Andy Boyer

Author: Andy

  • Lessons From Launching New Products

    We started toying around with the idea of Relaborate a little more than a year ago, in late 2011. In the beginning, we weren’t really sure what was going to happen with it, but everybody we talked to seemed to think it was a really cool idea.

    These last months have been a great education in learning the differences between a “really cool idea” and “something that I immediately want to invest money in.”

    There are a lot of hurdles to jump through to raise money. It’s not about the idea. It’s about being able to quantify an addressable market, convincing people your team is solid from top to bottom, and showing enough of the product that they can see the potential without criticizing the present MVP version.

    It’s been a long and funny road, and I’m sure like any entrepreneurial organization, we’ve made some missteps along the way. But here we are in April 2013, with a brand new release of the product that we really think is starting to live up to the expectations we had when we first conceived it. And other people are saying nice things too.

    So I guess my moral for this personal blog post is that it’s never just about the idea. Ideas are easy. People invest in execution. So if you have something that you’re sure will be a success, keep plugging away at it. Don’t expect to be rewarded for simply having an idea. The real effort is in taking that idea and making it something somebody else will understand and use.

    They say there’s a very thin line between being an entrepreneur and simply being insane, and we probably straddled that line a few times in the recent months. After all, to start a new company you have to build something that no one else thinks is worth building, or they’d be doing it themselves. There’s something a little inherently nuts in that.

    So if your reader of this blog, I expect you to run over to Relaborate.com and sign up for the trial of our new product. Read this blog and if you know me, I’m sure you’ll end up getting a discount (if you ask). Let your marketing people test it out, and if you end up bringing it in your organization, you know I’ll be the first one by you a round of drinks.

    Relaborate Photo Search

  • Speaking Today at Market Mix 2013

    I hope to see some of you today at MarketMix 2013. I’ll be speaking in one of the Breakout Sessions, talking about how to add Storytelling to your Content Marketing Plan. If that’s not enough incentive, I also brought along Rebecca Lovell of Vittana and Billy Pettit of Pillar Properties.

    If you want to cheat, here’s the presentation I’ll be giving.

  • Tossing 15 Things a Day

    My friend Liz told me that she has a pact with herself. She throws away 15 things a day. It could be 15 pieces of paper, 15 paper clips or 5 shirts and 10 paper towels. It doesn’t matter. 15 things go into the trash (or charity bin).

    She said it’s not that hard to do, and less painful than a whole day of spring cleaning.

    By the end of the week, she’s tossed 105 things.
    By the end of the month, 450.
    By the end of the year, 5400.

    Maybe I can’t do 15, maybe I can only start with 10. But I am going to start to do that today.

  • Traore’s Wunder-Strike, in 5 Frames

    Talk about threading the eye of the needle….Wow.

  • Learning About Phoenix Jones, Super Hero

    Phoenix JonesI’ll admit, I didn’t expect to like Phoenix Jones. I was excited to attend Sasha Pasulka’s Tech Show on Feb 20, but Jones was not the person I came to see.  I figured at best he’d be kind of uninteresting.  At worst, a complete joker. I was pleasantly surprised.

    For example, I did not know that Jones actually wore the same body armor that our troops wear – and that he has been shot twice in that armor.  I also did not know that he works closely with Police, making sure he gathers evidence properly when he is at a crime scene.  Also, whenever a police officer orders him to stand down, he does exactly that.

    Jones has an interesting stat in his corner.  Since he and his crew started patrolling, Police response times have improved – possibly to avoid the embarrassment of being beaten to the crime by a guy in a super hero costume.  Response times in Belltown on weekend nights were 29 minutes before Jones started his work.  How they are around 6.

    You may not believe in vigilante justice.  But after hearing Phoenix Jones talk for 5 minutes, I believe the streets of Seattle are actually safer with him guarding them.

     

  • The Power of Correcting Mistakes

    I’m not saying companies should make a practice of this, but here’s something interesting I noticed today in my email.

    I sign up for 100’s of free products, so you can imagine how many newsletters, product announcements and other emails I get every day.  Most go ignored, unless they have a catchy title or I’m in a certain type of good mood.

    So like normal, I ignored an email from a company called 6wunderkinder.com and added it to the mass delete list of the day.  Then something funny happened.  I got another email later from them.

    6Wunderkinder_email

     

    Truth be told, I didn’t even remember getting their first email.  And I don’t exactly know why I opened it this time.  But I did. And I got this.

    6Wunderkinder_email_2

    It was funny.  It was genuine.  It felt real.  Was I mad about getting a 2nd email from them? Nope. Do I think any less of them?  Absolutely not.

