Field Report: WebInno23 Session: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Bootstrapping PR

September 30, 2009

Last night, a near-capacity crowd of people passionate about the web congregated at the WebInno23 event at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge.  There were a number of interesting companies making their pitches, including The Idea Startup, Happn.in, and Book of Odds. It was a great event all around, but my favorite part was the journalist panel on “An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Bootstrapping PR.” The real title could have been more bluntly named, “How to effectively reach journalists and get them to write about you without wasting money on PR people.”

The panel was a who’s who of distinguished innovation economy regional journalists: Peter Kafka (AllThingsD), Scott Kirsner (Boston Globe), Wade Roush (Xconomy),  and Bob Brown (Network World). Despite the varied backgrounds, they all seemed to be in agreement on most issues:

The Best Way to Reach Journalists

It turns out, journalists are just like regular people; if you want someone to help you out, they’re more likely to do so if they personally know you.  Peter Kafka recommended getting a referral from someone he trusts; if they’re excited about it, then he will be as well.  However, en lieu of such a connection, they all agreed that speaking to them face to face at an event or a conference is the best way to make them interested in your company.  The also emphasized that the meeting needs to be natural; they don’t like it when PR people or others grab someone and try to force an interaction.  Just thinking logically about reaching them this way, it makes a lot of sense.  Are you more likely to help someone if you were randomly messaged by them on LinkedIn or if you met them in person before?

Tips for Blogging

If you’re going to blog, you need to be passionate about what you’re blogging about and blogging itself.  A number of the panelists mentioned checking company and founder blogs to start a story.  If it isn’t current, they’re less likely to be interested and as Scott Kirsner said he’d hate to be at a company and have to ask, “‘What’s happened since your last post on July 23rd?’”  Bottom line: Write regularly and with passion or don’t blog at all.

Best Hooks for Journalists

If you want a journalist to write about you, you need to give them something they find interesting to write about. These are what they said were the most likely items to be written about:
1) If your company gets  a new leader (Someone was likely removed)
2) If you just completed a big round of financing
3) If you’re an established company making a significant change in direction for the company
4) If you have a major product being released (NOT version 7.2.1.1)
5) If you tie to a hot topic or are taking on an industry giant (David vs. Goliath is always a good story)
No surprises here.  What else does a company do that others might really want to read about?

Thoughts on Embargoes and Exclusives

The general feeling was that embargoes are a dying concept.  With sites like TechCrunch breaking news as soon as they can find it and others “accidentally” breaking stories early, there’s not a lot of incentive to wait.  The panelists were mainly concerned with spending a great deal of time on an article only to be beaten to the story by another site.  They also posed the question, “Why do you need everything to break at the exact same time?”

A similar feeling was echoed for exclusives.  Unless it’s a really unique and deep story, being exclusive isn’t a big deal to the journalists; they said they understand an entrepreneur has to try to get their story out. Their main thoughts seemed to focus on the fact that you really just need to understand your desired audience for a story.  Sites like Gizmodo will get you a mention and a quick paragaph, but to have a full story told, you’ll want to target a journalist.

Final Thoughts

The main message of the event seemed to focus on three concepts: personal relationships, passion and personality.  They all get spammed by PR firms trying to convince them to write a story and press releases filled with gobbledegook.  Neither is likely to get a story actually written.  Instead, they want to get to know you and your company personally.  As Bob Brown said, “Put away your powerpoints and put you and your company’s personality in front of us.” They also want to see your passion and personality come through in the content on your site, your blog and your tweets.  These places are where you can control your message and may even attract interest from journalists (David Meerman Scott and Hubspot would be so proud).

In the end, journalists are just like everyone else; they want to be treated like a colleague, hear interesting stories and get to know you and what you’re passionate about.  PR people are still very important for companies for a lot of other duties, but for a new startup trying to get press, the panelists don’t believe they can help much.


2 Comments | Events, entrepreneurship | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jason Evanish

What is the Northeastern School of Technological Entrepreneurship?

September 29, 2009

When I’m networking at various entrepreneurial events in the city, my background often comes up in discussions.  When I mention that I’m a recent graduate of the Master’s program in the School of Technological Entrepreneurship at Northeastern University, most pose the question: “What’s that?”  I obviously don’t have the chance to go in depth to describe it there, so I’d like to talk more here about the seemingly little known program.

The School started 6 years ago thanks to a generous donation by Jean C. Tempel, a local education philanthropist.  I was just a freshman Electrical Engineering major when I took the first class they offered in the Spring of 2004.  This course was the seminar series showcasing local entrepreneurs that I’ve mentioned in previous entries.  Their stories really sparked the fire of my passion for entrepreneurship. Over the next 4 years, I took the necessary courses to gain a minor in Technological Entrepreneurship. As I moved closer to graduation, I realized that I was more passionate about the minor than my major, but I didn’t feel like I was prepared to pursue a career in entrepreneurship yet.  With this in mind, I decided to enter the Master’s degree program.

