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Mint’s Original Marketing Plan (circa 2007)

Published: Apr 8, 2011


When personal finance assistant Mint.com launched in late 2007, their app was warmly received by the startup community. You couldn’t go anywhere on the web without someone talking (positively) about Mint. A huge key of Mint’s success was the brilliant marketing plan they put together and executed.

For the first time ever, Noah Kagan (Mint’s former marketing director) gave TSF readers an inside peak at Mint’s original marketing plan. Noah has since moved on from Mint and now runs AppSumo, a site that provides “daily deals for web geeks”.

This document is pure gold for any startups that need help with marketing. Don’t miss this.

Marketing Game Plan for Mint

Again, special thanks to Noah Kagan from AppSumo for making this available to TSF readers.

For more startup news, follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry.

Love of the Game: Be foolish enough to believe your startup will make it.

Published: Apr 6, 2011


A close friend of mine has been struggling with his startup for the past 2 years. He’s dropped out of school to work on it full time and is still working hard on gaining traction. He has recently moved back to his parents house so he could keep his expenses low and not have to take any funding. His diet primarily consists of Ramen Noodles and whatever fruit is on sale. His income is under $15k a year.

His lifestyle isn’t this way because he lacks options. He’s turned down Angel funding on 4 separate occasions. Within the past week he’s turned down two different jobs (which would have require him to quit his startup) where both companies were offering six figure salaries. Many of his friends called him foolish.

He isn’t looking at the startup world with rose-colored glasses. He knows that entrepreneurship is a bipolar existence. You can embrace his idea or dismiss it, but you can’t ever shake his faith that his startup will make it. Job security, comfort, and money paled in comparison to the thought of him building a startup.

As I’ve talked to more entrepreneurs about my friends experience, I’ve discovered his story isn’t unique. Many entrepreneurs are driven by an intrinsic belief that what they’re working on truly matters. Despite all the odds stacked against them, they believe their startup will succeed.

This sort of lifestyle can only come from a love of the game and belief in your startup. I absolutely love this about the startup community. Just remember, you’re not entitled to anything. Hustle for everything you’re worth.

Be foolish enough to believe you’ll make it.

For more startup news, please follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry.

Teaching developers UX: Use Fitts’ law to build a polished landing page

Published: Apr 5, 2011


I’ve had several technical founders ask for advice on building landing pages. Typically it’s bootstrapped companies that want to increase conversion rates, but don’t have the capital to hire a UX designer. In this series of articles I’m going to identifiy a common problem I see, and how to fix it. Today I’m going to give you a brief overview of Fitts’ law and how developers can improve their UX.

What is Fitts’ Law?

Fitts’ law can be described in the mathematical formula to the left. T is time. a is the intercept and b is the slope. D is the distance to the center of the target. W is the width along the axis of motion.

Essentially Fitts’ law describes how long it takes you to point to an object. This is a pretty basic concept, but the mathematical formula gives us a framework to know exactly how to build things. Since we are looking at this through a landing page lens, the objects I will be focusing on will be buttons and links.

How should we design buttons and links?

1. Buttons and links are some of the most important elements on your landing page. You can improve the UX by increasing the target size. A common mistake I see is developers often build their buttons were only the text is clickable (see figure a). The rest of the button is just used for eye candy and is non interactive. By changing the whole button to a clickable state (see figure b), you will dramatically lower the amount of time a user spends trying to click. A good UX will minimize pain points, no matter how small.

2. The next thing that we can do to improve our UX is to increase target size. The basic premise is big buttons are easier to click. For example, it’s much easier to point at a car then it is to a key.

3. The last common button placement issue I see is with button placement. Take this example from Reddit user jbu311 .

Keep Fitts’ law in mind when you’re designing your landing pages to increase conversions. It’s amazing how small tweaks can minimize the amount of friction users encounter.

For more startup news, please follow us on twitter @startupfoundry.

Month Two of TSF: 140,000 page views, $500 in revenue, and how I screwed up

Published: Apr 4, 2011


Running a startup news site, I ask founders for hard numbers all the time. I think it’s only fair to publicly share mine once a month as well. This article is focused on the second month of TSF. You can read about our first month here.

