Targeted Marketing Has Never Been Easier . . . or Cheaper!!

The marketing world has substantially evolved over the last few years, in terms of how you can target prospective customers for your business.  Before, your primary options for targeting, were largely around demographics or geographies through media buys on larger websites and ad networks, or through keywords through the search engines.  But, the major social networks have made some very interesting strides in the last couple years, in terms of letting advertisers drill down like a laser beam on very narrow targets within their broader audience.  Below are a few examples of what I am talking about.

Read the rest of this post in Forbes, which I guest authored this week.

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10 Things You Need to Know When Responding to RFPs

If you are in the B2B space, odds are you will need to respond to requests for proposals (RFPs) from prospective customers throughout your normal course of business. But the RFP process is typically filled with potential pitfalls along the way. Here's how to identify, and more importantly, avoid them.

Read the rest of this post in Entrepreneur, which I guest authored this week.

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Lesson #222: Measuring Your Company’s Culture Can Pay Big Dividends

Building the right culture for your startup is a critical driver of its success or failure, as we learned back in Lesson #13.  It is one thing to talk about building the right culture.  It is an entirely different thing to actually know you have built it.  I recently got a crash course on this subject from my colleague Barry Saltzman at Culture Measures, a culture consulting firm, who taught me that measuring culture has become a science.  And, once harnessed, it can help turn culture into a competitive weapon for your business.  I wanted to share those learnings with you.

To start, and to be perfectly clear, your company’s culture is a direct driver of your business performance (e.g., customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, productivity).  The better your culture, the better your business output (e.g., throughput, variable costs) and business outcomes (e.g., net profit, equity value) will be.

But, how do you measure culture?  Barry, suggests there are four key drivers of a company’s culture: (i) your people (and them feeling empowered, being trusted and getting engaged); (ii) your process (which should be adaptable with continuous learning and improvement); (iii) your clarity (in terms of clearly communicating and understanding the company’s vision and values); and (iv) your execution (in a way that is productive, accountable and collaborative).  Unless you can clearly track and measure these four different areas, and the numerous sub-categories therein, you really won’t know what is working, and what is not working, with your company’s culture.

If you feel you have a culture issue in your company, companies like Culture Measures can help you clearly identify where the problems lie.  Or, you can try to solve these items on your own by: (i) introducing the concept and survey to your team and getting all issues aligned; (ii) reviewing the results with the management team; (iii) appointing an in-house culture leader to plan steps to address issues raised; (iv) build a metrics dashboard to measure your success over time; (v) make sure goals are set and are in line with the company’s priorities and financial metrics; and (vi) roll out the program to  your employees with clear near term and long term objectives.

If you do this right, not only will your culture and employee productivity improve, but it will lead to data-driven buy-in from your senior management to know they are getting a clear ROI on their culture investment which is perfectly in alignment with the company’s goals.  Pretty cool stuff, bringing hard data to a formerly hard to measure area of the business.

For future posts, please follow me on Twitter at: @georgedeeb.

Lesson #221: The Internet of Things is Coming, Hang on to Your Hats!!

I recently completely a deep dive on the Internet of Things (IoT) space for one of my clients, and I was blown away with what I learned.  If we think the consumer Internet as we know it is a big deal, IoT will become an even bigger deal, over time.  Gartner predicts the IoT industry to be $1.9TN in size by 2020, and McKinsey thinks it could be as large as $6.2TN by 2025, in terms of economic impact.  Yes Trillion!!  Intel forecasts 15BN devices will already be connected to the internet in 2015 alone.  That's a lot of demand for embedded smart modules, cloud computing, connectivity, data security, mobile apps and analytics reporting alone.

To be clear, when I talk about IoT, I am largely talking about devices connected to the internet (e.g., think a Nest thermostat), or Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technologies.  IoT applications run across these primary sectors:  Consumer, Commercial, Industrial, Buildings, and Government.  And, get further segmented across these major industries:  Retail, Transportation, Security/Safety, IT, Manufacturing, Automotive, Energy and Healthcare, to name a few. Research suggests Manufacturing and Healthcare are the largest two of these industries, in terms of potential and investment to date.  From there, it drills down even further.  For example, in the Security/Safety space, it splits out into Real Time Alerts, Asset Tracking, Fire Safety, Environmental Safety, Elderly/Child Protection, Power Protection, Supply Chain Visibility and beyond.

So, don't try to be all things to all people, find your sizeable niche and dominate it.  Understanding a lot of big companies are also carving out their niches.  As examples, in just the smart home space, niches are being created around lighting control (Hager, Legrand, Leviton, Lutron, Matsushita), access control (Honeywell, Siemens, Tyco, UTC), connected home security (Alarm.com, Bosch, Kwikset), energy efficiency (Belkin, Nest), home automation (e.g., Smart Things) and appliance control (GE, LG, Maytag, Samsung).  So, even if you pick a good niche, odds are some big companies are already trying to figure out solutions in that space.