While at times I’ll quickly tell someone that my Master’s degree is a “MBA for Startups,” that’s a rather crude approximation.  The STE program is more compact (one year, 10 courses) and includes a year long development project that involves work similar to organizing the business aspects of a startup.  The classes are a crash course in all of the key business concerns of a start-up: Intellectual Property, Marketing, Accounting, Finance, Product Development, Business Management, Leadership, and Strategic Planning.   These courses give students a solid base from which they can build upon when they work on real world start-ups after graduation and they even cover many of the lessons some have been disappointed MBAs don’t learn.

The types of students enrolled in this program are different than most MBAs.  The majority of my classmates are foreign and fresh out of undergraduate programs. This had both benefits and drawbacks in my experience.  It was great learning to work with people with vastly different cultural backgrounds; I had many conversations with my classmates that helped me understand the Indian, Chinese and Taiwanese cultures.  Even cultural norms such as how to interact with your professor are very different in other countries.   Of course, a drawback of working with so many foreign students comes when working on projects.  Since English is not usually their first language, I found myself needing to do significant editing for most of their work. We all know how much a grammatical error stands out in a presentation, so this was always a key issue to address.  Personally, I saw a silver lining in this as it made me more critical of my own work and have a greater attention to detail; never assume a slide or paragraph is perfect until you’ve checked it twice.

The program does have its flaws.  Since classes are every night, it’s impossible to go to the majority of entrepreneurial events.  This put me behind the eight-ball in finding employment upon graduation and building a network. The program could also use a lot more marketing, as it would be helpful if more local entrepreneurs were familiar with it. I graduated from the 3rd class of the program, so I’m sure it will improve in years to come as myself and others work in the local community and the program expands.

Overall, I’m very pleased with my decision to enter the program.  Every professor in the program has startup experience, and they all incorporate their stories into their courses (the good, the bad and the ugly).  We also had a VC and an Angel involved in a pair of courses, which further diversified the perspectives presented to students. Topics in the classroom were supplemented by a monthly speaker series, which included local entrepreneurs, angels, bankers, and lawyers.  We were required to give many presentations and write a great deal, which led to significant improvement in those skills as well as time management and organizational skills.  Since classes were at night, I was able to work part time during the day at E Ink, which provided both invaluable experience and allowed me to avoid going into debt for living expenses in addition to the hefty tuition costs. Finally, for those of us who were able to pursue personal projects for the year long development projects, we were able to learn a great deal about what it really takes to launch a business (more on my project in a future entry) with some even launching.

———————————————————————————————————————-

In the end, the Master’s program has vastly improved my business knowledge in just a single, intense year.  I look forward to continuing to build upon this knowledge for a lifetime.  As the great philosopher once said,

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” – Socrates

1 Comment | Education, entrepreneurship | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jason Evanish

The Best Kept Secret for Young Entrepreneurs: DartBoston’s Pokin’ Holes

September 28, 2009

Every Thursday night a group of energized, passionate, young entrepreneurs gather at a local bar for an event called Pokin’ Holes. The set-up is simple: a young entrepreneur gives a pitch of their company and describes what stage they’re in and problems they’re facing right now.  Cort Johnson, the host of Pokin’ Holes, then leads a 3 person panel (also filled with young entrepreneurs) to discuss what they see as both key problems and solutions for the start-up.  When the panel discussion is finished, the audience is asked for their feedback as well.

Before attending an event, I was skeptical. I thought, “How much could a few young entrepreneurs do to help and why would I want to attend this?” One word can explain it all: community.

Yes, a key part of the weekly events are the panelists discussing a fellow young entrepreneur’s start-up, but Pokin’ Holes doesn’t end when the camera stops recording (as I mistakenly thought).  Everyone is involved in the discussion, asking both tough questions and helping come up with possible solutions.  The diversity of backgrounds in the audience provides incredible insight as everyone looks at the companies through a different lense.

A great example of this was the week Schedr was the featured start-up (see video here).  Schedr is an online course registration application designed by UMass Amherst student Tom Petr.  The panel was made up of people with backgrounds in front end programming, back end programming and marketing, which were exactly the areas he needed advice on.  It became an even bigger help for Tom when Cort opened the discussion to the audience as others weighed in with perspectives as fellow students (his customers), RAs (a potential sales channel), and working with school administration (he needs access to the registrar).  By the end of the night, Tom had a laundry list of ideas and people to speak to that will make a huge impact on the development of his business.

