My latest column for Venture Fizz is now live. This month I talked with Springpad CEO Jeff Janer in First Look: Springpad.

Just about everyone has an idea that they’d love to turn into a startup. But how do you find the right co-founder(s) to get started?

Recently two new sites have launched (or have launched betas) with exactly that problem in mind.

The first one is called fowndr, which is currently in invite-only beta. From their site:

Fowndr brings together founders, co-founders and investors from all over the world to share ideas, thoughts, link, get feedback and even share files.

Once you become a part of the network you can start building relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs, form private networks, post comments, and share files with the wider network.

There’s a lively conversation thread on Hacker News about fownder, where commenters are debating the choice of the site’s name, the definition of a “founder”, and the development of cliques in the startup community.

The second is called StartupCrave, which is currently open for registration for early adopters. I spoke with StartupCrave’s founder, Dan Cote to see what his site is all about.

At its core, StartupCrave is a place for people to find co-founders, employees, funding, etc. to start an internet business. Dan Cote describes the site as “specifically focused on internet entrepreneurs that know they need someone else to get going.”

The Marketing Challenge

As is the case with any site that depends on a quantity of users and content to provide value, both fowndr and startupcrave face the “chicken and egg” problem. Since there are very few users to start with, there’s little value. Since there’s little value, there’s little incentive to sign up.

Fowndr and StartupCrave have taken different approaches to try to solve the chicken and egg problem and boost registration.

Fowndr has gone with the “request invite” method of pre-launch demand generation. They’ve decided to target sites like Hacker News and Reddit’s /startups subreddit to create initial demand.

StartupCrave instead is offering free registration for its (eventual) paid membership services:

Those that sign up for StartupCrave during the beta become “Pro-level members for life”.

StartupCrave was created to solve the problem Cote faced: as a marketing guy, he had plenty of startup ideas, but lacked the technical background to make those ideas happen. He met StartupCrave’s co-founder a year ago while working on another idea, and decided to create a site that helps would-be entrepreneurs share ideas and find a complimentary business partner.

It’s been a while since my last post here, as I’ve been spending more time walking the walk than talking the talk. That, and I’ve been trying to figure out the line between revealing too much and not adding enough value. I think I’ve found that line (hopefully those aren’t famous last words!), and I’m back to blogging.

My Purpose In Life (At Work, At Least)

I’ll always remember my answer when asked “What’s the goal of marketing at a startup?” when interviewing for my current gig. The answer: “Drive sales.”

Before moving on from a declarative statement like that, I should add a small caveat. There are some startups that simply don’t have anything to sell. So let me change my answer to “Drive the pre-defined success event”. It really doesn’t have the same ring as “drive sales”, but you get the picture. If the goal is to get people to sign up, that’s the success event. Moving right along.

Using Facebook Ads To Generate Leads

Back in January, we released the first paid version of our software. Prior to that, we had a free version, and most of my lead generation activities for the free app were, well, free. I did a lot of outreach, listings, etc., but didn’t really spend much money. With the release of the paid product, I was able to do a little bit of PPC spending.

Sure, I’ve done a lot of AdWords campaigns, but they just don’t work. The price per click is very high, the conversion rate is low, and those that actually signed up for a free trial of our product were few and very far between.

Enter facebook.

My preconception: Since facebook is primarily a place where people update their friends and play games, it would NOT be a good lead generation avenue.

Looking Back: Boy, was I wrong.

I’m obviously not going to share the raw numbers with you, but I can tell you this: facebook is by orders of magnitude the best lead generation channel we have. Here’s what’s so great about facebook ads:

1. Targeting is awesome.

With facebook, the targeting is HUGE. You can target geographically, by age, by gender, and by “Likes” (called Keywords here). The keyword field lets you target interests, by scanning what users have indicated within their profile.
2. Ads are cheap- Right now I’m looking at around $0.70 per click, which is FAR less than AdWords and the leads are highly targeted.

3. Ads are fun- Since this is facebook and you’re trying to compete for a visitor’s attention, you really need to come up with some interesting, fun ads. Here are a few that have worked well for me.

4.Time To Campaign Is Fast- It literally takes minutes to get a campaign up and running. Where AdWords can take days to give you a single impression, facebook ads go up in minutes, and you start getting impressions immediately.

