Pure Play

iGAP - the first two days. My thoughts

Monday and Tuesday last week (2nd and 3rd November) saw myself and Gerry McQuaid sitting in Trim, Co Meath representing dbTwang alongside 14 other businesses, a number of EI'ers, some of the Internet Growth Alliance founders, the coaches who will be working with us, a couple of panelists on Tuesday and the leads from the US and UK for the actual workshop delivery.

A lot of people, a lot of time and a lot of planning.

Which delivered a superb start to this much talked about program. In evolution since early summer it came out of the experience of Colm Lyon on the Leadership for Growth program and drew on the entrepreneurial experiences of Ray Nolan and Dylan Collins (there were others as well - see their site for full list). Enterprise Ireland in the guise of Jennifer Condon joined in, a budget was carved out and Brian Caufield drafted in as progam lead.

Day One was Jonathan Dillon. An Irishman in San Francisco and with such gems from his past as "Would you just take the billion Mark" (he ran acquisitions for Yahoo for a couple of years and they made an offer for Facebook at one stage) he could have been irrelevant to early stage startups. But wasn't. He took his experience and made it relevant to us - specifically in the area of Mission, Vision and Strategy. In the middle of it all Colm Lyon did a great talk on his experience with Realex Payments and showed us the actual presentation he used when raising money very early on.

Day Two saw Ed Bussey on the floor. Whose most recent sale I knew about as it was Zyb and is now Vodafone 360. He joined the management team there but was a founder of figleaves.com in the good old days of DotComOne. He worked through business models and shared a lot of his practical experience with both his businesses.

The panel also happened on Day Two. Colm Lyon substituted for Dylan Collins (who was in negotiations, the results of which were in the Business Post today - having sold Jolt Gaming to Gamestop - congrats), and he was there with the founders of Daft (Eamon Fallon), Hostel World (Ray Nolan) and Gifts Direct (Lulu O'Sullivan).

Each of the two days finished with a 1.5 session with our coaches - 4 of them having 3 or 4 businesses in each group. They will also be spending one to one time with each participant business.

Outcomes for dbTwang? I got something special from it - being the only founder there with an investor and non-exec director (Fintan my co-founder stays mainly on the guitar industry side as that is his core area). 2 days immersion was a great environment. Tangibly by Friday of last week we had strongly refined the value proposition we will be using for the next 6 months or so and using that same refinement to focus our operational execution.

Well worth it - and all participants agreed. From a group who would not be tolerant of having 2 days wasted that is saying something :-)

Thanks to all who put it together.

keith

Our first dbTwang screen cast

Fintan uploaded this to youtube earlier this afternoon - our first general intro to dbTwang and the initial functionality it offers to people who love guitars - everyone from enthusiasts to collectors.

The beta continues to be delayed by one last bug which needs to be sorted before we launch - it could cause the misplacing of data in guitar fields.

keith

Busy & Behind

I am extremely busy right now - consequently rejigging how I organise myself and my workflows.

If you need to get to me and I am not answering - resend the email, text me, whatever you need to do. Nothing personal just backed up.

keith

Startup Metrics for Pirates - AARRR

Dave mcClure is good, this is his talk from FOWA London

Startup Metrics for Pirates (FOWA London, Oct 2009)

View more presentations from Dave McClure.

keith

Mike McDerment, Freshbooks #fowa

Mike is the co-founder and CEO of Freshbooks and he explained that he was doing a marketing/business talk rather than tech.

Background:

• Built Freshbooks in his parents basement
• No institutional investment
• 1M users since May 2004
• 30plus employees
• They use Freemium business model

He says build as little as possible and launch. But do include a tracking system. He explained a bit more.

Standard conversion Funnel

100 visitors to your site
10 sign up to use your service
1 pays for it


To track this you need to design and implement a marketing system

• Tracking system
• Storage system
• Reporting system

What to track in a cookie
- ref url
- keyword phrase
- landing url
- referring domain

Store your marketing info with your user profile

Report - query and dump in sortable column.

Key point again - build this tracking into V1. It gives you vital information upon which to base decisions  - and communicate externally what is working and not working for you.

Q - most important thing ever done to increase conversion rate
A - easy to increase trials but conversion plummets. He could not name one specifically for converting trials to paying customers which stood out. 

