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The infinite to-do list

// September 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // Entrepreneur

(Editor’s note: Jason Cohen is founder of Smart Bear Software. He contributed this column to VentureBeat.)

As a start-up owner, there’s always more you could be doing. No matter how hard you work, it always feels like you’re falling behind. Worse still: Every time you cross something off the to-do list, you add three – or ten – more things.

After seven years of running my company, I can tell you this: It never gets easier. There is simply no way to get everything done.

But I can tell you this too: it doesn’t matter.

When I started Smart Bear, I constantly fretted over the things I should be working on. There was always one more feature I need to add to get one more customer; one more change to the website that might increase trial downloads; one more AdWords variant that could increase click-throughs by another 0.1 percent.

I worked too hard and (of course) didn’t make a dent in the to-do list. My wife, herself a successful chef and self-made businesswoman, would say “There will always be an infinite amount of work, so why not just stop for today?” She was right, but usually I kept on.

Even today, with 15 employees, we still have an infinite list of things to accomplish. Our marketing to-do list currently has eight items marked “Number One Highest Priority Must-Do Super-Critical.”

What we fail to realize, though, is that it’s often not necessary that it all be done.

Businesses – even yours – have no correct timetable. That’s like saying your kid should be potty-trained by now when every kid is different. You’re measuring against a yardstick that doesn’t exist.

Instead of worrying about the enormity of things that need to be done, concentrate on getting a few concrete ones completed. And realize that sometimes procrastination is a lot better than prioritization.

But what about those other people that seem to have boundless time and energy? Those people who find the time to create software, visit customers, create amazing blog entries, travel, give lectures and stay current on industry trends, all while also managing the mountain of time-consuming trivialities that plague small businesses?

Yeah, well, they’re not as prolific as you imagine.

Take Jeremiah Owyang whose blog Web Strategist is popular enough to attract scores of comments and Delicious links on almost every post. How does he have the time while also working full-time for Forrester Research? His words:

“How do I Keep Up?” This is one of the most common questions I get from folks, or a variant: “Do you sleep?” or “Do you have a family?”

I can answer succinctly: “I don’t, in shifts, and yes? I think.”

I’ve dedicated my life to how the web helps companies connect with customers, it’s something I knew I wanted to do for many years, I’m lucky I fell into my passion. It comes with costs however, I’m out of shape, stressed, I don’t sleep well, and my blood pressure is up.

Keep in mind, Jeremiah doesn’t even run a startup, but the example is still valid. The chaos he endures trying to keep up to date as an industry expert is very similar to what start-up owners go through. There’s always too much to do.

That’s OK, though. In fact, that’s how it’s supposed to be. Start-ups are evolutionary creatures that don’t care one bit about your schedule or how many items are left on your to-do list.

But here’s the secret: Often, things blow over when they don’t get done – and it frequently turns out that they weren’t as critical as they seemed when they got put on your to-do list.

Accept that success is not predicated on doing it all. Maybe tonight you can sleep a little easier.

Image by Dave-F via Flickr.

Sony embraces small publishers and unknown authors on Sony Reader eBook store

// September 29th, 2009 // No Comments » // Entrepreneur

The shift toward digital books is helping small-fry authors and publishers to get in front of wider audiences than ever before. That trend is being reinforced today as Smashwords announces that it has a distribution agreement to get its books published on Sony’s new eBook portal.

Smashwords lets authors publish their books in online formats in a matter of days. Now those books can be downloaded to the Sony Reader, the company’s eBook reader gadget. Smashwords takes manuscripts from writers in Microsoft’s Word format and converts them into Adobe PDFs and eight other formats that can be read by eBook readers such as the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader. Now those eBooks can be uploaded into Sony’s portal, the eBook Store, where users can buy and download them.

“This is one more example of the democratization of book publishing,” said Mark Coker, founder of Los Gatos, Calif.-based Smashwords.