All right, that’s all for now.

In the coming posts, I’ll be talking about things like:

• Using one-day only facebook ads
• Micro-targeting using facebook ads
• The lifecycle of a single ad on facebook (hint, it’s short)
• Running a branding campaign using facebook (succeeding without ever getting a click)

Lately I’ve been creating new content over at the Aprigo blog. We were a very stealth mode startup, but since we’re getting ready to release a private beta soon, we’ve started to lift the veil of secrecy. I was talking with a co-worker a few moments ago and was asked the following question:

"So the people that are coming to our blog and reading our posts….are they a missed opportunity? Shouldn’t we wait until we have a product?"

Now that was an interesting question. I’d never really thought about it that way. My immediate, knee-jerk reaction was "we shouldn’t wait." Here’s why:

1. Blogging early and creating content builds trust- When you’re a startup without any exposure, people are skeptical of your claims. So many startups make bold, aggressive claims like "our search engine makes google look like a dinosaur." It’s easy to make claims like that when you have no proof. But when you start off by addressing the problems you’re trying to solve and give examples of how you’re going to solve them, people respond to that. My favorite example of this was the blog from Powerset, a search engine startup focused on natural language search. (They were later acquired by Microsoft)

   Rather than making claims that their search approach was the best, they gave examples of problems that exist in search as we know it. A favorite post is called "The Tyranny of the Common Name", in which the author addresses the problem of having a common name when it comes to search. These kinds of posts go a long way in demonstrating expertise and a fundamental understanding of the problems facing the market, thus establishing trust.

2. Blogging early and creating content builds incoming links- If you wait until the day you have a product to sell to create content, who would know how to find it? Let’s play make-believe for a second….Let’s say I’ve been secretly working on an online store for dart players. The store has darts, accessories, and anything a serious dart player would be looking for. Today I’m ready to launch, and I haven’t done any kind of promotion until today.

   I could go to twitter, but since I have no following and haven’t approached dart players on twitter, no one would see my tweets.
   I could go to facebook, but since I haven’t friended anyone or joined any groups for dart players, no one would notice.
   I could start posting blog posts every hour, but no one would know about them.

   What’s worse is that since I didn’t lay the groundwork earlier, even if people did notice the content, they’d probably label me as a spammer, carpet-bombing the internet with shameless plugs rather than taking the time to organically build interest.

3. Blogging early gives your company exposure- Early on, when you don’t have a product to sell, you’re in an ideal position to create content. In this phase of your company’s existance, you are doing something awesome: you’re creating content purely because it is interesting and useful to the people you’ll eventually want as customers. You don’t have to worry about plugging your product. You don’t have to craft your posts around a product offer, and you don’t have to constantly focus on the ROI of each post. This is the fun part where you are really just trying to figure out how you can be a resource to the population you wish to later serve.
4. Blogging early makes your company real- When you don’t have proof, people don’t think you’re real. A "stealth mode startup building x" doesn’t really exist in the eyes of the public. And since you can’t yet clearly demonstrate your product, blogging is a great way to share your philosophy and focus on solving a problem. Blogging gives you a chance to relate to your market, and a chance to interact with readers.
5. Blogging early gives your company a chance to receive feedback- We repeat this over and over here at Aprigo, but we mean it when we say we’re a market-driven company. Why bother building a product with features people won’t use? Conversely, we don’t want to leave out functionality that people would really value. Blogging gives us the opportunity to give our opinions, but also to hear what others have to say, and that is incredibly valuable when looking at our roadmap.
6. Blogging early builds anticipation- Combining all of the above points, when you’re able to share your philosophy, build trust and interact with people interested in what you have to say, it builds anticipation for what you have to offer. It makes people want to know when your product is ready for them to check out. It’s happened to me time and time again….I’ll hear about a product that isn’t publicly available yet, and I’ll follow their blog to hear updates and to see what will be coming soon.

In the end, I think the point is that you need to constantly produce interesting, relevant content that addresses issues facing those you wish to eventually have as customers. Customer acquisition online isn’t about a transaction, it’s about a relationship, and blogging is a great way to start your company’s relationship to the outside world.

