Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 25, 2014

Contrary to popular opinion, viral marketing has not eliminated the need for old-fashioned lead generation to bring customers to a startup. For new product startups, search engine marketing (SEM) is still one of the most cost-effective and scalable lead-generation approaches. Social-media advertising. Display advertising.

Startup 99

Startup Social Media SEM Advertising 99

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 3, 2010

Probably every one of you who has a business and a website have been approached through email or personal contact, and asked to spend money on Search Engine Marketing (SEM). SEM is sometimes called “buying your way into search results.” For most, it sounds like a magical process or a scam, with the experts spewing so many acronyms.

SEM 90

SEM Marketing Startup Search Engine Optimization 90

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

In the same year they won Business Insider’s Startup competition. And because I wanted Ethan to be able to attract a great team, build & iterate a product, test it with initial customers and refine his strategy before having to take the wrappers off of his company. I was standing with him when he won the TechCrunch 50 award.

CTO Coach 359

CTO Coach Google CTO Hire GRP Partners 359

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 4, 2011

4 times / 100 means if a customer uses your app frequently (say 10-20 times / day) then they are crashing nearly every day. Customer Acquisition. At the highest level you’ll obviously want to track how many customers your adding every month (and for some businesses that have hit scale this is measured on a daily basis).

Metrics 346

Metrics Startup SEO Customer 346

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

So, we created a site which not just aggregates, but also organizes activities by type, category--land, sea, air--and things like competition, family, culture, adrenaline--to really narrow down the possibilities for what you're looking for. It's migrated onto the web in Hawaii, a simple migration, but no one had done it here yet.

Activity 164

Activity Startup Sites Web 164

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 23, 2013

It pays only if a customer clicks through AND takes a further action (conversion), such as buying a product or filling out a web form. Another alternative was added a couple of years ago to mitigate the problem of people clicking just to get paid (click fraud). The display side is called pay per action (PPA) or pay per lead (PPL).

Paid Search 90

Paid Search PPC Organization SEO 90

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

To say he has had an impact on the web would be an understatement. Not because they didn’t want to do Pay-per-click (they are huge buyers of SEM) but because they didn’t want other people to know what they paid for clicks! His impact has even helped a small country gain admission to the United Nations.

Competition 350

Competition Idealab Product Ideas 350