And, with this kind of next-generation market opportunity, it is attracting a lot of investment from a lot of big players.  In terms of financial investors, over $1.6BN was invested into IoT companies by venture capital firms in 2014 alone.  And, as for strategic players putting a lot of investment into IoT opportunties, it is an impressive list of expected companies, including Apple, AT&T, Bosch, Cisco, Eaton, Emerson, Ericsson, Fujitsu, GE, Google, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, Honeywell, IBM, Intel, Johnson Controls, Lantiq, Microsoft, NEC, Oracle, Phillips, PTC, Qualcomm, Rockwell, Schlumberger, Schneider Electric, Siemens, Texas Instruments,Tyco and Verizon, to name just a few. So, get ready for a slug fest from a lot of well-funded companies that are also trying to get their piece of the overall IoT pie, across all industies.  These will most likely be the companies you sell your successful IoT startup, down the road.

The IoT is going to change everything.  In your homes, lights will automatically turn on and off as you drive your car in and out of your driveway.  In buildings, fire departments will exactly know who is in the building and where they are, in case of emergencies.  In corporate offices, window shades will automatically open and close based on the weather, to save on energy costs.  In restaurants, food will be re-ordered based on how many times the refrigerator door is opened or closed.  In logistics, police will be immediately notified if trucks veer off course.  In healthcare, drones will deliver medical supplies faster than ambulances. In factories, data from parts usage will predict when a machine will break, and automatically order the part and a repairman before it does. As you can imagine, life in 2025 will look materially different than it looks in 2015, as the pace of technology change accelerates, thanks in large part to the coming IoT boom.

So, if you are a startup looking to hitch your wagon to a rising tide, grab the coattails of the coming IoT tidal wave, and hang on for the ride of your life.

For future posts, please follow me on Twitter at: @georgedeeb.

Mark Suster's "Venture Outlook 2016"

We just read Mark Suster's recently published "Venture Outlook 2016" and needed to share it with all of you.  Mark is a successful serial entrepreneur turned venture capitalist at Upfront Ventures, and author of the Both Sides of the Table blog.  Mark's post, linked above, is jammed packed with great stats about recent tech valuations and whether or not we are in the middle of another internet bubble, with valuations ahead of themselves. SPOILER ALERT:  Mark says we are.

Directly quoting Mark's high level outlook for 2016:

1. "I suspect 2016 will be the year that the over heated private tech markets cool but I’ve been saying that for 2 years so who the fuck knows. I do know the markets are over valued but one individual actor can’t change market prices, which is why the Bin38 scandal was always a red herring. I will keep funding early-stage technology companies who have a vision to fundamentally change some part of an industry over a normal (8-12 year+) time horizon. There are no quick bucks in venture outside of bubbles.
2. We will continue to see over-funding of late-stage venture financings until the bloom comes off the rose and then I predict rational non-VCs will return to their day jobs chasing returns in other corners of the financial world and we people who only know how to do venture will continue doing just that.
3. The rise of crowd-funding as a viable alternative to VC will continue to grow unabated. Too much capital will be allocated to this channel relative to its value until the next downturn when many unsophisticated investors will be burned or until the SEC begins to crack down on the less reputable platforms or investors in these platforms. I suspect this won’t pop until after 2016 when retail investors tire of the promise of easy money in tech.
4. In the meantime, the arc of technical progress will continue whatever the interim valuation scorecards of startups show. Technology continues to have profound impacts on society and industry and will continue to capture an increased portion of the total economic pie. And I suspect for the long-term venture capital will play an important role in helping support great entrepreneurs."

Be sure to also read Mark's great SlideShare presentation on this same topic:

Final venture outlook 2016 from Mark Suster

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So, You're a Startup CEO, What Do You Do All Day?

Chief Executive Officer? Chief Visionary? Chief Cheerleader? Chief Salesman? Chief Funding Officer? Chief Communications Officer? Chief Team Builder? Chief Lightbulb Changer? Chief Coffee Maker? Yup, all of these titles apply to the role of a startup CEO. It is perhaps one of the hardest jobs to do in the business world, given the wide range of skills required to excel. This is one of the reasons only 1-in-10 startups actually succeed, as it takes a really special person that has the right combination of skills and startup DNA. In many ways, it is a much harder job than a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. 

Here are the core skills a startup CEO needs.

Read the rest of this post in The Next Web, which I guest authored this week.

For future posts, please follow me on Twitter at: @georgedeeb.