Superman Gets a Website (Wonky Redhead & Doberman Not Included)
How to Get Funding for an Idea?
Be a tall, athletic Stanford-graduate male.
Otherwise, you'll need more than an idea - you'll need product/market fit.
I'm a short, geeky female with a degree from an east-coast art school. Looks like I'll have to build a highly valuable company in order to get some VC love :) I'm up for the challenge, how about you?
Actually, I really do look a lot like Velma, and my favorite colors are orange and red. Long live girl geeks!
Touchpoints When Preparing a Release
Ok, so you've written the code. You've tested, retested, run the beta, rewritten and retested again and again. It's as perfect as it's going to get so you're ready for production. Right?
Wrong.
Let's take yesterday's release over at Passpack for example. It was mostly a bundle of fixes and couple of minor features - nothing milestone. Yet that release produced about 20 hours of non-programming work that needed to be accomplished before it went into production. Plus there's at least another 8-12 hours of work to be accomplished post-release.
In general it's best to get as much accomplished pre-release as possible, because the additional hours post-release will be highly diluted by a spike in customer support, sales inquiries, press relations and the inevitable bug fixing. Oh - and a big fat nap.
Channels, Touchpoints, Tasks & Scope
I'm taking the liberty of expanding the typical use of touchpoint to include "materials I much touch". These materials are spread out across the channels I manage on a regular basis:
- Help (aka: Customer Support)
- Marketing (including PR & Media)
In addition, these two are regularly managed by Francesco, but in the event of a release, it's my job to manage certain touchpoints for a release:
- Corporate (anyone else abhor this word?)
- Application (the software itself)
Touchpoints are the materials to manage, organized by channel. And each touchpoint will have any number of tasks. The scope of tasks may be once for an entire release, others must be iterated on each item in the release (ex. every new, updated or removed thing-a-majig). Sometimes the scope is for milestone releases only.
My Touchpoint Grid
This is not a task-list per se, rather a guide to what we've got going on where. I've excluded channels I don't have to personally deal with, like IT and Accounting. Most touchpoints have completely different materials, even if they may seem similar at task level (ex. images, videos). Some touchpoints even have the same name (ex. Social Media) but are different because used differently by each channel.
| Channel | Touchpoint | Task | Scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Help | Knowledge base | find/update existing articles | item |
| find/update/upload existing images | item | ||
| delete irrelevant articles & redirect | item | ||
| create new articles | item | ||
| create/upload new images | item | ||
| Support admin | find/update existing canned replies | item | |
| find/update links to knowledge base changes | item | ||
| delete irrelevant replies | item | ||
| create new replies | item | ||
| update categories & automation rules | item | ||
| User follow-up | prepare replies for any affected open tickets | item | |
| prepare social media replies (twitter, fb, etc) | item | ||
| Social Media | create new videos | item | |
| upload new videos to youtube channel | item | ||
| upload new images to flickr channel | item | ||
| Marketing | Downloads | update/upload Admin getting started guide (PDF) | item |
| update/upload User getting started guide (PDF) | item | ||
| update technology white paper (PDF) | item | ||
| Website | update all pages involved | item | |
| update all images involved | item | ||
| update timeline in About page | milestone | ||
| Press | update/upload media kit (ZIP) | item | |
| create press release | milestone | ||
| upload press release to media center | milestone | ||
| distribute press release online | milestone | ||
| research/compile short list journalists | milestone | ||
| pitch & send press release to short list | milestone | ||
| research/compile short list bloggers | release | ||
| pitch, pitch, pitch! | release | ||
| Social Media | write/publish company blog post | release | |
| tweet/retweet blog post | release | ||
| notify news on company twitter account | release | ||
| notify company friends in facebook | release | ||
| create/upload images to flickr | release | ||
| create/upload video to youtube channel | release | ||
| Application | News | news alert in the application home tab | release |
| news alert in the application login screen | release | ||
| Inline Help | recompile with knowledge base updates | item | |
| update all on-screen instructions | item | ||
| Corporate | G&A | check/update tac/ua/privacy/copyright | item |
| check/update credits | item | ||
| update internal features/release schedule | item | ||
| update internal competitive analysis docs | item | ||
| Stakeholders | update timeline & deliveries documents | release | |
| prepare/email summary of status (PDF) | release | ||
| call to brag :) | milestone |
Tally It Up
Back to our example release, here's how it all panned out.
