Today is my very first official day in the WebNotes office, though I have been a WebNoter for about 3 days now. I am officially the Director of Marketing and have been at a conference called "The Business of Software" (http://www.businessofsoftware.org/) for the last few days. Needless to say it's been a whirlwind, but a great whirlwind at that. Some key thoughts from the conference:
1) Seth Godin: be remarkable, tell a story with your product, let your consumers spread the word, get permission to continue marketing to your new consumers. Marketing should be built into a product!
2) Jason Fried: Target Non-Consumption Demographics, those with a problem but not solution. Don't worry about stealing consumers from your competitors. Out teach, out share, out contribute: be a cookbook for knowledge.
3) Mike Milinkovich: coevolve your innovation within your particular niche of the ecosystem.
4)Noam Wasserman: 65% of all startups fail due to problems with people.
5) Steve Krug- "Don't make me think" when it comes to the User Interface.
6) Tomas Jennings: Align the interests of the VC, the founders and the employees. On a dorky note, I thought it was really interesting that while in the US VC historically returns more on average than buyout funds, in Europe it is the opposite. Intuitively this would mean that buyout funds in Europe should be riskier than VC funds…that strikes me as pretty unexpected!
7) Steve Johnson: Less documents, more development. The "L" in User is silent. Find your best ideas from your potential market, not your current customers.
Paul Kenny: Listen to your customers!
9) Jessica Livingston: How can I get customers to LOVE me?
10) Dharmesh Shah: On pricing? Pick a price, any price. Don't do financial partnerships. Use market analytics!
11)Joel Spolsky: Make people happy, Obsess over Aesthetics, Observe the Culture Code. Interesting fact: people on the right side of a theater will rate a movie 10% better than people on the left side. Joel calls this "misattribution".
There was tons more, so you'll just have to go next year if you are interested! Also, to just see moment to moment thoughts, visit www.twitter.com/webnoter
Happy highlighting!
