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A startup CEO’s tips for wooing investors

This is the 12th article in a continuing series chronicling the growth path of Screach, a startup based in Newcastle upon Tyne in England’s North East. Screach is an interactive digital media platform that allows users to create real-time, two-way interactive experiences between a smart device (through the Screach app) and any content, on any screen or just within the mobile device itself. We invite your feedback.

By John Hill and Leo Valiquette

Investment. It’s big news in the startup world. Sites such as TechCrunch and The Next Web are full of stories about how much a company has raised and what it wants to do with it. But if you’re set on putting together a round for your business, you’ve got to think about more than just passing around the tin.

There are mountains of articles out there about what investors are looking for, and how to have those conversations, so have a look around and get an idea of how to go about it the right way.

Earlier this month, Screach announced it had raised $2.5 million in funding from Northstar Ventures, Hotspur Capital Partners and other strategic investors. It plans to use the money to accelerate the rollout of its in-venue entertainment system, ScreachTV, into bars, first in the U.K. and then beyond.

ScreachTV is a plug-and-play box which allows bar owners to put interactive and personalised content on their screens to entertain and draw in customers when there are no live sporting events. Using its existing TV screens, a bar can display pub adverts and offers, sell ad space to local businesses, show posts from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram relating to the pub or the local team, broadcast the latest news, entertainment and sport headlines, and even challenge customers to interactive games such as pub quizzes.

CEO Paul Rawlings says the investment is crucial to fulfilling the company’s ambition to become a “global entertainment network.”

“We want to scale,” he said. “It’s about getting out to venues as fast as possible, bringing in partners and making sure we can support them. We’re getting a lot of interest around the product and we want to be in a position where we can actually scale this business. We want to make sure the customer experience is second to none.

“It’s all execution now. We’re looking for partners in the U.S. and U.K., and we’re focused on really putting out a product that we’re proud of.”

Screach also raised a previous round of funding when it emerged from a startup accelerator in 2011. Here are Rawlings’ thoughts on how to boost your chances with investors:

Get investors to come to you

“If you approach an investor, you’re at a disadvantage,” he said “If they approach you, you’re laughing.”

However, not everyone is a can’t-miss company on every investor’s must-see list. So how do you attract attention?

“Press is a good thing,” Rawlings said. “If people are mentioning you, you’re more likely to get noticed by an investor. Building your network is also very important, so you need to get out there and meet people. But there’s also a lot to be said for getting out there and getting known for doing a good job.”

Build the relationship

A lot of startups dream of meeting someone who’s so impressed by their product that they write a blank cheque and slam it down on the table straight away. However, building the confidence that leads to investment can take a lot longer.

“The key to any funding round is you’ve got to start the conversations really early,” said Rawlings. “They’ll do their due diligence, but the investor also wants to be part of the journey. That journey might start six months before you take any money off them.”

It’s all about team

This isn’t the first time anyone’s mentioned this, but investors look for a solid management team as well as a solid idea.

“The startup needs a different mindset,” Rawlings said. “You don’t think traditionally and you’ve got to find the right people who think the right way. Our CFO, Tahir Ali, is fantastic with finance, but he’s not just about numbers. He understands the vision and the product, and can sell and do marketing. Richard Dodd joined us from BT Group as our COO, and is another fantastic addition. He brings a lot of structure and is really zoning the product.”

Keep it simple

You might think your startup can change the world in many different ways, but investors need to see you’re not going to be running around madly trying to do everything at once.

“Focus is a big thing. We’ve got a product that’s very versatile, and we’ve really had to learn to focus on key areas, pick low-hanging fruit and have a path to money.

“Our vision is create a global entertainment network, but in order to get there we’ve got to take it off in chunks. We know the market’s big enough to support what we want to do, but we’re focusing primarily on the U.K. for now and building from there.”

Know your numbers

Investors love potential. But they’re also interested in seeing what you’ve built so far, and how big your target market is. Having cold, hard facts and figures at your disposal can be the difference between an interesting concept and an exciting opportunity.

“Every business is run on metrics, so you have to know your numbers,” Rawlings said. “It’s important to quickly identify what your key metrics are. For us, it was the total number of paying venues we were operating in, and making sure that we had a clear path for how we’d lead a venue down that path.”

Don’t be afraid to think big … and be passionate

“A really big element is having the vision and having a dream,” Rawlings said. “A lot of companies don’t have global visions at their outset. It’s important to think big, but also to have a plan and to be able to execute.

“We’ve moved from being a platform for interactivity to being an entertainment network. ScreachTV is the embodiment of our platform, but it’s done in a way that allows us to take it everywhere. It’s a bigger vision and it allows us to realise what we want to go.

“When you’re trying to build something, you’ve got to be passionate about it. If you’re not passionate about your product, no one will be.”

Technorati Tags: Screach, ScreachTV, Paul Rawlings, set-top box, pitch, pitching, investor, investment, funding round, content provider, startup, entertainment, digital media, plug-and-play, entertainment platform, entertainment network, in-venue entertainment, think big

From courting Hollywood’s A-list to navigating the Chinese New Year

This is the 11th article in a continuing series chronicling the growth path of Screach, a startup based in Newcastle upon Tyne in England’s North East. Screach is an interactive digital media platform that allows users to create real-time, two-way interactive experiences between a smart device (through the Screach app) and any content, on any screen or just within the mobile device itself. We invite your feedback.

By Leo Valiquette and John Hill

Growing a startup is all about establishing and managing relationships. There are the relationships that open doors and create opportunity. And then there are the more pedestrian ones involved with the day-to-day processes that get product to customers.

Relationships in both categories gave the Screach team plenty of reason to lose sleep over the past couple of months. The first was a pitch opportunity for CEO Paul Rawlings that made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. The second was the potentially disruptive hiccup presented by the Chinese New Year.

