Posts Tagged ‘jason calacanis’

A Message (and lesson) to Old Media

Posted by tom.altman on February 11th, 2010

For a while now I have been ranting within the company I work for that we throw away too much data – with particular emphasis on throwing away the data we have about our customers.

As I listened to the TWIST #38 (This Week In Start Ups with Jason Calacanis) Jason absolutely nailed this point to the wall.  He was warning publishers not to give apple complete control over their customer.  By using the Apple store to deliver the media product – you are giving the customer away to Apple to nurture and harvest for ever and ever more.  You have no idea who they are, where they live or other super important demographics.

Media companies have so many opportunities to harvest information about their customers – and many times i is just wasted.  I’m not speaking of the kind of creepy, stalker type way of getting information – but the smart, collective, long-term collection like Amazon does.

Amazon knows so much about me and what I have bought from them – it is crazy.  Crazy good!

Check out this screen shot of what Amazon has for me right now…all I did was go to amazon.com.

amazon.com

As you can see – it knows who I am right away and displays that at the top.  I have outline a few sections with numbers sowe cna look at the dffernt things Amazon is doing.

  1. Section 1 is called “Amazon Remembers” – this data is straight from my iPhone. Amazon’s iPhone app will allow you to take a picture of something and ‘remember’ it.  As you can see – it doesn’t want me to forgot – so it shows me when I came back to the site.Very cool.  Don’t get excited about the bottle of Miller Light.  It seems like I am always showing off my favorite apps and this time I happened to be at a bar with some people – but the tin beer sign is recommended for $15 isn’t a bad deal.
  2. Shameless promotion in my opinion.  This is where they push (way too much IMO)  the Kindle. This was OK when it first came out – but I’d like to say no-thanks now.
  3. Under the heading “More Items to Consider” we get helmets and tools.  Why?  I’ve searched for both recently.  I was simply looking for pictures of tools – but I “need” a new helmet before it gets warmed up.
  4. This is what Jason is ranting about – and me too.  Section 4 “it is” – this is why Amazon is the best.  They listen and look for you.  These are all things based on things I have looked at, reviewed and purchased in the past.
  5. Wow – #5 is great too.  I use Amazon’s wish lists because they are easy.  Oh – and Amazon doesn’t mind.  In fact – they help me remember what I want to buy.

That is pretty much it – but it explains exactly the point.  The more you know about your customer - the better. This goes for car sale people, it goes for laundry detergent and it goes for media – and media is WAY behind.

And customer service can benefit here too – customers do not want to have to tell you everything about them every time they call in.  They like that you know their information – as long as we’re not creepy about it.

It’s not too late.  Media companies have the data people in place, in fact the circulation departments of many media companies have been working with some of this kind of data for a long time…we just need to start collecting the new data and then do something with it.

Posted in business, community, customer service, innovation, marketing Tags: , , , , , , , No Comments »

HowTo: Launch new product

Posted by tom.altman on January 26th, 2009
Jason Calacanis at Gnomedex. Jason:
Image via Wikipedia

Here is a post from jason calacanis called “how to launch a new product“.  Jason tends to have a love him or hate him following – I tend to lean to the “love him” camp in the fact I think he comes off a bit like I do sometimes.  A bit brash, but the dude is real.

Sometimes – its best to start at the end – here is his summary.

This is how I like to launch a product and it’s not based on anything I’ve read or been told to do. It’s simply one person’s process learned from a decade of launching products. I’m sure there are many more interesting ideas and I would love for you to send them to me so I can learn from you. That really is the deal that you and I have with this email experiment we’re doing: I tell you everything I know and I’ve learned and you hit reply and tell me. We then create a relationship based on trusting each other, sharing knowledge and support.

