Found+READ: Comments by Adam Benayoun

Adam Benayoun — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 00:33:25 GMT

Nivi, Naval,
Wonderful article, very informative and made me ponder about what kind of experience and reading i should aquire.
We are a small startup composed of 3 founders, without equal equity, we never though or knew about vesting terms (Its our first startup), but we did put on paper that we need to commity at least 2 full years before being able to walk out of the business.
I dont think we really though about trusting issue in this case, we know each other for over 10 years, we are just realist and we understand that the startup is a new form of life that need to be secured by locking its founders/parents (including myself).
You never know what can happen in the future.

Adam Benayoun — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 10:40:55 GMT

i would say Om y God ;)

Adam Benayoun — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:34:53 GMT

babak, i heard from many sources that such investments (VCs usually) can take up to 6 months.

Adam Benayoun — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:34:56 GMT

i’d like to hear more stories like theses, i’d like to hear also the negative stories since we are about to raise money the next few months.

Adam Benayoun — Tue, 08 May 2007 18:38:02 GMT

Alex B, having your employees working in the same room is a must not only because you will be able to ‘watch’ them but because they will be able to work together as a team and nurture each other with new ideas and solves problem, This is how you increase productivity. Most of the time i have been outsourcing jobs to outside developer i found that i needed someone to watch them and make sure they’ll meet the deadline, 20% of them never met deadlines and i had to hire new developers to finish the job. At the long run, outsourcing your work to another location than your own office might be a nightmare, But of course you can succeed at it if you are well organized and know how to work in this environement “(im more of a team work and need to share space with other people).
I would give you few advices for your business:
- Focus on your core business and make your employees work on them, you can outsource for outside developer part of your projects that arent very significant for the overall progress.
- Give them deadlines/milestones and make sure they meet them, give them incentives if they meet them, reward them if they do more than expected. Set higher standards every months and make sure to give the example.
- You dont need to be all the time around, i’ve found out that the more you are around and check everything your workers do, the less they feel that someone trust them, give them some space. Allow them some freedom but always set the limits. you will see that with the right incentives and with the loyalty that they will have for your company, they will work hard even if you are not there.
-Hire good people, when i say hire good people, i dont mean hire the best developer or the best designer but more hire people who have the “thirst” to win or succeed. You can hire someone “cheap” but at the long run you will lose more than you think.
- When your company will grow, you will see that having a core team is precious and more valuable than anything (more than money).

Adam Benayoun — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 00:33:51 GMT

As a project manager, i have many years of experience with outsourcing, i’ve been playing from both side, many time as a freelancers and many times contracting the freelancers.

BE aware that outsourcing isnt the same as offshoring.
Outsourcing is delegating an internal project to an outside entity. This entity (the freelancer) can be local and you can meet him and in case of bad experience you can sue him if needed.
On the other side, offshoring is outsourcing to another entity in another nation which mean are able to lower down the cost than outsourcing, but take in mind that wont sue the outside entity (freelancer) if its a low bid or even wont be able to meet him and personally explain him the nature of the project.

After years of experience, i always go with outourcing. you not only can meet with your freelancer and set the standards, sign an agreemen and basically have a better impression of the man you working with but you also control the overall price of the project which mean you CAN be on price and on time if you know how outsource and manage your projects or part of your project.
I would also advise you to have some kind of basic understanding of coding in order to go over the code and make sure it has been written in a good manner and spot potential bugs/anomaly.
In case you have no such skills, i would advise to look out for a friend that will help you check the code before paying for it, or if the project is in big scale, hire at least a project manager to make sure that everything will be delivered in time and within the price scope.

Regarding the offshoring, i did it many times and always got disappointed. You cannot meet the freelancer nor sue him which mean that if you have a problem after completion of the code, you are in big problem. Timeframe are never met (but to be honest you need to take this in mind and calculate the timeframe with all the possibilities available). Price are never met since you always have to hire someone else afterward or go over the code and sometime fix it yourself or fire/hire/fire/hire several coders until your code is done and time = money as we know.
Personally after dozend offshored project, i stopped with that and now local outsource my small projects, i generally end up paying 20%-25% more for them but i know that i will be on time and on price.
Also, if you are small startup, i would strongly advise you to never outsource/offshore your business core, there is noone that will do a better job than yourself/yours coders.

Adam Benayoun — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 00:33:55 GMT

First of all, i would like to apologize if my post isnt redable, it has been submitted by mistake before i could even correct some of my mistakes and i cannot seem to find any “edit” button (Some feature publicsquare should add).

I would also be more specific about offshoring, when i meant “offshoring”, i was talking about offshoring to an external entity and NOT MEANT the traditional offshoring which mean you take your internal work to your internal division overseas.

Adam Benayoun — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:35:24 GMT

It would need a complete rewrite, but i would like to write a more complete article regarding outsourcing locally vs outsourcing overseas.

