The Pitch

Linkspank will be pitching to investors this month and it seems like a perfect thing to blog about here (protecting the identities of the investors, of course).

This won't be the first time I've pitched Linkspank to investor types but it's pretty close. On the other hand, Linkspank's business planning goes back almost two years.

Here micro-observations so far:

1. Even though your pitch will be a PowerPoint, it's better to introduce your business to people (before you have a meeting) with a 1-2 page Word document. PowerPoint isn't meant to stand on its own, but prose is.

2. Getting a meeting with investors is much easier than winning them over. So I think it's worth it to focus on your message, not the meeting. I think connections are useful only when no one is giving you the time of day, and if your connections will vouch for you so strongly that it will help investors believe in your management ability.

3. I view investment as a partnership and courtship, and I think most investors do too. You don't just want a match, you want a good match with all kinds of signs of mutual fit. If you're feeling too hungry, you're probably missing something. And it takes time, and it's impossible and undesirable to seal this kind of deal instantly.... so there's no need to try. At first, focus on the basics of your business and the caliber of person that you are.

Do you agree? Maybe it's obvious stuff. Anyway, more to come.

Viral Videos

Last spring, I had the opportunity to study Linkspank Marketing with my Marketing Communications classmates. We did a thorough study of marketing tactics for Linkspank. We came to many interesting conclusions. One conclusion was obvious and yet still striking: it was that viral videos are far and away the most effective way of reaching people online. People know this, yet we were still amazed, in the financial model, just how superior is successful viral video is compared to any other form of advertising, marketing or other expense to get peoples attention

Our experience in creating Linkspank TV made it relatively simple to create a viral video. We already had a team in place to create videos and to create video content. Bur TV show is different strategically from the viral videos. Our TV show is intended primarily for current users of our site. For this reason it makes sense that our television show would be more mainstream, less risky than our viral video, which in turn would be more offensive and more risk taking. Why? Because on one hand, for our television show we have dedicated viewers that we want to keep and make happy. On the other hand, our viral videos have to cut through a lot of noise out there and reach people who are not yet spankers but who should be spankers.

Viral videos appear to have indicated that the main way to cut through the clutter is to be so offensive that you stand out. Or probably “outrageous” is a better word, because viral videos don’t seem to have to be NSFW. To act on this opinion, a viral video is going to play a key role in our public launch this month. We have created a video that we will be sending to our users and and asking them to forward to their friends.

Viral videos are hard to make "stick" or make successful. But I don't think the failure rate is the real deterrent to companies - it's the cost of failure. A weird or outrageous video will alienate some viewers, maybe even many viewers.

Here I think it is key to have a strategy, if you have a strategy that is your guide to determine what you do and even what detail of what you do. I think a lack of strategy is why more companies don't create videos – they don’t know where to start. Do we make a funny video? What should do your video be about? Who should it reach or impress? The world is much more open probably, in that of conservative traditional advertisement. Linkspank, on the other hand is a young startup with a crazy name. We don't mind being weird and we might not mind even being defensive at least sometimes and it wrong as we are too offensive. For our company, this represents a big opportunity. One reason companies have trouble creating viral videos is because they are constrained in a way that we are not or at least should not have to be. That constraint is that big companies are reluctant to do weird or offensive things – while viral videos are actually usually maybe almost as a rule weird and offensive at least to some people.

In my opinion (and this has been my opinion for a long time) it is much more important to win over a small number of users—rather than simply not to alienate the larger audience. It is true that our site has special appeal to a great audience and I would like to be able to serve that large audience. But in this early stage it is important to target and win over early adopters, who will appreciate unusual messages more.

This might lead you to ask, as Linkspank grows, will its communications and brand become more mainstream? I think the answer is yes, to a degree. It is important to evolve to accommodate growth, but is also important to maintain our own identity. Part of my personal agenda is that I would like to create a vibrant large community but that I do not want to grow the community beyond its natural size. I think many successful websites have been pressured to do this to keep growing, and while they have proven that it is possible, I still would contend that it is not necessarily good business. But I shouldn’t be getting ahead of myself – it’s still time to make crazy YouTube videos.

Recap: HBS 2008 Entrepreneurship Conference

Today was the Harvard Business School's 2008 Entrepreneurship Conference: Life Outside the Box. Being in the neighborhood and feeling a bit daffy, I checked it out.