Q - average customer value, average retention value
A - He would not say :-)

Kevin Rose #fowa

Kevin Rose/Dig

• Twitter - one way and really simple
• Digg - leader board - worked really well, top people got uber icons
• • [in dbTwang we could use this for comments, guitars, group activity]
• Focus on 2 or 3 things - stop overbuilding features
• Build & Release, stop thinking you understand your users
• Hack the press - invite only. Give beta invites to key bloggers
• • Hit up junior bloggers, not the top names (they are too busy)
• Attend parties for events/conferences you cannot afford
• Connect with your community, recommended a podcast
• Build a group of advisors around you
• Look at Farmville - they are really, really good at what they do
• wefollow - autotweets worked well
• Look at what you can offer 3rd party sites
• Take a step back and look at the overall picture

- users

- create content

- this creates traffic

- 3rd party sites

Q - do you punish people who are gaming the top rank table

A - no, a lot of time they do not know they are doing it, or they are over enthuastic.

Q - has Digg ever paid for "traditional marketing"

A - no

Q - digg user demographics

A - started 95% male, 18-34. Broadened to 65% male

Internet Growth Acceleration Programme Launches

From their blog:

Tuesday 29th September 2009.

The IGA and Enterprise Ireland are delighted to announce the launch of the Internet Growth Acceleration Programme. This is a new multi-module programme for Irish Internet businesses that wish to grow internationally. It runs over six months allowing participants to complete a deep and intensive review of their internet businesses, resulting in a finale at which each participant will make a pitch to some of the IGA advisors who have pledged to refund the fees for at least four of the participants! Download the pdf here.

The programme has been developed and is being run by Enterprise Ireland - see http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/igap for the application process. Press Release is here.

International and local instructors will be involved as will the business advisors from the IGA giving participants the chance to network with both experienced and emerging internet entrepreneurs. Competition for places on this programme is likely to be intensive and interested candidates are advised to apply as soon as possible. Download the full details here.

dbTwang will be going for a place - will you?

keith

dbTwang welcomes Colm Lyon on board as we close a follow-on round

Thanks to Gordon Smith (and John Collins in the background) for the nicely written article in the Irish Times today. It was triggered by our closing a follow on Angel Round in the last couple of weeks bringing our total to date to just under 200k.

The great news which accompanies that is the participation of Colm Lyon (of Realex Payments) in the round. He is also going to act as an adviser to us as we move to take advantage of the ongoing interest in dbTwang to accelerate a couple of the business strategies which are important to us. He will compliment Gerry McQuaid really nicely.

• Thanks to each of the existing and new investors - this is a leap of faith and we as co-founders are really aware of that.
• Thanks to Kilkenny CEB and Enterprise Ireland for their ongoing support (and no - we did not ask EI to participate in this round. Holding that for the big one early next year :-) )
• Final thanks from me personally to all of the other startup founders and CEO's who are there to support me. Bizcamp tomorrow is one of the ways in which I am trying to repay that support.

keith

Extracts from the article:

A NEW Irish-based social network hopes to help guitar collectors find out whether their battered Strat was once gripped by Rory Gallagher, or whether Jimmy Page’s fingers ever danced across the frets of an old Gibson Les Paul.

Called dbTwang, the site aims to become a trusted place on the web where players and collectors can keep information about their guitars securely, over time building a history for their instruments, be they electric, acoustic or bass.

The site will use a “freemium” business model, where many services will cost nothing, and other exclusive features will be available only to paying subscribers. Data from the US suggest the conversion rate to paying users is between 3-8 per cent of a site’s total audience, Mr Bohanna said.

Quick burst of Freemium and Growth Drivers

From Om Malik today comes a post on the continued emergence of freemium as a business model. His post starts like this:

Earlier this year, I asked the readers of this blog and those who follow me on Twitter what the one app was that they couldn’t live without. Among the most common names offered up were Evernote, Remember The Milk and Dropbox.

Since then, those three apps have become indispensable to me as well. And they all happen to be benefiting from the business model championed by venture capitalist Fred Wilson known as “freemium.”

Read the rest of Om's post here.

And from Venturebeat came one on how to get focused on growth for your business. Eric Ries started with a warning:

Every startup needs to “pick a major” among three drivers of growth. It’s simply too hard to focus on more than one. This choice has to be made at the level of strategy, because the tactics between involved in each driver are quite similar.