1. Switch in currency, added free trials, updated refunds policy, added new premium package
Our product pricing centralized in a database and we have a policy to never quote a price directly but rather link to those sources. Thanks to these two factors, we breezed through the Marketing and Help touchpoints.
Most of the work fell was in the Corporate touchpoints, particularly "Billing & accounting" (pre-release) and "Investor" (post-release). Clearly out investors know a price change was in the works, but they also expect to be told when it actually happens. Welcome to "investor communications 101".
2. Website redesign
Very little impact on the release outside the design & development itself.
3. Three interface tweaks
Yikes. These were "itty bitty" changes to the interface, but with BIG consequences in terms of work produced. The key word is "interface". The interface is visual, which means not only are we adding and updating the text descriptions of of the features, but there are a lot of images and (sometimes) videos which are effected as well.
In this particular release, we had a lot of backend stuff we were in a hurry to roll out, so we opted to postpone about 80% of it post-release. All in all, the work done/to do is: all the tasks marked "item" in the grid x 3.
May the good winds fill my sails, I've got a long way to go!
4. Two non-interface tweaks, back-end stuff & bug fixes
Special attention needs to be paid to the "User follow-up" touchpoint (post-release). We had two pretty important patches in there, so I had quite a bit of follow-up to do in the help center with user that were awaiting a reply from me. I'm still wading through those as they generally require a personal reply.
Happy Side Effects
It's pretty easy to see how it things add up quickly, making the best reason to do your own grid better planning and productivity. But it's worth the exersize in anf of itself.
I've also found that the exercise of compiling a touchpoint grid in and of itself has its merits. Any redundancies will immediately come to the forefront. You may even identify ways to consolidate disparate systems or media in a way to save you time.
You'll also have a more intimately organized view of your company's real needs. Following the most recent release, we've decided to eliminate a number of redundant systems. In particular, I'm beta testing an awesome cross-channel customer support & social media service right now. Can't wait until that service is in production. It'll save me oodles of time.
Now, enough blatter. I've a lot of work to do. ;)
IgniteItalia: Destinazione Silicon Valley
I get tons of phone calls and emails from budding Italian entrepreneurs looking for some tips on their move to Silicon Valley. I love these calls - so keep them coming.
In the meantime, here's some of logistical tips (with price tags!) on planning your trip. It's just the tip of the iceberg, but should at least give you a starting point.
Ultraviolet Password Tattoos
Wow, I hope we don't have to start supporting tattoos as a password export option over at Passpack ;)
In the beginning of the monthNew England Journal of Medicinepublished an article detailing the security risk of wireless controlled implantable devices such as pacemakers and defibrillators. Researchers at Microsoft have proposed a possible solution that would allow doctors to still access the device if needed while the patient is unconscious: tattoo the password onto the patient with ultraviolet reactive ink. That way the password is only visible using a UV lamp, or if the patient walks into a really cool teenager's bedroom.
I grabbed this quote from here. And the Microsoft PDF paper is here.
Urban Antwoman
Sigh, I miss the days when I used to travel the city drawing and photographing people without a care in the world. Wait... no I don't! I do enjoy looking at what others have been sketching though.
The Antwoman, on the other hand, has never gone away. I started drawing her in the 10th grade and have never stopped. She's my alter ego - or maybe I'm hers. Sometimes I'm not so sure that it's me drawing her, or her making herself seen through my pen.