Now it’s much easier for authors to hit lots of readers. Self-published authors can now visit the Sony Publisher Portal and click on Smashwords to sign up for a free publishing account. Then they can format a book in Smashwords’ style andchoose their distribution preferences, and their book will be made available for immediate sale at Smashwords.com. The book can show up a few days later on Sony’s eBook Store.

Besides Smashwords, Sony is also getting new eBooks from Author Solutions. Smashwords first launched its eBook publishing and distribution platform 16 months ago. Now it has more than 3,000 books available. While that’s a small number, Coker said he is working to rapidly increase the book count. In January, Smashwords announced a distribution agreement with Lexcyle, to allow Smashwords books to be read by users of Stanza, an iPhone eBook-reading app with two million users. And Smashwords has an agreement with Barnes & Noble, which now distributes Smashwords books on BarnesandNoble.com, Fictionwise and on the iPhone eReader app.

Smashwords was founded in 2008. The company has 2.5 full-time employees and is self-funded.

VentureBeat is looking for a Chief Technology Officer

// September 29th, 2009 // No Comments » // Entrepreneur

VentureBeat continues to roll. Our next big move: We’re looking to hire a chief technology officer.

The specs are listed below. We’re looking for someone who does more than fulfill the technical requirements of this job. We’re searching for someone who can think really, really big.

That means helping VentureBeat develop the best media platform on the Web. We’ve got several projects in the works, designed to allow our high-profile readership to interact with our quality content in all kinds of new ways. But we want to do a whole lot more!

To start with, we’ve just acquired a site, now called VentureBeat Profiles, that has tens of thousands of profiles of companies and executives. Since announcing the deal at DEMO last week, we’ve been overrun by companies and public relations people interested in having a presence on the site. We’ll be integrating that site with VentureBeat in more intimate ways, including forging additional links with the offline community we’re developing through our executive events (DEMO, MobileBeat, GamesBeat, GreenBeat and more). In short, we’re looking for someone who is both creative and preemptive in the area of building a web community. It will be one of the most important leadership roles at VentureBeat.

Here are some of the qualifications and responsibilities:

• Must be a self-starter with intimate knowledge of web development, who is able to learn quickly, multi-task in a fast-paced environment, and drive results within a team through excellent interpersonal and written/verbal communication skills;
• Must have experience on the WordPress platform;
• Proficiency in Javascript/HTML/CSS/PHP coding skills;
• Discipline in testing and quality assurance;
• Ability to produce easy to use, intuitive user interfaces from prototypes and wireframes, and lead the development for design (experience building consumer web application interfaces);
• Command of web standards, CSS-based design, cross-browser compatibility;
• Knowledge of interaction design principles;
• Ability to think critically and provide recommendations for solutions or improvements;
• Meet regularly with product team to discuss release schedules as well as product strategy;
• Apply social media tools and channels (WordPress, Twitter, Facebook);
• Manage the technical platform for the site, including hosting, coordinating with outside developers.

Experience:

• At least 3 years professional web development (including dynamic database driven sites);
• Translating comps and wireframes into flexible and usable code templates;
• Rapid prototyping of new products and features

Ideally the candidate will also have the following:

• Visual design skills;
• Database knowledge (MySQL)
• SEO knowledge;
• Knowledge of Google Analytics and other tracking tools;
• Knowledge of MS Office Suite.

Submittal Requirements:

• Describe three improvements you would make to VentureBeat if you were given two weeks to make them.
• Describe your most recent work: methodologies, sources, guidelines, and tactics you employed to improve the project. Please provide a description of the actual result and how many of your ideas were implemented.

How to apply: Submit your resume to jobs@venturebeat.com with subject line “developer”

Can you trust any VCs under 40?

// September 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Entrepreneur

(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This column originally appeared on his blog.)

Over the last 30 years Wall Street’s appetite for technology stocks have changed radically – swinging between unbridled enthusiasm to believing they’re all toxic. Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies.

You have to wonder: does the VC you have on your board today have the right skill set to help you succeed in today’s economic environment?