The Schedr panel and audience was not the exception; there was no magical coincidence that the room was filled with the right people.  The following week, LaunchIntoBoston was the featured company, and similar results occurred (see video here).  Launch Into Boston is a company serving those transitioning from college to the working world in Boston.  They help you find an apartment, a job and discover socializing opportunities in the city.  Obviously, it couldn’t be more different from an online scheduling tool and yet, the panel again provided essential feedback and the audience reinforced and added many more ideas.  By the end of the night, founder Stephanie Smith had a new perspective on where to focus her business and make the most effective, immediate improvements.

Helping these companies is great, but when the camera shuts off and the audience feedback wraps up, the real power of DartBoston begins. Everyone sticks together after the event to talk about their passions, ideas and new ventures.  This is invigorating and exciting; everyone seems to feed off of one another, energizing us to all keep pursuing our goals.  The beauty is that the room is truly flat; none of the panelists or audience members are untouchable CEOs of major companies that are anxious to get back to their Blackberry or afraid to hear another pitch.  It is this openness and welcoming nature that keeps people coming back and leads to the community that is so powerful in helping the companies featured each week and also leads to help occurring off camera too.

—————————————————————————————————————–

The community is what makes DartBoston great and so unique.  If you know of another collection of such energized, ambitious, young entrepreneurs, I think we’d all like to know about it.

I’ll close this with a quote from an episode of Hubspot.tv a few weeks ago that I believe embodies what DartBoston means to the young entrepreneur community:

“If you have a great idea and are passionate about it, just go for it and surround yourself with people that believe in you and will offer guidance and help”  – Leah Busque, Founder of RunMyErrand.com

3 Comments | Events, entrepreneurship | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jason Evanish

Russ Wilcox, Mass High Tech All Star

September 25, 2009

As I was following my twitter stream today on TweetDeck, I noticed an announcement about “Mass High Tech All Stars”. What really caught my attention was the mention of Russ Wilcox receiving one of the awards.  Russ is very deserving of this and the other awards he and E Ink have been amassing recently.  I’ve had a number of great experiences with Russ, so I’d like to share a few here.

As you may recall from my first entry, there was a seminar my freshman year at Northeastern that included local entrepreneurs coming in to discuss their start-up experiences.  Russ was one of those entrepreneurs, and to this day, I remember his presentation.  He showed us his VC pitch and talked about his passion for changing the way we interact with books. The innovative nature of the technology and the passion he showed really stood out and definitely contributed to my growing interest in entrepreneurship at the time. From that day forward, I followed E Ink in the news to see how they were doing.

When I graduated 4 years later, it only seemed natural to apply for a position at E Ink; by working there I could learn more about a great local start-up firsthand.  Fortunately, they hired me for a summer job that got my foot in the door. During that time, Russ was constantly being taped in interviews, interacting with employees and talking about making E Ink a success. His passion seemed to spread to others and his demeanor made everyone feel confident and comfortable. After overhearing he got to talk to one of my all-time favorite entrepreneurs, Mark Cuban, on the phone as part of something Mark’s HDNet was reporting on, I decided I had to get a chance to talk to him too.

I won’t lie…I was scared. I thought to myself, “this is a man running a 100+ employee company that is just starting to gain traction…he has no time to talk to me.”  Luckily, I didn’t let those thoughts get the best of me,  so I emailed him explaining my passion for entrepreneurship and asked if I could talk to him about his experiences.  To my delight, he was more than happy to and we scheduled a meeting.

The meeting was everything I hoped it would be and more.  He started out by telling me the story of E Ink; how they almost went bankrupt and the extreme situation he was handed the day he was named CEO (6 weeks of cash left, no established product) and how they made it to 2008.  We then talked about his personal background and how he ended up at E Ink.  The discussion then turned towards me and I explained to him what I hoped to do and he gave me a lot of great advice.  He suggested a ton of reading and explained his philosophy for all that reading (essentially…there’s something to learn from all of them…the key is recognizing those key nuggets and combining it with the others).  The meeting was scheduled to be 45 minutes, but we ended up talking for an hour and a half. During that time, he never looked at his watch or hinted at all that he had anything to do but talk to me.

It’s experiences like these that inspire future generations of entrepreneurs.  I hope one day I can be the type of leader Russ is and hope he can continue to guide E Ink to a successful future.