    The lesson I walked away with – Don’t stress on the small stuff.  Anyone who refuses to use your product because you made a spelling error or shipped the wrong link doesn’t deserve to be your customer anyway.  After all, who wants customers who fancy themselves as perfect?

  • My Dumb Idea to Help with Homelessness

    If you were to line up all the causes I wish I could support more, Homelessness comes to the front.  It’s not that I think it is more or less worthy than others, but it feels like something we should be able to make more progress against.

    Every time I go into my neighborhood QFC, I pass between 1 and 3 homeless people asking for money.  One man stands at the front of the store with a “Homeless Vet” sign, one woman sits across the street by the parking lot and occasionally there is a representative from “Real Change.” Clearly, we can do better than this as a society.

    Now, there are a couple of problems that we all face.  If we write big checks to a charity that helps with homelessness, we don’t know where the money goes and if it is being used to help people get out of their situation or just make their situation more tolerable.  If you give money directly to a person, you don’t know if they’ll spend it down the street at 7-11 on a bottle of Boone’s.

    So here’s my dumb idea that will likely offend a bunch of people.

    I would like to try to focus some efforts on the homeless who are closest to climb their way out.  The  people who have cleaned themselves up, paid their debts to society or taken other steps to get back to a position where they can succeed.  There are plenty of people who just need that little burst of cash to get the first and last months rent, a nice set of clothes, a moped or bus pas, or whatever is keeping them just 1-2 degrees from that point.

    So how do we do this? I’d like to propose a kind of combination of Anonymous LinkedIn and Kickstarter managed by some reputable organization.  In this system, i could look at the anonymous profiles of  everyone who is applying for personal donations and what they will be need the money for.  They set personal goals and achievements that they need to hit.  With each success, they get closer to collecting their donation from me and the others who are rooting / supporting them.  The reputable organization then makes the purchase of the apartment, clothes, car, whatever on behalf of the client.

    So in a nutshell – the homeless person “earns” the money they need by achieving some set of goals and objectives, people like us get to choose the unnamed profiles we want to support based on our preference, and there is a group in between making sure everyone stays anonymous in the process.

    I can already hear the 100 reasons this is unfair to a whole set of people and not a solution to a massive problem.  But I’m not trying to boil the entire ocean here.  I’m just trying to help a few people out.  Anyway, that’s my latest dumb idea.

  • The Power of “Yes”

     

    I could have you click over to Seth Godin’s blog, which I strongly suggest you add to your list of daily reads. (You can even have it delivered via email, it’s that easy…)

    But in case you are just browsing through and don’t want to click a link, here’s some wise words for the day.

    Seth GodinOn behalf of yes
    Yes, it’s okay to ship your work.
    Yes, you’re capable of making a difference.
    Yes, it’s important.
    Yes, you can ignore that critic.
    Yes, your bravery is worth it.
    Yes, we believe in you.
    Yes, you can do even better.
    Yes.

    Yes is an opportunity and yes is an obligation. The closer we get to people who are confronting the resistance on their way to making a ruckus, the more they let us in, the greater our obligation is to focus on the yes.

    There will always be a surplus of people eager to criticize, nitpick or recommend caution. Your job, at least right now, is to reinforce the power of the yes.

    Seth, if you want me to pull this down, just say the word. I just felt like sharing it with my own tiny little tribe.

  • In the Battle of City of Sacramento vs the Hansen Group, It’s Time for Both Teams to Leave the Table

    Sometimes you want something so bad, you forget to look at the total environment you are living in.

    I’d love for Seattle to get a basketball team back.  I love the energy the sports community would have if we had multiple teams to root for, multiple opportunities every year to feel playoff energy.

    But I think I want the Hansen group to step back for a moment.  We’ve done something that seemed unfathomable – We’ve given the Maloofs leverage.

    On one side of the table, you have the Maloofs. By all accounts they seem to be business numbskulls who have managed to lose money in industries that it is fundamentally impossible to lose money in. They have put themselves into such a debt hole that the team realistically should not be alive anymore.  Were it not for the NBA bailing them out, this team would have folded, and its players would be looking for new jobs.

    On the other side of the table is the Hansen Group.  A collective of gentlemen so wealthy that they are willing to overpay by as much as 25% just to get these guys to pick up a pen and disappear forever.  It’s the equivalent of you or I paying our little sister a quarter to give us control of the Xbox and go away.