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. There’s lots of lore, emotion, and misconceptions of what VC’s do or don’t do for entrepreneurs. The reality is that VC’s have one goal – to maximize the amount of money they return to their investors. To do this they have to accomplish five things:

1) Get deal flow – via networking and legwork, they identify likely industries, companies and teams with the potential for rapid growth (less than 10 years),

2) Evaluate those companies and teams on the basis of technology, market opportunity, and team.  (Each VC firm/partner has a different spin on what to weigh more.)

3) Invest in and take equity stakes in exchange for capital.

4) Help nurture and grow the companies they invest in.

5) Liquidate their investment in each company at the highest possible price.

VC’s make money by selling their share of your company to some other buyer – hopefully at a large multiple over what they originally paid for it. From 1979, when pensions funds began fueling the expansion of venture capital, the way VCs sold their portion of your company was to help you take your company “public.” Your firm worked with an investment banking firm that underwrote and offered stock (typically on the NASDAQ exchange) to the public. At this Initial Public Offering your company raised money for its use in expanding the business.

In theory when you went public, everyone’s shares were now tradable on the stock exchange, but usually the underwriters required a six-month “lockup” preventing company insiders (employees and investors) from selling. After the end of the lockup, venture firms sold off their stock in an orderly fashion, and entrepreneurs sold theirs and bought new cars and houses.

Five Quarters of Profitability

During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. Underwriters who would offer the stock to the public typically asked for a young company to show five consecutive quarters of profits.

There was no law that said that a company had to, but most underwriters wouldn’t take a company public without it. (On top of all this it was considered very bad form not to have at least four additional consecutive quarters of profits after an IPO.)  While there was an occasional bad apple, the public markets rewarded companies with revenue growth and sustainable profits.

What this meant for entrepreneurs and VC’s was simple and profound – and is entirely unappreciated today: VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses. In this time, a successful business was one that had paying customers quarter after quarter, not one that was flipped or hyped to the market despite a lack of earnings or revenue.

Venture Capitalists on the board brought a firm their expertise to build long-term sustainable companies. They taught companies about customers, markets and profits.

The world of building profitable startups as the primary goal of Venture Capital would end in 1995.

The IPO Bubble – August 1995 – March 2000

In August 1995 Netscape went public, and the world of start ups turned upside down. On its first day of trading, Netscape stock closed at $58/share, valuing the company at $2.7 billion for a company with less than $50 million in sales. (Yahoo would hit $104/share in March 2000 with a market cap of $104 billion.) There was now a public market for companies with no revenue, no profit and big claims.

Underwriters realized that as long as the public was happy snapping up shares, they could make huge profits on the inflated valuations – regardless of whether or not the company should have ever been public.

Some companies didn’t even have to go public to get liquid. Tech acquisitions went crazy at the same time the IPO market did. Large companies were buying startups just to get in the game at the same absurd prices.

What this meant for entrepreneurs and VC’s was simple– the gold rush to liquidity was on. The old rules of building companies with sustainable revenue and consistent profitability went out the window. VCs worked with entrepreneurs to brand, hype and take public unprofitable companies with grand promises of the future. The goals were “first mover advantage,” “grab market share” and “get big fast.” VCs or entrepreneurs who talked about building profitable businesses were told, “You just don’t get the new rules.”

To be honest, for four years, these were the new rules. Entrepreneurs and VCs made returns 10x, or even 100x larger than anything ever seen. (No value judgments here, VCs were doing what the market rewarded them for, and their investors expected – maximum returns.)

And since Venture Capital looked like anyone could do it, the number of venture firms soared as fast as stock prices.

Venture Capitalists on boards developed the expertise to get a firm public as soon as possible using whatever it took including hype and spin – because the sooner a company got its billion dollar market cap, the sooner the VC firm could sell their shares and distribute their profits.

The boom in Internet startups would last 4.5 years – until it came crashing down to earth in March 2000.