Wait a minute... they're IN boxes... and wearing suits.

Thanks to the Entrepreneurship Club for putting this event together!! Here's my assessment. Logistics - good. Speaker & keynote lineup - great. Keynotes - good. Panel topics - good. Panel moderation - mediocre. Schwag - good. Food - mediocre. And last but far from least, Networking - good.

The keynotes emphasized the need to be bold, take action, get your ass out and do stuff, and be prepared for people to think you are crazy or doing things wrong. I think it's a great message and I don't get tired of hearing it from successful people.

Ken Howery, co-founder of PayPal, gave a cool summary of how to find a good startup idea: it is at the intersection of two circles - (1) Good Ideas and (2) Ideas that People think are Bad Ideas. The intersection of these two circles basically are overlooked opportunities... great areas to move into. Of course, while (2) is easy to determine, (1) is not. But I think it's an accurate summary of what entrepreneurs who aren't strictly lucky might chalk part of their success up to.

The biggest "delta" (that's business school wimp talk for an area for improvement) was the panel moderation. In the three panels, the moderators, students and profs alike, gave mealy-mouthed introductions, asked spineless questions, and made no contributions in framing or summarizing what was said. They should take a lesson from James Schrager, or just listen to NPR a bit more. Modest improvements would have doubled the value of the panels.

BUT I was glad I went, despite my general dislike of sitting still and listening. And I met some cool people.

Are you a Guerrilla?

You?

As I mentioned before, Linkspank is going to be doing a public launch "soon." All kinds of exciting stuff is going to be involved in the launch.

If you are Linkspank Lover and you want to get involved with some guerrilla marketing, send us your address to receive a complimentary Linkspank Lover "Guerrilla Marketing" Kit with further instructions.

We plan to do something just like this. Without the public alarm and police involvement part.

It's a secret, so don't tell anyone about it.

Discourse on Fear

This will be a short post, not a discourse, but it's a topic that's been on my mind. This post comes from deep Inside Linkspank :-).

My thesis: fear is the greatest impediment to success. Learning to drive through your own fear is the ticket to achieving and being happy with your achievement.

Imagine this parable. A child is born afraid of nothing. Injuries, traumas, and rearing teach the child many valuable lessons of caution, so this child is lucky enough not get hit by a car while crossing the street and makes it to adulthood. But the adult has learned the lesson too well, being cautious of everything, and has forgotten the dreams and adventures experienced in childhood.

I think this parable may apply to many or all of us. I'm a fairly intrepid person, having turned down respectable job offers to start Linkspank, having hiked off into the jungle to get lost and have guns pointed at me by tribespeople. But I think that even the most fearless people have opportunities to push through their fear, try things that may fail, learn by doing rather than by thinking, improve by iteration rather than by design.

If you don't believe me, make a list of things that you don't do as often as you should, or that you've been planning to do but haven't gotten to, or just things you don't enjoy. Go through that list and ask yourself if there isn't a trace of fear holding you back from these things.

Luck is a huge factor in success. People try things without really knowing whether they will work, and circumstances and timing conspire to make the right ideas work. But taking a business to the next level will require being able to risk what you have achieved, and being prepared to follow your success with experiments.

I think the application of this principle can be subtle. Google is intrepid enough to test and launch many products, but rather cautious in allocating resources and brand capital to products outside of search and ads. Facebook has been bold in rolling out its apps environment (not to mention Project Beacon), but, on the other hand, the move to the apps environment may have been motivated by fear of what would happen from not doing it (not "growing fast enough").

There's the nugget of my thoughts. How deeply you ponder it is up to you - and your courage :-).

Planning for launch

Here are some of the prongs of the many-prong attack plan for a public launch coming soon. They are in random order.

- a "viral video" created by the Linkspank TV team is creating a "viral video". Also another episode of Linkspank TV itself.

- a (more complete) Facebook app and facebook group.

- outreach to current spankers, via The Monthly Spank, people who have pledged in the Spankathon, personal outreach to those who claim to love me.

- outreach to bloggers and a press release.

- a launch party (in Cambridge, MA - hopefully to be followed someday by others in other cities)

- some guerrilla stuff (stickers, little cards promoting the Spankathon)

- a new contest, possibly with some extra zazz and zaniness.

What do you think? Let me know.