starting and positioning your business

STARTING & POSITIONING YOUR BUSINESS...

Michelle Rowan

Wednesday, 7 March 12

• 4 years old

• 2000 ideas pitched to us

• Involved in over 200 companies

• Biggest success? Sold Spreets to Yahoo!7 for $40m

POLLENIZER STORY SO FAR...

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Wednesday, 7 March 12

WHAT WE LOOK FOR IN A FOUNDER...

•What can they investment (time and money)?

•Do they have domain experience or what else do they bring to the table?

•Do they have the right temperament, leadership and motivation for start-ups?

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WHAT WE LOOK FOR IN AN IDEA...

• Can we easily test it?

• Is it a disruptor and is it solving a customer need?

• Is there an easy starting point AND a big vision?

• Is it really interesting?

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THE TEAMThe team is made up of product, customer development,

engineering, design, ops and finance, and we are all creative problem solvers!

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WE’RE OFTEN ASKED... HOW ARE BUSINESSES

FORMED?

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THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE...THROUGH THOUSANDS OF

TINY CONVERSATIONS.

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TIPS FOR...STARTING A BUSINESS

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#1 FAIL FAST

• Can you run manual tests before you build?

• How can you learn from your mistakes?

• Are you embarrassed by your first release? If the answer is ‘no’ you probably waited too long to go live!

• Remember... If you’re not failing somewhere, you’re not trying hard enough!

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EXAMPLE OF A MANUAL TEST FOR WWW.RYUUAPP.COM

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#2 GET ADVICE

•Who is your ideal advisory panel?

• Are there other ways you can access mentors?

• Are you being honest? Don’t pretend to be the expert.

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#3 PASSION

• Are you focusing on what you love?

• Can you find a way to make things more interesting for yourself?

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TIPS FOR... POSITIONING A BUSINESS

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#1 NARROW FOCUS

•What’s the smallest niche you can target?

• Can you start small, then scale?

• Could you capture 20% of the market?

Image via http://www.sprixi.com/i/2119943442?link=html

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#2 LOOK FOR GAPS

•Where are your competitors positioned?

•Where are customer needs not being met?

•Where’s the gap?

Very social

Unsocial

Big $Small $

Banks

Opportunity!

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TOOLS?

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WRITE MULTIPLE BUSINESS CANVAS

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WRITE PERSONAS

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BUILD A PRODUCT BOX

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USE IDEATION TECHNIQUES LIKE BRAINWRITINGHTTP://WWW.POLLENIZER.COM/BRAIN-WRITING/

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FURTHER READING

• ‘Disrupt’ by Luke Williams

• ‘The Lean Startup’ by Eric Ries

• Agile manifesto

• www.leancanvas.com

• Follow interesting people and discussions on Twitter : Jeremiah Owyang @jowyang, @mashable, @techcrunch, @ReadWriteWeb @startupsmart

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TO RECAP...

• Starting...

• Can you fail fast and learn from your mistakes?

•Do you have advisors?

• Are you passionate about what you’re doing?

• Positioning...

• Can you narrow your target market?

•Where do you fit in the marketplace?

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KEEP IN TOUCH

• Pollenizer...

•@pollenizer

• www.pollenizer.com

• Michelle Rowan...

•@mishymash

• www.mishymash.com

Wednesday, 7 March 12