The big pitch

Paul found himself part of a mission of U.K. business talent led by the Founders Forum that visited Los Angeles to meet executives from companies such as Universal Music Group, Sony Corp and DreamWorks Animation.

“It was an amazing experience,” he said. “The audience was a lot more influential than any I’d ever pitched to before.”

Paul got to spend a couple of days hearing from people such as Universal Music Group’s chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge and singer Will.I.Am. As we covered in the last post, Screach is currently rolling out in the U.S. market ScreachTV, a plug-and-play box which allows venues such as sports bars to create their own personalised branded TV channels featuring adverts, interactive games, news, and social media feeds and messages. The trip to L.A. provided Paul with a golden opportunity to pitch leading figures in entertainment, media and technology as potential partners and content sources.

But there was a catch. He had only two minutes to get their attention. Here’s what he learned:

1. A shorter pitch is much harder than a longer one

There’s an old quote, often attributed to Mark Twain, which says: “I’m sorry to write such a long letter. I didn’t have time to write a short one.” That applies to pitches, too.

“You’d think it would be a lot easier to talk for two minutes than for 10 minutes,” said Paul. “But it takes a lot more effort. You’ve got to spend a lot more time boiling your pitch down to what’s really important, what’s exciting to your audience, and what your product actually does.”

That’s why it’s important to…

2. Practice

Paul has pitched to a lot of people. He’s pitched to investors, to potential partners, to press. But practice is still crucial, no matter how long you’ve been doing it. Go through the process each time.

Consider how you can express yourself better. Cut out unnecessary detail. Tailor what you’re saying to your audience. Practice makes you more confident, and makes you think about what you’re saying.

3. Don’t over-promise

You’re standing in front of the most influential audience you’ve ever faced. Surely it figures that you’d want to give them your best show. But that doesn’t mean you have to promise them the earth. Make your pitch crisp, intriguing and direct, but make it honest.

If you sign someone up by dangling a feature or a financial return that you can’t possibly deliver, you’re not closing a deal. You’re setting a time bomb that will affect your reputation.

The long wait

Keeping the product moving also posed a challenge for Screach over the past couple of months as it worked around the Chinese New Year.

ScreachTV is a combination of code and hardware and the plug-and-play set-top box that makes it happen has to be made somewhere. In this case, that somewhere is China.

While the Screach team knew what to expect and how to work around the new year holiday, the experience did highlight some considerations all startups must keep in mind when working with an offshore supplier or manufacturer.

1. Talk to your supplier

It helps to remember that offshore suppliers may observe different holidays than you, depending where you are in the world. If that’s the case, it’s best to know when they are, how long they’ll be enjoying the break, and to plan ahead.

“Chinese New Year was obviously on our radar, but we had to be aware of how long it was celebrated in China,” said Robyn Lingard, Screach’s head of operations. “Suppliers wouldn’t bring it up a lot because they didn’t want it to look like they were causing any disruption, but a lot of places do close for 15 days.

“When we made a major order in October we knew we were going to be looking to make another bigger order shortly afterwards, so we started talking about things like Christmas and Chinese New Year then.”

2. Explore your shipping options

Some manufacturers will handle the shipping of the product to you, but it’s worth at least exploring your options. Some companies might deliver the shipment to you and then ask for any customs charges, while others may store your order at the depot until they receive payment.

“We organised the shipping ourselves, because it turned out it would be more cost-efficient in this case,” said Robyn. “It’s worth exploring.”

3. Getting the right code

It’s also important to check whether your order has the correct tariff code for shipping, so that you’re paying the right duty rates for your order.

“It can determine how much you pay in customs charges, and the fee you pay to the company doing the shipping,” said Robyn. “We used a helpline which gave us advice on what we were looking for, and we got our chief technology officer involved as he could give a technical appraisal of exactly how our product works.”

4. Don’t cut it too fine

You want your product to be perfect, and you’re going to make changes to the design as you go. But if you need to get your product to customers at a certain date, keep in mind how long your manufacturers need to build and ship it. Otherwise you may need to explain delays to your clients.

“We knew we needed to leave about eight to 10 weeks, just to be safe,” said Robyn. “We kept discussions going throughout December, and kept updated with conversations between the shipping company and manufacturer, even if we needed to use Google Translate sometimes. Everyone was very helpful, but all the way through, communication was so important to us.”

Technorati Tags: Screach, ScreachTV, Paul Rawlings, Founders Forum, L.A., Los Angeles, Universal Music Group, Sony Corp, DreamWorks Animation, Chinese New Year, shipping, customs tariffs, tariff code, offshore, outsourced, shipping, China, manufacturer, set-top box, pitch, pitching, content provider, investor, partner, customer, shipping company, startup, entertainment, digital media, plug-and-play

‘Put away the cozy image of the little old lady knitting a sweater for the grandkids’

By Alexandra Reid

This is a story about a 70-year-old woman who wants nothing to do with social media but is doing it anyway, inspired by an article I read on ReadWriteWeb last week, “Why boomers won’t release their grip on technology.”

Please let me first point out that I know she is not of the Boomer generation. I’ll get to that later.

According to the article’s author, Brian Proffitt, we need to “Put away the cozy image of the little old lady knitting a sweater for the grandkids, or the distinguished gentlemen playing chess in a park, because the newest elder generation is not going to sit quietly in a rocking chair.”

What he means is that many Boomers are not as traditionally minded as many of us have come to expect, but are, in fact, technologically savvy early adopters. Citing Dr. Karen Riggs who wrote, “Granny @ work: Age and technology on the job in America,” Proffitt explained that Boomers saw “the exploding rise of technology in the workplace just as they were entering their mid-30s and -40s. This is why so many Boomers are technologically adept despite not having grown up with technology.”