I saw the news today that ImindI, after giving away 1000 invites to their beta on TechCrunch, accidentally deleted all user accounts. Whoops. ImindI’s CEO Adam Lindemann sent out an apology email:

Dear Friends of Imindi,

Yesterday, we were featured on Techcrunch and many of you were kind enough to sign up to the service. Unfortunately, we had not prepared sufficiently for the demand on our servers and then with some human error we accidently deleted all the user accounts. Darn.

We would ask that you forgive us and sign up one more time as members of Imindi. We will set you up with a clean account which we hope you will enjoy using to collect your thoughts and share them with like-minded people.

We are extremely embarrassed by this mistake and we have purchased more capacity and instituted safer backup processes to handle the increased demand to prevent a recurrence of this incident. It’s a private beta, and it will be a while before this service is ready to be launched in public but we hope that you will be kind to Imindi as she grows.

When I see an invite-only beta and sign up, I assume that there are going to be problems. There will be bugs. There will be weirdness. I don’t assume that all the user accounts will be deleted, but I do expect that things won’t be perfect.

That’s just the nature of betas. If a company were to wait until everything worked perfectly, they’d never ship a product. And shipping something buggy but solid is a great way to get user feedback, feature requests, etc.

I think the ImindI situation is a different animal altogether, as it wasn’t the product that was buggy. It was a lapse in preparation for scale along with some human error. But again, it’s a beta, so you can’t be too upset. Instead, I think the interesting question is: Do you only have one chance to get the launch right? Will people invest the time to start over?

I know that there were only 1000 accounts, so the scope of the problem is super-small. But looking at TechCrunch readers, these are the early adopters, the evangelists, the influencers. Whatever title you wish to apply, these are the people that either make something popular or they’re the people that tell their friends not to bother.

With only 1000 accounts and probably triple that number on the waiting list for an account, I’m guessing this won’t be a problem for ImindI at all. But I want to ask you:

• How much leeway to you give to betas?
• If your account was deleted, would you start over again?
• Or….does it really depend on how much time you spent on the app in the first place?

On March 24-26 here in Boston, there will be a conference entitled “The Business of Community Networking“. The overview:

We have designed the one marketing event that you can’t afford to miss – a best practice conference to create social networks and measure ROI of online marketing. Help your business interact, network and exchange knowledge using social media, reach new customers and make your performance soar. After three days of premier content delivered by over 25 talented speakers and panelists, you leave with a plan to take your company’s marketing to a whole new level.

I’ll be there covering the event, and the agenda is available here. Some of the sessions planned include:

• Identifying How Personality Drives Word of Mouth Marketing for Your Online Community – How To Develop a Successful Online Community
• Developing a Community Networking Strategy – Steps to Take
• Best Practices in Social Media Strategies
• The Chicken or The Egg: The Real Deal About “Viral” Marketing
• Understanding the Conversation Online Between Consumers – Focusing on Blogging
• Understanding the ROI with Community Marketing

Though I like going to the conferences that focus mainly on tactics and execution, one that is all about measuring ROI is really exciting.

Folks, you’ve heard of inbound marketing as an idea. It’s the marketing equivalent of fishing vs. hunting. You put out the content, you try to lure people to your site, basically you do all you can to get the customers to come to you. When inbound marketing is done correctly, the business is getting lots of calls and emails requesting information on what they have to offer. Think of it as the opposite of cold calling prospects.

Every company, regardless of industry, says they want more leads. More business is always a good thing, right?

In my experience it’s the idea of an avalance of leads that is appealing to most companies while the reality is something different entirely. Companies are more than willing to do the effort to get prospects into the top end of the funnel, but seem to lose focus and ignore the details when they get past the first stage in the sales cycle (this seems to be true in companies that sell a product/subscription as well as ad-supported companies who see registration as the final stage of conversion).

Let me give you three real-world examples, all of which happened to me on the same day last Sunday. My girlfriend and I are starting to quickly outgrow our 1 bedroom basement apartment. When I lived there by myself it was fine, but with two people and two pets it’s a little crowded. Because of that we’ve been looking around for a new spot. All of these places advertise heavily.

1. Forbes Lofts- While you can’t see anything useful in this photo, forbes lofts is a huge new complex on the water in Chelsea, MA. They have a gigantic banner advertising the website and phone number on their buildings, and I see it every day while driving. The idea of a loft really appealed to us, so we went to the website. The site advertises an open house each Sunday from 11-3. Here’s what they say:

These tours will highlight the recent progress on site, including the windmill, new entrance road, salt marsh tidal canal, and development of the new harbor side pavilion! R.S.V.P. is not required, but appreciated.

