Click To Hit

A somewhat interesting fact has come to light as we go through the hiring process to fill gaps in our infrastructure. One of the key things I personally qualify through the interview process is the fact that a startup usually has a fun, relaxed, results oriented environment that allows participants to acquire equity, and be rewarded for their contributions in making passionate ideas become a reality.

This can be a double edged sword, and although I highlight the benefits I like to make sure the negatives are clearly communicated since it takes a certain personality type to thrive and contribute in this structure. It’s important to note that a startup can also be a hectic, stressful, chaotic environment with a lot of pressure on your adaptive skills to conform and succeed in an ever changing landscape.

When going through this process, it was surprising to me when asking applicants why they wanted to become a part of a startup to hear a few of them state that a flexible work structures was something they found most attractive. Meaning, working from home, leaving early, and taking days off were benefits they expected as compared to their current or previous structured corporate lives that required minimums of work hours on a weekly basis.

I have to disagree, and its import to note that although a relaxed process does translate into a more flexible results oriented “fun” approach to accomplishing goals, due to limited resources the environment is usually more labor intensive. With a vested interest past just a salary, there should be incentive to put in as much effort as possible while still balancing your personal life to offset burnout.

In either event, the important note is to ensure you qualify both the positive as well as negative aspects of a startup work environment so you can find the right people who will be successful in helping the project become a reality.

Wow, take a look at this:

On Domain Monetization

We note that there is a meaningful difference between Domain Tasting and Domain Monetization. Monetization is a straightforward arbitrage between the cost of domain registrations and the revenue from as much pay-per-click traffic as the domain owner can get from people who visit web sites in the domain. It’s a fundamentally sleazy business, since the web sites have no useful content and the way they get the traffic is basically by tricking people, either via typos or recently expired domains. More importantly, the presence of such website makes web-surfing by ordinary users far more difficult and confusing than they should be.

We do not think it is appropriate in this case to make ICANN as a regulator to watch and prohibit the Domain Monetization practices per se. Instead, on behalf of ordinary Internet users, we call upon those commercial enterprises such as Google or Overture to take appropriate measures such as to stop paying for clicks on pages with no content, thereby dealing with a problem that is not limited to typo and expired domains. We’ve seen click arbitrage, people buying Google ads to drive traffic to pages that are simply other Google ads. This kind of self-generating traffic for pay-per-click advertising is confusing and unnecessary for ordinary Internet users and, in the long run, not healthy for the development of Internet as a whole.

Since Domain monetization is a relatively new phenomena, the impact to the ordinary users and the wider Internet community is hard to measure at this point. It seems clear, however, that it does not improve the user experience at all. We think it is worth to keep watching on how it develops and may seek for specific actions when we have clearer understanding of measurable impact.

I haven’t read anything in recent years that didn’t shock me with its ignorance and arrogance more than these three paragraphs. It’s obvious to me this group has no idea of the impact or value Direct Navigation brings to the search market or to Google and Yahoo’s bottom line. Direct Navigation is a true form of search; it’s a way for a user to find a search term through the address bar of their browser without having to wade through pages and pages of organic search spam to find what they’re looking for. Although Typo’s and Expired traffic is an exploited portion of the market that has ethical concerns that need addressing, it is a small portion and doesn’t come close to outweighing the benefits the larger percentage of true generic domain monetization pages bring to the search space.

Thankfully there are groups being put together to fight this ignorance …

Since our project’s heading ever so near a public unveiling, I’m making this my inaugural article relating to our startup experiences. Although some details will emerge, don’t expect our whole story to come out until the timing’s right, but I hope that you can find a few of these tidbits valuable if you’re going through a startup process yourself.

Some of the most important feedback you’ll receive on your business plan will come from potential investors. The unfortunate thing is that investor feedback, at least at the VC level, can be harsh and is usually comprised of a “no” without much explanation or detail on the “why”. Take a look at Guy’s list of the top 10 lies by Venture Capitalists to understand where I’m coming from, but as a side note also take a look at his list of top 10 lies by Entrepreneurs to understand what to avoid on your side. In both of these articles however, one of the key’s highlighted to acquiring a favorable response from a VC is to ensure you clearly articulate your differentiation in the marketplace.

For us in particular, the User Generated Content monetization market is rife with success stories and failures over the last few years. One thing I don’t think anyone has done well enough is cornered the market on UGC consumer experiences even though a few startups have already been repositioning or sold due to competition in their particular choice of approach. Personally I see a lot of depth in what a consumer experience is or could be, and I break it down in a number of ways. The most important of which is drawing a line between whether it’s about a service or a product. In my mind the former relates more to a particular business or provider, and the latter relates more to the particular purchase where that distinction can end up with very different results.

Two real life examples I can use to highlight this is the difference in approach between yelp.com and epinions.com. One focuses on service providers in geographic locales, while the other focuses on the product itself, yet they are both services we feel we have little in common with. If we aren’t similar to either of them then where do we fit since there’s little perceived real-estate in between? That answer is one we’re working on attempting to articulate in word since we know there’s an unexplored gap between the two that we hope to leverage. Although reviews have traditionally been relegated to the periphery of user content generation with little emotional investment on the part of the reviewer, we feel that has more to do with the platform and the process than their actual interest level.

What this all means is that we have a significant challenge in clearly articulating our differentiation on paper without examples of our ideas in action, and if no one has really done it yet how do we articulate it effectively, especially if a VC is mired in what already exists today? Almost everyone we have had the pleasure of carefully sharing our plans with has provided extremely positive feedback. Someone I highly respect in the 2.0 space even went so far as to say “I think you have a winner here’, which for us meant the world, but I have yet to look at our executive summary and find myself 100% satisfied with the clarity of our message, then again as a typical perfectionist I probably never will.

The biggest thing I can share is that no matter how perfect or flawed your business plan, you are going to have to find the VC that has the square hole to your square peg, so don’t obsess over the details at the sacrifice of the product. Just make sure you explore multiple investment sources that make sense strategically and get help if your writing skills don’t meet the requirement. If your vision is realistic as well as profitable you should find the capital to help make it a reality in no time if you're persistent. No matter what keep at it, in my last startup during the bubble I was turned down by more than 10 VC’s before we were considered final four out of over 1500 business plans by the 11th, so timing and fit mean everything.

If I could ensure you take anything away from this article, it’s that the keys are making sure you understand your vertical well, have passion for what you’re doing and as someone who I highly respect attributed to his personal success… be persistent no matter what.

As I assumed, the whiteboard was never delivered on Friday, it's been postponed until Friday March 30th. I now have to talk to a “Tracey” in the mississauga “Insight” office after a coworker, who didn't appear the least bit interested in helping, stated she was the only person who I could speak with about this order.

Tomorrow, Tracey will receive a call, and hopefully if I pound enough of those ”Easy” buttons at the Staples alter I may actually receive a whiteboard shortly thereafter…

As we went through the office build out, we ended up buying some office furniture from staples which we found pretty cheap yet not bad quality at all. A couple of examples would be the desks and the office chairs, where for a leather manager’s chairs $69 CDN was a fantastic deal. I guess the only bad experience I’ve had with Staples Canada is their online store, and the frustrating story that started on February 9th when I ordered a whiteboard…

I went online, and when comparing a few retailers found their pricing for a decent sized 4’ by 6’ whiteboard to be competitive at just over $100… comparable sizes from other suppliers ranged from double to triple the pricing so I was pretty happy I found a good deal. Staples promised next day delivery so I decided to go for it.

The next day I get a call from a very nice lady stating the whiteboard was on backorder, and I’ll have it delivered in about a week and a half. I thought why not, no super rush so no problem. A week and a half goes by; the Friday February 16th comes and goes, no whiteboard, no phone call. Hmm, that’s strange; they’ve been very responsive so far, so on Monday February 19th I give them a call and spoke with a nice gentleman who tells me the whiteboard was on backorder, but they do have stock now and it will be delivered on Friday February 23rd. Great, I thought, so I went about my business working on all the myriad of things that had to get done and next thing I knew it was Tuesday February 27th before I realized that they still hadn’t delivered the whiteboard. I gave them another ring, spoke with someone… “The whiteboard was on backorder. It will be delivered Friday March 2nd. We’re sorry for the inconvenience, but it is showing up in stock now and you will receive it this time”. Although it's a little funny, I have to admit I was also getting a little frustrated by this point as well.

I had been so consumed by work that it was Wednesday March 14th before I was reminded of the elusive whiteboard again…  of course no deliveries on either Friday since my last communication, nor any phone calls. So I call them up and this time, understandably, a little miffed to say the least. The response I get? “Sorry sir, the whiteboard was on backorder, but they have stock now and it will be delivered on Friday March 16th”… yeah right… I explained that this was the 4th or 5th time I’ve heard the exact same story, and the person tells me “You’re right, I’m not exactly sure why but *someone* at the warehouse keeps delaying your order by a week every week. Let me look into it and call you back” Thankfully this time I did receive a phone call a couple of hours later “The Mississauga location that was earmarked to make your delivery has been out of stock, and although we're showing a shipment being received on January 27th, it was never delivered so we’ll call you when we receive stock.”

Yesterday, Tuesday March 20th I gave them a call to check on the status “Sorry sir, the whiteboard was on backorder, but we do have them in stock now and you WILL receive it this Friday march 23rd”… <sigh>“If you have it in stock, why can’t you deliver it tomorrow instead of Friday?”… “Sorry, the order is locked so I can’t change it, but I am showing it in stock so you will receive it this Friday”

I’m not holding my breath….