Startup Tips: How I grew a waiting list of 20,000+ at Mint.com Part I

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/okdork/tZRC/~3/303914402/click.phdo

Recently I got a question asking

“i was curious what methods you used to build a 20k pre-beta email list, and what were the conversion rates for those emails?”`

I love Mint.com and if you are not using them for your personal finance then bleh. Anyways, I think for many new startups the largest challenge is distribution (outside of fb apps) to get people to use their service. Many rely on a Techcrunch post or the hope of a Digg article, Mint was rewarded with those but I think it’s even more valuable to have the right audience checking out your site from the beginning.

1- Figure out your objective. You are a promoter at a party and want the right people in line. No ugly people. For Mint that meant we wanted a waiting list of personal finance interested people in different segmentations. As well, we wanted to have a lot of personal finance people aware of us for trust reasons, the longer you know about something likely the more you’ll trust it.

2- Where are these people? This is not hard, they are reading personal finance blogs, searching for help on Google, listening to personal finance gurus, at Credit unions, in schools, etc…

3- Acquisition. Okay this is the good stuff:

a) Email Collection. duh. However, we did this with multiple landing pages. Amazingly done by Jason Putorti. We a/b tested many types of messaging and such to see what was the most compelling. Do people want Mint for savings, tracking, notifications, etc…New idea: Why not get their phone #? These are your customers, this is your livelihood, ask for their # and call them when you launch. That’s freaking memorable.

b) VIP? We allowed people to recommend friends and post badges to their blogs for earlier access, “I Want Mint”. Xobni, took our idea to a new level and was able to track those refers and have them compete.

c) Sponsor. We found smaller bloggers with passionate readers and sponsored their blog for periods at a time. Great relationship builder with influential writers. Thanks PStam for helping.

Important: We tracked all the cost / conversion to see which keywords, sites, methods were the most effective. Make sure you do this ALL THE TIME so you are not burning money if you are a start-up.

Part 2 later. Leave your own idea and the top three will get Ori Brafman’s new book Sway, about how people make irrational decisions.

Read More...

Summary only...

There it is again

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/typepad/sethsmainblog/~3/337942481/there-it-is-aga.html

Chris Anderson of Wired had the insight and guts to discover one of the two most important natural laws of the Net, give it a name, explain it and teach it to the rest of us. The Long Tail is a natural law, the sort of thing that just keeps showing up. Every time I crunch a set of numbers, every time I examine something happening online, I see it again.

(The other one? Metcalfe's Law, which explains the network effect. It's sort of like the long tail, but flipped in the mirror. The more people who connect to a network, the more it's worth--squared. Facebook and fax machines are both network effect businesses).

A lot of people don't seem to understand a key implication of the long tail: Given the choice, it's better to make a hit.

If you have a choice of cutting a top 10 record or making a track of Jamaican polka music for iTunes, go for the hit.

If you have a choice between being on page 30 of the Google results for "Bolivian sushi" or the number one match for "buy life insurance", go for the latter. No brainer.

The problem, of course, is that you don't have a choice. You can give the hit a shot, but it's awfully crowded at that end of the curve.

The implications of the long tail have nothing to do with this false choice. What it explains in a powerful but subtle way is:

1. Collecting many many products among the tail permits you to amalgamate a market that may be just as big or bigger than the short head. But you need a lot of them. Squidoo is my proof--a profitable site with no real short head. So are eBay and YouTube and dozens of other places. Which is going to be worth more in ten years: the leaky boat of a network TV franchise or the relentlessly growing collection of long tail video at YouTube?
2. Within the long tail, there are micro long tails. The long tail permits entirely new micro-markets to emerge (exercise clothing, for example) and within that market there are hits and then the tail. It's sort of a fractal curve of new markets living within markets. (Simple example: Amazon enabled an entire eco-system of books on presentations and graphics to emerge).

Aside: In the last few weeks, I've gotten a ton of email about an article in the Harvard Business Review and a companion slash piece in Slate about the Tail. A professor tried to poke some holes, and in my opinion, missed the entire point. The long tail is so clearly a force that the real work is in refining the definitions and expectations of those that are affected by it.

Read More...

Summary only...

Why Metered Broadband Is Bad for Microsoft, Google & Us

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/338254809/

Here’s a horror scenario for everyone on the content side of the Internet: A consumer comes to a web site to download a movie, work presentation, software update or photos, and just before they commit to the download they pause and wonder: Am I over my usage quota this month? How much will downloading this new HD movie from Netflix on my Xbox cost me?

We’ve all been there before — with cell phones, about a decade ago. Usage-based pricing tiers started out with very limited minutes and lots of overage charges. Competition in the market by innovative operators drove plans fairly quickly to a point where only exorbitant usage resulted in overage charges (and now there are flat-rate plans for those consumers, too).

Unfortunately, the usage-based pricing plans (starting at 5 gigabytes) being considered by AT&T, Time Warner and others will force us all to wonder about the size of our connectivity bill on a monthly basis. Further, the lack of last-mile (the infrastructure that connects the consumer to their Internet service provider) competition will not result in these plans changing in the near future. Today, true competition on the Internet last mile requires new copper or fiber to each consumer — a very costly proposition. Cellular competition, on the other hand, required a less costly (on a relative scale) deployment of cellular towers.

While it is true that the consumer can elect who provides services over their last mile, most of us have very limited choices. As an example, a friend of mine recently moved into a building in downtown San Francisco that had exactly one last-mile provider: AT&T. The 700Mhz wireless spectrum provided a hope for an alternative consumer last-mile option, but that dream quickly faded.