The second month was hard for me. Running a startup full-time and a side project (The Startup Foundry) is paradoxically draining and fulfilling simultaneously. Alexis Ohanian (a co-founder of Reddit) nailed it when he said “Entrepreneurship is a bipolar existence”.

Hard numbers:

Traffic was up from 120,000 pageviews to 140,000 a month. 60 days ago TSF didn’t even exist and we’ve still managed to serve over a quarter of a million page views. This is very encouraging to me and I would like to say thank you to our readers.

Through sponsors we’ve generated $500 in revenue this month.

Things I did correctly:

1. Increased Revenue: Last month we made $462 dollars in revenue. This month I increased that number to $500. Even though it’s not a huge jump, it’s progress. The more money I generate, the more time I can spend on TSF. Slowly but surely I’m seeing this grow.
2. Viral Promotional Piece: I doodled a Startup Death Clock on a napkin for fun. An hour later I had a rough version put together in Photoshop and HTML. Two hours after that a TSF reader (Ashley Williams) helped me with some javascript and we completed our silly clock. In the first 6 hours after launch, the death clock received 5,000 page views, and people had spent over 11 days playing with it. This promotional piece helped drive traffic to the main site and increased our followers on twitter significantly.

Things I sucked at:

1. Article output has dipped: Situations arose in my life when I was unable to publish an article for the day. I should have had several stories in my backpocket that I could fill in the holes.
2. Better submission process for startups seeking coverage: I need to streamline this. Entrepreneurs and founders are already busy people. I want to make their life a little easier.
3. Mailing lists: Currently I have two mailing lists. The Weekly and the Daily Digest. I need to do a better job of creating value with my newsletters, and promoting them.

Next Steps:

Each month I focus on one metric to improve. This month I’m working on lowering the bounce rate. Currently we are at an 80% rate. I would like to see this number drop to about 50%. Most of the changes to TSF in this month will be addressing this issue.

Any Questions?

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments. I will try to answer each one as openly as I can.

For more startup news, follow us on twitter @StartupFoundry.

Startup Riot’s Sanjay Parekh on “How to Put Together a Slide Deck”

Published: Apr 2, 2011

Sanjay Parekh has a lot of experience with startup pitches. Sanjay runs Startup Riot where, once a year, 50 companies pitch their deck in a single day. He has seen the whole gamut of pitches from fantastic, to horrible, to captivating. He recently Skyped in to share with TSF readers some basic tips on how to improve your own pitch. Don’t miss this 8 minute video!

This is part 2 of our interview with Sanjay. Be sure to check out part 1, “I pitched 200 VCs in 10 months before I closed the round”.

Highlights:

1. Don’t skip the “why” of your startup. Assume the crowd knows nothing about your startup.

2. Keep it simple. Text is fine for a document, not a PowerPoint.

3. You want to emotionally connect with the audience.

4. If you see a lot of text on a slide. Your attention shifts to the text instead of the presenter.

5. The point of the slide is to convey information and augment what the speaker is talking about

6. The ideal slide that complements what you’re saying (instead of speaking for you) would have a lot of visuals, but wouldn’t describe . That’s your job.

7. Create an outline before you fire up PowerPoint or Keynote. Know what direction you’re headed in before you start creating.

8. People connect with stories, not facts and figures. Focus on your narrative.

9. Adjust the deck to the audience.

For more startup news, please follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry.

Why entrepreneurs and founders often have trouble sleeping: Closure.

Published: Apr 1, 2011

When I’m physically exhausted and craving sleep I close my eyes and I see code. Methods and variables gleefully dance on the inside of my eyelids and new ideas pulse through my veins. My brain doesn’t care it has spent the last 12 hours focused on my startup, it wants more. It’s addicted.

Last night was no different. After an hour of unsuccessful negotiation with my body to go to sleep, I admitted defeat and jumped on the computer and worked so I could get my fix. After several hours, I decided to send out a quick tweet to see who else was hacking away at 3:30 am. An outpouring of entrepreneurs began to flood my Twitter timeline.

It appears I am not alone.

