Lessons Learned at DemoCamp

Some observations & lessons learned from Calgary first DemoCamp on Tuesday night:

• Compared with Montreal DemoCamp 2 we had fewer people, and it was interesting to see that most of the people gathered for drinks afterwards. Because this group was gathered out of interest, rather than industry or net worth like other groups, I think that this group will relate both socially and professionally better than other groups.
• It was an easy-going environment for young and first-time entrepreneurs to meet people in the tech industry, as well as a few “been-there, done that” entrepreneurs. Mark Rosenberger of Sidefinder put on a great demo and followed up with several people in the crowd.
• It was free, which is good and bad. Good (or maybe even great) because it allows everyone to attend – from students (we had a few show up) to bootstrapping entrepreneurs. Bad, because a lot of the people we told about the event didn’t put it in their calendars!

Overall, we’re pleased with how DemoCamp Calgary 1 turned out. The presenters did a great job, and the event was intimate enough for people to meet and have a great discussion afterwards. Here’s Kempton’s report, (with video).

As a result of this event, the organizing committee has decided to hold a few more DemoCamps before we hold a BarCamp. (BarCamp is a full day event). DemoCamp Calgary 2 will be held May 23rd – please let us know if you know of any new companies that would make for interesting presentations. BarCamp Calgary is now scheduled for the fall, and we’re actively recruiting thought leaders to assemble panels and topics for that day.

Sad Exit For The Flames

It’s been a hard couple of years for the Calgary Flames since their spectacular 2004 Stanley Cup run. While demand for tickets and paraphernalia continues to be high, the Flames need to show they’re a Stanley Cup contender again, real soon.

And I’m not saying that just because I’m a bandwagon fan. Major league sports teams are expensive ventures, not only for the team owners, but for everyone in the city. The Flames are looking for major renovation on the Saddledome, or an entirely new stadium – guess who’s paying for that? Local businesses (especially bars) depend on sports to generate business. Taken to the extreme, a local business partnered with the Flames and spent millions creating Flames Central and Wildfire Grill. How much of their business plan banked on the Flames going past the first round?

And while nobody is panicking just yet, you can hear the grumbling – check out what I got in my email this morning:

Competition-Based Strategy

Strategy is all about competition, says Jack Trout, in his book, Trout on Strategy. He says better people and better products are not viable strategies: Statistically, it is impossible for one large company to have better people than another company – as proven by the distribution curve. As for better products, do better products always win? Think Windows vs. MacIntosh, Betamax vs. VHS . . .

Jack recommends that we know our competition, avoid their strengths, and exploit their weaknesses. From there, we develop our strategy based on tactics. Tactics are ideas that allow your company to be different, and are always “bottom-up”, never “top-down”

A tactic must have a competitive angle in order to have a chance of success. This does not necessarily mean a better product or service, but rather there must be an element of differentness. It could be smaller, bigger, lighter, heavier, cheaper, or more expensive. It could be a different distribution system.

Once you’re determined your tactic, wrap the strategy around it. Strategy is coherent, and includes all aspects of your business, including marketing, finance and operations.

Many entrepreneurs have told me that their only problem is not being able to raise money, to which I reply, “What would you be able to achieve if you had $1,000,000?”. It’s a tough question to answer, because they have not determined what their company tactic is. (yes, that’s a singular tactic, as Trout says you should only have one to maintain focus).

Most people think that this is a use of proceeds questions, and sometimes, it is. However, what I would like to hear is how the entrepreneur is going to take that $1,000,000 and convert it into more than a million.

The question really drives at whether your strategy & tactic provides the risk reduction and predictability that a good company should. For instance, when you invest in a bank, you expect them to charge service fees to make money.  Their marketing department understands exactly how much money to spend on capturing a new customer, and how much that customer will spend, on average, over a lifetime. Having a solid customer acquisition cost model and predictable RPU (Revenue Per User) gives you the ability to predict how you’re going to convert the $1 invested into something more than $1.

DemoCamp Calgary: Tuesday

The first DemoCamp Calgary will be held next week at the University of Calgary. It will feature 4 or 5 company presentations that are strictly PowerPoint free!

Date: Tuesday, April 24th
Time: 6:00 – 8:00
Location: Scurfield Hall 257 (Map)
Cost: Free

The first rule of DemoCamp is to talk about DemoCamp – so tell all your friends!

If there are enough people interested, we can wander over the Dinnie’s and have celebratory drink afterwards. Hope to see you there.

Will Ferrell: Web 2.0 Entrepreneur

VentureBeat reports:

VC firm Sequoia Capital backs Will Ferrell and Adam McKay comedy video site — Called FunnyOrDie.com, the site features a two-minute clip that won a reported 1.5 million page views in less than a week.

Check out the video here.

Ferrell and McKay are building a comedy video community, and there are currently 397 videos on the site. “The Landlord”, with 6,555,803 views is number 1, with the 2nd place video placing well back at 204,632 views. When you consider the number of views on YouTube of “The Landlord”, they have well over 7,000,000 views.

