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My Startup Failed and it's all Marketing's Fault

Brad Montgomery
November 01, 2014

My Startup Failed and it's all Marketing's Fault

A presentation from TechCamp Memphis, 2014.

Brad Montgomery

November 01, 2014
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Transcript

  1. My Startup Failed
    And it’s all Marketing’s Fault!

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  2. Brad Montgomery
    Hi, I’m

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  3. –Marc Andreessen
    “The number one reason that we pass on
    entrepreneurs…is their focusing on product to
    the exclusion of everything else. Many
    entrepreneurs who build great products simply
    don’t have a good distribution strategy.”
    !

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  4. 2011 -2013

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  5. Work for what?
    Goal: Better Technical Recruiting
    Starting with Developers
    (open source)

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  6. Corp.
    Dev.
    Dev.
    Dev.
    Dev.
    3rd
    Party
    Job
    Listing

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  7. Corp.
    Dev.
    Dev.
    Dev.
    Dev.
    WFP

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  8. Work for what?
    Product: Developer Portfolios built
    upon existing developer tools/
    communities.

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  9. Developer Profile

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  10. For Companies…
    Goal: Expose Great Companies

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  11. For Companies…
    Product: A developer-focused
    “brochure” for each company.
    (inbound marketing)

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  12. Company Page

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  13. Who would use this?
    Number of Employees
    0
    250
    500
    750
    1000
    Number of Companies
    10 100 10k 1M

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  14. Work for Pie, actually.
    Phase One: SaaS Model!
    (company pages)

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  15. Work for Pie, actually.
    Phase One: SaaS Model!
    (company pages)

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  17. Work for Pie, actually.
    Phase Two: “consulting
    services”!
    (Pie Works: getpieworks.com)

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  19. Work for Pie, actually.
    Phase Three: Sell Out.!
    (we tried to be recruiters)

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  21. So… Marketing

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  22. Marketing
    mar·ket·ing!
    /ˈmärkədiNG/
    !
    noun
    the action or business of promoting and
    selling products or services, including
    market research and advertising.

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  23. Marketing
    • Everything you do.
    • Every word on your website.
    • Every Tweet.
    • Every Email.
    • Every Interaction in your app.

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  24. How we thought we should
    do “marketing”
    • Twitter.
    • Hacker News/Reddit
    • Meetups/Conferences (attending & sponsoring)
    • Email.
    • Our Blog.
    • Press.

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  25. WTF Goes on the
    Homepage?
    • Who do we speak to?
    • Companies?
    • Hiring Managers?
    • Developers?
    • “Internal” Recruiters.

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  26. We spoke to no one.

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  27. –Scott Case
    “I have no idea
    what you guys
    do.”

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  28. Hindsight.

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  29. Email
    • We were way too shy (with our developer side)
    • We should have been more analytical about
    sending email.
    • A/B Test copy, track calls to action.

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  30. Life Cycle Emails
    • There’s a non-annoying balance…
    • #1 way to keep your users engaged.

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  31. Sales
    The process of generating leads,
    qualifying them, and converting them
    into paying customers.
    Then being able to repeat this.

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  32. Sales
    • We sent a lot of cold emails. To lots and lots of
    companies.
    • We hired a “sales as a service” company.
    • Heed the Maxim: Never hire until you can’t DIY

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  33. Sales
    • We sent a lot of cold emails. To lots and lots of
    companies.
    • We hired a “sales as a service” company.
    • Heed the Maxim: Never hire until you can’t DIY

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  34. Press
    • We made friends with a couple journalists and got
    in Mashable and The Next Web.
    • Great for new features.
    • Not Sustainable.

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  35. Paid Advertising
    • Lots of targeted Landing pages.
    • Target ads to those companies/managers/people
    that we wanted to work with.
    • Focus on Exposure.

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  36. Content Marketing.
    • More Blogging.
    • Developer Interviews.
    • How-To articles.
    • Fewer here’s what we’re doing articles.

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  37. Engineering as Marketing
    • We had technical ability
    • Build Useful Micro-sites.
    • APIs
    • “Widgets”

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  38. BD: Business Development
    • “Strategic Partnerships”
    • Most large/successful startups did this at some
    point.
    • Team up to make both of your services/products
    better.

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  39. BD: Business Development
    • “Strategic Partnerships”
    • Most large/successful startups did this at some
    point.
    • Team up to make both of your services/products
    better.

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  40. Build Market Sale

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  41. Build Market Sale

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  42. Build
    Marketing
    Sales

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  43. Resources

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  44. Thanks!
    [email protected]
    !
    Twitter: bkmontgomery
    IRC: bkmontgomery

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