According to Proffitt, this technical aptitude distinguishes Boomers, defined as anyone born between 1946 and 1964, from their ancestors of the Silent Generation (1927-1945) and the Greatest Generation (1900-1926).

As for their motivation, “Their adoption of technology tends to be of necessity, especially now that Boomers find themselves competing with Generation X (1965-1983) and Millennials (1984-2002) in the workplace,” said Proffitt.

“We are expected to at least learn some of the basics of computers at the office,” said Riggs. But for the older generations, “a lot of people were left behind.”

Those of you who did the calculation will know that our 70-year-old, let’s call her Sarah (she prefers that her real name not be used), is of the Silent Generation. (Yes, I asked her about her age. Shame on me, I know.) Her story adds something that was not revealed in the RWW article – regardless that she may not have had to use technology as much in her personal life and the workforce as subsequent generations, especially early on in her career, she is feeling the pressure to compete with Gen X and Millenials today, just like the Boomers. And although she doesn’t want anything at all to do with it, she has been teaching herself about digital media for the last 11 years out of necessity, just like the Boomers.

The story

I’ve been regularly offering digital media counsel as part of my volunteer duties at The Well, a gathering place for women. After a recent meeting, fellow volunteer and IT veteran, Sarah, pulled me aside and asked if I could share some basic knowledge of social media that she could then apply to help her son run his small business.

“Veteran” has become a loose term to describe someone with senior expertise in a vocation. Indeed, this woman has been working with computers for more than 40 years. Now retired, she continues to provide computer support in various volunteer positions around the city.

She explained that she began her programming training in the early 70’s but, having spent 70 hours per week focusing solely on national mainframe computers, admitted that she didn’t have much time to learn much else until she retired. As a result, she had no real exposure to the Internet or personal computers until 2001.

“When [my son] came to me for help, I didn’t know what I could offer at first,” said Sarah. “I sat down with him and asked what the heck this Internet thing is all about. He said, ‘Ask me anything,’ and I asked him about Komodo Dragons. Don’t ask me why. Within a few seconds and keystrokes he brought up all kinds of information. It was like a ton of bricks fell on my lap and I realized there was no turning back after that. I saw the potential and began teaching myself.”

While still reluctant to learn any of this “stuff,” she knew she would have to dig her teeth into digital media sooner or later for her son’s sake, who’s strapped for time as the sole owner/employee of a full-time business.

She explained that her son’s role at a former company was downsized some years ago, just at the start of the recession. And, like so many others in their 40′s, he was unable to find work. So, like many others, he decided to start his own small business. But it’s tough being a “solopreneur” and he quickly found that being a one-man company is a two-person job, and he was caught in the familiar trap of desperately needing an extra body but not having the money to pay for one. So, Mom stepped in to help.

She knows how to set up a blog and website, but social media continues to baffle her. Upon her request, I agreed to sit down with her for a long chat one Sunday afternoon to go over some core concepts.

“I have zero interest in tweeting and facebooking and all that. I have no interest in any of this. I really, really don’t,” she said. “I’m doing this because I see business value in it, and I think it will help my son.”

The learning curve was steep despite her technical background and that she had spent a great deal of her own time going over the basics. But she listened intently and tried very hard to make sense of and retain the necessary information.

“I realize this is the norm for today’s generation, and for those to come it will be as natural as breathing. I get the point, but it’s a steep climb for me.”

That she is doing it is inspirational. Despite the learning curve and that she has absolutely no personal interest whatsoever in these channels, she sees the business value in them and is gritting her teeth to learn how to use them to help her son build his small business.

And she’s not alone. The Pew Internet & American Life project (cited by Social Media Today) found that:

One in three online seniors uses social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
From April 2009 to May 2011, social networking site use among Internet users ages 65 and older grew 150 percent, from 13 percent in 2009 to 33 percent in 2011.
Half of adults ages 65 and older are online.

I think this story is quite revealing of a generation coming to grips with this new form of communications, and the point is this:

Many aren’t letting themselves get left behind; many, like Sarah, are working their buns off to keep up.

Image: ariionkathleenbrindley

Technorati Tags: Social media, digital media, Boomers, Boomer, senior, online, Internet, Brian Proffitt, early adopter, technology, Karen Riggs, Silent Generation, Greatest Generation, Generation X, Millennials, The Well, Pew Internet & American Life

May roundup: What does it take to bring technology to market?

By Alexandra Reid

As usual, we covered a lot of ground last month on our blog. We wrote about the Startup Canada launch, introduced a new “born global” startup concept, discussed the future of accelerators, and explored how the Canadian university ‘innovation gap’ is more illusory than real. We championed the Montreal startup scene, envisioned what Ottawa should do to support entrepreneurship at home, and warned that VCs can sometimes be detrimental to young companies. These topics merely scratch the surface of our coverage.

In case you missed any of our posts, here’s a handy roundup:

May 2: Check your baggage at the door by Leo Valiquette

May 14: How to make better inventions: Part 1 by David French

May 22: How to make better inventions: Part 2 by David French

May 28: The ‘born global’ disruption by Tony Bailetti

May 29: Picking up the pieces from an R&D misadventure by Leo Valiquette

And on a related note…

In addition to our series, our associates and guest bloggers were also busy writing on a great range of topics. Here are our other posts from May, as ranked by the enthusiasm of our readers:

May 8: Anything they can do you can do better: Competing in social media by Alexandra Reid

May 9: How I learned to stop worrying and love a blank page by Leo Valiquette

May 23: The worst small business social media marketing advice I’ve ever heard by Alexandra Reid

May 31: Canadian university ‘innovation gap’ more illusory than real: Kurman by Francis Moran

May 3: Lessons in entrepreneurship from the Startup Canada launch by Alexandra Reid

May 24: Montreal startup scene continues to rock by Francis Moran

May 15: Managing client expectations throughout an outsourced social media marketing program by Alexandra Reid