Startups may pivot from one driver to another as they experiment. But failure to identify a clear driver of growth leads many entrepreneurs into dangerous territory.

Read the rest of Eric's post here.

The first one is particularly interesting for me as regular readers of this blog will know. dbTwang.com is being built with a freemium model in mind yet at least half of the conversations I have with other entrepreneurs about it are with them telling me it will not work.

We think it will - and as with all startup founders while we are very carefully soliciting feedback and advice which we do listen to and incorporate from time to time we are also sticking to our guns on the core of the business.

And that core (for the moment) retains a freemium element.

keith

Mailchimp - initial impressions

One of the most popular blog posts for me is one I did on GroupMail - the Sligo based software for running mail lists.

Over the last week I have been working with MailChimp - a SAAS service for running email newsletters and I am really enjoying it. Deep functionality combined with a relatively intuitive interface and rock solid stability are all indicators of a mature product.

You can send up to 600 emails a month free - which puts this in the frame for a lot of Irish SME's. As I sent out nearly 800 emails last night to beta signups for dbTwang we stepped up to the $30 a month bracket.

One interesting report for me was the geographic analysis of opens - which gives us an indication of where the people who signed up for our beta actually are (we only have an email address so difficult to tell).

This is what it reported.

It makes sense. Our market research shows the largest group of guitar owners in the US and UK with Germany probably the biggest in the rest of Europe. One country completely unrepresented here is Japan and that is something we will have to address - but that is another days work!

keith

Great slides from Enterprise Ireland on their investment process

In May I attended a great early morning workshop held by Enterprise Ireland in conjunction with the Irish Software Association which was targeted at early stage businesses with the aim of making it clearer how Enterprise Ireland (EI) works to assess and process funding applications.

My notes from the session are linked here in a post I did on the day.

Missing were the presentations themselves. I found them yesterday and scanned them in. The first contains an overview of the division within EI which deals with funding applications. Specifically it gives a good step by step on the various elements of how an evaluation works.

Enterprise Ireland Investment Services Division Overview

View more documents from keithbohanna.

The second contains details on the legal side and some great information to note for entreprenuers. Specifically the point was made on the day that the vast majority of this (ie that EI takes Cumulative Convertible Redeeemable Preference Shares) is not negotiable and so any advice to the contrary can be ignored!

Enterprise Ireland Investment Process - The Legal Element

View more documents from keithbohanna.

Hope they are of use to you.

keith

dbTwang pitch deadlines coming up - any to add?

The following are noted in my Things as needing to be done over the coming months:

Hothouse Application
Going to give this a shot - for a number of reasons would be good to be part of the Hothouse Network. That application is due in 31st July

Seedcamp London
As recommended by the Europas shortlisted Robin Blandford the Seedcamp week in London has to be worth pitching for. It closes on 23rd August

Seedcorn
Have ignored this for the last 2 years as we had nothing to show. This year we will have so in it goes for a top prize of 100k for the winning business. 25th September for this.

Anything else to suggest for dbTwang.com?

keith

The Europas - all is quiet

Is it a sign of the times or just a sign of my times (reading and blogging less while I and stay focused and try to achieve balance of sorts in my life) that I have not seen many (any?) Irish references to the techcrunch.co.uk inaugural Europe-wide awards ceremony for technology innovation.

Caught my eye and certainly considering attending - however wondering if I am missing something when the web2 community here are being silent on it.

Help me find those missing links? It is on July 9th in London and there are 300 places.

keith

Update - just sent in our pitch so will book a place now one way or another :-)

Please sign up. Pretty please

Thanks to Richard Hearn (currently working in Asia). He sent me the link to this great presentation from Josuha Porter in Bokardo who specialises in interface design for social web sites.  

In it he explores the psychology of signup - what is potentially going on in peoples heads/minds when they arrive at a new service on the the internet and how to design your site/service to make it easier for them to make a favorable decision and commit their details to you.

Designing For Sign Up

View more Microsoft Word documents from Joshua Porter.

Elements of it I have seen before but this brings it all together nicely. keith

Quick share - live stream from Techcrunch event in Stockholm

Friend of mine is in the room and I am listening to the discuss in the background



keith

Enteprise Ireland Morning Workshop - Early stage funding

Introduced by Jennifer Condon who said that it was developed in conjunction with the ISA and was aimed at giving a less formal intro to how EI work in this area.

