Alex Iskold, the CEO of Adaptive Blue has a great post on events.  It’s worth a read for any startup thinking about Demo, TechCrunch, E-Tech or any of the other conferences and events out there.

I’ve done a _lot_ of tradeshows and events in my time (30+ at a rough guess) and attended even more.  They range in size from User Group table-top events to humongous monsters like E3, NAB (the National Association of Broadcasters annual show in Vegas, ~120,000 attendees) and CeBit (second largest in the world back when I did it).

While the kind of events Alex is talking about aren’t exactly the same
as a typical tradeshow, there’s plenty of commonality in the goals: get
noticed and sell somebody on something.

So after reading Alex’s post, I figured I could share some useful information.  I thought twice about it — don’t want to be too kind to the competition — but here it is.  I’ll use the term event and tradeshow interchangeably — most of what I’ll talk about applies readily to either.

Fact:  Most companies handle events very poorly.

It is all too easy  for a show to become the worst kind of marketing event.  What’s the worst kind?  A "get our name out there" event.  That’s crap and a waste of money.  If you have a marketing person and they ever say this to you, beat them with sticks.  Getting your name out there does nothing WHATSOEVER for you or your company.  You go to a tradeshow to accomplish something specific:

• Sell your product to customers
• Strike deals with partners
• Sell your company to investors
• Get press coverage that drives any of the above

You need to decide which one you’re going to pick and prepare accordingly.  You can pick more than one, but only when you get the hang of it.

There are plenty of ways to screw up an event, but nail your focus and you’re at least pointing in the right direction.

Fact:  Even after agreeing with Fact #1, most companies handle events poorly.

There are lots of ways to completely screw things up.  Here’s my top 10 sins list for your consideration:

Sin #1:  No signage — who are you and what do you do?

Sin #2:  Bad signage
    (a) Keep it simple, clear and readable
    (b) Find a designer.  Even a bad one will probably be better at this than you
    (c) No handwritten anything EVER

Sin #3:  No "flow" planning. What do you want people to do when they hit your booth/tabletop.  What order do you want them to do things in?  Is it obvious from the layout?  What are the focus points of the booth?  Where can a customer get information?  For example, if you want them to watch a demo and then register, don’t put the registration bit (with your fancy giveaways) in front of the demo bit.

Sin #4:  Not engaging everyone that stops at your booth.  You’re there to meet people — don’t let them just walk away without knowing who they are and how to reach them.  Once they leave your booth, they’re gone.

Sin #5:  Not tracking leads.  Figure out a system for tracking who came to the booth and what they were interested in.  Crummy notes on your palm or the back of a biz card are a bad idea — capture that info!
Sin #5A:  Not qualifying leads.  The point is not to collect the most names, it’s to collect the most USEFUL names within the context of what you are trying to do at the show.

Sin # 6:  Know where your key people are at all times and know how to reach them.  If an investor wants to talk to your CEO and you can only mutter "Umm.  S/He should be right back", you’ve blown it.

Sin #7:  Not reading people’s name tags.  Sometimes it won’t tell you anything, but quite often it will.  Look before you speak.

Sin #8:  The wrong kind of enthusiasm.  Cut back on the redbull.  Some folks get waaaaaay too aggressive at trying to stop people as they walk by.  Bad idea unless people think you’re entertaining, like me

Sin #9:  The unmanned booth.  This is a big one.  Make sure someone is at your booth WHENEVER the hall is open.  Every show I have ever been to, large or small, has had empty tables and booths.  Some of the most productive encounters I’ve ever had at an event occur in the slow times when not many people are in the hall.  A lot of funding-related events have a main stage that is "on" much of the time, with set hours for looking at exhibits.  But savvy individuals frequently cut out of the main event to explore exhibits in detail.  And if no-one from your company is manning your booth, you won’t know that

Sin #10:  Follow up. This really is the deadliest and least excusable sin of the lot.  Follow up IMMEDIATELY.  Not in a week, not in two weeks, not never.  Now.  These leads will quickly go colder than a penguin’s butt at hatch time (you did see that movie, right?).  So get on it and get going.

