking in Georgia and we are proud to recognize them for their hard work to improve the way we live and do business through technology,” said Tino Mantella, president and CEO for the Technology Association of Georgia and TechAmerica Georgia.

“Georgia has become a hotbed for new and established technology companies and the Spirit of Endeavor Awards are our way of recognizing the companies here who are making a difference, not only in our state, but on a national and global level as well.”

The “Cool Technology” finalists were nominated for the following reasons:

• ·         OpenStudy is dubbed by TechCrunch as a “platform for Massively Multiplayer Study Groups.” It connects students studying the same subjects into online study sessions where they can help each other understand lessons, prepare for tests and stay motivated. Currently 75,000 students from 190 different countries and 1,500 different schools are registered.
• ·         Cardlytics Transaction-Driven Marketing platform is a unique advertising platform that enables banks to deliver rich, relevant rewards to their customers based on purchasing history while fully protecting their privacy. The platform is able to reach customers through online banking, mobile banking and mobile apps, social media, email, SMS and ATMs. The company recently secured $33 million in funding and is on track to reach 75 million U.S. households by Q2 2012.
• ·         TripLingo creates a customized experience to help leisure and business travelers navigate the local lingo and culture. With apps available via the web, iPhone, Android, Windows Phone and Nook, TripLingo offers language tools in over 13 different languages and packages local customs, idioms and an intelligent learning system to make it easy for travelers to learn essential bits of the local language and culture both prior to and during trips.
• ·         ViziTech USA holds proprietary intellectual property allowing the company to develop 3D imaging as HoloProjection images similar to the famed HOLODEK from the movie “Star Trek.” The images are not confined to a video or screen, but rather move right out into the classroom, engage students and allow them to interact with machines or objects. Students can get a real feel of how something acts or operates by using their hands to control the interactive image. The company currently assists teachers and trainers in schools throughout Georgia, the Department of Defense and several Fortune 500 companies.   
• ·         SoloHealth offers the SoloHealth Station, a free and bilingual health screening kiosk that provides vision, blood pressure, weight, and body mass index screenings, as well as an overall health assessment and access to a database of local doctors. SoloHealth Station is a more comprehensive version of the company’s Eyesite vision testing kiosk for which the company received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to advance it into a more comprehensive self-service health and wellness station The company plans to provide highly personalized and interactive healthcare opportunities for consumers, advertisers and retailers by placing these kiosks in high-traffic retail locations. SoloHealth is targeting a nationwide rollout out of the SoloHealth Station in 2012.

The 2011 Spirit of Endeavor Awards are sponsored by Platinum sponsor Concurrent, Gold sponsor ASAP Solutions Group, and Silver sponsor Burnette Insurance, CresaPartners and Intel.  A portion of the proceeds from the event will benefit the TAG Education Collaborative.

© 2011, TechJournal South. All rights reserved.

The revealing survey, which included input from dozens of companies, aimed to shed light on the developing role of social media in marketing. Questions focused on social marketing etiquette, the influence of social media on lead and sales, the most useful social media tools, and the cost to operate social marketing programs.

Not surprisingly, social media use among B2B marketers is on the rise, according to respondents. A full 95% indicated they use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or corporate blogs to reach prospects. Yet despite the increased use of these services, only 70% are monitoring the return on spend for these programs. And among those who do, about 42% of marketers replied that zero or an uncertain number of sales leads resulted from social media programs, a startling high percentage given the resources required to operate the campaigns.

The gap between cost and return for social marketing may have something to do with social media protocols within companies, which are still evolving.

As uncovered by the survey:

• Approximately 11% of marketers said their companies have a formal social media policy
• 55% of respondents said contacting a social media-generated sales lead by phone or email is appropriate, even if the prospect had not invited the vendor to do so
• Meanwhile, 48% said it is appropriate to respond to a prospect via social media, if the prospect contacted the vendor via email or phone first
• 100% of respondents said it is acceptable to invite a prospect to join a marketer’s online social networks, though some suggested the invites be limited to networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Plaxo and YouTube, versus more personal sites like Facebook
• 31% said it is acceptable to critique a competitor via social media

“Social media is an exciting and enticing sales and marketing medium, but best practices are clearly still emerging,” said Adam Blitzer, co-founder and COO for Pardot, which recently introduced a series of social media management tools for small business marketers.

More than half use internal free tools to manage social media

Another obstacle facing marketers who are engaged in social media are the tools and services they use for implementing and measuring their campaigns.

According to the survey, over 64% of respondents use “internal, free tools” only to manage social media campaigns, which may or may not be ideal for effective program management. Meanwhile, only nine percent rely on an outside agency or social media expert for help with social media marketing.

“There’s no question social media can be a powerful tool for establishing community and generating leads,” said Blitzer. “But to optimize its value, social media efforts should be monitored carefully and integrated into broader content and lead nurturing programs.”

Also of interest, the survey revealed that Twitter was the most popular social media channel, followed by LinkedIn and Facebook. And social bookmarking services and paid channels including promoted tweets were cited as the least popular tools.

