Andy Boyer

I stumbled across a cool little search engine in beta, called Viewzi.  Now I'm not making this out to be a Google killer or anything, but it's a kind of fun way to troll through web sites if you are looking for a visual representation of the page.

My favorite of their searching options was the "Web screenshot" view.  Now, my take is that this will be less helpful for certain types of searches than others.  For example, I think it did better with a search on Cristiano Ronaldo (below) than the Georgia-Russia conflict (above).  And the algorithm isn't perfect.  When I searched on my own name, it at first attached me to the usual places, but then attached me to a bunch of web sites with "Spring Creek" in the name.  So, it was a good effort to look at say, AndyBoyer.com, see a link to SpringCreekGroup.com and make that connection, but then it took it to far when it surmised I also must be part of SpringCreekFishing.net. 

But I'm not here to criticize.  It's kind of cool to play with, and there are a few target markets I'm sure they are already very popular with.  Check it out at Viewzi.com

I encourage everyone to take a quick trip over to Qvisory.com,.a extremely socially conscious and responsible project headed up by Eileen Quigley, the former head of RealNetworks' philanthropic arm, RealImpact.

Dubbed, "Tools for life, " the site helps young people (and old ones too) achieve their work, money and life goals.  Here's what they said in a recent email:

Our mission is to help young people build their economic future and gain more control over their lives. Today’s 18 to 34 year-olds face significant challenges in our evolving economy. We’re providing them with information and tools to help manage and meet their money, work, and health goals. And we’re advocating for change to ensure that their voice is heard in Washington, DC, in board rooms, and in state capitols.

I have long been an advocate of our school system shifting gears and actually teaching things that people need to know - little things like how credit card companies make money, how to fill out tax forms, why interest only mortgages are a bad idea, what happens if you eat fast food and chips every day, etc....So, I think this is a great project.  Check it out and let me know what you think.

Bonanzle, a young and exciting company we recently started working with, just received a fantastic review from Ecommerce-Guide.com.

An alternative to Craiglist and Ebay, Bonanzle is designed to make it easier for people to buy and sell products online.  Given the state and direction of the economy today, any way to make it easier to move used merchandise is positioned to do well.  Some choice quotes from the article:

"You get Bonanzle — an eBay alternative that is quite simply, the best I've seen in my four years of reviewing and writing about start-up marketplaces aimed at taking sellers away from eBay."

The Bonanzle platform was designed in-house from the ground up, so not only does the site look very different from other alternative sites, but this is the reason why the tools and features on this site are so radically different.

The best way to experience Bonanzle is simply to log on and try it. What you will find is that Harding and his team of self-titled "action-minded experts" have managed to offer sellers more features in this one site than any alternative to date, yet keep the entire site and selling process simple, compact and super-easy to use.

Check out the whole article, and please Digg it or add it to Delicious if you would be so kind.

Seattle Craigslist is a favorite place for millions of people to buy and sell used items online.  As they say in their tagline, Seattle Craigslist "provides local classifieds and forums for jobs, housing, for sale, personals, services, local community, and events."

 I've recently come across an alternative to Seattle Craigslist, at www.bonanzle.com.  (Full Disclosure - I like their idea so much, I am helping them with some marketing.)

While Seattle Craigslist is simply a text based classifieds section, Bonanzle is built on Ruby on Rails, and offers easy image upload, advanced communications between buyers and sellers, easier ways to create stores, and a host of other useful features.

So if you use Seattle Craigslist, and are looking for an alternative with more bells and whistles, check out Bonanzle, and let me know what you think.

Seattle Craigslist Alternative Bonanzle

Adotas has a story today about Google's problems monetizing YouTube. 

If you remember, Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.7 Billion, which after complex calucaltions, came out to be a multiple of about $1.7 Billion.  That's not true, they made some money, but the valuation was shocking.  Revenue this year is estimated to be $200 Million.  A fine amount of money. 

But, my goodness the costs must be enormous.  How many trillion streams are they broadcasting at what processor and bandwidth cost?   Wikipedia estimates $1 Million per day on Bandwidth alone.

So now imagine for a second that Google had not bought YouTube, and allowed it to lose money at an astonishing rate.  If YouTube was currently running around the investor community asking people to pony up money to fund the TV watching habits of the next generation.  At some point, the bleeding would have to stop.  Imagine some new scenarios for owners of YouTube:

1. Comcast:  *Poof* All of a sudden it's a paid subscription channel, and no copyrighted broadcasts would make it to air.
2. Microsoft?: YouTube becomes MSN Video
3. An "Orbitz-like" joint partnership between Disney, Viacom, and General Electric: YouTube meets Hulu.
   
4. Fox: The new MySpace Videos?

I guess my point is that next time you are enjoying some free entertainment, be happy YouTube was bought by a company who thought it was a cool idea, and would figure out how to make money on it 5-10 years down the road.

