Top 10 Lies Venture Capitalists Know You Are Telling

Lies, Lies, Lies! 

In the quest for capital, many entrepreneurs stretch the truth. One venture capitalist calls them out.

As a venture capitalist, I get pitched dozens of times every year, and every pitch contains at least three or four of the lies below. Are you guilty?

1. “Our projections are conservative.” An entrepreneur’s projections are never conservative. If they were, they would be $0. I have never seen an entrepreneur achieve even their most conservative projections. As a rule of thumb, when I see a projection, I add one year to delivery time and multiply by 0.1.

2. “(Big-name research firm) says our market will be $50 billion in 2010.” Even if the product is bar mitzvah planning software, every entrepreneur claims the market potential is tens of billions. Do yourself a favor: Remove any reference to market size estimates.

3. “(Big-name company) is going to sign our purchase order next week.” Only play this card after the purchase order is signed, because no investor will fall for this one.

4. “Key employees are set to join us as soon as we get funded.” When a venture capitalist calls these key employees, he usually gets the following response: “I recall meeting him, but I certainly didn’t say I would leave my $250,000-a-year job to join his company.” If key employees are ready to rock ’n’ roll, have them call the venture capitalist and confirm it.

5. “No one else is doing what we’re doing.” Well, either there’s no market for it, or you’re so clueless that you can’t use Google to figure out you have competition. Neither a lack of a market nor cluelessness is conducive to securing an investment.

6. “No one else can do what we’re doing.” The only thing worse than cluelessness and the lack of a market is arrogance.

7. “Hurry, because several other vc firms are interested.” There are maybe 100 entrepreneurs in the world who can make this claim. The fact that you’re reading this article means you’re not one of them.

8. “Oracle is too big/dumb/slow to be a threat to us.” There’s a reason Larry Ellison is where he is, and it’s not that he’s big, dumb and slow. Entrepreneurs who utter this lie look naive at best, stupid at worst.

9. “We have a proven management team.” If you were that proven, you wouldn’t be asking for money. A better strategy: State that you have relevant experience, you’ll do whatever it takes to succeed, you’ll surround yourself with proven advisors and you’ll step aside whenever it becomes necessary.

10. “All we have to do is get 1 percent of the market.” First, no venture capitalist is interested in a company that wants just 1 percent of a market. Second, it’s not easy to get even 1 percent, so you look silly pretending it is. Instead, show an appreciation of the difficulty of building a successful company
Chris Benjamin, Rogue CFOwww.RogueCFO.com

How to Use Twitter to Understand Brand Perception By Don Bulmer

http://www.everycompanyisamediacompany.com/every-company-is-a-media-/2010/06/how-to-use-twitter-to-understand-brand-perception.html

For many executives, when it comes to understanding basic stakeholder perception and sentiment towards a company's product or corporate brand in the social web, Twitter is a great and safe place to start.

People who 'tweet' want to be listened to, they want to be heard. As such, Twitter is a perfect platform for people to channel their emotions, thoughts, experiences and ideas.

There are a number of free Twitter applications available that allow you to run an infinite number of Twitter queries at the same time - such as TweetDeck.

As an example, you can start by running the following queries, side-by-side:

Love [insert your company/product name]
Hate [insert your company/product name]
This is a safe and easy way to understand the sentiment of people toward your company (brand, products and services) - at the extremes. You can also conduct the same with your competitors as a comparison or benchmark.

If you want to take things one step further you can 'engage' with and thank customers who support and love your products/services - by responding to tweets. Perhaps ask a few questions while at it: "What do you like best about x products?" "How can we improve your experience?"

On the flip side you can also engage with people who hate or do not like your products. "How can we improve or do better?"
An important note, though, is that before you engage and ask questions you must be prepared to graciously accept the input/ideas and if the ideas are relevant - adapt them to make improvements to your products and/or services.

The power of question is great and can be very transformative. It shows people that you care to understand their insights. But it also comes with responsibility on your side. You should only ask questions if you are willing to accept and potentially act on the answer.

If done well, this is a very authentic way to show that you/your company care. It strengthens the emotional and experiential ties with customers and in the areas where experience is bad - it just might be the beginning of turning around sentiment.

There are many other examples of social media tools, services (free and paid for) that analyze sentiment in impressive ways across many social media channels.

In closing...

Social business is a reality. CEOs and top executives can no longer ignore this fact.

In many ways social media programs are becoming part of a new strategic business mandate for both B2B and B2C organizations.

Understanding and managing effective customer relationships are the core to any successful company; and the strength of any organization is largely dependent upon the company’s ability to deliver exceptional experiences through the right products and services to its customers in a timely way.

So knowing what the customer wants and understanding their current and future needs is paramount to increasing revenue and exceeding customer expectations. This is just one simple way to start the process.

How Not to Join Facebook’s Walking Dead

Social Media

June 29, 2011

By Lisa Barone

Last week over at All Facebook, Brian Carter posted: Shocker 3% to 7.5% of Fans See Your Page’s Post, which was a wakeup call to many of us that perhaps our Facebook pages weren’t getting quite as many eyes as we had originally thought. Even more surprising was that, based on the data compiled by PageLever, the more fans you have, the less likely it is that your content is reaching your audience. What is going on?

EdgeRank is what’s going on.

EdgeRank is the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine which posts a user should see in his/her news feed. It’s influenced by the freshness of the content, engagement with the content (liking or commenting) and how strong the connection is between the brand and the user. The more interactions a particular user has with your brand, the more likely it is that your content will appear in their News Feed and that they’ll see it. This means, of course, that it’s not simply good enough to create a Facebook Brand page for your business. You must create content that users want to engage with. Otherwise, you’re wasting time posting content to an empty room.

Below are some tips to keep your brand active so you avoid becoming part of Facebook’s walking dead.

Craft Engaging Status Updates

You know how important your Status Update is. It’s pretty much your gateway for interacting with fans, but just because you’re posting something doesn’t mean it’s being seen. As noted above, EdgeRank is what determines whether or not a user will be exposed to what you’re putting out. That means to help your chances, you need to create content that is intended for interaction.

Use your Facebook Status to:

• Ask questions
• Hold informal polls
• Get feedback
• Encourage people to “Like” the update if they agree with a particular statement or to discuss why don’t.

The more you can encourage people to comment, Like or interact with your update, the greater your chance that Facebook will put the update on their friends’ news feed, exposing new people to your brand.

Use the Facebook Questions Feature

When using your update to ask your community a question, don’t just type the question into your Status and hit enter. Instead, use the Facebook Questions option that’s located above your status bar to help you post that content. Because of how these Questions are distributed through the site, your question will actually receive more exposure and prominence than if you just posted the question directly into the status bar. Facebook allows you to easily ask true/false, multiple choice or open-ended questions, so there’s plenty of opportunity to get creative.

Use Photo and Video Content

Because of the viral nature of Facebook, media content such as photos, videos and audio tend to do very well. People like to share this content, and the more they share and Like it, the greater the brand karma you’re going to create. Take a look at your brand and ask yourself what kind of media you have that you can share on Facebook. Maybe you have photos of the new line of cakes you’re experimenting with, video from your last company picnic or holiday party, or audio interviews that you’ve shared in newsletters or on-site. If you do, consider putting this material on Facebook, and encourage people to share it. And if you don’t yet have it, consider investing in creating it – either as Facebook exclusive content or content for your website.

Worth noting: Now that Facebook has given photos more real estate on your profile page, it’s even more important to provide something that is eye-catching and will pique interest in your page. If you have a lot of interesting images, you can use the Facebook Profile Banner to customize your photo strip.

Host Relevant Contests

Another great way to create buzz around your Brand page and keep users engaged with it is to hold contests via Facebook. Contests can keep old fans engaged by giving them something to interact with and a reason to re-visit your page, while also helping to attract new fans at the same time. When running Facebook contests, however, do your best to make the contest as targeted to your brand as possible; otherwise, you run the risk of shooting yourself in the foot.

For example, by running a contest that is too broad (“Like this page and win an iPad!”), you may get a lot of people to Like your page, but they’re not people who are interested in what you have to offer and they won’t engage with future posts. The result of this, of course, is a low EdgeRank score over time as a result of untargeted eyes. While Facebook contests can be a great way to attract eyes and ignite buzz, it’s the targeted contests that work the best in the long run.

Bonus: Get Smart About Targeting

One of the neat things about Facebook marketing is the power of the targeting that’s allotted to you. Knowing that part of your EdgeRank score has to do with engagement, you want to make sure that you’re customizing your messages for a particular audience as often as you can so that only the group that’s relevant to the message actually sees it.

For example, did you know that Facebook allows you to choose which audience you want to display certain messages to? Maybe you own a local chain of bakeries with storefronts in several different cities in Michigan. Do you have a special that’s only being run in one particular location? Or maybe you have a cupcake truck that’s circling the town and you only want the people within that area to see that? By clicking the small lock icon below the Status bar, you can opt to have Facebook show that update only to the people who can benefit from the offer.

By creating targeted messages for a small subset of fans, you help increase your engagement percentage.

If you’re not working to keep your fans engaged with your page on a regular basis, chances are you’re not being seen and you’re wasting a great opportunity.

Kevin Brown - www.kbsinsight.blogspot.com