The Rise of Mergers and Acquisitions -– March 2003 -2008

After the dot.com bubble collapsed, the IPO market (and most tech M&A deals) shut down for technology companies. Venture investors spent the next three years doing triage, sorting through the rubble to find companies that weren’t bleeding cash and could actually be turned into businesses. With Wall Street leery of technology companies, tech IPOs were a receding memory, and mergers and acquisitions became the only path to liquidity for startups and their investors. For the next four or five years, technology M&A boomed, growing from 50 buyouts in 2003 to 450 in 2006.

What this meant for entrepreneurs and VCs was a bit more complex– the IPO market was all but closed (with the Google IPO in 2004 as a brilliant exception), but it was possible find a buyer for your company. The valuations for acquisitions were nothing like the Internet bubble, but there was a path to liquidity, difficult as it was. (Every startup wanted to believe they could get acquired like YouTube for $1.4 billion.)

VCs worked with entrepreneurs to build their company with an eye out for a chance to flip it to an acquirer. The formula for exits was a variation of the formula they used in the Internet bubble, morphing into: brand, hype and sell the company.

In the Fall of 2008, the credit crisis wiped out mergers and acquisitions as a path to liquidity as M&A collapsed with the rest of the market.

So what’s left?

2009 – Back to The Future

The bad news is that since the bubble, most VC firms haven’t made a profit. It may just be that the message of building companies that have predictable revenue and profit models hasn’t percolated through the VC business model. (Perhaps in direct proportion to the number of “freemium” and “eyeballs” web deals funded.)

It may be that the venture business will have to return to the old days of helping entrepreneurs build companies – not hype them, not spin them, but actually make them worth something to customers and investors.

The question is: Do VC’s still have what it takes to do so?

Next time you sit in a board meeting with your VCs, step back a bit from the moment and listen to their advice – like you are hearing them for the first time. Are these VC’s who know how to build a company?  Is the advice they are giving you going to help you build a repeatable and scalable revenue model that’s profitable quarter after quarter?

Or were they trained and raised in the bubble and M&A hype and still looking for some shortcut to liquidity?

Image by Stephen K. Willi via Flickr.

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Come see the most promising new technologies unveiled for the first very time at DEMOfall 09 this September 21-23 in San Diego. VentureBeat readers may register to attend the conference at a special 20% discount off our regular rate. Register now at: http://www.demo.com/f9vb2

High investment return expectations may limit VC spending

// September 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Entrepreneur

(Editor’s note: Dr. John K. Paglia is Associate Professor of Finance, Pepperdine University’s  Graziadio School of Business and Management. He contributed this story to VentureBeat.)

Private capital lenders and investors may not engage in a meaningful volume of lending for another 2-3 years, according to new research from Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management.

The Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Study, which sought to learn how private capital providers view return on investment in the midst of the recession, found that venture capital firms expect a 42 percent ROI on an annualized basis, while private equity groups expect a 25 percent return.

They’re hardly alone. Asset-based lenders expect 11 percent; mezzanine funds expect 18 percent; and bank lenders expect a 6.5 percent return on investment.   

(The study spoke with 627 private lending and investment professionals during the first half of this year.)

For business loans being booked these days, the median reported rate is 11 percent. But 22 percent of the survey respondents said the all-in rate borrowers will pay for a loan tops 15 percent.

These high expectations and requirements could very well make it hard for private capital providers to strike deals in the short- and long-term. They also suggest there is more pain ahead for a wide range of enterprises seeking private funding.  

Private capital lending may be limited for a period of six months to up to three years, the study found. The timing couldn’t be worse.

Recent reports from the U.S. Department of Commerce suggest the economy has finally stopped cratering.  In fact, some specific key sectors are showing signs of life.  Factory orders and shipments of goods in the manufacturing industry such as metals, construction machinery, turbines and electrical equipment have stabilized and showed a slight uptick in June, meaning that existing and new businesses may soon be able to make a plausible case for increased capital. 

Historically, investment in early stage growth companies takes off at the start of a recovery and contributes significantly towards leading the country out of a recession.