Here are a couple of the lists he points to, and these are piviotal too:

  1. Creating Buzz & the Beta
    “In order to create buzz I like to start telling folks about my work schedule about a month out from the launch.”
  2. The Beta
    “A couple weeks before the project’s launch we put up a simple Google Spreadsheet with a bunch of questions.”
  3. Slamming the System
    “It is absolutely essential that you try to break your system before users come in.”
  4. The Media Tour (in six acts)
    Step One: Selecting who to brief.
    Step Two: Have your hardware and phone perfect.
    Step Three: What to put in your demo.
    Step Four: Letting the journalist ask questions.
    Step Five: Wrapping up.
    Step Six: Leave them alone.
  5. Opening the Floodgates
    “We set an embargo of 1 a.m. PST for Mahalo Answers and we opened up the product at around 1:30 a.m. We tried to get it to open at 12:55 a.m. but there were–as there always are–some technical issues.”
  6. Setting the Tone
    “Back to setting the tone. It’s absolutely important that when you have a beta that your entire company take part in it and ‘eat your own dog food’ as they say.”

This article is chock full of good stuff – essential, even if you don’t agree with it all, to launching a new product.

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Rules for Start-ups

Posted by tom.altman on March 10th, 2008

I’m not sure who’s article kicked it all off – but I recently found a few all buzzing around the same topic.  It is very interesting to me – because I am involved in a new star-up called “e-Me Ventures” and we discuss some of these things weekly, if not daily!

The first one is by Jason Calacanis and is called “How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)“.  Jason is known as a good guy, a little “over-the-top” at times and definitely into quality.

I really like #4 and #5:

Don’t buy a phone system. No one will use it. No one at Mahalo has a desk phone except the admin folks. Everyone else is on IRC, chat, and their cell phone. Everyone has a cell phone, folks would rather get calls on it, and 99% of communication is NOT on the phone. Savings? At least $500 a year per person… 50 people over three years? $75-100k

Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs. Tables are a complete rip off. We buy stainless steel restaurant tables that are $100 and $600 Areon chairs. Total cost per workstation? $700. Compare that to buying a $500-$1,500 cube/designer workstation. The chair is the only thing that matters… invest in it.

That article lead me to read this one at Found/Read called “My 10 “Un-Tips” for Starting-Up Right“.  This has a little more fundamental advice.

In the Found/Read article – there was a link to “36 Startup Tips: From Software Engineering to PR and More!“.  This was broken into sections and my favorites were:

 Tip 4: Ask tough questions during the interview
here is nothing worse than being soft during an interview with a prospective employee and hiring the wrong person into the company as a result. This is bad for you, but more importantly bad for the person. In the end you will end up parting ways, but it would be best to just not make this mistake to begin with. So be tough and ask a lot of technical questions during the interview.

Tip 2: Sponsor/attend a few high impact conferences
Tech, SWSX and Defrag are our top picks so far. Make sure there is a fit between the conference and your product. Check out who else is sponsoring, and get feedback and blog posts from last year’s attendees before signing up.

And lastly a post from Mark Cuban called “A Couple of My Rules for Startups” backs up others (plus pokes fun at Jason).

 1. Don’t start a company unless its an obsession and something you love.

2. If you have an exit strategy, its not an obsession.

6. An expresso machine ? Are you kidding me ? Shoot yourself before you spend money on an expresso machine. Coffee is for closers. Sodas are free. Lunch is a chance to get out of the office and talk. There are 24 hours in a day, and if people like their jobs, they will find ways to use as much of it as possible to do their jobs.

11. NEVER EVER EVER hire a PR firm. A PR firm will call or email people in the publications, shows and websites you already watch, listen to and read. Those people publish their emails. Whenever you consume any information related to your field, get the email of the person publishing it and send them an email introducing yourself and the company. Their job is to find new stuff. They will welcome hearing from the founder instead of some PR flack. Once you establish communications with that person, make yourself available to answer their questions about the industry and be a source for them. If you are smart, they will use you.

These are all really good articles.  Really gives you a sense of what people are thinking an how they choose to begin their company.

Posted in community, web concepts Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment »
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