Sean M Everett

Be You, Get Rewarded & A Rant On Marketing

Seemingly the entire startup and tech community is at SXSW this week but I don’t feel like we’re missing a thing.

Thing is, it’s a big party, but how many startup’s customers are actually there?

I make consumer apps. Not many “normal” consumers are hanging out chilling at the Interactive sessions this week.

People just don’t get it. Marketing to the tech community is fraught with danger. Mostly because a startup is new and a lot is still broken, un-designed, and not figured out. Your peers are the first ones to notice your faults (and call them out).

Then what do you have? A consumer does a web search for your company and sees potentially negative reviews based on the “experts” picking apart minor details.

I say fuck that. They’re fairweather fans, every day it’s “on to the next one”.

“What? I can only login with Facebook?” what about…what if…

Stop it.

I prefer to do things others don’t do. Here’s a simple example:

@plyfe is going to OWN 3 things:
1. The color purple
2. Made in NYC
3. Swag

Let’s start with #1, purple. Blue is taken by facebook, twitter, foursquare and nearly every company in the Fortune 1000. Red is taken by Pinterest and Path. But who owns purple, the most luxurious of all colors, Charlie Murphy? Hopefully, us.

#2 Made in NYC. Sure, there’s a list of a couple hundred startups on the Made site, sure many have a tiny link in the footer, but who is branding Made in NYC in every visual, graphic, the copy & slang used? Hopefully, us.

#3 Swag. Jay-Z may have invented it, but we’re branding it. When you see or hear hashtag #swag you hopefully think of plyfe first. And this is a subtle, but often misunderstood aspect of branding and marketing for startups. You don’t spam people with your company’s name. You spam them with an emotion, a concept, a state of mind, and let them discover your company on their own.

When you search for #swag on Twitter today versus 6 months from now, hopefully our fam will be the ones driving a huge spike in usage. I’ve already started seeing it happen, from white to black to brown to purple people, and from 20 somethings to gray hairs, a little swagger can bring the world together.

We’re building a Suburban Dictionary in the spirit of this. Talk that talk. Lexicon swag.

So why swag? Because the true definition is finding that eccentricity and uniqueness inside yourself, and having the confidence to own it, regardless of what others think.

Everyone has swag; don’t hide it, show it. The concept of plyfe is for you to be yourself and get rewarded for it. Social media is your voice. Use it, show it, be real, and get stuff for it.

Doesn’t matter if you’re Hasidic, homeless, or a professional athlete, we’re all looking for a little acceptance.

We accept you for you. It’s the best part of you.

http://plyfe.me

*Beta opening to the public on March 19th, 2012

The Long Game of Chess

For the last 30 years of my life I’ve studied deeply various areas of academics and their application.

From highly theoretical proofs of mathematics to subconscious emotional drivers of consumer behavior. From econometrics and pricing theory to the art of writing for both business and literature. From computer engineering to the minimal aesthetics of design and art.

To be called a jack of all trades and a master of none could very well be used to define my expertise. Though I believe that moving throughout these various disciplines over the course of my lifetime has provided me with an extremely critical and discerning eye for doing one thing exceedingly well.

The first 30 years of my life were for gathering the intellectual thread to weave a disruptive tapestry over the next 30 years.

The real chess match has just begun…

Branding

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. And I think I may be circling in on something, but it’s going to take some deeper thought.

I think you start with figuring out an emotion or a feeling you want your brand to stand for. For example, Apple was all about creativity and thinking different. I’m sure you’ve seen the video by now. The entire thing was about a feeling.

And you have to make that feeling blatantly obvious in everything you do, whether that’s a tweet, a design, an email, a landing page, and most importantly your product.

The next step after figuring out the appropriate and specific feeling is to remember a specific time in your own life where you felt that emotion strongly.

Then try to write a summary statement that captures that experience and emotion.

That’s what I’ve got so far…

Animation Is…

…expressing a character’s moment of change.

Like when Eve saw WALL-E in a new light and fell in love.

Via my boy Tragnark

(e)Motion in Apps: Path Case Study

I’ve been extolling the virtues of what I call (e)motion (i.e., motion + emotion) for a bit now and finally, we have a company who gets it. The chart below is from this 40-page deck on Consumer Behavior & Virality that I wrote, and represents a concept similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

The startup that gets it, and incorporated it into it’s complete redesign of their service is Path.

Path 2.0 for the iPhone has been blowing up the internets this week because it took the concepts of (e)motion and applied it to invisible software. For example, upon opening the app after traveling from Dallas to New York City, it automatically sensed that I was in a new location and updated my Path accordingly with a little plane icon.

In addition, they way you add a new moment to Path is by clicking an animated ‘+’ button that explodes out a spinning menu of icons (e.g., location, picture, thought, message, mood, etc). That’s the motion half of (e)motion. The concept was so popular that someone even wrote an open-source library for using it in your own iPhone app (click the link to see an animation).

The other half, emotion, is created through the use of smileys that you click to comment on other’s status updates. The other way they do this is through the art of storytelling. Think of Pixar. How many times have you teared up watching a poignant scene in Toy Story, WALL-E, or Up? They’re trying to do something similar with the poignant moments in our own lives, where you can share these private moments with a small group of your most trusted friends and family.

Together, they’re the only ones I’ve even come across who hit the (e)motion nail on it’s head, and in the process raised the bar for every other startup and consumer-focused app.

Finally, if you’re looking for a little more private emotional outlet in your life, check out CONFIDE.

Tumblr Versus Other Blogging Platforms

I’ve used ‘em all: WordPress, Tumblr, Posterous, Squarespace, etc. So why did I choose to use Tumblr for this, my latest blog?

Simple. It’s more social.