And that brings up another interesting point. Everyone expect videos to be available on YouTube, and when you search for “will ferrell landlord” you’ll see one of several links:

• Spam: unscrupulous people placing the words “will ferrell landlord” into the titles of their videos (that have nothing to do with the topic) to get hits on YouTube searches.
• Videos that don’t work: Uploaded by friendly internet users, these videos have anywhere between 1,000 and 150,000 views before getting pulled because of copyright violations.
• Videos that work: Uploaded by other friendly internet users, these videos will be taken down soon.

In remains to be seen whether or not people will go to sites other than YouTube in significant numbers to view videos. For now, it seems like plenty are diverting themselves from YouTube to Funnyordie.com. In addition, other content providers like Fox’s American Idol are pulling their content from the site, making YouTube less of a one-stop shop that it once was.

Congrats to StumbleUpon!

Congrats to StumbleUpon on their acquisition by eBay! We’re awfully proud of this crew, with founders Garrett Camp and Justin LaFrance hailing from Calgary. Garrett and Justin: after all the dust settles, please come back and tell your story at BarCamp, so that we can benefit from your experiences!

The acquisition of the site, which uses the power of community to allow users to discover new sites, was said to be worth between $40 – 75 million, as report by TechCrunch.

Pitch Thyself

With all the talk about how to pitch your company, I find that many entrepreneurs have a hard time introducing themselves at meetings. Don’t kid yourself – leaving a positive personal impression is just as important as delivering a good company pitch, because people ultimately want to feel comfortable with the people they work with.

I mentioned 15SecondPitch a while back, but thought that it was worth mentioning in detail this time. In her study, Laura Allen, CEO of 15 Second Pitch found that 76% of people surveyed were professionals who said they have trouble explaining what they do, and/or feel uncomfortable pitching themselves.

Laura has created a great 5 step process for developing a personal pitch. They’ve even written one for Superman, as an example:

My name is Superman and I am a superhero specializing in saving the world. I fight for truth, justice, and the American Way. I can leap tall buildings in a single bound, which comes in really handy when chasing criminals. Unlike some other superheroes I could mention, I don’t wear a funny hat, so people take me more seriously. Call me for a free consultation – I’m always near a phone booth ready to take your call!

I think the challenge for most people will be to make their personal pitch sharp, but not full of generic buzzwords; proud, yet humble. And once you’ve perfected it, don’t be afraid to practice your pitch!

Free: Not a Business Model?

Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital writes a great blog entry entitled “The Penny Gap“, explaining why it’s easier to scale from $5 million to $50 million than it is to get your users to pay you anything at all.

Anne Zelenka writes a great follow-up entitled “Free: a Tactic, not a Business Model“. She suggests that once a company has found a way to make money, it has found a business model. However, free is a great tactic towards getting paid in other ways, such as advertising.

I’ll go a step further. I think there’s a business opportunity in attracting leads with free products or services, as long as the “free” products doesn’t cost more than advertising. For example, free stock photography sites are likely generating qualified leads for a lower cost than Google Adwords can.
It’s just pure statistics:

• say you bid $ 1 – 3 on the phrase “stock photography”
• you’ll pay $1,000 – 3,000 for 1,000 clicks.
• you might get 1 – 5% of those people creating a free membership on your e-commerce site.
• That’s a pool of 10 – 50 people that you’ve paid $1,000 to $3,000 for.
• Cost per member: from a low of $20/member to a high of $300/member.

These numbers are for illustrative purposes only, but you can quickly see how valuable a free site is IF it has a large membership list and some key sponsors or a specific industry to target. Thus, key questions to ask if you’re using free as a business tactic is – how valuable is the audience you’re attracting, to whom is that audience valuable to, and how much do you know about your audience? Remember, most businesses aren’t MySpace and Facebook, so you’re going to have to be very specific if you choose this as your tactic!

Snap Image Search: Better Than Google Images?

Slowly but surely, Bill Gross and his Idealab team is chipping away at Google’s leadership position. Take, for example, Snap’s newest feature, Snap Image Search. I did a quick search for “business meeting”, and was pleasantly surprised by the results. Snap not only has a great looking interface, but the results are very impressive. Take a look:

Links:

Snap search for business images

For comparison:

Google search for business images

iStockphoto search for business images

Getty search for business images

Alexa search for business images

While I may be somewhat biased, the best results for a search term like “business meeting” can be found on sites like iStockphoto and Getty Images, simply because of the implied commercial application. Snap! finishes a very close second, which is a huge accomplishment, considering the number of images it has to index. Google results are simply a little too scattered, and Alexa’s search seems to be heavily reliant on certain stock clipart and photography sites.

Try Snap’s Image Search, and you’ll find it finds better looking images than Google across a variety of search terms.

Imagine

Last night, my family and I attended a concert by the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, where they played the music of the Beatles. My favorite song of the evening wasn’t a Beatles song – it was Imagine, by John Lennon. Voted as the 3rd greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone in 2004, Imagine was written and released in the midst of the Vietnam War. It’s an understated, yet elegant song that is anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, and anti-war:

Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

Lennon’s message is simple, short and powerful, proving yet again that classic communication adage . . .