Just wanted to share the news that my startup Selloscope got some great coverage by Haydn Shaughnessy over on his Re:Thinking Innovation blog at Forbes.com! It was a pleasure to speak with Mr. Shaughnessy, and while I appreciate the feature, I’m particularly looking forward to following Mr. Shaughnessy’s work on innovation moving forward.
It’s a fact of startup life that you win some and you lose some. Mostly you lose some. I’ve tried my hand a few times at bootstrapping a startup. I have one now that’s just ramping up, but I have to admit that along the way there have been a couple of times I just let a domain expire so I could move on.
Speaking of “moving on,” there’s a hugely popular yet dangerously bad idea out there that’s captivating more and more decision-makers: this idea of “Fail Fast.” I thought Mark Suster had put this one to bed early last year, but amazingly it continues to gain momentum. Here’s why I’m not buying it.
There are four things you absolutely have to know and do if there’s any possibility you’ll be involved in bootstrapping a startup:
1) Define and build your minimum viable product.
2) Aggressively keep your run rate as low as possible.
3) Iterate to find your product/market fit.
4) Don’t die.
If you live in a world where the flavor of the week is the most important thing — and I get it, I’ve worked there myself — then failing fast is a great strategy. Maximize your “successes” and get out while you’re on top.
But if I’ve done my marketing homework, the monthly bills are manageable, and I’m iterating toward market adoption, then as far as I’m concerned those “fail fast” guys can pry my startup from my cold, dead hands.
There are two very commonly known things about search engine optimization (SEO).
1) Great, targeted content drives PageRank.
2) Google’s page rank algorithm is recursive.
Given how common this knowledge is, it’s surprising that so many Web sites haven’t put 1 + 1 together: Your pages earn a PageRank based on content and links, and then they lend that PageRank power to your other pages based on how you link to them.
In effect, your internal link structure may be causing your most powerful, highest-ranked pages to spread their PageRank weight across your entire site, instead of to the specific campaigns or initiatives you mean to support with those individual pages.
The takeaway: Instead of thinking of your SEO efforts as a collection of channels (FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, and the obligatory blog) meant to drive content — think of SEO as a structured set of Content Tiers, each of which are built and interlinked to support your marketing and SEO objectives.
Enter: the SEO Matrix.
Part of the ritual of starting a new job is signing all the paperwork: the acceptance letter, I-9, W-4, insurance forms, direct deposit.
Oh, and the non-compete and confidentiality agreements.
When we accept an offer for a new job, signing a non-compete agreement as a condition of employment seems like a footnote at the end of a long chapter… something that surely we don’t need to actually read. Non-competes are ubiquitous – and, we assume, mostly harmless. However, these agreements are so common (and so one-sided) that I wanted to spend a few minutes describing how they really work in practice. Continue reading →
Jeb is a 13-year Internet veteran with depth in database marketing, business intelligence, predictive modeling, and marketing research. He holds a PhD in experimental psychology.
About Jeb Stone
