I say to pitch the idea or 'outline' first. Have someone (on the payroll) responsible for sourcing opportunities, then ask your bloggers to pitch ideas. (For consistency's sake - consider bringing them together at a daily or weekly meeting?) From there, pitch the ideas to the brands or agencies ...
We ALL like to pay as little as possible but we're happy to pay $4 for a latte from Starbucks because a, caffeinated beverage is worth more than that at that time and to that person. Prove the value. Prove that your software is worth (either saving them money or making them money) 2X or 5X or 1...
Advantages: 1. speed to grow faster than your competitors and gain a dominant position and marketshare (assuming you'll be able to translate funding into growth of your team and your customers). 2. In certain businesses, the right investors can make introductions that help accelerate your growth...
Depending on what classifies the transactions as fraudulent will determine next steps. If the fraudulent transactions were due to the cardholder having their card stolen and then being used to make fraudulent purchases you should work with your merchant services provider. Within your gateway or...
All of the factors you mentioned are important but if you asked me to rank them. 1. Traction: as it proves that you know who to build something people want. 2. Team: as it's the constant that matters most as the business evolves. 3. Vision: as it'll help tell the story as to why you have the pot...
A co-founder is a long-term relationships that should be built on trust, and passion, and time... time to fight, time to recover, time to build rapport. Ultimately, your co-founder shouldn't be based on *any* specific idea, because the two (or three?) of you could work on anything you are all pas...
So the real issue isn't whether a marketing person should come from sales - it's whether the marketing person understands that their job is to actually help sell things. My definition of marketing is "profitably solving customer problems" so - baked in there - is understanding the customer and ge...
The most innovative ways, might also actually be the least innovative ways: * Send them hand written thank you notes for their business. * Interview them about their successes, and highlight them in your blog/on your site. * Where appropriate, send them business from other customers * With th...
With all respect to Dan, I'm not seeing anything like that. You said "pre-revenue." If it's pre-revenue and enterprise, you don't have anything proven yet. You would have to have an insanely interesting story with a group of founders and execs on board with ridiculous competitive advantage bui...
"Right action, right time" Eric Ries The key is to invest in the parts of the product that need that attention. In the early parts of a startup (MVP) then it's all about building something to put in front of users. As that scales, then you can spend some time paying down the technical debt by ...