Doing a start-up can be exhilarating but it demands endless focus and effort. Each step of the way presents a new challenge and no sooner is one surmounted than the next one presents itself. First there’s the challenge of figuring out the core product features. Then there’s the challenge of building it. Intermingled with these challenges are others, like hiring the right people and making sure they are working efficiently and finding capital to fund development. And then there’s the next make-or-break: getting your first reference customers. Read the rest of this entry »
My Take on Entrepreneurship
In the 2007 kids’ movie Ratatouille the mordant food critic Anton Ego says, “The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.” Every entrepreneur should be in furious agreement, because few things in life are tougher than trying to create a new company. Mostly, entrepreneurs are madly optimistic people – and we have to be, because pretty much everything will turn out to be against us in one way or another as we head down the road towards our distant but cherished goal. How does an otherwise normal person end up being an entrepreneur and, once the madness strikes, how do we sustain our effort in the face of reality slapping us across the face on a too-regular basis? Read the rest of this entry »
Information as an Asset Class
In 2010 the World Economic Forum issued a paper which argued that information is becoming the next hot asset class. The general argument was simple and compelling: whereas a century ago capital was the number one commercial input factor, today it is information that counts. We can see the validity of this argument by conducting a quick thought experiment. If you were a medium-sized manufacturing company operating in a very competitive market and trying to satisfy choosy customers, which input would you value more: ten million dollars to expand your factory or reliable data about your customers, needs, preferences, and past buying patterns? Read the rest of this entry »
A Change in Direction
Every new company starts with a vision. Sometimes the vision is about how the product will look or what it will do, sometimes the vision is about a particular unserved market need that you know, deep in your bones, you can serve with a killer product. However it starts, the vision is big and bold and enticing. So you pull together a small team of people you know you want to work with and you roll up your sleeves and you get started. Read the rest of this entry »
Gain a Competitive Advantage Through Upstream Reporting
In an earlier blog we covered the topic of pushing information down to customers through downstream reporting. Now we’re going to think about pushing information up to franchisers, parent companies, and other people who are not necessarily on the front lines but require information from multiple sources to make strategic decisions. Read the rest of this entry »
Increase Sales and Customer Satisfaction with Downstream Reporting
It’s become common to say that we live in an information-rich world. The Internet has eliminated distance and smartphones have made it possible for us to access anything, anywhere, anytime. But how many of us really use information constructively in our businesses? How many of us have thought about how to use information to improve the service we provide to our customers and, by extension, make them aware about how much they rely on us to get the job done? At Brightmetrics, we call this downstream reporting – pushing relevant information down to those who can benefit from it. With a bit of creative thought, information can become a great way to improve not only the services we provide to our customers but also how highly they regard what we do for them – and also a way to identify other opportunities for mutual benefit. Read the rest of this entry »