Competition and an aggressive last-mile build have resulted in reasonable usage-based pricing models in Japan. OCN, the carrier operated by NTT Communications, is planning for unlimited download bandwidth usage and a 30-gigabyte limit on daily upload usage capacity. By my estimates, that will be more than adequate for all but the largest consumers of Internet bandwidth and does not invoke any horror scenarios for the large content owners.

In fact, large content owners may help us all avoid usage-based pricing horror scenarios. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every month (assume $10/month/Mbps using 95th percentile on 10Gbps of traffic) with the same Internet service providers buying connectivity to their networks because they want to be connected directly to the consumers via the last mile.

If the Internet service providers start billing on usage-based pricing, it’s inevitable that large content owners will look for new ways to reach the consumer. It seems unlikely that they’ll be willing to pay the service provider for access to their last mile if at the same time the consumer is being motivated not to access their content. Why would Microsoft and Netflix pay Time Warner for connectivity to their cable Internet infrastructure consumers if those same consumers are being billed on usage and worry about their usage quotas before downloading HD movies onto their Xbox?

Like other large businesses, Internet service providers are looking for ways to extract more value from their customers. As a venture capitalist, I understand and appreciate that perspective. Usage-based pricing, however, at least as currently envisioned by the service providers, will not only change consumer behavior but will work against some of their larger customers.

Read More...

Summary only...

Elemental Technologies Nets $7.1M

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/338390864/

Elemental Technologies, a startup focused on faster transcoding, has raised $7.1 million from General Catalyst Partners and Voyager Capital. The company’s software uses the graphics processor rather than the CPU inside a computer to handle the work of ripping a DVD or video file to another format. It’s one of several startups using Nvidia’s GPUs for tasks once allocated to the CPU, and bolstering the idea that GPUs might be better suited than the CPU to some tasks, such as scientific computing or video transcoding. To read more check out our coverage on NewTeeVee.

Read More...

Summary only...

Venture Capital Loves Virtual

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/338996259/

Startups selling virtual goods and offering virtual experiences are raking in the venture capital these days. Perhaps it’s the fact that virtual gifting hit the mainstream in 2007 or because people are worried about the impact of business travel on the environment, but the virtual world is beginning to get its share of real dollars.

In the first half of 2008, virtual worlds raised $345 million in venture investment, according to data from Virtual Worlds Management, a media company that covers the industry. And while it may be easy to dismiss the virtual economy as frivolous or scoff at the idea of attending a virtual trade show as useless, deriding the intangible misses a crucial point about today’s culture: A lot of it is happening online.

From World of Warcraft to relationships built on Facebook or MySpace to intensely personal blog entries, we are using the web to extend our real lives into virtual ones. It makes sense that an army of startups will follow us there, ready to supply us with tools that make our virtual lives more productive or enhance our virtual status. So even as Google struggles to monetize video advertising on YouTube and social networks pray for higher CPMs, there is money to be made selling virtual swords and trade show booths.

Given that gaming, all the way back to Dungeons & Dragons offline to World of Warcraft online, has long pushed the envelope when it comes to building virtual worlds, it’s easy to see why their players are among the most comfortable buying and selling binary-based goods. Since games are where a lot of this began, it’s where a lot of investment dollars continue to flow. Earlier this week, Social Gaming Network netted an investment, the value of which was undisclosed, from Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos’ personal fund. SGN creates games for social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, and makes some of its revenue from the sale of virtual goods.

Last week Challenge Games, the Austin, Texas-based startup behind the popular casual role-playing game Duels, raised $4.5 million in a first round funding. Ironically it started its very real relationship with its newfound venture backer, Sequoia Capital, after a Sequoia partner attempted to purchase a pack of virtual armor. More than swordplay, sparking those real-world relationships is where the future of virtual worlds is headed as socially networked and digitally savvy generations rise in the corporate ranks.

Research firm eMarketer expects the number of teen Internet users visiting virtual worlds to rise to 20 million by 2011 from just 8.2 million in 2007. Expectations like these are driving investments in virtual worlds largely populated by teens, such as the $11 million Series C round of funding Gaia Online took in this week. That world makes money by selling virtual goods and advertisements.

Despite the hype surrounding Corporate America’s embrace of Second Life, which included stories about conducting job interviews in the metaverse and its very own news bureau, there is a business model around enterprises going virtual when it comes to conferences and collaboration. Just ask Cisco Systems, which has been quite busy in Second Life as of late.

According to the 2006 Meetings Marketing Report by the International Congress & Convention Association, corporations spend an average of $107 billion sending employees to conventions and in-person meetings. The number of conventions and meetings that year totaled 1,243,600.

Eliminating some of those costs — and the need to meet face to face at all — is one of the advantages of virtual conferencing, which explains why On24, a webcasting and virtual event producer, raised $8 million in funding on Tuesday. Many gamers and young adults bring their avatars into the workplace and are comfortable holding meetings online. To some this sort of communication may seem awkward, trendy or forced, but that’s at least partly because an older generation of workers isn’t used to managing online relationships.

The rise of the virtual won’t supplant the economy and relationships of the real world, but it will augment them. However, until bringing your virtual wealth and friends with you around the web becomes easier, virtual worlds will remain fragmented and bereft of their full economic potential. True data portability could allow people to create one digital persona that travels the web, paying money to access certain worlds via subscription, but able to leave that world and still seamlessly connect with friends made there. There's still too much real-world work required to link your various avatars and social network in multiple worlds. Solving that problem is yet another venture opportunity.

This post was originally published on BusinessWeek.com.

Read More...

Summary only...