May 7: Five old school mistakes creeping into digital and social media planning by Rob Woyzbun

May 30: The future of startup accelerators by Ben Yoskovitz

May 16: The root of all evil by Leo Valiquette

May 18: Dealing with children and sensitive information online by Alexandra Reid

May 1: Why startups should build social media communities before they launch by Alexandra Reid

May 11: Three interesting developments in modern journalism by Francis Moran

Image: marcie scudder

Technorati Tags: Startup Canada, born global, startup, entrepreneurship, small business, accelerator, incubator, university innovation, VC, venture capital, angel, investment, startup financing, startup fundraising, competing in social media, social media, content marketing, writing tips, bad social media advice, outsourced social media marketing, marketing, digital media, journalism

Five old school mistakes creeping into digital and social media planning

Editor’s note:

This is the inaugural post by Rob Woyzbun, whose work in marketing and broader business strategy I have admired for years. We get together periodically to share war stories, discuss strategy and generally commiserate on the sorry state of technology marketing. We always part with an expressed desire to find some way to work together and it is my hope that having persuaded Rob to become a regular contributor here is just the start of some stellar collaborations.

– Francis Moran

By Rob Woyzbun

The near-ubiquitous availability and always-on nature of the internet has changed how consumers learn about, consider and make decisions regarding almost everything — purchases, politics and even the causes they support. We live in a world where Marshall McLuhan’s prophetic claim that “the medium is the message” is true — in ways even he might not have considered (See: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man; 1964).

Ironically, while the proliferation of paid, owned and shared media channels has created limitless opportunities for innovative thinking and tactics, marketers still drag old-school errors into this brave new world. In our media research and planning practice, we see companies continue to make the same avoidable, costly mistakes.

Here’s our top five list of old-school mistakes creeping into the digital and social media arena, and some ideas on how to avoid them:

No. 1: Failing to fully understand the customer decision journey

Many marketers still use the traditional purchase “funnel” (a linear customer journey starting with consideration of numerous brands, narrowing down to a set of fewer options, and ending with a purchase). While parts of this journey are still relevant — such as the idea of a consideration set — research strongly suggests that once an initial brand set is developed, consumers spend far more time in evaluating a smaller brand set, and do so in an iterative fashion (including much peer and digital reference), and continue to do so even after purchase. In some product categories, there is actually more discussion about brands after a purchase! If this shift is missed, a marketer might set unrealistic objectives or expectations for his communication strategy. For example, not allocating enough resources to help consumers “spread the word” versus simply evaluating a set of brands. More on this issue in mistake No. 2.

No. 2: Inappropriate media objectives and measurements

This mistake comes in two variants, and follows closely on the heels of No. 1. Mistake 2A is to equate business objectives with communication objectives, thereby setting inappropriate measurements. Unless your business is a pure online, direct response, long tail, niche play with unassailable patent locks and a killer value-prop, your media or advertising objectives should not be sales, profit or market share. Those are business or marketing objectives. There’s a BIG difference. There are too many mitigating variables (product, price, customer experience, etc.) that make it unreasonable to hold advertising or communication responsible for final sales numbers. Your advertising or communication objectives are about knowledge and behaviour: What you want your customers to know about your brand, how it fits into their consideration set, how they should feel about your brand, and finally, how you would like them to act. Mistake 2B flows from No.1: If your customer journey is not well understood, it is likely you will set inappropriate objectives, such as “building awareness” when in fact the objective should be to “draw visitors to x product review sites or to amazon.com,” or to join a community of advocates.

No. 3: The trap of patterned, conservative thinking

This trap gets in the way of profit and innovation. Patterned thinking allocates resources (i.e. budget, people, time) based on unnecessarily conservative decision-making and a reliance on misleading indicators such as prior industry patterns. For example: “In our business, social media never works,” or entrenched ideas like “At ACME Inc. we’ve always used sales flyers.” Patterned thinking is very costly. A recent study in The Journal of Advertising Research (June 2011) suggests that in a variety of industries, profitability could be increased an average of 14 percent through improved spending allocation, simply by avoiding decisions fueled by false pre-conditions such as habit, and fear of change or disruption to an existing marketing eco-system. Marketers in relatively new industries, who actively seek new insight, are less likely to be trapped by these harmful patterns.

No. 4: Failing to evaluate competitive proposals or multiple vendors

When viewed through the media planning and implementation lens, we see poor business practices translate to media mistakes. The most prevalent is the “all-in” strategy (working strictly with one vendor or publisher) at the cost of reduced audience reach and impact. While one can often save time and effort by dealing with one publisher or vendor, there’s a lot to be said for good old competition. Unless a media vehicle or channel has a 100 percent reach of your target audience, and touches them at the perfect point in their decision journey, with the right brand environment and with reasonable cost efficiency (see Mistake No. 5), alternatives should always be considered. We’ve seen advertisers fail to reach their target audience effectively because they’ve committed their resources to one vendor in a market served by many. We’re not advocating an adversarial relationship with the media, simply one based on comparative values and knowledge gained through due diligence.

No. 5: Selecting and buying media on price alone — or by “unit” price

It’s been our experience that negotiating media campaigns for the lowest CPM or cheapest rate compromises other critical elements of media planning, including creativity and innovation. Media vendors who give up reasonable profit margins in negotiation are not inclined to collaborate with a marketer seeking added value or media innovation. Rather than leading with a low-cost focus, share your campaign objectives and insights with the media, and encourage them to consider a range of criteria (that includes but is not limited to cost efficiency) in developing a media solution best suited to your needs and objectives. Invite your vendors to become partners in creating a media solution that levers the strengths of their properties, while recognizing the value of your message and audience. We believe that the true measure of a media strategy should be value, not cost. There is more to gain from a cohesive media buy that addresses specific communications objectives and is not driven by price alone.

