Are Product Days Productive?

Sometimes you just need to knuckle down and get some work done. But what's the best way to do this? And what about all the other stuff you need to do before you can even start? Well, yesterday Seeker had a Product Day, and so I decided to catch up with the Founder and CEO, Daniel Wilson, to see how (and whether) it works.

1.       What is a product day ?

A product day is a full day when we step out of our regular roles to understand what we’ve got in the product, where we are as a business, and what we want to do over the next 3-6 months.  It gives us a chance to think about our tech and our customers at a higher level.

2.       Why did you arrange it?

The main point was to stop any silos of purpose and knowledge building up, as we’re all working semi-independently because there aren’t many of us.  We need to all be working on the same plan, or we won’t make the right sort of progress.

3.       What did you want to achieve from it ?

We took an inventory of features built, we planned the next 3 months major features to build (develop, or dev), everyone knows our goals around sales and investment

4.       What methods did you use and which ones work best?

We used lots of brainstorming, and we had bits of cardboard and sticky notes, which allowed us to move our ideas around afterwards into more logical groupings.  We used the important/urgent matrix (which is one of my very favourite things) to prioritise our work.

5.       What did you actually achieve?

A sense of purpose and a to do list.

6.       What's the next step?

Today the tech guys are sizing the dev work and planning iterations, and I’m starting to work on more heavily on our sales website, because we realised it was a major blocker to a lot of other work we wanted to do.

7.       Any advice you'd give to startups now in hindsight?

Do more prep than you were going to (My section on “state of the nation” was harder to talk through off the cuff than I had thought), and expect to go through fewer items in the agenda: This is really the time to have those discussions that normally get glossed over, e.g. what’s more important, a new feature or fixed bugs, or sales collateral.

Sales Hackathon with Avocarrot

Avocarrot are pioneering a new technique called a Sales Hackathon. The objective is simple; to make personal contact with relevant people in order to secure meetings. In this internet world, people are getting weary and bored of countless emails, and a phone call can make all the difference in standing out from the masses.

For startups, the Sales Hack is an ideal opportunity to refine and develop your elevator pitch to strangers. Also, as I tweeted earlier this week, a secret to startup success is telling every single person you meet about your idea.

For it to work most effectively (and to be fun), this is a great time to gather the team in one place to pool your resources and skills. The team environment creates a collaborative atmosphere and limits the chance of being distracted. Also, one person can research the company and the employees, another can focus on the social media and contact numbers, while another can make the phone call. By having an assembly-line approach, you can be sure you are approaching the right person with the right technology, eliminating time wasting on both ends.

For Avocarrot, this process is used to engage directly with developers of apps who could greatly benefit from their monetising platform.  This method delivers results quickly and drives them toward their commercial goals.

If you want to talk to Avocarrot, pick up the phone and call Conno on 07527870598.

The Report is Dead

As Mark blogged earlier today, the report is dead. Luckily for all those data-hungry people out there, startups have the answer (unsurprisingly). One of the luxuries of being a startup is having the flexibility to evolve and respond quickly to a brand’s problem. By having a small team and flexible hours, startups are able to tackle a problem head on and create an enhanced, bespoke service for those who require it.  Alexandra Dinsdale from Unilever mentioned this issue in our interview with her last week, emphasising just how important this ability can be to large businesses.

This matter is also something Avin Wong from WhichSocial has experienced this week. During a recent meeting with one of his large clients, he created a solution to a pain-point they were experiencing  which is actually exceedingly common amongst online retailers. The problem is what to do with the large amounts of online data that is being collected from sources liked Google Analytics.  All the facts and figures are there, but brands are struggling to know what action to take. Another issue is when to consult this data;  if you are only checking it weekly, or even monthly, how can you possibly react fast enough to the results you are seeing? Monthly reports seem to hail back to an era we are rapidly zooming away from, as right now data needs to be relevant, recent, and responsive.

The alternative to way to accurately measure your ROI on social media is actually very simple. WhichSocial provide real time alerts with actionable insights. That sounds like a lot of buzzwords, so let’s break it down.

1. The brand sets a benchmark for product sales, social media interaction, or influential activity from consumer so they can judge and control what is a large response for them.

2.Whenever these criteria are broken, WhichSocial alerts you. This allows you to respond immediately to the action your shoppers are taking, and respond in an appropriate manner (for example, move the product to the shop’s front page, promote the Facebook post, or contact the influencer).

3. This uniquely allows the brand to know instantly when something goes viral (by their definition), whether it is a new video they posted on twitter, or a product that has been repined.

This kind of compelling and active response is going to only increase in importance as shopping online and social media marketing continue to dominate.

Avin is speaking at The Big Data show tomorrow, so if you're going, be sure to listen to him at 4pm.

Guest post with insider tips from Sokratis Papafloratos

Recently the Collider startups were given a private workshop with Sokratis Papafloratos, who took them through the experience of being acquired by a large brand. This is something that Sokratis has personal experience in as in 2006 he co-founded TrustedPlaces.com, one of the first user-generated review sites in the UK. He managed to raise half a million pounds in 2007, with even more funds in the following year. Things continued to go well for TrustedPlaces as the user interface received high praise and awards, including the Best Startup in the UK in 2009. In 2010 a positive outcome was realised when Yell Group/Hibu acquired the company. Read on to see what insider tips he shared.

"Last week I had the opportunity to discuss the lessons I learned from exiting my first startup (TrustedPlaces to Yell Group/Hibu) with a bunch of startups at the Collider accelerator.

Here’s a list of points I shared with them about the exit process:

Preparing from the start

1. The process starts from day 1 Don’t interpret this as building to flip or being in for the wrong reasons. It may take one year from start to exit, it may take ten. Be thorough on on every transaction and contract, keep your documentation in order and always have exit as an agenda item in your board meetings. (You may not spend any real time discussing, but having it there will focus you and your board).

2. Build relationships early

Selling your business will often be the result of a personal relationship, which you cultivated over a number of years. Don’t hesitate to reach out to competitors and incumbents in your space early on.

3. Skill up You will be dealing with pros on the other side. They know the tricks of the trade and have done this before. You haven’t. The key skill to master is negotiation, which is useful in running your business anyway. I loved ‘Secrets of Power Negotiating’ for its playbook approach and would highly recommend it.

4. Manage your cap table and funding terms This is the hardest one to get right, but you need to be aware that the capital you raise and type of investor you raise from will often dictate possible/desirable outcomes. Watch out for liquidation preferences with >1 multiple and make sure you understand what ‘participating preferred’ means.

Preparing just before the first real conversation

You will rarely get someone calling up saying ‘I want to buy your business now!’. Chances are you will have a few informal chats with someone at the right position, you will receive and send the right signals and at some point things will get serious. The transition from flirting to getting in bed can happen quicker than you think and you need to be ready for it.

5. Think deeply about the outcome you want It seems obvious, but it’s very easy to let this one slip or not think deep enough. As a friend had told me ‘you’ll only sell your business once’. Make sure you get what you want out of the exit.

6. Align with your investors You won’t get the process to work unless everyone is behind it. Have a very clear common outcome agreed with your investors and get as much help from them as you can. Howzat Media (Hugo, Sascha and Lars especially) were incredibly helpful. However, I should have done a better job getting more help from them by preparing better and doing more of the following.

7. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse It may sound silly, you will cringe, but just get it done. Run through the playbooks, visualize the meetings (who you take with you and who will be there from the other side), how you respond to their offer…get as much prep as you can afford and get your investors to help you with it.

Managing the process

8. Understand the journey Here’s what a typical one looks like.

• First conversation
• Deliberations
• Verbal offer
• Emailed offer
• Deliberations
• Final offer on email
• Heads of Terms – this is where things get real. Anything else is foreplay.
• Due diligence and negotiating of documents
• Completion

It took us nearly two months from heads of terms to completion and a similar amount of time for the previous steps.

9. Prepare your lawyer and accountant Give them as much warning as you can so they can be prepared. Talk to them to fully understand the different types of acquisition (asset vs equity sale) and their respective tax implications. Go back to your articles of association and firm up their understanding before conversations get real (points 5 & 6).

10. Get acquirer to agree to cover legal costs if they walk away They should be happy to do this if they’re serious. Agreeing the specifics will be the first hurdle you need to negotiate and agree. Have fun! You only have a million more such points to cover.

11. Negotiate the highest sounding title you can get away with. It will matter when it comes to getting things done in your new organization.

12. Keep everyone focused on the business Not all acquisition conversations end up in actual acquisitions. The biggest mistake you can make is lose focus and distract your team. An aborted acquisition can hurt morale so make sure you share with the people you need to, when you feel the time is right and set the expectations at the right level.

13. Take care of yourself Stay healthy and in shape. Responding to an email the next day won’t kill the deal and most things that seem huge and massively important are often not. Being relaxed and composed will help you run a smoother process and get a better deal in the end.

I have made mistakes on most points above, which I hope the post helps you avoid. If you’ve picked up any lessons yourself or would like to go deeper on anything mentioned here, hit me up on twitter or leave a comment below. This is just an overview on the points I feel are the most important for a first time founder. At some point I’d also like to cover the negotiation and management of the post-acquisition phase and expand on how to create competitive tension before and during the acquisition period."

Thank you Sokratis for letting us share your tips, and for more information, you can visit his site here. 

Location Apps are Making Positive Changes

It's been an important week for location technology, with Foursquare announcing some big changes in their plans to monetise their service by generating revenue outside of it. One of our startups, HitMeUp, have been also making some excellent progress with their social location mobile app. HitMeUp is designed to help you discover what's hot near you, right now. It does this by allowing you to upload your photographs onto an evolving map. The photos will only appear on the map for a limited number of hours, unless they are voted up, which adds time, using the 'Hit' button. This uniquely allows users to see where is trending, and to get involved with events local to them.

Recently, they conducted a treasure hunt where local businesses hid prizes around London in little HitMeUp boxes, and provided their locations using the app. Then the businesses tweeted about the hunt; overall there were over 30 prizes up for grabs, and scattered all over central London. When people found their prizes, they added pictures of themselves with their prize on HitMeUp. Also, in the box was a note that said "if you thought this was a nice idea, take your prize, go and buy another prize to put back in the box, re-hide the box, and give the new location using HitMeUp".  Wonderfully, some members of the public did that. 

Here is some key data HitMeUp collected from their Treasure  Hunt:

1.) During the day they tripled their user base, with 90% of those users returning to the app since.

2.) The app had a minor crash in the morning due to a logging-in bug,  but it was discovered and solved quickly, making the app even stronger.

3.) HitMeUp is perfect for these interactive and quick events, as well as discovering what's going on around you.

These results and the news mentioned earlier prove that location apps are becoming increasingly relevant in this ever-mobile and ever-social future.