So that’s my top 10 sins list.  How about throwing you a bone, I hear you cry.  Okay.  Here are some thoughts:

1)  Go to some big tradeshows.  Walk the floor.  Which companies pop out at you and why?  Be sure to check the mini-booths in the back of the hall.  Most of them will suck — good lessons in what not to do.

2)  No matter who you are, assume no-one knows you or your product.  They need to be intrigued from a distance.  A simple monitor on a table-top is the equivalent of being a bread-roll on a steak and seafood buffet table — you’re not what anyone sees first.  Signage is critical.  It needs to be simple, clear and readable by a myopic octagenarian from a distance of 10-20′.

3)  Practice what you pitch.  Everyone at the booth HAS TO KNOW THE PITCH.  Identify your key points and get everyone on the same page.

It’s a lot of work — think releasing a product — but if you don’t do it, you can be sure your competition will…

Categories: Old Posts
292 Comments »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2007/07/31/my-002-on-tradeshows-and-events/My+%240.02+on+Tradeshows+and+Events...2007-07-31+13%3A02%3A00NickN

If you’re looking for an elusive Pownce invite, send us an email (hello at disruptor monkey dot com) or leave a comment.  I only have a handful and it’s first come first served…

Don’t know what Pownce is?  Then you probably don’t need an invite

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The business plan.

<sigh>

As everyone says, it’s "a living document".  But sometimes, it feels more "undead" than living.  I keep thinking we’ve nailed it and put it to bed, only to have it rise again needing a couple more tweaks.  Don’t get me wrong, I greatly appreciate the feedback we’ve had (thanks go to Jock, Jamie, Adam and my long-suffering wife), but it would be great to bury the thing and NOT have it climb out of the ground and chase me down the street the second my back is turned.

There are several factors that exacerbate that zombie feeling:

1)  The Entrepreneur’s Time-warp.  Every day seems like a minute and yet every minute seems like a day.  I barely seem to have blinked and another week has gone by.  But then it feels as though we’ve been working on some things for a really long time.  I’ve lost track of the number of revisions I’ve made to the document at this point and I’m sure there’s more to come.

2)  My Inner Realist.  I am, of course, an optimist about many things.  I don’t think you can be an entrepreneur unless you have a decent streak of optimism (masochism just isn’t me).  But I also try hard to be a realist.  Just because I can build a castle in the air doesn’t mean I’ll move in with my furniture.  There’s tons plenty a chunk a nugget or two in the business plan that I am reasonably certain will play out as described.  But there’s an awful lot that will remain pure conjecture until we gain traction in the market, or die trying.  With the best will in the world, all you can do is fire up the machine and throw stuff at customers.  You have no real control over what they do with it, what sticks and what works.  Or if you prefer the business speak, define and execute the plan, measure results and modify accordingly. 

Now I fully understand the importance of a solid business plan, both in terms of the exercise of thinking through the business and in terms of building a plan of action.  But we all know that most of it will be thrown out as we move forward.  I, for one, would like to be honest about that. 

It would be great to walk in to a meeting with a potential partner and cut right to it: "Here’s what we’re building and why we think it’ll work.  We’ve got a bunch of ideas about how we’ll make money and some more ideas about how we’ll reach our customers.  I don’t have a unique silver marketing bullet figured out yet (mixing up my zombie metaphor), but we see generating revenue as a primary goal, so we’ll try everything within out power to make it work.  In the mean time, we’ll stretch every dollar as though it’s the last and track our results with the determination of a presidential candidate sucking up for votes."

That would feel good.

3)  The evolution of the business.

Despite the Time-Warp, things really are constantly changing and moving forward.  As a result, the ground beneath the plan is in constant flux.  It’s like setting up a tent in a sandstorm.  Everything is moving and some of that motion is caused by the plan itself being caught in the wind.

As close as I am to the business (1 year and counting), there’s a common theme that I see running through everything we’ve done.  But with possible exception of Logan and Andre, I’d bet I’m the only one to see it.