    But now a new table has been pushed into the room, led by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson.  Johnson is the Mayor we wish we had in 2008.  Someone who actually DOES something.  He CARES.  He is LOOKING OUT for his people, not because an economic study says to, but because he believes the Kings are part of the fabric of the City of Sacramento, and P&L Statments be damned, he doesn’t want that fabric ripped away.

    So the battle has become Johnson vs Hansxn.  In some ways it’s a rematch of Johnson vs Gary Payton, with KJ trying to keep Seattle from getting what it wants. Meanwhile the Maloofs are sitting courtside.

    Thus, it’s time for Hansen and Johnson to call timeout.

    Without a bid from Hansen on the table, Johnson doesn’t need to pull together a ridiculous package to get a new arena built.  He doesn’t have to get investors to overpay to cover the costs of a team hemorrhaging money.

    And more importantly, the Maloofs don;t have anymore leverage.

    They will keep losing money and the NBA will keep having to bail them out and someone in New York will finally say, “We need to buy this team from these idiots or we need to call the loan in and fold them.”

    Let the Maloofs sell what’s left of the team for pennies on the dollar back to the NBA.  There is precedent here with the Hornets.  Let the NBA take things over and get the Maloofs clear of the whole issue.

    If there really is a local ownernship group in Sacramento who can make it work, and a way to build a stadium that won’t cost Sacramento or California tax dollars they need for things like schools and roads, then the team should stay there.  If there isn’t, then the city has to accept that professional basketball is a luxury, not a right, and they need to get their house in order before they can have extra amenities.  That’s not a basketball perspective, that is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

    If they don’t have a real plan, then the NBA should sell that team to the Hansen Group.  Tell me Mark Cuban and Paul Allen wouldn’t rather have Steve Ballmer sitting next to them at their exclusive Owners’ Meetings than the Maloofs.

    But let’s let all that play out after we’ve rid the league of the Maloofs.  And let’s get that done by not bidding against each other.  Let’s all just stop the ridiculousness and get back to the point that the Maloof’s can’t afford to keep running things, and shouldn’t have any leverage.  Let’s call a timeout, stop this momentum in the wrong direction, and draw up the right play to get the lead back.

  • How to Make the Front Page of Mashable

    I’m going to take a wild uneducated guess, than somewhere between 50-500 start-up tech companies sent press releases, emails, tweets and carrier pigeons to Mashable in the last 2 days, trying to get someone to cover them. Some of them were full of fluff I’m sure, but some of them likely had real news, about doing real things, and expanding into real markets with real customers.  You know, real stuff.

    Somewhere between 50-500 of those companies were ignored.

    But fear not, because in the same 24 hour period, Mashable showed us how to make the front page – have a famous relative and do something outlandish on Twitter.

    Item 1: The Zuckerberg Family Vacation Scandal

    I’m sure Randi Zuckerberg is a great and smart person.  I’ve never met her, but I have no reason to believe that if she wasn’t a Zuckerberg, she still would have been a successful marketing person at some other social media company.  She’s probably witty, funny, smart, a great business person and a joy to be around.

    But so are several thousand other women in the Bay Area.  It wasn’t “Randi” that was covered here.

    Instead, it was Mark’s sister who got press in Mashable for a Twitter dust-up over a holiday photo (and a boring photo at that).  Let’s not pretend that the Executive producer of the Real Housewives of San Francisco would be covered for a Twitter spat.  But when you are related to Mark, anything you say gets picked up, and probably more sadly, it gets shared.

    Item 2: The Avery Johnson Jr. Tantrum

    It’s not enough that professional athletes and coaches need to monitor their own social presences, now they have to worry about their kids’ social media accounts.  Who knew Avery Johnson had a son? None of us, until he got mad about his dad getting fired.  Amusing perhaps, but that’s it. Not much else incriminating on his feed, so that’s that. Except… Mashable’s journalists rush to the rescue, discovering he is a high school junior. Thankfully, we have a full account now on Mashable.com about this breaking social media and technology news – ‘Kid upset that Dad gets fired.”

    The Moral of the story:

    We read tech pubs and like to think we’re reading things that are more substantive than Perez Hilton.  But when it comes down to it, the folks we’re reading aren’t much different than Perez’s correspondents.  They have their fingers on the pulse of the families of the newsmakers.  And we’re choosing these non-news articles. So lesson to be learned – get someone’s relative on your team.  Doesn;t matter if they are a cousin or sister or son or mother.  Get them a consultant position.  Have them erupt on Twitter.  You’ll get instant awareness for them and your company.  Hmm, maybe there’s a business model here.  Representing the relatives of famous people to get them social media gigs…..