Rob Woyzbun is the director of media research and strategy integration for Vector Media Canada, and also a partner and founder of the firm. In its 20th year of business, Vector Media provides paid, owned and earned media planning and consulting services for B2B and B2C clients. Rob is also a professor at the Queen’s School of Business in Kingston, Ontario. Rob’s mantra is to challenge patterned thinking for better marketing and communication results.

Technorati Tags: media planning, new media, digital media, social media, marketing strategy, marketing mistakes, paid media, shared media, owned media, customer decision journey, sales funnel, measurement, marketing objectives

Putting your assumptions to the test

This is the fourth article in a continuing monthly series chronicling the growth path of Screenreach Interactive, a startup based in Newcastle upon Tyne in England’s North East. Screenreach’s flagship product, Screach, is an interactive digital media platform that allows users to create real-time, two-way interactive experiences between a smart device (through the Screach app) and any content, on any screen or just within the mobile device itself. We invite your feedback.

By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette

In our last post, we looked at Screenreach Interactive’s recent inroads in the radio and television industries, including its appearance on Popular U.K. television program The Gadget Show at Radio Festival, Europe’s top radio industry event, and its new “experience” for long-running U.K. current affairs program Dispatches.

But making a splash at major industry events and with high profile clients demands one thing – a compelling product. But a compelling product can’t be developed in a vacuum; it must address a clear market demand. As we have emphasized time and again on this blog, marketing and product development must work together from the get go. To quote guest commentator Ronald Weissman, “Great companies constantly test the market, for validation and feedback.”

The team at Screenreach has taken this to heart. With a new version of the Screach app expected to launch in February, every effort is being made to solicit input from beta testers and prospective users. In this post, we’ll look at how Screenreach approaches the beta testing process, what third-party tools it has found to make life easier and the lessons it continues to learn along the way.

In beta with social media

While the team is reluctant to reveal too much about the new features and functionality that will be included in the new version of Screach, it is safe to say the app has been in a constant state of evolution since its launch in the summer of 2010. Market feedback has been fundamental to the process, with social media emerging as a primary means to attract and engage with users.

Screenreach’s blog has proven to be a useful tool and this time around, the lure of winning a MacBook Air is an added incentive. But building a community following on Twitter has been fundamental to mustering a strong and outspoken group of testers. The team has built its following by getting involved in specific industry conversations on Twitter and constantly discussing Screach through the micro-blogging platform.

“There is a need to strike a balance between too few and too many beta testers,” said Screenreach CEO Paul Rawlings. “Realistically, you may have a lot of people signed up for beta testing but experience has shown us that only 25 percent of those will actively download the app and provide feedback – perhaps even less. So from that point of view you need to account for drop off.”

The mobile platform being tested also impacts how large the group can be. At this stage, Screenreach is only testing the iPhone version and Apple limits beta tester groups to 100. Google, on the other hand, imposes no such limitation for the Android.

Finding the forest among the trees

It’s one thing to build a strong community of beta testers who are willing to provide useful feedback and quite another to manage the logistics of all that crowd-sourced input and distil it into meaningful data. For that, Screenreach has found two useful third-party tools.

The first is Test Flight, a free web service that provides developers with an easy means to distribute their beta apps for testing. For the Screenreach team, there just isn’t anything else comparable.

“TestFlight has proved to be a useful tool for us, it has a great dashboard and organizing tools,” said Rawlings.

However, its current version does have one drawback.

“One problem we have experienced with TestFlight is that it only allows you to assign one account to your device which has posed problems when a beta tester has previously registered another account,” said Rawlings. “It means they have difficulty swapping the accounts over – this was something we were already aware of and could help the testers resolve but it’s definitely something you need to be aware of. Anything that inhibits the tester from downloading the app as quickly as they need to obviously isn’t great.”

The other tool is Get Satisfaction, an online platform for brands to host their community of users.

“We looked around at a number of tools that could be used to collate feedback on the new app and we chose Get Satisfaction for a couple of reasons,” said marketing manager Sarah Athey. “First, we really liked the way it allows a user to categorize their posts, it means we can manage feedback based on whether it’s a question, idea or problem. It has useful admin features too, such as a management view which helps to track and stay on top of all your posts.”

The Screenreach team never really considered handling these kinds of logistics in house.

“Third party apps like Get Satisfaction are good at what they do and make it easier to categorize feedback topics and assign the best team member to respond to a specific question, problem or idea from a tester,” Athey added. “It also creates a forum for testers to compare notes with each other and for the whole team to get involved in these conversations.”

In some instances, however, nothing beats good old fashioned face-to-face contact. While Get Satisfaction has proven effective for engaging in conversations through online forums, the Screenreach team has still found it useful to hold focus groups for feedback on the Screach experience for versions that have been customized for a specific market vertical, such as television programming.

“We’ve also had a couple of testers who have really gone the extra mile and their fresh perspective on Screach has been fantastic, so we’ve thought about inviting them in to meet the team and see the impact their feedback has made,” said Athey. “Some of the testers put a lot of their time and thought into the process and we’re very grateful for that.”

Lessons learned

Despite the benefits of using social media and specialized third-party tools, the team has found that the process can be more complicated than expected, with a host of small details to manage around the release to ensure the install of the beta version is as painless as possible for testers.

“One thing we’d say is make sure you have the full team involved in the process. Everything that comes out of this involves just about every aspect of the organization,” said Rawlings. “It’s also an interesting way to generate new ideas within the team. We’ve always placed great emphasis on every team member being deeply involved in the user and client perception of Screach so this is an important part of that.

“For example, your developer needs to be ready with the technical aspect of things but this has to be correctly communicated to your marketing person for them to translate that message to the user. Then there will be feedback that revolves around design or bugs or product questions in general – you need to have all of the correct people on board to answer these questions.”

One risk the Screenreach team took was opening beta testing during the holidays.

“We took a bit of a risk, but as it turned out, it meant our core testers had free time on their hands to get more actively involved,” said Rawlings. “You need to be aware of things like this.”

The important thing, Rawlings added, is to immerse yourself in the feedback that you receive by asking followup questions to understand the thought process behind why a beta tester is making a specific suggestion.

The learning process never ends. The new version of Screach will soon be pushed out to Android beta testers, which promises to provide a whole new flood of feedback given the growing variety of Android devices that are now available.

“We’re aiming to launch in February so things are very full on at the moment and the beta tester feedback is at the heart of everything we are working on,” said Rawlings.

In our next instalment, we will take a closer look at the launch efforts for the latest version of Screach, provided, of course, that the team’s best-laid plans do not go astray.

Technorati Tags: Screenreach, Screach, experience, beta test, beta tester, Test Flight, Get Satisfaction, Paul Rawlings, Sarah Athey, startup, entrepreneur, mobile app, mobile device, download, engagement, digital media, radio, television, The Gadget Show, Dispatches, Radio Festival, blog, Twitter, online community, social media

Making waves in radio and television

This is the third article in a continuing monthly series chronicling the growth path of Screenreach Interactive, a startup based in Newcastle upon Tyne in England’s North East. Screenreach’s flagship product, Screach, is an interactive digital media platform that allows users to create real-time, two-way interactive experiences between a smart device (through the Screach app) and any content, on any screen or just within the mobile device itself. We invite your feedback.

By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette

In our last post, we caught up with Screenreach Interactive founder and CEO Paul Rawlings on his way out the door to attend the Digital Signage Investor Conference in New York. We explored how the company has developed its target markets, including the digital signage, or “out of home advertising,” market.

It has been a busy month for the company since then as it continues to build market share in the digital signage, television and radio industries.

David Weinfeld, Screenreach’s chief strategy officer, is based in New York. He and Rawlings hit the tradeshow floor together to speak with experts in the digital signage industry to deepen their understanding of how best to serve this growing global market.

“The conference really gave us a chance to get into the shoes of the clients we wish to serve,” Weinfeld said. “As a result, we are making some exciting changes to the product that we think will make a significant difference in how useful and appealing it is to advertisers and digital signage operators.”

Gadget of choice

After New York, Rawlings headed to Radio Festival, Europe’s top radio industry event, where Screenreach was a sponsor. As we explored in the last post, radio is a growing market for Screenreach and it already counts among its customers in the space Bauer Media, which operates 42 radio stations across the U.K.

“Radio Festival was a very interesting experience for us,” Rawlings said. “It gave us the chance to hear some of the challenges facing the industry. One thing we hadn’t realized was just how important research is to the business of radio. Screach offers deep consumer profiling and we have perhaps been underselling this feature.”

Popular U.K. television program The Gadget Show also held a session within the festival which demonstrated up and coming technologies set to change the radio industry. Screach was used by the audience to allow them to vote on their favourite technology from each round and was also voted the winning gadget in the final round.

Making current affairs interactive

Screenreach has also been working with U.K. television network Channel 4 to provide an app for its long-running current affairs program, Dispatches.

The opportunity to work on the show arose through Tom Gutteridge, a member of Screenreach’s board who worked previously as the CEO of Freemantle Media in the U.S. He made the initial contact with Channel 4 through his production company, Standing Stone.

“This is exciting for us as it will be the first time we’ve seen Screach used in this context,” Rawlings said. “So far, many Screach adopters have used the technology for games and quizzes and our trial on Dispatches will really show how versatile the product is.”

Channel 4 will use Screach to give viewers more control over their news consumption. It will provide additional content and information related to the Dispatches program in real time, provide integration with Facebook and Twitter to encourage viewers to chat with each other during the program via their mobile devices, and provide them with a live polling feature.

“With the polls feature, an example would be if the program was featuring a story that refers to trains, we can ask viewers questions such as ‘how many times have you had to stand on a train journey in the last few months?’ for which they will then see an instant poll,” Channel 4’s Vicky Taylor said in a recent interview.

Playing nice with iOS and Android

Back in the office, Screenreach’s development team has been busy working on the Android platform. It’s now possible for a user to install the Screach app on a tablet device, running either iOS or Android, and engage in a multiplayer experience with other users.

Previously, the only way a user’s smartphone could interact with a tablet was through Wi-Fi synching, AirPlay (synchronization between iOS devices), or through devices with matching operating systems, such as an iPhone and iPad.

With the latest development, an Android tablet can be used as a travelling game board, and people can interact with it through Screach using either an iPhone or an Android device.

Taking stock

For Rawlings and his team, the past month has provided valuable lessons about the importance of refining the current product messaging depending on the needs of specific market verticals.

“This is very exciting for us,” he said. “It means that our continued development opens windows of opportunity that we previously had not foreseen. If we think back to a year ago, so much has changed. One of the favourite sayings in the office is ‘do you want to see something cool’ which is followed by a group gathering around someone’s desk to see something we couldn’t even have imagined the week before. This makes it a very exciting product to work on.”

Technorati Tags: Screenreach, Screach, Paul Rawlings, David Weinfeld, startup, entrepreneur, tablet, smartphone, mobile app, mobile device, engagement, digital media, digital signage, out of home, radio, television, The Gadget Show, Dispatches, Radio Festival, Bauer Media, Digital Signage Investor Conference, Android, iOS, iPhone, iPad, AirPlay, Wi-Fi synching, Standing Stone, Tom Gutteridge, Facebook, Twitter

Telling the right story to drive customer acquisition

This is the second article in a continuing monthly series that will chronicle the growth path of Screenreach Interactive, a startup based in Newcastle upon Tyne in England’s North East. Screenreach’s flagship product, Screach, is an interactive digital media platform that allows users to create real-time, two-way interactive experiences between a smart device (through the Screach app) and any content, on any screen or just within the mobile device itself. We invite your feedback.