 

 

I'm not one to think that Marketing is free.  I think you can be effective on the cheap, but you have to commit to at least spending SOMETHING.

I liken it to a party.  You need one of these to be extremely great - location, people, food or music - to make it worth talking about.  But no matter what, you need to spend some money on booze to loosen things up.  

Marketing is similar.  You either need extremely great product, creative, design or placement for a campaign to be noteworthy.  Take a boring product, give it a standard design, a few relevant pieces of copy and stick it in tradional media and you have something to put in your portfolio but not much else.

But I digress.

Here's a company who is executing a very nice campaign on the cheap, but they are nailing the creativity and placement attributes.  They spend some cash on shipping, but have potential to have a lot of "free creative." designed for them.  Here is a copy of the email below:

-----------

Hey fellow Magnifier -

We've had amazing response to the Mascot's first week out and about in New York City.   He's  been on the Subway.  He's been to Columbia University.   He came to a Magnify.net board meeting.  He event had a night out with Obama Girl!

Now,  he's ready to travel the world. So,  invite him to  your place - we'll pay the way.

Magnify Mascot will travel first class (fed ex)  to you.   He'll bring a gift (a brand new American Apparel Magnify T shirt),  and he's ready to have a photo take with you.

We're going to feature some of the best photo's,  most glamourous locations,   and most creative channel admins on our homepage over the next few weeks.   So,  if you're looking for a house guest who is flat,  and orange - we've got a guy who wants to visit you.

To apply to be a stop on the Magnify Mascot World Tour:

1).  Send an email to:  WorldTour@magnify.net
2).  Tell us the name of your Magnify.net site(s)
3).  Tell us about some  great photo op (famous tourist destination he can visit?)  or neat photo location.
We've got a backlog of Channel Admin's who have already invited the Mascot to come to their unique and wonderful part of the world -  so get on the bandwagon now.

 We're excited about coming to you!

Best,

Steve,  Simon and the Magnify.net team

 

Here's a picture from our latest Board meeting, with Board Member
David S. Rose giving the Mascot a 'Hi Five.'

PS...  yes,  we know he needs a name... we're still accepting suggestions for the Name the Mascot contest.  Expect  more news shortly on this.

 

(And now we get back to this being a marketing and business blog...) 

This article from the New Republic chronicles mistakes the Clinton campiagn made over the last 15-16 months.  Note: I'm not saying that her campaign is over, but I think if you start as the overwhelming front runner, and then become a candidate struggling for survival, it's fair to say your candidacy has underperformed.

While the article is interesting on a political level, it's also a perfect example of simple business mistakes that can make you lose consumer confidence and fall behind in the marketplace.  A couple of themes that transfer include the following: failure to recognize competitive threats, total lack of long-term focus, not taking care of the people who can give you free publicity, what happens when you choose the wrong message, and how the public turns on you if they think you are dishonest.

Check out the article here. 

One of my favorite things over the past four years has been the UW Business Plan Competition.  As a grad student, in 2005, I had two ideas and we went nowhere.  In 2006, I jumped on another student team and we won "Best Consumer Product."  Last year, I was a first round judge and merely observed the rest.  And this year, thanks to the kindness of some of my favorite people, I was invited to judge the tradeshow round.

Quick moment of clarification for those who don't know anything about this.  Every year, about 60-80 teams submit a business plan.  Some teams are made up of 4 students, some teams are established companies with a student consultant.  It's a broad range, so you see a lot of neat ideas.  These 60-80 teams are whittled down to 32, who then fill a room and pitch their idea to about 100 judges in a tradeshow type setting.  That list gets cut down to 16, then down to 4, and a winner is chosen.  So, Wednesday, we had the tradeshow round of 32, and our job as judges was to "invest" 1000 fake dollars into at least 5 companies.  You are free to split that 1000 however you like, as long as 5 or more companies are given money.  The 16 teams who receive the most money move on to the next round.

Now, my favorite part about this whole competition is that since most of the people you talk to are undergrad, MBA or PhD students, they still have this sense of optimism and naivety.  For example, you ask an undergrad with a dream, "What's your exit strategy?" and his response is pure and good.  He says, "Exit?  We're going to make this a profitable business.  I don't want to sell it.  This is my idea, and it's going to work."  Wow, as a human being, you love hearing that.  But then you have to crush his hopes and dreams, and invite him to join the real world.  You have to tell him, "Well, here's the thing.  If I'm a VC, and I put money in, there better damn sure be an exit.  Because I'm not really in the business of giving you a bunch of coin so you can build a company that doesn't make me rich.  You will sell, and you will sell when I tell you to."

Anyway, the whole thing is great.  Wide eyed, naive students getting creative and coming up with some crazy cool ideas.  It's the kind of place that you walk out of wishing they all would get the money they need to build the product they want to build.  Sure, there were some plain dumb ideas - but only dumb from the standpoint that they were unfundable.  Every idea itself had merit.  Even the ideas with terrible business plans and execution were at least interesting ideas.     