© 2011, TechJournal South. All rights reserved.

© 2011, TechJournal South. All rights reserved.

The latest round of funding was led by two of Tower Cloud’s existing investors, The Burton Partnership and Knology Inc. Tower Cloud’s other existing institutional investors include: Sutter Hill Ventures, El Dorado Ventures, Ballast Point Ventures, Kinetic Ventures, ITC Partners Fund and Noro-Moseley Partners.

For this round, two new investors joined the consortium, The Florida Growth Fund and CLR Investors. The funding was done in two phases with $13 million completed in January and $36 million completed in July. This funding follows a $20 million equity commitment by the same investor group in October 2009.

© 2011, TechJournal South. All rights reserved.

Kabbage Inc., a provider of working capital for online merchants, is offering Social Klimbing, which gives small businesses additional access to capital based on social network activity. Today’s announcement represents the first time a financial services company has provided benefits to its customers as a result of Facebook fan pages and Twitter feeds.

“Kabbage is the only company providing working capital to companies based on social media activity and utilization,” said Kathryn Petralia, Kabbage co-founder and COO.

“With Social Klimbing, small businesses can – for the first time – benefit from maintaining and growing relationships with their customers through Facebook and Twitter.  While other companies are ‘talking’ about customer engagement, Kabbage is actually quantifying and utilizing it as a means to give small businesses more capital to grow.”

To date, Kabbage has leveraged marketplace data, such as seller ratings for online merchants, to underwrite its business customers. With Social Klimbing, Kabbage can now reward businesses that leverage social media to attract, interact with and retain customers.

Social Klimbing allows customers to connect their Kabbage accounts to existing or new Facebook fan pages and Twitter feeds, which is immediately analyzed and translated into additional capital. As customers increase followers, activities and chatter on Twitter and Facebook, they will automatically gain access to more funds.

Kabbage, Inc., headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, is pioneering the first financial services data, technology and marketing platform just for online merchants, supporting millions of small and medium businesses that make a living selling online. The company presented at TechMedia’s Southeast Venture Conference and recently raised funding itself.

Kabbage leverages data generated through merchant activity across various marketplaces and channels to understand business performance and craft financing options that meet their needs.

Kabbage is venture funded and backed by Mohr Davidow Ventures and BlueRun Ventures, with additional investors including: David Bonderman, founder of TPG Capital, Warren Stephens, CEO of Stephens Inc., and the UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund.

© 2011, TechJournal South. All rights reserved.

Pardot CEO and co-founder David Cummings looks out the window of the company's 33rd floor offices in Atlanta.

ATLANTA – Unemployment may be a major problem generally in America, but many high tech companies are nevertheless struggling to find just the right talented IT engineers.

So, while the IBM’s of the world are laying off staff, Atlanta’s Pardot, which sells a marketing automation platform that helps businesses track, score and nurture leads, is offering a $10,001 bounty to anyone providing a talent referral that works out.

Pardot, which currently has about 60 employees, offers great benefits. “We pay 100 percent of healthcare premiums, which includes dental care, match 401k contributions, cater lunches on Friday’s and breakfast Mondays,” says Pardot co-founder Adam Blitzer. Blitzer co-founded the company with David Cummings.

The company is looking for people familiar with Software-as-a-
Service (SaaS) and Web apps. But, Blitzer adds, “We’re a small company. We all wear a lot of hats and work with each other closely. The toughest part for us is finding people who fit into our unique, quirky culture.”

Adam Blitzer

Helicopter high

Pardot is located on the 33rd floor of the One Atlanta Plaza building, where you can just about look weather helicopter pilots in the eye. It shares the generous space with Hannon Hill and Shotput Ventures. For a look at the “unique quirky culture,” see “A Dizzying View from the Top.” The offices include such amenities as a telescope, a pinball machine, a ping pong table, a gong, a telescope and a “culture book.” It is reminiscent of the heady days of the Dot Com boom at the beginning of the century.

But that culture also includes an attitude. “They need to be positive, self-starting, and supportive. A positive attitude (or its lack) comes right out in an interview,” Blitzer says. “You would be surprised how many applicants bad mouth former employees, complain or come off negatively. If they’re that way in a job interview, what would they be like to work with?”

Blitzer says the company is offering the extra dollar of the $10,001 bounty to set it apart from a similar offer by a Seattle company. The idea, Blitzer says, “Is that instead of working with one or two recruiters, we want to accelerate the process by tapping into the community. We have always offered an internal bounty for finding talent, and we wanted to make that external and see what we get from making everyone a recruiter for us.”

Blitzer says a strategy like that probably would not have worked before the advent of social media such as Twitter and LinkedIn. “They make it much easier,” he says.

The bounty offer will run indefinitely until the company “Can’t hire anyone else,” Blitzer says. “We’ve been growing faster than we could hire. Ideally, just in engineering, if we could hire two a month for the next five months, I’d be happy.”

Interested? Email jobs@pardot.com.

© 2011, TechJournal South. All rights reserved.