Well, we decided to RSVP just in case. On Sunday we showed up at the site and no one was there. Not a single person was to be found, and we were standing in the exact spot listed on the site. I looked up the phone number and called while we were staying there, but it went directly to voicemail. I said “Hi, this is Nathan Burke. We RSVP’d for the open house today, and no one seems to be here. We’ll hang around for a few more minutes, so if anyone is around, please come by. Otherwise, please give me a call at xxx-xxx-xxxx. Thanks.”

It’s been 5 full days, and I still have not heard back from them.

2. The Atlantica- The Atlantica is a relatively new condo complex on the beach, and we literally drive by it every day. They always advertise their Saturday and Sunday open house, so we decided to swing by after being let down at the Forbes lofts. I looked at their web site as well, which gave 12-3 as the weekend open house hours. When we opened the other door there was a sign giving the number for the sales office, so I punched it in.

Direct to voicemail. We hung up and left.

3. Surfside Lofts- Yet another new complex within spitting distance of where we currently live. Since we were 0 for 2 in the day, we thought we’d try one more time, and it looked like we’d actually be able to see something. At the door we found a buzzer with the number to the sales office. After calling, a woman told us to come in, and that she’d be right down.

We walked in and saw a sign pointing to the model unit. We went in (door was open), and took a look around. After 15 minutes or so, we decided to buzz the sales office again, as we thought we might have misheard her. After the second buzz, we heard “I’m on the 4th floor, give me a minute!”

Right. We left immediately.

Now, these are just three real-world examples that show the problem I’m seeing…..the huge gap in effort between no-touch mass marketing and actually closing a sale. It’s really easy to put out content on the web and ignore it. It’s much more difficult to follow-up with those looking for more information on what you’re selling.

While it may not be a perfectly fair comparison to online inbound marketing (where it’s not always necessary to individually communicate with a potential customer, since the sale can happen immediately) I think the concept is sound. Getting the prospect to the site is just the first step. Failing to give enough information on what to do next will not only blow the sale, it’ll waste your potential customer’s time. It’s worse than nothing.

Marta Kagan is a bonafide marketing genius. At least that’s what she calls herself. She’s right.

Marta works for Viximo, the Boston-area virtual goods startup, and the company just released an iPhone app called TrueFlirt. Since Marta is tasked with getting folks to buy the app, she came up with what I think is a pretty awesome strategy. I’ve always been a huge fan of Marta’s work, as she is truly creative and original. You’ll see in the voice she uses. Here’s the message I received on facebook:

** 48-HOUR FRIENDS-ONLY OFFER: FREE $10 ITUNES CARD **

Just when you thought friending me on Facebook couldn’t be any more thrilling, I figured out how to make it just so! Some people might call it "bribery," I like to call it "marketing". Basically, it involves me giving you a $10 iTunes gift card — and no, you don’t have to do something crazy like eat bugs to get it.

Here’s the dealio:

1. Go to the iTunes App Store now and download TrueFlirt, the sexy little iPhone app (built by my posse here at Viximo) that lets you flirt—with style. TrueFlirt is just $3.99 through Valentine’s Day—and much less filling than those sugary Necco hearts. Here’s the link: http://tinyurl.com/TrueFlirt

2. FLIRT WITH ME! No, really. TrueFlirt lets you send virtual "flirts" to other iPhone users. To get your $10 iTunes gift card, you’ll have to send that first flirt to me.

Personally, I’d love for you to send the Love Potion flirt (I’m kinda thirsty), but I’ll let you take your pick—there are 10 gorgeous "flirts" to choose from.

Here’s the number to send your flirt to: 617-417-7444

(No, I wont tell your girlfriend—or boyfriend or husband or wife—that you sent me a flirt. It’s all good, clean fun in the name of "marketing," remember?)