Background:

I never had this problem when I was working a 9-5 job. My sleeping problems began when I started working full time on my startup. I’ve tried changing my diet, exercising more (I’m already pretty active), and Ambien without having much success sleeping.

My Diagnosis:

After talking with several other entrepreneurs (and my own personal experience), I believe that founders often have trouble getting closure in a work day. For most people working a corporate 9-5 job, they can checkout the second the clock strikes 5 and have little trouble leaving their “work at work” (not always true, but I’m speaking in generalities).

Entrepreneurs aren’t afforded that luxury. An entrepreneur has his fingerprints all over the company and the startup often reflects much of the founders personality. I’ve found that so much of myself is wrapped up in my business that it can be hard to mentally check out at the end of the day.

It doesn’t help that I had an arbitrary goal of “making it big” without any clear definition of what that actually meant.

My Solution:

Figure out your end goal. If you could snap your fingers and give your startup success, what would that look like? After you have this big picture view of your company, break down your success into steps you can take. Then start a checklist of things you must get done each day to move you forward. Doing this helps you get “closure for the day” by reminding you that you’re actually making progress.

Remember, you are a separate entity from your startup.

If you have any other advice, I’d love to hear it in the comments. I don’t have this issue completely figured out, and I would appreciate additional insight.

Please follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry.

The audacity of charging from day one.

Published: Mar 31, 2011


“We will start charging in version 2.” As the entrepreneur wishfully daydreamed he tacked on “Perhaps not till version 3. Or maybe 4”. I asked the entrepreneur if his product was buggy, and he said “No, it just doesn’t have all the features we have planned yet”.

His answer baffled me. They had a stable, secure product that did a few things very well. Their app didn’t have feature X,Y, and Z (like their competition did), but they had a superior workflow that saved small business owners a lot of time.

After further prodding I discovered they had a user base of over 1,000 business, many of their customers were practically begging to pay for premium access, and yet the startup was running out of money. “Charge for it”, I replied. “Your customers obviously like what you’re doing and you’ve clearly demonstrated value”. His face conjured an expression equally split between disgust and contempt. He felt that by charging for his product he would be a “sell-out” in the startup community.

Why is there apprehension about making money in startup land?

Is it possible that quite a few entrepreneurs simply aren’t interested in making money? Perhaps they are more intoxicated with the process of building a startup then ringing the cash register. Entrepreneurship is about more then just money, but money is a necessary to keep the lights on.

Don’t be ashamed to charge money for a product or service that has value. If your community tries to shame you for this, ignore them.

Old is the New new

Earlier today I asked, “Has anyone successfully bootstrapped their company by charging from day one?” I received several responses, and my favorite reply came via email from Peldi Guilizzoni (Founder of Balsamiq) “Ehm, because that’s how the world has worked since the invention of commerce? I give you something of value, you give me money in exchange. Why is that audacious?”

Go build something of value and charge for it. If you need some inspiration, checkout The Startup Death Clock.

For more startup news, please follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry.

Polishing your pitch: Don’t try to be everything to everyone.

Published: Mar 30, 2011

Last week I met an entrepreneur who asked if he could talk to me about his startup. I said “yes,” and he began his pitch. He had an interesting concept, fantastic tech, and he was already funded. As I pulled out my iPhone to jot down some notes, I asked him a simple marketing question, “Who did you build this for?”

I saw panic race across his face and beads of sweat began to form on his forehead. His answers were all over the spectrum. Answers ranged from soccer moms, to kids doing homework, to professional videographers in Hollywood. Essentially he gave me a shotgun pitch when I was looking for a laser.

Upon reflecting on his pitch, I believe he was trying to prove that there was a market for his startup. All of his additional use-case scenarios just added noise to his pitch and watered down the impact of his presentation.

The most important thing when you’re pitching your startup, is to build a clean, concise narrative. Focus on one demographic and demonstrate your startup’s immense value to that user group. Work on getting traction with one market before you try to expand.

It’s impossible to be everything to everyone and it distracts from the important parts of your pitch.

For more startup news, follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry.