This blog’s only been up for a month or so, with completely new and fresh content, and I already have about the same number of followers as blog posts I’ve written. There’s no other platform that could have happened on (and this are new followers, not people I already know).

To The Two

This one is for two people who saw something in me that I saw in myself, when everyone else dismissed me as just “some farm boy from Iowa”.

The first is Beau Burgess.

After graduating with two internships from a premiere Fortune 500 consulting company, and two of the hardest degrees from one of the hardest schools, I had no job. Feeling hopeless I fled home to live with parents because I couldn’t afford to support myself. That was my first lesson in humility and I vowed that if someone gave me a chance, I would cherish it and work my ass off.

Beau hired me as a Sales associate for a clothing retail store in Dallas. He saw something in me and we became quick friends. Cut to a year later and after a few promotions I was the Store Manager of one of the top 3 stores in the company. I also met my first true love there. Beau taught me how to manage and motivate employees who didn’t care and didn’t want to be there.

After awhile at the helm I got a chance to interview for the Management Consulting job I was hoping to have coming out of undergrad and quickly was hired.

His name is David Seitz. He saw an energy inside me and helped point it in the right direction. On day 3, I was advising one of the top 5 senior executives of a $20 billion dollar corporation. David taught me about process, project management, do-check-review, and the subtleties of soft language when advising very important people not used to being told what to do. After a few short years I was one of the fastest promoted associates, rising from Analyst to Senior Analyst to Consultant.

I’ll never forget you both, because you took a chance on me when no one else did. So to you, I tip my hat, and if there’s ever a chance to repay the favor, I’m merely an email away.

You gave me hope at two points in my life when I had none.

My Favorite Designs

I spend a lot of time writing about software and the mechanics of how (I think) things should work.

But what I haven’t done is share all the time I spend looking at analyzing designs, down to the pixel, which is inherently more subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right?

So here are my favorite designs, by element, over the last few months or so (I’ve excluded all our own team’s work):

iPhone App Icon

by @zane_david

iOS User Interface

by @musHo

UI Element

by @Cazoobi

Website Homepage

by @f_i

Dress Shirts!

by @MathieuBrg

Communicating With Analogies

I follow startups and technology like most men follow sports. The only difference is we don’t have ESPN, so it’s harder.

Funding Now Or Later & When To Launch?

First A Few Disclaimers

One of the readers of this blog, who shall remain anonymous for confidentiality purposes, emailed me questions similar to the title of this post yesterday. He’s building social software that some investors have shown interest in. Part of this post was my reply to him.

Also, while I’ve raised six figures in Angel funding, that was in an entirely different market (2007) than today. That said, I’m fairly well read and keep up with the state of the funding environment vigorously, but you should consider my advice below based on these caveats.

Funding Now Or Later?

Get the funding now if you can get it. The initial Angel round isn’t that hard these days, comparatively speaking, of course. Series A is proving much harder, however. And a down round (a lower valuation at a later funding round) won’t help future funding if you don’t show valuation growth at Series A.

Thus, I was thinking that minimizing, to a point, your current valuation could actually be a positive, because you’re more likely to increase the valuation for Series A and Series B. So, I’d take the money, sprint as fast as you can, then raise more (series A) when you’re getting close to needing it. With VC investment seemingly slowing and becoming more competitive, it seems to make sense.

How Much Do I Raise?

Obviously it’s all situation specific, but most people in the industry tend to think enough cash flow to last about 18 months in exchange for 10% to 20% equity, at least for the first few rounds. And typical Angel investments seem to be in the $250K to $750K range.

Lightbank’s Deal Terms

One of my last MBA classes at the University of Chicago was with Erik Lefkofski and Brad Keywell, the founders of Groupon, Lightbank, Echo Logistics, Starbelly, etc. They actually told us their typical deal terms. I like transparency, especially in free market economies, so here you go:

Lightbank has very little term sheet noise (i.e., preferences), but you have to give up 33% to 50% of your business in common stock. Lightbank’s sweet spot is investing approximately $500,000 for pre-revenue businesses with a great idea (typically between $200,000 to $1,000,000).

This gets pretty complex pretty quickly so my advice to you is to just hire an amazing entrepreneurship law firm. One of my best friends I’ve known since diapers works for one, and they’re pretty amazing. One of their clients made a little video game you might have heard of: Halo. Oh, and they also made the Call of Duty franchise.

I asked Eric how much money it takes to build a good internet company, both the technology and the marketing/advertising. He said it takes at a minimum $300K, but typically takes closer to $500K. Here’s a little inside information (shh…):

Lightbank will typically invest between $200,000 to $1,000,000 (typically $500,000) for between 33% and 50% of your startup in the form of common stock, but does not have any restrictive covenants.

When To Launch

Now that you’ve built your baby, when do you let her out into the world?

I say release the MVP ASAP, at least to friends and family. Because unless it’s an iPhone app, screw what people say about the launch. The hard part is growing it after initial traffic spike.

But, if it is an iPhone app, you want to get in the top 100, 50, 10, 1. And the only way to do that is from a large amount of simultaneous downloads in the shortest amount of time possible. Once you get on top of the charts, you’re much more likely to get discovered and your adoption rate will accelerate.

How Do I Break The Top 100?

I met with an internet friend recently during his book tour through NYC (he just published a design book). He had an interesting strategy that worked out well for him. He amassed a list of pre-orders through Kickstarter (you could do this through an email sign-up form, if you’re selling software and not a book), hired people through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, and on launch day these “employees” ordered each of the pre-ordered books from Amazon.

What did this do? It shot him up to the number 1 book in his category on Amazon, thereby getting more exposure.

So yes, the launch is important to get an initial traffic spike (and timing everything just right is extremely important), but the hard work sets in a few months after that when nobody wants to talk about you anymore.

And that period separates the men from the, uh, Muppets.