About 20 EI clients here and lots of EI staff.

Cathie Hynes, Growth Capital 

Started with slide borrowed from Brian Caufield showing stage of growth and relevant funding for each.

She spoke about the dilema around matching funding when private investors or business angels are not available. www.businessangels.ie relaunched to assist with that issue. Angels generally invest 50k to 500k and usually in the region they live in and sector they are knowlegable about.

Q's they ask - Team? Skills they have? Skills they need? Personal chemistry is very important. Then the usual core businesss questions.

KEY - what monies do you need know, what do you need over next 3 years, how do they get their return.

"There is money out there - for every muddy field bought by a developer someone sold it!" Cathy. She mentioned Diane Roberts who is the recently appointed national co-ordinator. Cathy then spoke about the network of private investors who EI have knowledge of - including serial investors. They also know some international investors.

They also work through intermedaries - banks, accountants and solicitors, stockbrokers. There are 108 investors on the database.

The route to these investors is an introduction by your DA (Development Advisor) to the Growth Capital section in EI. Cathy mentioned working with 8 clients who they arranged UK presentations to UK Angels with and are now doing the same in Ireland. They do prep work with each of those. The route has two streams - ones where EI have made investment decision and ones where the decision has not yet been taken. Former preferable obviously :-)

She then spoke about VC's - more structured and more onerous. Also businesses need to be aware of the life cycle of a VC fund - if you approach in the latter half of the typical 10 year period then you are unlikely to get funded.

VC funds to consider - AIB Seed Capital (fund managed by DBIC and Enterprise Equity) and BOI Seed Funds. Those 2 funds manage e46M in total. They both need to be seen to invest in Irish businesses. 

Interesting - in response to a question I asked Cathy said that there is currently no delay with drawing down investmnet cash at present. Once paperwork is in place which is not always the case. That directly contradicts what I have been told by a number of businesses recently and maybe it indicates that the logjam caused by Dept of Finance has been cleared?

She spoke about an example of a investor teaser for a business called Digitary and the key information it contained.

Mary Cryan asked about current angel investment and was told by Cathy that they are still active - angels take the view that they can control/influence an angel/seed investment more so than stock market or property! Investment dominated by tax based mechanisms (presume BES).

keith

The blogs I follow specifically for dbTwang, and why

There are some blogs that are very on target for what we are doing with dbTwang (a focused social network with a freemium/recurring subscription element to it).

They are the ones I read regularly - not skimming but setting time aside to read them properly.

Kissmetrics
They offer a service for analyzing visitor data and have a blog that is very informative on the topic of metrics for e-commerce and conversion driven businesses.
http://blog.kissmetrics.com

Startup CFO
Mark McLeod is a CFO for hire and he took the time a couple of months ago to have a Skype conversation with me. He is informed and experienced and generous with sharing. He also initiated a Startup CFO community on Ning.
http://startupcfo.ca/

Andrew Chen
Andrew is obsessive on the topic of freemium and has published many rich posts on this and related areas. One of which includes a spreadsheet for modeling conversions, user acquisition costs and life time values.
http://andrewchenblog.com

Dave McClure
Dave is an entrepreneur, VC rep for very early stage investments and is also metric obsessed. He rules supreme with his "How to give a VC a Hard On" presentation! I met Dave in San Francisco recently and he took the time to listen and feedback to me.
http://500hats.typepad.com

The Startup
This European site covers (as you would expect!) EU based startups.
http://www.thestartup.eu

Sean Ellis
Startup Marketing is his baby and he speaks from a background of having taken 7 VC backed businesses to market.
http://startup-marketing.com

Venture Voice
This is the single podcast I always listen to. Frequency is irratic and the lenght (at an hour usually) is longer than usual yet the style of conversation is great to listen to and the stuff you can learn from the entrepreneurs Greg Galant talks to is worth it.
http://www.venturevoice.com/

Hope some of those are of interest.

keith

Managing the launch of a new online service

Picked up a great post today from Eric Ries entitled "Don't Launch".

Summary:

The concept of a launch usually encompasses two things:

1. Marketing Launch
2. Product Launch

2 different things and probably best to be at 2 different times.

