By Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Mark Suster, PandoDaily, Jason Cohen and MarketingProfs.
How to configure your startup team
Mark Suster, 2x entrepreneur and current VC, has been known to base 70 per cent of his early investments on the team — in an unpredictable market with competitors, funding requirements or PR disasters for example, only great teams will pull through. Suster posts his slide deck on “How to build out your early team” and summarizes the key findings.
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By Alexandra Reid
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are ReadWriteWeb, Fast Company, Forbes and VentureBeat.
Why you can’t settle for the “minimum” in your minimum viable product
Many startups scramble to create a “minimum viable product,” or MVP, to get a version of their product to market quickly for testing. It’s a great way to cost-effectively test a website or app with real users. But be careful. If your MVP is too minimalist, it could torpedo your company’s future.
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By Jeff Campbell
I recently had a very refreshing day in terms of strategic marketing. I spent several hours with two entrepreneurs in Toronto who are building a great business. It is the way they are going about building the business that is so refreshing to me. It is a well-focused, pragmatic, and calculated strategic campaign to ultimately be the 800 lb. gorilla in a well-defined niche market. I am speaking of Shaun Ricci and Somen Mondal, co-founders of N4 Systems, and their safety and compliance service, Field ID. More about their success and future plans in a moment.
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By Jesse Rodgers
Seeking out customer feedback and using it to build a great product is not a new concept. Great designers have been doing it for a long time as have great companies. The Lean Startup manual (or startup bible to many) talks about involving the customer while developing that minimum viable product (MVP): “The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.”
Where that generally leads people is straight to building a simple application that might not be sexy in its design but it is functional or a landing page about a new product that might not exist yet. Using Google Analytics and collecting email addresses along with some “conversion” points becomes what you focus on. However, if you forget to actually talk to customers as well you could be wasting a lot of time. Especially when you are moving past your MVP or have a product that people are paying for.
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By Alexandra Reid
We are bringing you our roundup a little earlier than usual this month because we will be celebrating Canada Day early next week when this post would otherwise be published.
We covered a lot of ground this month on our blog, from RIM to training your boss, tribal marketing to productivity tips. We even launched content marketing as a new service offering.
In case you missed any of our posts, here’s a handy roundup:
June 6: Getting the marketing right at an event product launch by Francis Moran and Alexandra Reid
June 14: Putting Ottawa’s puzzle together by Leo Valiquette
June 18: Balancing investment, Minimum Viable Product, and time to market by Peter Hanschke
June 20: Training your new boss by Francis Moran and 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 June, as ranked by the enthusiasm of our readers:
June 4: Why RIM could and should bounce back: Mobile needs to innovate by Jesse Rodgers
June 5: Levering the power of teamwork to drive a successful content marketing program by Alexandra Reid
June 11: The evolution of branding and advertising by Rob Woyzbun
June 26: Ottawa entrepreneur Scott Annan comments on the relaunch of Mercury Grove by Alexandra Reid
June 12: Content marketing tips: SEO implications for rebroadcast articles by Alexandra Reid
June 7: We launch new content marketing service offering by Alexandra Reid
June 19: 10 questions B2B companies should ask before selecting a content marketing service provider by Alexandra Reid
June 27: 7 ways to stay sane and productive by Leo Valiquette
June 21: PR people really are dead and mindless sheep by Francis Moran
June 8: Is it spring time for venture capital in Canada? by Francis Moran
June 13: Product marketing vs. brand marketing: Separate your product or separate your users? by Ken Rosen
June 25: Tribal marketing for ‘Generation Me’ by Bob Bailly
June 28: Why is there a lighthouse on your brochure? by Francis Moran
June 22: Social Media Breakfast Ottawa: Digital measurement and consumer understanding by Alexandra Reid
Image: Michel Z Binden
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Great articles roundup: Social media, content marketing, marketing strategy and startups
December 20, 2013 by Daylin Mantyka
It’s Friday, yet again, which means it’s time for our weekly roundup. This one happens to be the last of 2013. Over the week, we’ve read great content from Social Media Explorer, Marketing Sherpa and Startup Professional Musings [...]
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Damn it, Beyoncé: Now all the pundits will say marketing is unnecessary
December 19, 2013 by Francis Moran
It didn’t take long after music megastar Beyoncé dropped her latest release onto Apple iTunes with no advance warning or usual hype-fest for the armchair pundits and marketing deniers to trumpet that marketing was now dead [...]
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Five keys to your presentation success in 2014
December 18, 2013 by Anil Dilawri
The good news – 2013 was a good year for most businesses. The bad news – most business presentations delivered in 2013 still sucked. Whether it’s an investor pitch, an elevator pitch, a customer update, or an important sales presentation, here are five ideas to help make your presentations remarkable in 2014 [...]
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Becoming a more successful you in 2014
December 17, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
It’s that time of year again, when pundits and armchair quarterbacks of every stripe offer up their insights on the year past and their predictions for the year to come. This isn’t one of those posts [...]
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Best of: I’m sick and tired of hearing that Canadians don’t take risks
December 16, 2013 by Francis Moran
This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from December 2011. We welcome your feedback [...]
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Great articles roundup: Social media, Gen Y, communications and entrepreneurship
December 13, 2013 by Daylin Mantyka
It’s officially the end of the working week, which means that it’s time for the Friday roundup where we’ve compiled a short list of the top articles we read and loved [...]
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Communications by warehouse in the Internet age
December 12, 2013 by Francis Moran
When I moved to Ottawa in the late 1980s to head up the national capital office of what was then Canada’s largest public relations firm, the Internet was not yet even a gleam in Al Gore’s eye [...]
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Would you kill the Fat Man?
December 11, 2013 by Bob Bailly
Over a number of my previous posts, I’ve written a lot about the concepts of Neuromarketing – a predictive model that uses findings from the sciences concerning the brain (neuroscience and psychology) to improve sales and communication skills [...]
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Twitter
Tweets by @FrancisMoranRecent Comments
James LaPalme : Francis Would not say thrived - but close - in spite of geography. 15ish years ago - a group of similar skilled and experience and capable business folks (sales, channel, alliance, business development) all lived in Canada (Ottawa-Toronto-Waterloo). All except for one stayed - that would be me. Well the guys that went to Silicon Valley have thrived well beyond expectations. The others - Boston, Dallas and EU have done very well - thrived. My survival has been predominately based on CEO's from outside Ontario seeing my value. Best to move on to more receptive fertile ground if ambitious. A successful strategy is to move south do a few years and remove the pure northern business experience then come back - which my experience is very few will.
Francis Moran : I'm so glad to see you warming to this idea, Luc. Not that you were ever one of those mindless critics who automatically opposed the proposal; you were properly skeptical and demanding that it contain more of what folks like you and I believed was necessary for success. Looks like the city is listening.
Luc Lalande : Hi Francis, thank you for the steady and keen eye on the development of this important project for the City. I share your view that open spaces in the building’s design will be critical components for encouraging spontaneous interactions between people. Integrating such spaces in the Innovation Complex sends the right signals to the community-at-large and not just the local startup ecosystem: everyone is welcomed! With respect to Patti’s comments about the arts sector, it would be worth bringing back to light that the Hintonburg-Mechanicsville area has emerged as the first Arts District in the City of Ottawa, housing many artist studios, performing arts studios, and media groups. While the 7 Bayview located Innovation Complex may cater to the entrepreneurial set, there is still considerable property on these lands that could, one day, be developed and capitalize on the area’s sizable artistic community. But perhaps the open spaces at the Innovation Complex can be equally accommodating for anyone who embraces creativity and entrepreneurship: artists and innovators alike.