How FeeFighters saved startups $50 million a year in credit card fees

Published: Mar 29, 2011


I had the chance to chat with Sheel Mohnot (from FeeFighters) to talk about how one startup helped other founders and small business owners save $50 million in the course of one year. Be sure to checkout the end of the article for a gift (worth $49) that FeeFighters is generously giving away to TSF readers!

What is FeeFighters?

Sheel Mohnot: FeeFighters helps small businesses shop for credit card processing, making it as easy as shopping for a plane ticket on Kayak.com. In minutes, business owners can choose the best deal on credit card processing with a reverse auction marketplace that saves the average business owner 40 percent on credit card processing.

Who is your target market?

Sheel: Our target market is anyone that takes credit cards. About 2/3rds of our customers take payments online (mix of startups and established companies, we have lots of e-retailers and SaaS businesses). The other 1/3rd are offline customers, like pizza shops, restaurant chains, and retailers.

We find that a lot of startups often go with PayPal or use their bank for payment processing early on, and then once they get to a certain size, they realize that they can save a significant amount of money by switching to a new provider. We help them make the process as easy as possible.

What is FeeFighter’s backstory?

Sheel: Sean (FeeFighter’s CEO) ran a company called TSS radio. In his first year of operations, he was really frustrated because he overpaid his credit card processing fees by $40,000, which was more than the total profits he took in. He wanted to do something about it- so he started a blog called the Informed Merchant. informed-merchant.com was getting a lot of love from small businesses, so he decided that he could do more to help them actually save money. The idea was born that if processors compete down for merchant’s business, prices would come down significantly. We wrote the contracts to eliminate the opportunity for processors to deceive our customers – we’ve instituted interchange plus pricing, which was previously only available to large merchants like Best Buy and Wal-Mart. All of our customers combined add up to a lot of market power and processors love getting their business.

 

I’ve noticed that your blogging style is very similar to how Mint communicated in the early days. Can you tell us why blogging is important to FeeFighters?

Sheel: Blogging is really important to us, and we figured we could learn from the best. Mint is really good at getting useful content out via their blog, which gets syndicated out throughout the web. We want our blog to accomplish 2 main things

1) Inform merchants about the intricacies of payment processing (obviously hoping to convert them as customers)

2) Generate buzz. We do this via infographics, fun articles completely unrelated to payments (including a workout video that got several thousand hits), and general business articles

For pagerank purposes, it’s important that these be linked to from outside sources, so there is certainly some link-bait in the mix as well.

 

How are you gaining traction? How did you get your foot in the door in this industry? Can you share a few tips for other startups that are still in the hustle phase?

Sheel: We’re gaining traction the old fashioned way. We provide a needed service that our customers love. They spread the word about us. The problem is, it isn’t happening fast enough… So we spend money on some paid search, we do a lot of buzz/PR stuff, and we are trying to build out our partnerships. We want to be anywhere that small businesses are, and we offer something compelling to our partners – the opportunity to save your customers a lot of money.

 

We got our foot in the door in the industry by learning more than anyone else about it. Sean read a lot. He became an expert on payment processing, so much so that he’s one of the experts in this field. He’s written about it, spoken at conferences, and ultimately started a company in the industry. It’s always a hustle – raising money, getting early customers, getting processors to agree to our crazy merchant-friendly contracts, etc. The hustle phase is really important… I don’t think we’ll be out for that phase for a long time. Tips: NEVER STOP HUSTLING. If things are getting comfortable, you aren’t hustling enough and someone that out-hustles you will eat your lunch. In our business, it is important to be everywhere at once. We work hard to do that.

 

What’s next for FeeFighters?

Sheel: Lots of exciting things! We’re launching an awesome UI change to the site in the next week or so, which will give our customers Kayak-style ability to do instant searches. Also, we’re launching in Canada! Our neighbors to the north can save a lot of money on payment processing too, and we decided that we should try to reach them.

We already have fantastic customers like StackExchange and OkCupid, but we’re always looking to grow our user base.

 

Is there anything else TSF readers should know about FeeFighters?

Sheel: We decided to run a special for TSF readers – We’re going to give a free statement analysis $49 value.  Send an email to sheel@feefighters.com with TSF in the subject line and your statement attached.

For more startup news, follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry