Archive for September, 2010

Julian and Seth shared their experiences on customer acquisition. Julian is the founder of Chicago Micro. Seth is the founder of InsuranceLeads.com which last year was ranked the 24th company in the INC 500.

Seth Kravitz
InsuranceLeads.com
Started 2004
lots of phone calls, lots of heavy biz development
#24 in the INC 500

No presentation – just doing questions and answers

Q: Tell us more about your business and how you grew
A:
Seth:
Started as affiliate in lead gen space for insurance companies
One day they realized that they didn’t want to be middleman anymore
2007 made switch to providing the service themselves
they didn’t have a product for four months
didn’t have anything other than a name
signed up 400 agents on trust with nothing but that name
took credit cards, took deposits – used that money to grow
sign up a bunch of agents as quickly as possible
were 30 commissioned sales people – call all day long
tons of direct marketing
email constantly
if people tell us not to call back, we call back in 2-3 weeks
one of most well-liked brands in the lead gen space
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Kevin Taylor
kevin@obtiva.com
ktaylor.name
@ktaylor

Kevin founded Obtiva, web dev company, five years ago
now has 30 employees

Customer Development
every startup has a limited runway
how do you validate a product and biz model before you run out of money?
who are your customers?
what problems do they have?
does your solution solve their problem?
can you do this before you run out of cash?

This presentation is based off of the book Four Steps to the Epiphany

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As of this morning, The Social Network (the Facebook movie) has a 100% favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 9.8/10. More shocking however, is the fervency of its praise:

If Coppola were into computers, this would be The Godfather. Should I have gone with Scorsese and Goodfellas? I think it’s the cooler reference but The Godfather is more legendary and Social Network deserves the comparison. -Screen Junkies

…half the time I sat there marveling at the similarities of the story, themes and structure to “Citizen Kane.” -indieWire

…as socially significant to this generation as films like Network, All The President’s Men and The Graduate were in their own time. -Box Office Magazine

All the building blocks for a great movie seem to be in place: A screenplay by Aaron Sorkin (writer of The West Wing, a TXI favorite) based on a book by Ben Mezrich (Bringing Down the House’s) and directed by David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en). Also, Justin Timberlake.

I haven’t understood the incredulous criticism that someone would make a movie that’s “just about Facebook”. Facebook was created in a dorm room by a 20 year-old kid, in just seven years has grown to be the most heavily trafficked site on the internet with more users than there are citizens of the United States, and has a history rife with accusations of the theft of intellectual property now worth billions of dollars.

Despite whatever personal opinions you may have on the utility of Facebook, you cannot deny that there is a story here to be told.

Social Dev Camp, that is.

On August 13-15, Jordan Ho and Greg Baugues attended the third annual Social Dev Camp Chicago, an “unconference” for social application and platform developers that explores the emerging trends in new media. This year’s guest speakers included Ben Huh, the CEO of the web’s largest comedy network, Icanhazcheezburger.com; Michael Slaby, the former CTO of President Obama’s election campaign; and Andrew Mason, the CEO of Groupon, which graced the August cover of Forbes as the fastest growing company of all time.

The biggest takeaways from the conference were ideological rather than technical. “Human nature admires complexity and rewards simplicity,” Huh said, advising that people make their applications as simple as possible and not “over engineer.” Slaby spoke of the importance of establishing a clear goal and always working toward it (in his case, getting Obama elected). Technology should never be employed for its own sake, but only where it supports that greater objective.

Slaby also trotted out some interesting web stats from the campaign that demonstrate how social media is changing politics. Of the $700 million the Obama camp raised, $500 million came from online donations. Though for a time Slaby was the only staffer who knew how to build websites, at its height the campaign employed more than 100 paid workers dedicated to social media efforts, as compared to Senator McCain’s 10. Slaby himself worked a total of 603 days, with only five days off.

All in all, it was a great weekend. We learned a ton, met cool people, and are already looking forward to next year’s event. Perhaps most significantly, it renewed some of our faith in Chicago’s tech conferences.

Check out some of the other upcoming conferences we’ll be attending:

Tech in the Middle: This one-day event focuses on expanding mobile application and cloud computing knowledge in the Midwest.
September 11 / Illinois Institute of Technology

Chicago COUNTS, a conference uniting non-profits and technology.  Greg will be doing a repeat performance of “How to Not Get Screwed” which he has given at the ICNC and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce.
September 12 /Illinois Institute of Technology

midVentures Launch: A two-day conference for entrepreneurs, VCs, and media that showcases new and innovative start-ups and applications in the technology space. September 27-28 / UIC Forum