However, more than half of the asset-backed and private equity investors surveyed said they believe the U.S. gross domestic product will decrease well into next year.  Median estimates of GDP growth are consistently negative.

The economic risks of a constrained cash flow extend far beyond the success or failure of struggling start-ups.

Job creation is a significant concern. Economic recovery has always included a recovery in small business. Private equity and venture capital play a critical role in investing and encouraging fledgling enterprises that grow into steady and robust job providers.  More than half of the companies in the 2009 Fortune 500 were launched during a recession or bear market, according to a report from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

That same study suggests that job creation from startup companies is less volatile and sensitive to downturns when compared to the overall economy.

Finally, there’s innovation. An increasingly large share of the more than 12.1 million jobs currently connected to venture capital are in areas such as energy and clean/green technology. In fact, according to a June 2009 report from the PEW Charitable Trusts, green energy investments from 1998 to 2007 generated jobs 15 percent faster than the entire California economy (more than 125,000 jobs over the ten year span). 

Clearly, there’s an upside to private capital providers who catch the wave when it is about to break. But judging by the anemic level of funding and exorbitant expectations for returns, we’re a long way from returning to the VC ‘heyday’. If the economy is going to recover at a reasonable pace, private capital lenders need to set aside their lofty expectations and take on greater exposure. The company they save, ultimately, may be their own.

Image by Tracy O via Flickr.

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Come see the most promising new technologies unveiled for the first very time at DEMOfall 09 this September 21-23 in San Diego. VentureBeat readers may register to attend the conference at a special 20% discount off our regular rate. Register now at: http://www.demo.com/f9vb2

TC50: BreakThrough lets people use online calling to get psychiatric help

// September 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Entrepreneur

A new startup called BreakThrough says it wants to use the web to help people overcome the barriers to getting psychiatric help.

The company, which demonstrated at the TechCrunch50 conference today in San Francisco, has created a site where people with mental illnesses can create anonymous accounts, then find professional therapists and schedule appointments with them. Those meetings can be conducted over Skype as either video or audio conversations — what BreakThrough calls telepsychiatry. Therapists can even prescribe medication after the sessions.

Chief executive Mark Goldenson, who is also a columnist for VentureBeat, says this overcomes many of the barriers preventing many people from getting the therapy that would help them. The anonymity reduces the social stigma of seeking therapy. The fact that you can schedule short Skype sessions helps reduce the cost. And the remote access makes it easier to talk to therapists, particularly for patients who live in rural areas that may not have any therapists.

Goldenson says that beyond therapy, BreakThrough could eventually be used for telemedicine and to help organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous hold truly anonymous group meetings.

Click here for more startup news coming out of the TechCrunch50 conference today.

You’re a little company, now act like one

// September 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Entrepreneur

(Editor’s note: Jason Cohen is founder of Smart Bear Software. He contributed this column to VentureBeat.)

I talk to a lot of companies that are still hunting for customer number one, or have made a few sales, but the ball really isn’t rolling yet.

Most of them are making the same mistake: Their public persona is exactly wrong.

I know, because I made the same mistake – but I learned my lesson.

Even before I had a single customer, I knew it was important to look professional. My website needed to look and feel like a “real company.” I needed culture-neutral language complimenting culturally-diverse clip-art photos of frighteningly chipper co-workers huddled around a laptop, awash with the thrill and delight of configuring a JDBC connection to SQL Server 2008.

It also meant adopting typical “marketing-speak,” so my “About Us” page started with:

“Smart Bear is the leading provider of enterprise version control data-mining tools. Companies world-wide use Smart Bear’s Code Historian software for risk-analysis, root-cause discovery, and software development decision-support.”

“Leading provider?” “Data mining?” I’m not even sure what that means. But you have to give me credit for an impressive quantity of hyphens.

