Colliding with Rory Sutherland

Yesterday Rory Sutherland paid our startups a visit to share his wisdom, experience, and humorous (yet informative) stories. We decided to turn what would have been a private session into a very public, and live, Google Hangout. Rory spoke about a wide range of topics, including a $300 million online button and why airports compel us to buy Toblerones. You can watch the whole 2 hour session here, and as this was such a successful experiment, we will definitely be hosting more Hangouts (with even better recording equipment). 

Check back tomorrow for some of Rory's key topics, book recommendations, and tips for startups.

Collide With Rory

Tomorrow, Collider12 and the startups are having a group session with Rory Sutherland at Ingenious Media.

What makes this session a little different is that you'll be able to join in too, as we're hosting a Google Hangout. From 11am on May 1st, you'll be able to put your questions to @Rory with the hashtag #CollideWithRory, or by joining the hangout at 11.30am. It will be broadcasted on Google+ and YouTube. This is a pretty special opportunity, so get thinking and get asking.

Workshop with Matchbox Mobile

Last week the Collider12 startups had a workshop with Andrew Farrell, co-founder and CEO of Matchbox Mobile. He shared a few of tips for startups based on his experiences during the last eight years.

Sales and Relationships

• In order for any business to grow, you need someone selling your business, making a decent sales team essential.
• You need to have people speaking for you and about you at every opportunity, and this can only happen by meeting lots of people
• By building rapports you can create a mutual understanding and genuine friendship that could take you anywhere in the future.
• People can transcend companies and so one relationship could be your key to many different opportunities.
•  Never turn a meeting down, you never know where it may lead.

Maintain standards and Reputation

• The individual values behind the reason you started need to be maintained and shared with employees and customers. If you lose this vision, you’ll lose direction and your principles.

Hire the Right People to Build the Right Team

• The single biggest challenge I have ever faced is trying to hire the right people. Perhaps it’s a bit simplistic, but I've always found the pub test to be the best way to decide. If you could go and have a beer with them and happily chat for a couple of hours, 90% of the time they’re going to be the right fit for you. You need a rapport that goes beyond their skills and talents, as a time will come where you need to depend on them.
• I don’t think it is cheating to hire friends, as long as they have the skills you need.
• If you have to offer them an incentive to join your startup, they aren’t the right person to join your startup. You need people who are committed and that have the passion and interest already there. Once you start offering incentives, you have to keep it going which is a commitment you cannot make.
• How you manage your mistakes with the customers (as, trust me, everyone makes mistakes) is can be incredibly important. We have made some of our strongest relationships by handing our failures very well. You have to share your successes and failures with your customers as well as your team.

Adapt to Change

• There will always be multiple and rapid changes in and around your business that you will need to adapt to.
• There will also be changes to how your product is used, what your product is, and changes within your company. If you cannot evolve with these changes, you are going to fail.

Make Decisions

• The worst thing you could do is to make no decision at all. It is far better to make a wrong decision as that’s all part of the process to the right decision. By recognising your mistakes you can correct your course to get on the right path to success.

Being the cleverest person in the room counts for nothing if you’re unable to manage your business:

• Taking care of the business is your number one priority.

Monday Wake-Up

Here is the startup equivalent of the chicken and the egg to get your mind back on track after the weekend.

How do you get customers without investment, and how will you get investment without customers? Here at Collider12, Matthew thinks that gaining customers should be your number one priority, but we'd be happy to hear your thoughts too.

Quick Q&A with WhichSocial about The Big Data Show

Avin Wong from WhichSocial, one of our startups, recently spoke at The Big Data Show. I managed to grab Avin for a quick Q&A to find out how it all went.

Hi Avin, thanks for taking the time to chat. Firstly, what was your speech about?

Our topic was "How internet retailers can measure & increase social media ROI through Big Data predictive modeling". I discussed how to measure and improve social media ROI. Then our data expert and friend, Dr Robert Pietruszkiewicz  (MD of  SDART.co.uk) talked about how you can use big data predictive modeling to increase sales.

What two facts would you like people to take away from your talk?

1. Measuring social media ROI is not difficult; you just need specialist software like WhichSocial.com

2. Crunching historical analytics data is pointless, internet retailers have to "Act when it matters", i.e. act instantly when their social ROI software picks up trending patterns through their social channels.

Were you nervous?

I wasn't nervous. In fact, I spoke even better when more people turned up and started asking questions.

What questions were you asked by the audience?

The audience mainly asked about how our technology works, i.e. how the software tracks social media ROI.

 How has the experience helped you?

The experience has motivated me to keep on giving pitches, and I am aiming to speak at even bigger events.