Adam Benayoun — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 12:07:56 GMT

As a startup this is a critical problem. since you have limited ressource to operate and anything that you do will impact your business.

This is the art of Boostrapping, knowing what to spend, when to spend and usually on what you should focus.

I would strongly advise you to do 2 things when you are in a bootstrap mode, growth and generate a flow of income. both of them are criticals for your business even if you have funding and you think you dont need revenue yet.

Adam Benayoun — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:36:28 GMT

Marketing your site/idea is cheapest than what it used to be years ago, while in 1999 people were spending $$$ on throwing launch parties and hiring expensive PR firms to market their ideas, today almost anyone can achieve this within few simple steps, but beware theses simples steps takes time and usually need persistence.

During this explanation I’ll be using a supermarket as a metaphor, that way I will be able to better explain the fundamental of Online Marketing.

To easily describes the Marketing effort, I would break down the process in 2 majors stage (Here comes the metaphor), Try to visualize your idea as a Store.
First thing you need to do is seduce your customer and bring him to your store, but once your customer is in the store your second step will be to sell him the product you’re trying to market. While this sound logic and easily achievable, many fails to actually accomplish this.

What you need to do to bring the customer to your store and have a look at your product/idea?
One of key success is to raise your brand awareness – Customer tends to be attracted to successful companies, why is that? Because successful companies are usually made of successful peoples and successful products.

- Setup your website with a nice and clean layout/logo, your site should have all the information available about your product, demo, explanation, contact page with your email addresses and other way of communication (Don’t be scared to share your phone/fax/Real address, that’ll communicate you’re serious).
- Setup a blog for your product, While your website offers statics and professional information regarding your products, you need to build loyalty toward your brand/product. In order to do so you need to engage the customer on a personal level. Share your thoughts and your experience on your blog, Never hide anything, that is called “trust”.
- Networking – Use every social platform to market your product. Join 3 or 4 main social network such as “Facebook”:http://www.facebook.com, “Myspace”:http://www.myspace.com and others. Integrate your layout/logo and start to network with other users, with the time your userbase will grow and most important, people will reach your site and blog. Try to avoid spamming, networking and “making friends” takes time, but after a while you will be rewarde greatly.
- SEO – You should outsource this task to some specialist or employ someone to do it in-house, Search engine optimization is about improving the volume and the quality of your traffic. Write great content, post it on “Digg”:http://digg.com/”del.icio.us”:http://del.icio.us/magnolia/Reddit (while these site are controversial since they bring a spike in traffic without really contributing to the natural growth of your site, the After-effect of theses site is great, few weeks after you make it to Digg homepage, bloggers will post articles about you, people will link to you and usually 1-2% of your visitors will stay and stick around, that is only if you provides them with interesting content and a great product to write about). Exchange Relevants links with other sites, post daily on your blog, write articles for other sites which links to your site, all theses methods usually will improve your site ranking. A great resource for SEO specialist: http://www.seomoz.org
- Submit your ideas to blogs that profiles company such as yours. Like “Techcrunch”:http://www.techcrunch.com, “Gigaom”:http://www.gigaom.com, “Mashable”:http://www.mashable.com and so on… I’d make sure that the mail I’m sending will hold an interesting and short pitch, bear in mind that theses blogs reviews hundreds of companies a week and it’s hard to make it to their front page. I’d also try to concentrate in sending mails to hundreds of smaller blogs, while a link from techcrunch can be nice, imagine what can do 500 hundreds links from smaller blogs to your SEO And to your traffic. You could enventually post few PR release to PR site such as PRweb.com and others.
- You could use paid advertising to bring more customers and tracks the conversion rate.
- Use a viral marketing, people usually like to invite their friends when they stumble upon a great product, ease their pain and offers them easy invite tools.
- Ask your customers to help you, Don’t be afraid to ask your customers to help you, they usually will contribute if the product is good enough. They can generate the buzz required for your product and help you promote the idea.

These methods usually build your identity online, be open, use your mail/Skype/Msn to chat with as much as people you can, listen to their feedbacks, learn from past ventures/experience of other entrepreneurs.

Once you generate the right traffic to your site, you need to retain it and make your visitors sign up for your product, this is the second stage:
- Integrate a good statistics tool, such as Google Analytics or Clicky. You need to tracks everything, see whats the best landing page, your conversion rate, whats your exit page, populars keywords, and always adjust yourself. If a link isnt generating enough clicks, then move it, change its description, add an image. Sometime small changes can do the work and generate 10 times more traffic.
- Produce Great content. In order to retain your customer, produce great content. Produce great content. Produce Great content. Produce Great content (hope you understood it by now).
- Focus on building a great product, there is no magic solution here. A great product will attract more customers. Make it viral. With the support of your customers, your traffic will boost.

I’d recommend to read “Guy Kawasaki blog”:http://blog.guykawasaki.com and “Seth’s Blog”:http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog.
If you’d like to discuss more marketing practices, you can contact me at adam at Octabox dot com.