That’s what you’re supposed to do right? That’s what other companies do, so it must be right. Who am I to break with tradition? Surely my potential customers would immediately close the browser if they read:

“Hi, I’m Jason and I built an inexpensive tool for visualizing what’s in your version control system. It’s useful for answering questions like ‘When was the last time we changed this file?’ Check it out and tell me what sucks!”

I mean, can you imagine a person with “Software Engineer III” on their business card taking me seriously if I just talked like a human being? What if someone got offended by the word “sucks?” No.. No… Big companies want to see professional language, I thought.

But I was wrong. I’ll explain why from the point of view of selling software over the web, but the same lesson applies to every little company trying to get off the ground.

Now repeat after me:

“My next sale won’t be a 1000-seat order from Lockheed Martin…”
”My next sale won’t be a 1000-seat order from Lockheed Martin…”
”My next sale won’t be a 1000-seat order from Lockheed Martin…”

I’m telling you this having sold software to every size of company from micro-ISV to IBM, and, well, to Lockheed Martin.

Your vision is to land $100k deals with big companies and you will – but not today. Today your product is a shaky version 1.0 with bugs you haven’t uncovered yet, missing 80 percent of the features big companies require. It also lacks significant documentation like case studies or a proper manual or an ROI model or a large, reference-able customer.

Today, you’re a complete mismatch with Lockheed Martin. But there’s a nice big niche that’s a perfect match: Early adopters.

Early adopters are people who want to live on the bleeding edge. They like new technology, even if that means it’s buggy. They like working with teeny companies where they have a personal relationship with the founders – where they are showered with attention and where their ideas are implemented before their very eyes. They don’t mind putting up with a hundred bugs so long as they get fixed fast. They want to be involved in the process.

The best part is, this is exactly the moment in your company’s life when you need early adopters to help you build the right product. You don’t need people who download, get discouraged and then never call you back. You need a chatty Cathy who wants to dive in and help out.

Returning to your public corporate persona… What do you put up on your website that screams out to those potential early adopter cheerleaders that you are exactly what they’re looking for: A cool new company with a fresh product and fresh attitude; a product that might be rough around the edges but is ripe for feedback and collaboration; a company that may be small today but is thinking big.

Well here’s how not to it: Say “a leading provider of” and blather on about how you “Provide the ability to quickly and easily do XYZ so you can go back to accomplishing high-value tasks.”

Puh-leeze. Can you be more uninspiring?

Balsamiq Studios is doing it right. Read their company page. It’s says “Hello.”  It says “Yes, a couple of guys in a studio.” They don’t skirt the issues of being a small company:

I know, it sounds iffy: how can such a small team create, test, maintain, market, sell, and support a software company?

Well, that remains to be seen – but Balsamiq made $800,000 in their first year of operations, so don’t tell me “big companies” need to hear garbage PR/marketing language. And Balsamiq got 100 product reviews during their first six weeks of operation, so don’t tell me “a couple of guys in a studio” isn’t a good public persona.

You want that kind of success? Stop acting like a faceless, humorless, generic, robotic company.

Put yourself in the shoes of that early adopter. Does she want to see useless garbage phrases or does she want to hear about how you understand her pain? Should you come off as a big, established, safe company or as a cool, passionate, small team who wants to make a difference? Should you hide behind “Contact Us” forms or display your phone number and Twitter account on your home page?

Be human. Stop hiding. Be yourself.

Win when you lose – 10 guidelines for loss analysis

// September 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Entrepreneur

(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Scott Olson is president of MindLink Marketing. He contributed this column to VentureBeat.)

Losing is never fun. When you invest significant time and resources pursuing a deal and it falls through, it’s frustrating – and invariably causes some self-reflection.

Why weren’t we successful this time? What could we have done differently? Implementing a process to learn from your losses can yield great dividends – and is often the best way to lock in the next potential customer you approach.

There are plenty of reasons deals fall through. See if any of these sounds familiar:

• The price was too high
• The competition had a personal relationship with the buyer
• The product was missing a key feature
• The product isn’t a comprehensive solution
• The sales rep didn’t position our product correctly
• The lack of a reference customer in the industry
• The customer didn’t believe they have the problem you solve
• The competition simply outsold your firm
• The lack of an ROI toolkit

The list goes on – as do the recriminations and excuses – but by taking the time to formally analyze your losses, you can discover a wealth of valuable information that can impact your overall vision and strategy. You can learn a lot from wins as well, but losses can be particularly illuminating.

Here are 10 guidelines you can apply to your own loss analysis:

Interview internally and externally – Loss analysis doesn’t mean the sales representative, or even your sales leader, writes up their perspective of the deal. Interview the appropriate sales representative, but more importantly interview the customer, being sure to identify (and contact) both the business and technical points of contact at the customer.

Choose an objective individual to conduct the interview – It’s difficult for the sales representative for the deal to conduct an objective interview. I have seen interviews conducted by the Product Manager, the VP of Sales, a consultant – and in some early stage companies, even the CEO. The key is you want the customer to feel open to speak about why they did not select your solution.

Don’t wait too long – The closer you conduct the interview to the conclusion of the deal, the better. You are asking the customer to give up their time to better understand the reasons of their decision. They are more likely to do this if it is seen as a part of the natural conclusion of the deal. If you wait too long it may seem like you are simply trying to get back into the deal.

Understand the customer need - Begin by understanding why they were talking to you in the first place. Did they have a budgeted project before they were talking to you? What need were they trying to address?

Get their perspective on your product – In what ways did your product meet their primary need and where was it lacking? Discuss with them their perceptions of your key strengths and weaknesses. Identify product gaps as well as areas where you might be able to communicate better about your product’s true capabilities.

Get pricing feedback – Start by understanding what they had originally budgeted to meet their identified need. Was your pricing too high? Did the competition beat your price? How are they evaluating the return they expect on their investment.

Get competitive insights – Spend time discussing the competitive products they looked at. They may not be able to give much information, but you will be surprised at how much they will reveal about how other products differ from your own including features, pricing and marketing.

Review their key decision criteria – Spend the time to understand the key criteria they used to make their decision. This should provide a good view into how to market your products better as well as guide your product roadmap.

Evaluate the sales process – Did they receive all the materials they needed to make their decision? Are there sales tools that could have helped the deal – like ROI calculators, case studies or better customer references?

Review the effectiveness of your marketing – What publications or blogs do they read? What shows do they regularly attend? Were they looking for materials that weren’t available? Would more product documentation or case studies have helped? What was their impression of the website?

If you build this in as a normal part of your sales process you not only will get valuable feedback, but you will indicate to them that you are a company that is continually looking to improve your products and services. More importantly, if you are engaged in a similar opportunity in the future, you will be armed to win.

Image by Todd Klassy via Flickr.

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Come see the most promising new technologies unveiled for the first very time at DEMOfall 09 this September 21-23 in San Diego. VentureBeat readers may register to attend the conference at a special 20% discount off our regular rate. Register now at: http://www.demo.com/f9vb2

Skills of great entrepreneurs

// September 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // Entrepreneur

Being smart and working hard isn’t a guarantee of success in the entrepreneurial world. Outside influences often have a bigger say in the fate of your company than you do. But Randy Komisar of Kleiner Perkins, in this talk given at a Stanford entrepreneur summit in 2007, says the top tier of entrepreneurs are the ones who can recognize an opportunity and know how to take advantage of it.

Streamy: Your hub for social networking, news sharing

// September 11th, 2009 // No Comments » // Entrepreneur

Editor’s note: This is part of VentureBeat’s series “Startup Spotlight.” Every week, we’ll sift through the scores of companies applying to be promoted and profile the best one. Companies can sign up here at the Entrepreneur Corner, which is currently sponsored by Microsoft. (Of course, you’ll still find lots of startup news and innovation in our day-to-day coverage.) Today, we continue the series with Streamy, below.