Extract:

What a marketing launch can do for you;

a) Drive customers into your sales pipeline. Caveat - if you are not geared up to take full advantage of this then you will waste a one-off opportunity. This is clear from many Techcrunch blips where a large flood of site visitors makes no tangible difference to a new service because it is done too early.
b) Establish credibility with potential partners
c) Help you raise money

......there is loads more in the post - follow the link here to read it in full. This is really relevant to dbTwang.com as we make decisions on how to approach our service and marketing launches - trying hard to ensure that we combine managing expectations, raising the next round of finance and keeping pace with the inevitable feedback and demand for what we will offer.

keith

eBusiness Masterclass in Dublin on 28th April

From Enterprise Ireland - and only available to their clients - comes this event on 28th April:

"The Enterprise Ireland eBusiness Unit and HPSU Department are running an eBusiness Masterclass in East Point on the morning of the 28th of April.

Primarily aimed at client companies who operate in the online space, the Masterclass, entitled "Enabling eBusiness: Best Practice and Future Trends", will feature presentations on international best practice from leading industry figures on the following topics: Web 2.0 and the law; online advertising; virtualisation/cloud computing; and online payments.

The presentations will feature in-depth analysis of the current best practice in the topic areas, as well as outlining future trends and development"

The pdf with more detail is here: Download EBusiness_Masterclass

keith

Consciously building a twitter profile

I have a personal twitter account (@keithbohanna) and it just kinda happened. Followed a couple of people I knew, posted updates and over time it has evolved to where I follow 437 and am followed by 579 people.

I have done it differently with @dbTwang because it is more focused and has a point - to attract attention to the upcoming closed beta. That forced me to be more structured in the last week and this is what I did:

• Used google alerts for a number of relevant phrases as a source of potential posting materials
• When I had the time I used the Irish www.twission.com to watch real-time mentions of guitars and followed the users concerned
• I used www.twellow.com to search profiles for mention of the guitar word and had a look at the profiles of the users it highlighted. Most of those I followed as well.
• I followed back each of the twitters who followed me - unless they were from internet marketeers whose profile and tweets indicated that they have no direct interest in guitars
• I took the time to look at the twitter pages of some of my followers and with a couple of them looked through everyone they followed. One or two of them had really relevant listings of twitters
• I replied to every direct message and engaged in some responses to my twitter stream
• Although it is a business account I have tried to keep the tone more personal than some business twitter streams - making it clear that it is an individual writing it.

Thats it , 11 days later @dbtwang is following 388 and being followed by 106. I will keep working those steps and welcome any basic ones which I have missed?

keith

PS - the pain of working with multiple accounts brought me to Nambu - a native Mac application which (among other things) can nicely present feeds from multiple accounts. Best news today is an update I just downloaded lists an issue with sending DM's as one of it's fixes. That is good because I thought I was just being dumb in not being able to send them!

And so I find myself in San Francisco for Web2 Expo

In a classic example of unplanning I decided last Monday evening to see if I could get to Web2 Expo in San Francisco which is running this week. I had to do a couple of things first:

• Find my passport (filed away "carefully" after a trip last Winter)
• Rearrange some work commitments this week with the help of clients
• Clear the cost with my co-founder

I did all three and then started to make contact with anyone and everyone who was over here, focusing especially on the area of freemium business models and also looking at stuff around user generated content.
Looking like most of us may hook up for the Techcrunch/WebMission event this evening and then going for a bite to eat afterwards. Also planning for lunch with Simone Boswell from EI Silicon Valley on Thursday.

I also found an unconference happening for the 1st time during the Expo and got the last slot in one of their sessions on Wednesday, looking forward to that and we have already had 15 signups to the beta since it was posted this morning. Details below from their blog, thanks to Sarah Milstein for organising.

keith

As I've written here recently, we've got some amazing sessions scheduled for Web2Open--the free unconference hosted by Web 2.0 Expo in SF this week. One that I'm particularly excited about is a new experiment, "Practice Your Customer Pitch."

We're bringing in five startups who will get two minutes each to give their customer pitch (not their VC pitch), as if meeting a potential customer at a cocktail party (i.e., no slides but OK to drink if you want). To give them feedback, we've assembled a top-notch panel of serial entrepreneurs and marketing experts. It's not a competition, so there's no judging or ranking—just discussion among the entrepreneurs, panelists and other session attendees.