**IMPORTANT: Be sure to add a message with your email address so I can get you your iTunes gift card lickety split.**

3. Rate & review TrueFlirt at the iTunes App Store. (Here’s the link again http://tinyurl.com/TrueFlirt)

4. Join the TrueFlirt Facebook ‘Fan Club’ here: http://tinyurl.com/TrueFlirtFans

5. (Optional) Tell your friends! Know someone who has an iPhone? Think they might like a free $10 iTunes gift card? Forward this message to them.

So let’s review—
How to Get Your Free $10 iTunes Gift Card—without even leaving your chair:
Buy the app, send a flirt, write a review, join the club, pass it on…!
Easy peasy rice & cheesy.

Isn’t Facebook friendship a beautiful thing?

Flirt on,
Marta

**Note to friends who don’t have an iPhone:
WHAT?! YOU DON’T HAVE AN iPHONE YET?! Honestly, I’m not even sure why we’re friends. (Just kidding.) Seriously – I’d love to share the wealth with you despite your poor choice of technology, but unfortunately TrueFlirt was made only for the iPhone. Get back to me when you’ve realized the error of your ways.

Marta also duplicated the message on her blog in a post called "Flirt with me. I dare you. (I’ll also give you $10)"

Personally, I think this is awesome. If I had an iPhone, I’d do it in a second. Why? Well, first of all, people with iPhones buy songs on iTunes. So it would just make sense economically to spend $4 to get a $10 iTunes card. Second, I’d tell people I know about the deal since it’s basically a free $5 for doing something insanely simple.

And since her free $10 iTunes promotion is only good for 48 hours, it’s not like Viximo is going to continue to lose money acquiring each user. Instead, they’re basically paying a small amount of money to build buzz, thus moving TrueFlirt up in the iTunes App Gallery. Right now it has 22 Reviews (not bad for one day), a few of them are 5 stars.

I think this is excellent. Thoughts?

Lately I’ve been noticing a trend: startups that have offered free membership to their sites are now going pay-only. Even sites that have been built on the “freemium” model (free membership with feature limitations or pay memberships with unlimited use) are ditching the “free” part of their offering. While these startups are blaming the free service termination on the economy and declining ad rates, the question remains: is it a good strategy to dismiss a large pool of potential converts?

Two of the most recent examples:

1. Jott- The voice-to-text service added a premium version back in August, and just announced they’re killing the free version entirely on February 2. From their blog:

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably heard that we’re ending Jott’s free services (Jott Basic and Jott Notepad for the iPhone). Unfortunately, it’s true, beginning on February 2nd. Plans for current paying customers are not changing.

Whether you are a paid or a free customer, we thank you for all of the support you’ve given us over the past couple of years, and the support you’ll hopefully give us in the future.

Why is Jott ending its free services?
As we’ve said many times, one of our goals was to always offer a high quality, free version of Jott. But as with many businesses right now, the economic environment is forcing a change in plans. When we started, we made quality our top priority, and we will always be committed to this. As you know, we use a combination of automated speech recognition and human quality assurance to deliver this, and it costs real money to do it well.While we’ve made remarkable progress at innovating costs out of the system, the current climate is forcing us to focus 100% of our energy on getting to profitability. The great news is that with this change we are within sight of that goal.

2. Sprout Builder- The platform that allowed users to build multimedia web content without being flash developers launched at DEMO 08 has gone fee-only.

From their email:

Over the last year Sprout has provided you with a free solution for creating interactive Flash content and widgets. Like many technology companies, we offered our service for free while we worked on our products, spoke with customers and developed our go-to-market strategy. Now that we have developed a solution worthy of creative professionals at the best agencies in the world, it is time for us to monetize. Starting in early February, we will begin charging for our service. We hope that you have found value from Sprout Builder and will continue to use our services.

Which brings me to a couple of questions. If you’re from a startup that has gone the freemium to pay-only route, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Here they are:

1. What percentage of free users convert to paid users?
Looking at a TechCrunch article that covered Jott, they say:

In August voice-to-text service Jott moved out of beta and added a premium feature for $4/month. Since then, the company says, about 30% of Jott’s active users have opted for the premium, no-ads version of the service.

30% seems really, really high to me, but I could be way off. But even if 30% of the free users upgraded, that leaves 70% that are gone completely. That’s 70% of the people that have heard about you, come to your site, and actually signed up to use your service.