I'm being lazy and not going through the whole list of companies.  But here were some ideas that stood out for me.  I'm not saying all their business plans were great, but the ideas stuck in my head

• A way to deliver medicine through the nose to the brain, to get cancer medicine pas the blood brain barrier.
• A company who developed a new strain of algae that they could farm for oil.
• An exercise device specifically tailored for people in retirement homes.  A kind of "soloflex" for people in wheelchairs.
• A system for capturing excess carbon from buildings to decrease heating costs.
• A career web site specifically tailored to kids right out of school.
• A "match.com" for tradeshow attendees, where you fill out a profile, and the site suggests other people attending the show you should meet with.
• A company that produces organic clothing.
• A sunflower village in Kenya so villagers can earn money.
• A Web site for coaches to help them manage their teams.
• And other cool ideas....

Congrats to all the teams who made it to the next round.   And I hope those teams that didnt make it, continue to tweak their plans and shoot for success.

 

Well alrighty.  My first trip to Ad:tech San Francisco is in the books.  They claimed to have about 300 companies exhibiting, and I think I talked to more than my fair share.  So as promised, here are a few companies I thought were pretty interesting.

1) Without a doubt, the guys at AdReady.com were the hit of the show.   A well funded company with a simple solution for a common problem.  That's a pretty good formula for success.  Plus, I got to chat with a Senior VP.  When a Senior VP is schlepping time on a show floor, it shows something about the caliber of people they hire.  Check them out if you have a few minutes.

2) Before I go into all the companies that I walked away from thinking, "Wow, that's cool," let me throw out a caveat.  There were a lot of future unemployed people at this show.  My bubble alert would go off every time a company claimed they were a "revolutionary way to optimize your ad budgets" and you talked to some 25 year old who had just cut his teeth as a junior media buyer at a 3rd tier ad agency.  I saw a lot of companies, none of which I'll name, that seemed to have the strategy of, "Well we have a Series A, and we'll get some Series B funding in 2010."  Except, there may not be any VC funding in 2010.  Plus, everyone seems to have a strategy of selling to Google, Yahoo or Microsoft in 2 years.  I think the best job you could get right now is a M+A guy at one of those 3 places...  

3) Ok, some things I liked:

• SeeSawNetworks - Rep firm for all types of weird ways to advertise
• SproutBuilder - I didn't quite get the full concept, but looked like a cool way to make widgets 
• LSNMobile - Serving Mobile Ads, but in a cool way and they are profitable.
  
• IdeaLaunch - There were tons of companies offering Landing Page Optimization services.  I can't remember why, but I liked these guys.
  

4) Affiliate Programs and Networks - It was fascinating to me how many new affiliate networks are out there these days.  Equally fascinating was the fact that all the big guys didn't bother to attend the show. 

5) Final shout of annoyance: I'm going to express a little displeasure toward the Rubicon Project.  Only because, I RSVP'd for their party and they didn't have me in the database, so I couldn't get in.  Probably my fault for not noticing the lack of a confirmation email.  You see, since they weren't sure if anyone was going to come to their party, they invited EVERYONE in the world.  Then when more people showed up than they expected, they had to adhere to the RSVP list, which caused an issue of portraying themselves as an internet company who had a internet sign-up form that didn't work.   Now, I'm a nobody, so leaving me stranded outside is no big deal.  And there was plenty of stuff to do so I didn't really care.  But here's where I thought they looked kind of unpolished - the door people even refused to admit an extremely well connected CEO of a pretty strong VC backed company, while their own Marketing Coordinators and their friends drank free Grey Goose.  Bubble alert - when your junior level guys are getting drunk at a party you are hosting, and you don't have anyone senior enough at the door to let in a CEO of a company you should work with, you need to re-evaluate why you are throwing a party.  Let your guys get drunk at home.  Use Ad:Tech to talk to the CEO that wanted to talk to you. Or, I guess you can be that cocky and see if it works for you.  I guess I just wouldn't be that cocky in a recession.

6) Final note: I can only hope the Seattle light rail will be as efficient as the BART.  I was off my plane, on the BART and in my hotel in like 45-50 minutes, for a $5.00 fare.  Compare that to the $50 cab ride I would need to take to get home from Sea-Tac today.  Love that BART.

Here's a neat little web site that you can get lost in for a few hours if you aren't careful.

KillerStartups.com says they review 30+ sites a day, so that database gets pretty big pretty quickly.  The site prolies a wide range of companies, from the goofy to the geeky, and they mostly accentuate the positive.  After all, no start-up isperfect, but you have to root for someone willing to throw it all out on the line like that.  Plus, it doesn't look like you need a +$10k a month PR firm, work at a VC firm or be a close friend of Michael Arrington to be profiled on KillerStartups.com, so it's almost like the "anti-TechCrunch."