At its core, Streamy is an aggregator. It brings together the news sites and blogs you’ve subscribed to — much like Google Reader — as well as your feeds from various social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed, and even your chat clients like Google Talk and AIM. But saying it’s a one stop shop for news and social media junkies doesn’t do it justice — the excellence of Streamy is in the details.

When you sign up for Streamy, either via the site or through Facebook Connect, it provides you with a basic start page. You can then build it out by adding your Twitter account, Facebook newsfeed, FriendFeed stream, Google Talk account (to actually receive messages in the Streamy interface), and Digg feed. It even lets you track Flickr updates and receive messages from AIM, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live.

Streamy’s design gives you a lot of options within each of these channels. For instance, when you add Twitter, you gain the ability to tweet, view mentions, read direct messages and conduct real-time search all within the Streamy interface. When you add FriendFeed, you can post items, add comments and like others’ posts. The Digg interface lets you sort out top and topic-specific links. And the Facebook add-on lets you change your status, comment, likes, and view your friends’ walls. The icons for each of these channels appear at the top of every window, making them easy to navigate between with one click.

That said, you can’t do everything you can on these sites within Streamy. For example, while you can view how many friend or event requests or messages you have on Facebook, clicking on any of them takes you to the actual site. And in order to post in a particular room on FriendFeed, you need to go to that URL (though this functionality really should be added to Streamy). Still, in the social-networking arena, the site excels at giving you an up-to-date snapshot of your online presence and properties, either all together in dashboard form, or separately

Streamy’s real sweet spot is news aggregation and sharing. Not only does it let you import your subscriptions from Google Reader, Bloglines or an OPML URL or File, it also provides story recommendations based on your preferences, and a list of the web’s top newsfeeds, making it easy to subscribe to the most popular properties on the web in any category from arts to science to videogames. You can also add new subscriptions just like you would on Google Reader by providing the URL of the blog of news site. When you import from an outside RSS reader, Streamy maintains your folders and labels, making it easy to find your favorites just where you left them.

This same service also takes sharing news and links to a higher level. Let’s say you want to share a link from a blog you read all the time. You have several options at your fingertips. When you hold down your mouse on the title of the post in question, three options pop up in spheres around your cursor: Save the post, share the post with friends on Streamy (when you roll over this sphere, tiny boxes with your friends’ faces appear so you can choose which one), or through your social networks (when you roll over this sphere, tiny boxes appear giving you the option to share via Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed or Digg. If you release the mouse, a new window pops up where you can check boxes next to the various services you want to share through (allowing you to share the link on all of them at once), or by typing in the email addresses of people you want to send the link to. You always have the ability to add comments to the posts you share. And with your chat client running in the right-hand sidebar, you can even drag a link straight from the reader interface to someone’s screenname to send it to them.

As convenient as that all sounds, there are a couple or caveats. First, Streamy would be way more awesome if more people used it. Right now, the company says it has “tens of thousands of users” — but that isn’t many. As is, it’s unlikely that any of your friends belong to the site, hobbling cool features that are only possible when you’re sharing or conversing with other Streamy members. And second — despite its emphasis on sharing options and subscription management — it doesn’t actually let you share posts via Google Reader, a major sticking point. Hopefully these two problems will be remedied over time or in future iterations. The company has been fairly quick to respond to user feedback. Since it launched its public beta in March, it has successfully implemented Facebook Connect and chat.

Beyond that, the interface is sleek and appealing — and of course, customizable with different skins. And I dare say its RSS interface is more intuitive and easier to navigate than Google Reader. With a collapsible three-column appearance that resembles Tweetdeck, it’s not too busy or complex for continuous use throughout the day.

Based in Manhattan Beach, Calif., Streamy was originally founded in 2007 by Dan Mosites and Jonathan Gray. If it has raised any capital, it has yet to disclose it. According to data from Compete, its number of unique monthly visitors dropped from 45,000 to less than 10,000 between May and July of this year. It’s unclear what’s responsible for the drop off. The site has received glowing reviews so far. And as far as I’m concerned, if Streamy could import my email, I might never leave.

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