2. What is the cost of keeping free members?
Like I mentioned above, most startups would kill to keep their users, especially when they have a premium version to offer. With such a captive audience already using the product, there are great opportunities to plug the full version in every communication.

3. Are there competitors ready to take your free users?
When you get rid of your free users (especially if they are frequent users of your service), they’re likely to look for another service to replace you. What if there are other services that would welcome your subscribers?

4. How will startups attract new users without a free version?
Without a free version to hook new users, how do you sell users on paying for the service? A 30 or 60 day trial? If that’s the case, what’s the point of getting rid of the free users? Is it solely the ability to charge them after 30 or 60 days? Is it the simple shift from
a) users that are freely using the service without offering up their credit cards

to

b) users that are using the service, but have their credit card on file, so if they forget to cancel, or think the service is ok, you can charge them

I’m not knocking the strategy. It certainly has a higher probability of making some cash, but free trial vs. freemium upgrade certainly feel like very different animals. One motivates me to check it out and bail immediately, looking for flaws and reasons to stop payment. The other makes me actually try something out at no cost, and if I feel that the service is useful, I’ll pay for it by making the choice myself.

5. Will the cost of your service be enough to be profitable?
Finally, the big question: even with a high conversion rate, is the charge enough to make sufficient profit?

Like many of my posts, this one is more of a curiosity than anything, and I’d really love to hear some feedback. What do you think of the disappearance of the “free version” of online services? What does it take to actually make you upgrade to the premium version?

And the winner of the most convoluted and awkward blog post title of 2009 thus far goes to……….this post.

This morning I was going through a bunch of unread emails, unsubscribing from lists and deleting junk. I then saw an email from a service called Soocial. The email let me know that the service had completed a full backup of my gmail address book. I vaguely remember doing something like that, and I definitely didn’t remember what Soocial was all about. I went to the site and found that soocial is a universal address book that synchs contacts between macs, blackberries, gmail, phones and outlook. They promise "hassle-free" contact management, and even go so far as to have a cartoonish photo of David Hasslehoff on their site:

Hassle-Free Contacts

I took about five minutes to check out the service, and it looks like it is as promised. But I had an overwhelming "so what?" feeling. Why? Because I already use something else to accomplish the same task.

The Cost Of Switching

Without knowing it, I was doing a cost-benefit analysis and decided that the cost of importing my contacts and the risk associated with giving my login credentials to yet another service was just too much. The switch wasn’t worth it. Which made me ask the next question: what would soocial need to have in order for me to make the change? Then the question moved into more general grounds: what does any competitor need to have to get users to switch from a service they’re currently using?

Think about it for a second. If you use flickr, what would a new competitor need to offer in order to get you to join and bail on flickr? If you use twitter, what would the new microblogging/status tool need to have to get you?

The first answer to this question is: well, it depends. I mean, if we’re talking about a "social" service that derives its value on the community of users, that’s one thing. A new competitor to twitter could have any feature you can think of, but if it didn’t have people using it, it wouldn’t matter. But let’s ignore the social stuff for a minute. Let’s talk specifically about services that are kind of in-itself offerings. Things like contact management tools. Like text editors, blogging software, etc. Applications that matter to you and you alone regardless of what others say.

Let’s pretend you use MS Word. Price aside, what would a new word processing competitor need to have to get you to switch?

Sequential Building Blocks

Here’s an example I had today. Since switching over to using a mac, I’ve been looking for a decent alternative to Windows Live Writer. I absolutely love WLW and I just can’t find something comparable for the mac. I was so used to it that I had all the shortcuts memorized and composing a post was a breeze. I’ve tried everything I can find for the mac, but nothing does it for me.

I’ve been using Qumana for the last two months, and it’s decent. It’s very basic, but it gets the job done. But when I hear of another blog editor for the mac, I’m always willing to check it out. I heard about a similar product called Blogo and had to give it a try. The interface was really slick and simple, but it lacked some of the features I’d grown accustomed to in Qumana. Even though Blogo had features that Qumana lacked, I bailed.

Why? Sequential building blocks.

To me, a new competitor needs to have everything plus. That is, it needs to have all the features of the product I’m currently using along with additional features. Otherwise I’m out. Maybe I’m more impatient than the public at large, I’m not sure. But if someone comes up with an alternative to Excel, it better have everything excel has…..and more. Otherwise what’s the point?