By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette

When we caught up with Screenreach Interactive founder and CEO Paul Rawlings last week, he was in the midst of packing for a trip to New York, where he was booked as a panellist for the Digital Signage Investor Conference.

Digital signage, a so-called form of “out-of-home advertising,” delivers video content, advertisements and messages to specific locations at specific times on static or touch screens, often in combination with movement detection and image capture technology. According to one recent industry forecast, the market is growing at a compound annual rate of 40 percent, with 22 million digital signs expected to be deployed world-wide by 2015.

For Screenreach, it’s an industry ripe for the Screach app.

In fact, Screenreach recently teamed up with U.K. out-of-home advertising firm Ocean Outdoor to turn a huge digital sign at London’s Westfield Shopping Centre into an interactive driving game shoppers can play using their smartphones as the controller. The game is a marketing initiative for insurance provider Swiftcover. Participants accumulate points as they race that can earn them a prize, can connect to the app through Facebook, and have their Facebook profile picture feature on the screen. In addition to a fun and interactive way to engage with consumers, the connection between Screach and Facebook also allows Swiftcover to garner more information about how consumers interact with its brand.

This project typifies the business model which Screenreach has developed over the past year and a half to break into specific market verticals, establish partnerships with key players within those verticals and work together to create a unique, value-added solution that allows a brand to engage in a much more dynamic fashion with its consumers.

“It’s a new market,” said Rawlings. “A new global market around interaction and we are spearheading it. The world is changing, things are becoming more social. Consumers want better experiences and they want to be engaged.”

Screenreach’s bold leap into this brave new world has also attracted the attention of global food and drink giant PepsiCo. Earlier this month, Screenreach was named as one of the Pepsico10, an annual program in which 10 European startups are selected to work on pilot programs with the company’s top brands.

But reaching this stage has demanded that Screenreach narrow its focus and avoid the temptation of spreading itself too thin chasing too many opportunities.

Those essential first case studies

In our introduction to Screenreach last month, we talked about Rawling’s experience with U.K. startup accelerator The Difference Engine in 2010. When Rawlings entered the program, the underlying technology for Screach had been nailed down. The challenge, however, was figuring out which market verticals to target and why.

“Because Screach is a platform proposition, it exists across a whole variety of different markets,” Rawlings said. “Through The Difference Engine, it became evident that platform could do a lot of different things and mean a lot of different things to different people.”

What Screenreach’s strongest prospective markets had in common was that need to create a unique and interactive experience that would allow a brand to better engage with consumers. A national museum provided the first opportunity to put Screach to the test.

The museum wanted to attract new visitors, keep them on the premises longer and drive additional revenue from the on-site cafe and gift shop. Screenreach made each exhibit interactive with a QR code. When visitors scanned a code with their smartphone, it launched an interactive guide and rewarded them for using the technology with vouchers for the cafe and gift shop.

“It was a great first case study for us and got us thinking about the different ways that Screach could work best for the client depending on the environment it was in,” Rawlings said.

Rawlings and his team then took advantage of an in with the Newcastle United Football Club, where Screach was used to turn fans’ phones into voting tools to decide the “Man of the Match,” again, with rewards that would drive foot traffic to the stadium’s gift shop. A local radio station picked up on the club’s use of the app and this led to a project with GMG Radio. This in turn led to a deal with Bauer Media in August, which operates 42 radio stations across the U.K., to use Screach to create interactive location-based services for online listeners.

Finding out what the market needs

Rawlings attributed Screach’s appeal to these initial customers to three points which resonated with their needs:

1. The ability of the app to deliver rewards to consumers which provide an immediate incentive to take a specific action.

2. The utility of the app as a platform for brands to engage in a two-way conversation with consumers to learn more about them.

3. The flexibility of Screach to accomplish the previous two points with unique and customizable games, quizzes, polls, chats and other forms of engagement.

Word of mouth, existing relationships and levering case studies of successful deployments have all been critical to driving Screenreach’s customer acquisition strategy to date and identifying what have become its target verticals – digital signage, radio, print, live events and broadcast television.

Its customer list now also includes Microsoft, TEDx, JCDecaux, the National Soccer Coaches Association of America and RMG Media. With RMG, the Screach app will be used with digital signage located in 800 independent coffee shops across the U.S. to provide polls, quizzes, games and other interactive activities.

The team has taken to the blogosphere and Twitter to establish relationships in target verticals and position Screenreach as a thought leader for consumer interaction.

“We try to be part of the conversations that are surrounding relevant industries,” Rawlings said. “We use our blog to demonstrate exactly what Screach is capable of and what it can provide to clients but we try to do this in a way that is current and acknowledging what is currently going on in the industry around us … we use Twitter a lot for listening too, to learn more about current industry needs.”

It is also actively seeking as many speaking opportunities as it can at conferences that hit its target verticals, such as this week’s Digital Signage Investor Conference.

“If you are on a panel or on stage, the value is there before you’ve even gone to the conference,” Rawlings said. “If all you’re doing is exhibiting, it’s much tougher to ensure a return on the investment.”

Speaking or exhibiting at a conference is about more than just communicating your own story and product benefits, he added. It is also about participating in the debates around timely topics and issues which are impacting a target market.

Lessons learned

A big lesson that Rawlings and the team have learned is the need to properly qualify a customer early on. In some instances, significant time was spent on a prospective customer with nothing to show for it. This problem often resulted from Screenreach’s early efforts to woo trial customers to use Screach without requiring them to provide anything of value in return.