We're trying this idea for the first time, so who knows how it will go? But in the entrepreneurial spirit, we've mitigated our risks: even if the format doesn't sing, the session can only be a hit given the participants. (Thanks to Sean O'Malley for helping us connect with a lot of these folks.)

The rather impressive panel:
*Rashmi Sinha, moderator. SlideShare CEO
*Robert Acker, panelist. LiveSpot CEO
*Michael Cerda, panelist. cc:Betty CEO
*Nilofer Merchant, panelist. Rubicon Consulting CEO

The smart startups:
*CrowdVine, social networks for conferences
*dbTwang, Dogster for guitars
*Doodle, online scheduling magic
*Maestro Market, a Web 2.0 speakers' bureau
*Magoosh, customized test-prep

The session is on Weds, April 1 from 10:50 - 11:40a. If you still need a free pass for Web2Open, you can register using the code websf09opn. There's more general event info on the Open website.

Dave McClure, Internet Subscriptions alive and kicking

While I was watching the closing part of this interview with Dave McClure in which he talks about the future he sees for subscription models on the internet (bright if you were wondering) I also came across Niall Harbison's post entitled "Subscriptions to Launch On App Store Tomorrow".




All good to hear and read as we prepare for the launch in April of the beta dbTwang.com service - which is a subscription based business. keith

dbTwang Facebook ads metrics @6th February 2009

In my last post on this topic I mentioned that I had split out adverts that were running to all M&F in 18 plus by gender and more defined age ranges. So each ad went from 1 variant (can you have a single variant!) to 8. That was easily done - Facebook gives you the option of Build Similar Advert and pre-populates it.

Overall stats in bold with last week in brackets

• 420,329 (304,574) impressions across 29 ( 8) adverts
• 274 (154) click throughs (the ads range from .42 (.08) of a percent to .02 (.02) of a percent click throughs)
• e53.31 (e32.72) spent to date
• 68 (39) of those visitors signed up to be notified 25% (25% )
• Therefore each of those has cost us e.78 (e.83)

Learnings from this:

• You can see adverts improve dramatically in their click through rate with this kind of segmentation
• Our signup rate has not changed - we will be making a small change to over the weekend to add a hint of what we actually will be offering. The 25% signup is for an unspecified service which is a bloody miracle. (the signup rate, not our existance!)
• The highest clickthrough rates was 45-65 Males in the UK at .42%.
• This is also the demographic which we are targeting with our subscription service (so some validation there) and they are the smallest segment on Facebook (a younger profile overall) so even with a high CTR the numbers are small.
• Our name and logo have been shown 420 thousand times to a targeted audience for the price of a small advert in a local paper.

FYI some detail from the Ad Manager in Facebook below. You can see some of the ad wording here.

Commentary and feedback welcome please - going through a steep learning curve with this and all tips helping a lot :-)

keith

UPDATE @ 8th Feb:

Working out the metrics for just the signups since the week before (as opposed to the aggregate total). This is more meaningful in terms of tracking weekly performance and the impact of changes on the cost per conversion.

• 115.755 impressions across 29 adverts
• 120 click throughs (the ads range from .42 of a percent to .02 of a percent click throughs)
• e20.59 spent to date
• 29 of those visitors signed up to be notified 25%
• Therefore each of those has cost us e.70

Freemium - startup metrics

I set up a google alert a week ago for this term and am getting some great results back. A conference I came across is Startonomics (link to upcoming one day'er in LA) and I have just watched the video and accompanying slideshow from a presentation by Dave McClure in October 2008.

For any of you in early startup mode with an eye on your business model and visitor conversions this is a great one to give 20 minutes to.

Startup Metrics for Pirates: AARRR! (Startonomics SF 2008)

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: dealmaker media revenue)

Welcome feedback on the LA conference - any readers with experience of their events? Would you go to it? Will you go to it? :-)

keith

HPSU Mentor recommendations?

As part of the package from Enterprise Ireland dbTwang can avail of a mentor from their panel. Anyone reading this got someone they can recommend based on direct personal experience with their own HPSU startup?

No going to bother specifying what we are after - those of you with good mentors know exactly what one feels like and the opposite also holds true :-)

keith