Either way, we haven't failed each other yet.
Wonderful Content for Entrepreneurs
Came across this incredible resource in my daily web travels: Kutztown Small Business Development Center. I haven't sampled any of the courses from this collection of free online learning programs yet, but looks like some good weekend reading.
On-Demand Online Learning Programs
We have over 90 Online Learning Programs. We are constantly adding more programs. This is one of the largest collection of free, on-demand entrepreneurial training resources available in the United States and is part of our "Success Network". We have Online Learning programs from the SBA, IRS, Small Biz U, Virtual Advisor and custom programs from the Pennsylvania SBDC Network.
Enjoy - and let me know if you get a chance to try one of these courses.
In Good Company
On March 30 here in Rome, I'll be participating in a discussion hosted by BAIA on Data Privacy - my favorite topic. Check out the lineup:
Ammiro Partners – Fastweb – Google – Microsoft – Passpack – Sky – Sorgenia
That's some pretty good company wouldn't you say? [big grin]
The event is celebrating the release of the book Next Privacy. If you're in Rome and interested in coming, check out the full invite and registration here. There will be some of the leaders in privacy here in Italy like Luca Bolognini e Pietro Paganini.
One of the great things about being back in Rome is that Passpack is a big (biggish-medium?) fish in a fairly small startup pond. That means I get lot's of opportunities to talk where I might not even be taken in consideration had the pond been larger.
Hope to see you there!
Captured reCAPTCHA
I use reCAPTCHA on various forms across the various online properties I manage. Sometimes though, the random words are, well, interesting. [sigh]
Thanks to Jacques for pinging me with the capture on Imgur (cool site).
I think it may have already made the rounds on Facebook.
A Pause for Reflection
The past five months I've been up and down Silicon Valley figuring out Passpack's future path. It would have been great (maybe) had I decided to blog during that time, but frankly I just was't up to it. That said, what I've learned has been so incredibly useful that I'm going to share some insights after the fact.
On Funding
A little over a year ago at Passpack, we tightened our belts for the recession. While (alas) the recession is still only barely showing signs of improvement, in July we took on some extra funding that allowed us room to explore the future development of the company. In this post we listed four goals for using those funds. To recap:
- Continued product development
- Infrastructure
- Marketing
- Improved content
While Francesco toiled away on development and infrastructure, I was in charge of marketing and content. However after looking into hiring a blogger and content writer, we ultimately decided the "content" money would be better spent entirely on marketing.
Marketing Take 1 (promotion)
Raise your hand if you hear "marketing" and think "promotion." Yup, promotion is exactly what I'd planned to spend our mini-budget on. We did a little SEO, dabbled in some ad-wording, tested a few landing pages. Nothing extravagant, but it all seemed to be going decently at least.
So we took a look at our metrics. We compared that with that survey we had our users fill out, and we thought, "Hey not enough web designers are using Passpack. We should reach out to them!" Shortly thereafter we had a banner ad running for a full month on Smashing Magazine.
Results? Nothing. Nada. Sub-zero response from the designers.
In our business plan web designers were one of the top five segments we expected to go ga-ga for Passpack. Stumped, I decided to pull out the original doc and check our standing on all five segments. Turns out Passpack is being used by an pretty different crowd than we had expected. Go figure.
Marketing Take 2 (positioning)
It was time to take a deeper look at our current - and future - strategy before doing any promotion.
What's our market position right now? is it what we want? is it sustainable? should we be penetrating deeper into the segments that already use Passpack? should we be trying to reach out to new segments? are these the business plan segments or folks we've never dreamed of? does any of this mean product improvements, building additional products or an API/platform for building multiple products?
I decided to go straight to the source to conduct my research. I've just now returned from a 4-5 month stint at Plug and play Tech Center in Sunnyvale. What I learned is pretty amazing and merits a post unto itself.
In the meantime, I leave you with these links on metrics and customer development: