John McArthur’s New Venture Blog

Shortly after I started working with StorMagic, I suggested they create a Facebook group.  One of the initial target markets for StorMagic is the education market, and given the number of college students on Facebook, it seemed like a logical fit. We’re only a few weeks into this, but I’m pleased to see that the number of members is up to 46 and includes some pretty well-known, well-connected analysts, venture capitalists, and potential partners and customers.  Facebook groups are a great way to notify interested people about changes, enhancements, new materials and upcoming events. 

That brings me to the Web 2.0 double-dip comment.  Facebook is one tool that can be leveraged for marketing and community-building.  Another is YouTube.  StorMagic just completed their first video and uploaded it to YouTube.  You can see it here.  But they also notified the 46 members of the StorMagic Facebook group about the video, by posting a notice on the group’s posted-items board.  We’ll see what kind of traffic it generates, but having created the video, YouTube is a low-cost way of beginning to circulate it.  I just watched it, and it does a pretty good job of demonstrating the simplicity of implementing a StorMagic iSCSI storage area network.

I’d really like to hear your opinion on two things:

1. Using Facebook as a community building and marketing tool
2. Using YouTube to cost-effectively demonstrate key features of a solution

I’d also like your suggestions for other Web 2.0 tools that are effective in raising awareness and building communities for a supplier’s customers, partners, and prospects.

One last thing.  Can you give us some feedback on the video?

A Google search on “Top 10″ will get you all kinds of interesting results.  When I did the search this afternoon, the first listing was “Top 10 Naked People on Google Earth.” Sorry, but I’m providing no hyperlink, and for the record, no, I did not go there.  Next is Time Magazine’s  50 Top 10 Lists for 2007, which shows a surprising lack of appreciation for symmetry.  Then comes The Late Show with David Letterman, which I thought should have come up higher on the list.  There’s also the Top 10 Dunks and Top 10 Women Drivers of the Year available courtesy of YouTube. I’m just going in order here.  No offense intended. 

For any startup or new technology, it’s difficult to get the door opened long enough to allow the first presentation of a product, company or concept to a potential customer or partner.  It’s not that customers don’t want to look at new stuff.  It’s just that there’s so much new stuff, and who’s got the time to look at everybody. So whether it’s analysts, or bloggers, or the press, it’s nice to have a little bit of focused attention on new companies and new technologies, and have them do some filtering.  Thus the creation of Top 10 lists that say, “Hey, pay attention to this.  It could be big.” (more…)

As a follow on to my earlier posts regarding GoldMail, Bruce over at Iron Mountain sent me this note through Plaxo.

This is one of the typical Brainshark presentations we use. You can also embed other objects like videos, etc. in the presentations.

www.brainshark.com/ironmtndigital/vu?pi=5687813

Another interesting marketing company that uses word of mouth/viral marketing is called bzzagent out of Boston.
Regards,
Bruce

Iron Mountain uses Brainshark for some email marketing campaigns, and I asked Bruce to send me a sample one that they use to market their desktop backup service.  So here it is, and none to soon, since my Outlook application keeps crashing and I’ll probably lose my data soon.  Tell me again, why I don’t just use Gmail?

Don’t ever challenge my mother to a game of Jeopardy.  She answers every question correctly almost before you can get the question out.  You’ll leave the game having lost all confidence in your ability to remember highly-specific details or the picayune.  She’s pretty good at ping-pong (sorry, table tennis), too.  At least for an 81 year old. The people that Myndnet has recruited to answer questions for clients are a bit like my mother.  At least that’s my recent experience.  They seem to be able to answer anything.

StorMagic recently used Myndnet to identify IT directors at K-12 schools, at colleges, and universities. The question went live on February 15th and by Tuesday, four days later, they had fulfilled the 200 or so budgeted responses.  If you go to Myndnet, you’ll notice that the question is still up and you can still respond.  StorMagic has the right to reject leads that don’t fit the criteria, and StorMagic might want to acquire additional names, if the first ones work out well.  So why not keep it open for a few days? (more…)

OK, I just made a Black Swan-type mistake (read the book), when I wrote in my last post that Goldmail was “different.”  I have to constantly remind myself (or rather my friends do the reminding for me) that, just because I haven’t seen something like this before doesn’t imply that it doesn’t exist or that there aren’t a lot of them.  So in response, I received this post through Plaxo Pulse from a friend, Bruce, over at Iron Mountain.

John:
Goldmail looks very simliar to a service we use called Brainshark out of Waltham, MA. Very cool tool, create the presentation, send the link, get almost near instant reporting on who watched, how many slides, for how long… There are quite a few of these services out there. Best part about them as they usually don’t get caught in spam filters where a lot of marketing pieces do. Let me know if you care to see one.
Cheers,
Bruce

Thanks, Bruce and Mike, who commented on Windows Live Mail in my earlier post.  So now, let me leave it to the folks at Microsoft, Goldmail and Brainshark to inform us here in the comments section of the differences.  And, if anyone else has a favorite enhanced-email tool, please let us know here.  Comments are welcome.  And yes, Bruce, I would like to see one of your presentations.  Something about Iron Mountain’s online desktop backup solution, maybe?  I had a dream, last night, that I lost my PC.

Taylor Allis asked this question on his most recent blog post: “What is server virtualization’s impact on Storage?”  Here’s my opinion. But I’m interested in yours, too.

First, I think storage comes out of the server and into a shared pool. Some might say that’s a book-of-duh comment, but given the enormous storage capacity you can put inside a server today, why would anyone need to go external? Here’s the reasoning.  Server workload, virtual or not, is relatively independent of the storage workload.  By that I mean, running out of server resources to support an application has no implicit or explicit relationship to running out of storage resources (capacity or performance) to support that application.  If you need to move a virtual server from one physical server to another, because the physical server is running out of head room, there’s no explicit reason I should also have to move the data. There are some impediments, like unwanted down time, to moving data out of a server and into a shared pool, but one of our clients, StorMagic, has pretty much solved that problem with their non-disruptive data migration capabilities. (more…)

My goal when I started this blog almost a year ago was to:

1. Create a resource for entrepreneurs and inventors
2. Have a conversation with those entrepreneurs (or entrepreneur wannabes) on strategies, tactics, and best practices.  

On the second goal, I feel like I’ve fallen short.  There’s not enough dialogue.  (more…)

OK, first the disclosures.  Tek-Tools is a client.  I’m telling you that, because you may think it’s important information, when you evaluate what I write next.

In the early years of a company, product development is often driven by influential sales managers.  Sales-driven development usually comes from a sales rep saying, “If we had this feature, I could win this deal.”  It is the polar opposite of what I have often advocated to sales execs, which is “Sell what you’ve got, and stay out of the development road map.”  I think sales should have a voice, but no vote.  Instead, I advocate market-driven development, which involves the assessment of market opportunities, product differentiation, and product gaps, rather than sales-driven development, which often leads to a confusing and sometimes conflicting web of development priorities. (more…)

A recent blog entry by Denise Shiffman on Viral Voice referenced an article in InsideCRM entitled The Facebook Marketing Toolbox.   I’ve only been using Facebook for a few months, so this article was a great find, with links to tons of resources and recommendations.  Thanks Denise.  This article is required reading for my new client, StorMagic, and my nephews who continue to grow their restaurant, Black and Brew, down in Lakeland, Florida.  Keeping getting the word out!  For all others, reading is optional, but highly recommended.

I’m a regular reader of Kent’s Imperative.  I don’t know how many of you read the blog, but I found this perspective  on Prediction Markets interesting. The notion of Predictions Markets has been getting a lot of attention lately.  And I wonder how many of today’s startups might be considering Prediction Markets as a way to determine which way the wind is going to blow.

About two years ago, I agreed to participate in a trial of a Prediction Market in the area of storage.  After a month of watching people trade on opinions, I began to wonder how they would validate the results.  Turns out they validated the results from the first published report of a top market research company.  (more…)