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My Startup Failed and it's all Marketing's Fault
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Brad Montgomery
November 01, 2014
Business
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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
My Startup Failed And it’s all Marketing’s Fault!
Brad Montgomery Hi, I’m
–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.” !
2011 -2013
Work for what? Goal: Better Technical Recruiting Starting with Developers
(open source)
Corp. Dev. Dev. Dev. Dev. 3rd Party Job Listing
Corp. Dev. Dev. Dev. Dev. WFP
Work for what? Product: Developer Portfolios built upon existing developer
tools/ communities.
Developer Profile
For Companies… Goal: Expose Great Companies
For Companies… Product: A developer-focused “brochure” for each company. (inbound
marketing)
Company Page
Who would use this? Number of Employees 0 250 500
750 1000 Number of Companies 10 100 10k 1M
Work for Pie, actually. Phase One: SaaS Model! (company pages)
Work for Pie, actually. Phase One: SaaS Model! (company pages)
None
Work for Pie, actually. Phase Two: “consulting services”! (Pie Works:
getpieworks.com)
None
Work for Pie, actually. Phase Three: Sell Out.! (we tried
to be recruiters)
None
So… Marketing
Marketing mar·ket·ing! /ˈmärkədiNG/ ! noun the action or business of
promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.
Marketing • Everything you do. • Every word on your
website. • Every Tweet. • Every Email. • Every Interaction in your app.
How we thought we should do “marketing” • Twitter. •
Hacker News/Reddit • Meetups/Conferences (attending & sponsoring) • Email. • Our Blog. • Press.
WTF Goes on the Homepage? • Who do we speak
to? • Companies? • Hiring Managers? • Developers? • “Internal” Recruiters.
We spoke to no one.
–Scott Case “I have no idea what you guys do.”
Hindsight.
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.
Life Cycle Emails • There’s a non-annoying balance… • #1
way to keep your users engaged.
Sales The process of generating leads, qualifying them, and converting
them into paying customers. Then being able to repeat this.
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
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
Press • We made friends with a couple journalists and
got in Mashable and The Next Web. • Great for new features. • Not Sustainable.
Paid Advertising • Lots of targeted Landing pages. • Target
ads to those companies/managers/people that we wanted to work with. • Focus on Exposure.
Content Marketing. • More Blogging. • Developer Interviews. • How-To
articles. • Fewer here’s what we’re doing articles.
Engineering as Marketing • We had technical ability • Build
Useful Micro-sites. • APIs • “Widgets”
BD: Business Development • “Strategic Partnerships” • Most large/successful startups
did this at some point. • Team up to make both of your services/products better.
BD: Business Development • “Strategic Partnerships” • Most large/successful startups
did this at some point. • Team up to make both of your services/products better.
Build Market Sale
Build Market Sale
Build Marketing Sales
Resources
Thanks!
[email protected]
! Twitter: bkmontgomery IRC: bkmontgomery