“Because they hadn’t paid anything for it, they were fairly apathetic about how much they are going to use it,” Rawlings said. “In any vertical, you have to make sure the customer has bought in from day one and the only way is with some kind of exchange of value, either money or services in kind.”

Screenreach has also found itself with prospects that range from independent local businesses to major global brands. The other challenge, as the business has grown, has been to understand which customers are the best customers at any given time.

“We work it on a case by case basis and assess the level of opportunity,” Rawlings said. “Obviously we always strive to do as much as we can.”

We will explore that aspect of Screenreach’s growth story in more detail in a future post.

Technorati Tags: Screenreach, Screach, The Difference Engine, Paul Rawlings, Sam Morton, startup, incubator, accelerator, entrepreneur, smartphone, mobile app, mobile device, engagement, customer acquisition, digital media, digital signage, out of home, radio, print, live events, broadcast television, Digital Signage Investor Conference, Pepsico10, Newcastle United, Ocean Outdoor, Swiftcover, RMG Media, Bauer Media, social media

Meet Screenreach Interactive

This is the first article in a continuing monthly series that will chronicle the growth path of Screenreach Interactive, a startup based in Newcastle upon Tyne in England’s North East. Screenreach’s flagship product, Screach, is an interactive digital media platform that allows users to create real-time, two-way interactive experiences between a smart device (through the Screach app) and any content, on any screen or just within the mobile device itself. We invite your feedback.

By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette

We first encountered Screenreach Interactive and its founder, Paul Rawlings, several months ago when we featured Jon Bradford, the man behind U.K. startup accelerators The Difference Engine and Springboard.

Rawlings and Screenreach completed the first cycle of The Difference Engine’s 13-week program in 2010. When we asked Bradford for an example of a successful graduate from that program, he was quick to sing Rawlings’ praises.

“He was not proprietary about his ideas, he was very open to new suggestions, new directions and wasn’t wedded to, ‘Look, this is what I’m doing and I’m not going to listen to anybody else,’” Bradford said.

“I think having an open mind, being able to listen, to react in a positive fashion was probably the making of him. He was also not very selfish about bringing in other team members, making sure he had a good team around him beyond the program itself. One of his mentors (Sam Morton, pictured right in the photo below with Rawlings) became one of his members of staff.”

There was no doubt in our minds that Rawlings is a man with an open mind. He has, after all, agreed to share with us Screenreach’s evolving story, warts and all, in the hope that there will be insights and lessons learned here that will resonate with other entrepreneurs working to bring their technology to market.

What is Screenreach?

Screenreach’s flagship product, Screach, is an interactive digital media platform that allows a brand to create a real-time, two-way interactive experience between a smart device (through the Screach app) and any content, on any screen or just within the mobile device itself. Using Screach, the smart phone can become a game controller, quiz answer pad, a voting and polling tool, a bingo card, a roulette table or a number of other things to engage and interact with consumers.

“The cool thing about it is that it allows you to profile your users to learn more about them and measure your ROI, and to also reward consumers for interacting,” Rawlings said. “It allows you to bring your ad, event, TV program or radio show to life by allowing your consumer to interact with you straight from their smartphone.”

How did it come about?

Rawlings began his career creating sales order processing and marketing systems for businesses including Burger King and European electronics retailer Dixons. In 2009, he built several Twitter-based businesses, including Twe2, a free SMS provider for Twitter which he sold privately, and a social auction website called Tweba.

When he began work on what would become Screenreach, Rawlings turned to The Difference Engine.

“The ability to get my head down and really focus on the product for 13 weeks was very appealing,” he said. “I knew that being in an environment where I was surrounded by people all working towards the same goal would be very inspiring.”

Through The Difference Engine program, Rawlings garnered the feedback he needed to refine the product. It was also here that he met his co-founder and COO, Morton.

Rawlings and Morton then connected with entrepreneur Tom Maxfield, who helped build global enterprise software vendor Sage.

“I met Tom at an entrepreneur’s dinner event and he loved Screach, as Tom was one of the original minds behind Sage, we were obviously really keen to get him on board,” said Rawlings. “He became our first investor, investing £250,000.”

That investment in August 2010 was followed by another £500,000 by Christmas of that year from Hotspur Capital Partners.

“Since then, it’s been a whirlwind journey of launching the product to the world and building an ambitious team that can work together and overcome each new challenge that is thrown at us,” Rawlings said.

In March, Screenreach launched Screach to the world at DEMO Conference in Palm Springs, Calif. Screach is targeted at the digital signage, radio, print and live events and broadcast television industries. Screenreach’s client list already includes Newcastle United Football Club, Microsoft, TEDx and GMG Radio.

What’s next?

Screenreach has grown to 20 staff since its launch a year ago, is generating initial revenue and looking forward to moving ahead at full steam in 2012.

“It’s a year that we believe is going to be even more eventful than the first so we’re very excited to be bringing you regular news of our progress and the challenges we come across on the way,” Rawlings said.

“There’s a general sense of ambition and excitement within the team, our culture is something that’s very important to us,” he added. “We tackle challenges together, irrespective of your skills or role within the company. If something needs resolving we all do it together. I think it has given everyone a sense of ownership; it’s good to know that your product is in the hands of a team that feel as passionate about it as you do. There’s no tiptoeing around a situation, if someone disagrees with something we throw it out there and then decide what’s best.”

With a number of new clients coming on board, recruitment is going to be a key focus in the next few months along with the growth of the business and the launch of new Screach projects. In next month’s post, we will explore how the startup is dealing with the dynamic of having to rapidly grow its team.

Technorati Tags: Screenreach, Screach, The Difference Engine, Jon Bradford, Paul Rawlings, Sam Morton, Hotspur Capital, Sage, Tom Maxfield, DEMO Conference, startup, incubator, accelerator, entrepreneur, smartphone, mobile app, mobile device, digital media, interactive

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