But almost all good Zombie flicks end well.  I’m aiming for a "Shaun of the Dead"-style happy coexistence with this particular Zombie.  We’ll keep you posted.

Categories: Old Posts
272 Comments »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2007/07/30/business-plan-living-document-or-brain-eating-undead-zombie/Business+Plan%3A++Living+Document+or+Brain-Eating+Undead+Zombie%3F2007-07-30+05%3A55%3A07NickN

I often get asked where the name "disruptorMonkey" came from.  That’s usually a polite introduction to "and why the heck did you call your company that?"  To me, the latter part is the more important. 

First things first.  The name itself stems from two things I appreciate:  Marvin the Martian and my daughter.  Surely you remember that Marvin’s ray gun was actually a disruptor? My daughter’s nickname (when she was younger) provides the second half of the name — she was climbing before she could walk.

The name was a spur of the moment creation for a TechCrunch party I attended back in 2006.  I hadn’t decided on my next gig at that point and needed business cards to hand out at the party.  The logo was similar in theme to the one now in use, but nowhere near as cool (thanks Andre!).  I thought it was fun and since it didn’t convey a specific product or business area, it had a lot of flexibility.

It also seemed memorable to me.  Pretty different from all the Web 2.0 Warmr / Coolr / Startr / Finishr style names that I saw everywhere, and definitely not an old school stodgy name either.

The more I used the name, the more I saw that it provoked an emotional response.  Sure, some folks disliked it, but almost everyone had an opinion and they remembered the name.  Most importantly, the name starts a conversation.

As some of you might guess from that last statement, I’m a big fan of Seth Godin.  I have a lot of respect for his concept of permission based marketing.  I believe very strongly that starting a conversation is a fundamental part of marketing and a key first step in transforming individuals into customers.

Back in 2005 Seth had a great piece on why the naming game has changed.  As Seth points out:

A long time ago, the goal of a name was to capture the essence of your
positioning. To deliver a USP, so you could establish supremacy in your
space just with your name. International Business Machines and Shredded
Wheat were good efforts at this approach.

It quickly became clear, though, that descriptive names were too
generic, so the goal was to coin a defensible word that could acquire
secondary meaning and that you could own for the ages. That’s why "Jet
Blue" is a much better name than "Southwest" and why "Starbucks" is so
much better than "Dunkin Donuts".

The days of International Acronym Corp. are behind us.  Seth suggests that the key to a brand and domain name is findability within Google, Technorati, Digg etc.  The uniqueness of a name has become paramount.

Seth goes on to point out that there is a lot of power in the way a word sounds and the feelings it evokes. 

Historically, the market we play in has been anything but fun for the customers.  Data management tools have been painful and burdensome. The products we are building are a radical departure from what has gone before.  The name of the company is a reflection of that fundamental change. 

And last, but not least (really a continuation of an earlier point):  it’s fun!  Business is something we take very seriously.  It’s hard work.  But a little fun in the mix can lighten the mood and help with productivity.  While the brand and the company are clearly related, a whimsical name does not imply a whimsical business.

So in summary (in case this was too much to read), we chose the name disruptorMonkey because:

1. It’s a pure brand: highly unique and owned entirely by us
2. It starts a conversation, and that’s the first meaningful step in a sales process
3. It adds an element of fun to a market that has historically been no fun at all for the people that count: the customers

At the risk of sounding like a Highlander soundbite, there is only one disruptorMonkey.  Let the branding begin.

Categories: Old Posts
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Thanks in no small part to the diligence of our CTO, we are officially entering phase 1 of beta testing. 

Our initial beta is limited to a select few while we make sure everything works as expected — it’s always good to turn the water on slowly if you’ve got a bunch of new pipes in place (yes, that’s based on a bad plumbing experience).

Over the next month we’ll slowly start opening up the beta program to a wider audience.  If you’d like to be part of the program, send an email to pickme at disruptormonkey dot com.

More news soon!

Categories: Old Posts
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