————————————————————————————————————————————-

I’ll leave you with a quote from Russ that speaks deeply to his beliefs and what I think entrepreneurship is really all about:

“You live to your fullest potential when you pursue a challenging dream that builds lasting value for others. ” -Russ Wilcox, CEO E Ink


5 Comments | Leadership, entrepreneurship | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jason Evanish

Inspiration

September 24, 2009

Many have written about their experiences as emerging entrepreneurs to great effect. These books, blogs and articles all serve as inspiration to me and fellow young entrepreneurs.  One of my favorite items I’ve read is Mark Cuban’s insight on that journey.  It’s easy to look at him and say, “Wow. He has everything. He’s a billionaire. He owns the Mavericks. He has a gorgeous wife and a great family.”  But did you know he slept on the floor of a cramped, trashy apartment for a few years while he was trying to get his first company off the ground? Or that he read computer manuals in his free time so that he could become an expert with them? Behind every success story is years of hard work and sacrifice…

http://blogmaverick.com/2009/05/13/success-motivation/
http://blogmaverick.com/2009/06/09/success-motivation-2009/

Now Mark Cuban is a great personal entrepreneurial “hero” of mine, but if we’re talking about inspiration to pursue your goals, nothing compares to Dr. Randy Pousch. At age 47 this Carnegie Mellon professor was given a diagnosis of terminal cancer.  Randy decided cancer could kill him, but not his spirit. In his “Last Lesson,” he shared with everyone his life story and lessons learned.  Below you’ll find the full video of this “Last Lesson.” It’s about the length of a movie, but I dare you to find one as powerful and moving:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5700431505846055184&hl=en#

I saved a number of quotes from Dr. Pausch for myself, but I’d like to comment on a few that resonated the most with me and others I showed the video (approximate time in the video listed in parenthesis):

(18:40) “When you see yourself doing something badly and no one is saying anything anymore…that’s a problem. It means they’ve given up on you”

I think this emphasizes the fact that feedback is so important. You always want to improve yourself and sometimes it’s really hard to get constructive criticism out of people. It’s often because they don’t want to hurt your feelings, but they’re only doing you a disservice.  Of course, if they just don’t care, you have a bigger problem.  If you ever have constructive criticism on my blog, please comment!

(1:10:35)“Decide if you’re a Tigger or Eyeore”

As my father so eloquently put it, “I always thought Tigger was an airhead.” Yes, in the most literal sense that may be true. But to me, this is about optimism and hope vs. pessimism and acceptance.  Tigger sees all the great in the world and pursues his goals of being happy in life, while Eyeore is always depressed about something and never does anything to change his situation. To me, the Tiggers of the world are those that see problems in the world as opportunities to make a difference.  I’m a Tigger. Are you?

(53:00) “If you do anything that is pioneering, you have to put up with the arrows in the back”

This quote relates to entrepreneurs in two ways.  First, there will always be doubters, critics and haters.  You have to know when to listen to them…is it constructive criticism, or deep down, do you know they’re wrong? In general, I’ve found the best way to know if I believe in what I’m doing is simply to have someone try to encourage me to go another way; if I strongly disagree with their suggestion, I know I’m fully committed to my decision.  The second way this affects us is competition.  There is always someone else with the same idea.  Even if you get a head start and have more customers, better market presence, or superior technology, they’re gunning for you.  As I learned in running cross country, if you aren’t passing someone, someone else is likely passing you.

(26:40) “The brick walls are there for a reason.
The brick walls are not there to keep us out.
The brick walls are there to show us
how badly we want something
The brick walls are there to stop those
who don’t want it badly enough.
They’re there to stop other people.”

When I was a freshman in high school, I joined the track team.  Since my father ran track in college I thought I would be good too.  As it turned out…I wasn’t a natural.  At the end of the year, we had a banquet and the coaches honored all of the best athletes, which obviously didn’t include me. I decided I wanted to be one of those guys.  My coach told me I should join the Cross Country team and so after that banquet, I told him I was going to try to make varsity that fall.  He’s a nice guy, so he didn’t tell me no way, but he basically shrugged me off. He knew I ran a 7:30 mile as my best time that track season, and that pace wouldn’t even be good enough to make varsity.  Little did he know how badly I wanted it. All summer I got up every morning and ran 7.5 miles in the morning and 2.5 miles at night.  By the start of the school year I had run over 600 miles and was doing my morning run in under 7 minute mile pace.  I made varsity, to the great surprise of my coaches and my teammates.

When I set a goal, I passionately pursue it with everything I have and refuse to give up.  It hasn’t failed me regardless of whether it’s an athletic, academic or professional challenge.  I see a few “brick walls” in my life right now; I look forward to breaking them down.

—————————————————————————————————————————-

Despite only living half of the average American life, Randy Pousch accomplished a laundry list of lofty and challenging goals including working for Disney Imagineers, experiencing zero gravity, and writing an article for World Book Encyclopedia.  I have a list. Do you have a list? How are you working to check them off?   Don’t be afraid if they’re lofty. Randy’s mentor put it best:

“It’s such a shame people see you as arrogant…it’s going to limit what you’re going to be able to accomplish” -Andy van Dam

3 Comments | Inspirational, Life | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jason Evanish

« Previous Entries