Employer Services Director at The Clean Air Campaign

ATLANTA – Demand on roads in American cities has never been higher, and in many parts of the country, the supply is struggling to keep up. According to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, traffic on the nation’s interstate highways grew by 150 percent from 1980 to 2006, but interstate capacity grew by just 15 percent.

With tax revenues decreasing and government budgets shrinking, the state of Georgia is focusing on a strategy that reduces traffic demands while benefitting local employers: telework.

This week Georgia Governor Nathan Deal and The Clean Air Campaign are calling on all Georgia employers and commuters to support the second annual Georgia Telework Week, Sept. 12-16.

Despite a decline in telework on a national level—as we saw in the most recent World at Work survey—Georgia is actually seeing an increase in both the number of teleworkers and the frequency with which they telework.

Number of teleworkers growing

The 2010 Metro Atlanta Regional Commuter Survey, commissioned by the Georgia Department of Transportation, revealed that the number of teleworkers grew 20 percent between 2007 and 2010, meaning more than  600,000 metro Atlantans currently telework on at least an occasional basis. That equates to 21 million miles of vehicle travel eliminated from our roads each year if everyone among this group teleworked just once.

The Clean Air Campaign works with hundreds of employers throughout the state, starting or expanding telework programs at their worksites.  These employers are leading the way because they understand that telework is a smart business strategy: improving recruitment and retention, boosting productivity and morale. Many also benefit from lower real estate costs, reduced absenteeism, and the ability to remain productive when Mother Nature interferes with the ability to get to work.

Although there is strong support for telework, there is still tremendous opportunity for growth. Currently, 245,000 employees in the Atlanta region who do not have permission from their employer to telework but believe their job functions would allow them to do so. That is nearly 430 million vehicles miles that we could eliminate from our highways annually if everyone in this group teleworked once a week, not to mention all the money these commuters and businesses could be saving.

We invite commuters and employers to log on to www.cleanaircampaign.org/teleworkto show their support for telework. Last year, close to 150 employers across the state—including half of Georgia’s Fortune 500 companies—pledged their support during the inaugural Georgia Telework Week. On September 15, we will also be hosting our first Telework Summit which will to provide real-world strategies for telework success.

I’ll leave you with this. Right now in metro Atlanta, the typical solo commuter is spending $4,000 a year on commute costs alone, which equates to roughly $16 per day. That means a typical drive-alone commuter has to work about an hour each day just to pay off that day’s round-trip commute costs. For the year, it would take a full month of workdays just to pay for their annual commute costs. Think about how much money you could save if you were working from home.

The Clean Air Campaign is a Georgia-based non-profit working with the Georgia Department of Transportation and other partners to assist more than 1,600 employers and thousands of commuters with clean commuting options – such as carpooling, transit and telework – that lead to less traffic congestion and cleaner air.

© 2011, TechJournal South. All rights reserved.

Led by Imlay President Sig Mosley, the $1 million risk capital fund will support startups in the first two Georgia Tech Flashpoint cohorts. The program, the first public-private partnership of its design in the country, brings together resources from the university, private funding and startup leaders to accelerate innovation and growth.

The Georgia Tech Flashpoint accelerator is part of an ongoing effort to transform the Institute’s ability to positively influence society through innovation and entrepreneurship.

Georgia Tech Flashpoint brings together mentors and investors from across the country to share expertise and lessons learned with the entrepreneur teams. Mentors include prominent venture capitalists and entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley, Boston and New York, among others. The program culminates in two Demo Days, one in Atlanta and one in Silicon Valleythat hosted by 500Startups.

The inaugural class will kick-off with a meeting on September 7 with a keynote by Georgia State Senator Jason Carter, who serves on the Senate Science and Technology Committee.

Georgia Tech Flashpoint Philosophy – Startup Engineering

Georgia Tech Flashpoint is focused on de-mystifying the startup process by improving upon a repeatable process of scalable business model discovery by further developing the startup engineering principles that support real-world value creation.

“The teams selected have a great depth and diversity of skills, backgrounds, and focus. They share a passion to solve significant problems, the self-awareness to understand that their vision of what is needed and what is possible is not, at this stage, spot-on, the willingness to listen to advice, and the desire to go out and test hypotheses,” said Furst.

“We have already had the opportunity to meet with some of the teams, and it’s an impressive group of entrepreneurs trying to solve very big problems,” said Jeffrey Leavitt, Partner at DLA Piper, who’s firm is providing pro bono representation. “We look forward to working with these teams as they evolve their vision into offerings that meet a variety of market needs.”

“The Atlanta technology community is ripe with ideas ready to turn into the companies that will help build our economy of tomorrow,” said Allen Nance, one of the Georgia Tech Flashpoint mentors and president and founder of WhatCounts. “We are delighted to bring together some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the area to support this endeavor, and to help these teams learn from our collective experience.”

Entrepreneurs interested in participating in the second cohort, which will start in May of 2012, should watch for more information at flashpoint.gatech.edu/.

© 2011, TechJournal South. All rights reserved.