My Startup Failed and it's all Marketing's Fault

A presentation from TechCamp Memphis, 2014.

1. My Startup Failed And it’s all Marketing’s Fault!
2. Brad Montgomery Hi, I’m
3. –Marc Andreessen “The number one reason that we pass on entrepreneurs…is their focusing on product to the exclusion of everything else. Many entrepreneurs who build great products simply don’t have a good distribution strategy.” !
4. 2011 -2013
5. Work for what? Goal: Better Technical Recruiting Starting with Developers (open source)
6. Corp. Dev. Dev. Dev. Dev. 3rd Party Job Listing
7. Corp. Dev. Dev. Dev. Dev. WFP
8. Work for what? Product: Developer Portfolios built upon existing developer tools/ communities.
9. Developer Profile
10. For Companies… Goal: Expose Great Companies
11. For Companies… Product: A developer-focused “brochure” for each company. (inbound marketing)
12. Company Page
13. Who would use this? Number of Employees 0 250 500 750 1000 Number of Companies 10 100 10k 1M
14. Work for Pie, actually. Phase One: SaaS Model! (company pages)
15. Work for Pie, actually. Phase One: SaaS Model! (company pages)
17. Work for Pie, actually. Phase Two: “consulting services”! (Pie Works: getpieworks.com)
19. Work for Pie, actually. Phase Three: Sell Out.! (we tried to be recruiters)
21. So… Marketing
22. Marketing mar·ket·ing! /ˈmärkədiNG/ ! noun the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.
23. Marketing • Everything you do. • Every word on your website. • Every Tweet. • Every Email. • Every Interaction in your app.
24. How we thought we should do “marketing” • Twitter. • Hacker News/Reddit • Meetups/Conferences (attending & sponsoring) • Email. • Our Blog. • Press.
25. WTF Goes on the Homepage? • Who do we speak to? • Companies? • Hiring Managers? • Developers? • “Internal” Recruiters.
26. We spoke to no one.
27. –Scott Case “I have no idea what you guys do.”
28. Hindsight.
29. Email • We were way too shy (with our developer side) • We should have been more analytical about sending email. • A/B Test copy, track calls to action.
30. Life Cycle Emails • There’s a non-annoying balance… • #1 way to keep your users engaged.
31. Sales The process of generating leads, qualifying them, and converting them into paying customers. Then being able to repeat this.
32. Sales • We sent a lot of cold emails. To lots and lots of companies. • We hired a “sales as a service” company. • Heed the Maxim: Never hire until you can’t DIY
33. Sales • We sent a lot of cold emails. To lots and lots of companies. • We hired a “sales as a service” company. • Heed the Maxim: Never hire until you can’t DIY
34. Press • We made friends with a couple journalists and got in Mashable and The Next Web. • Great for new features. • Not Sustainable.
35. Paid Advertising • Lots of targeted Landing pages. • Target ads to those companies/managers/people that we wanted to work with. • Focus on Exposure.
36. Content Marketing. • More Blogging. • Developer Interviews. • How-To articles. • Fewer here’s what we’re doing articles.
37. Engineering as Marketing • We had technical ability • Build Useful Micro-sites. • APIs • “Widgets”
38. BD: Business Development • “Strategic Partnerships” • Most large/successful startups did this at some point. • Team up to make both of your services/products better.
39. BD: Business Development • “Strategic Partnerships” • Most large/successful startups did this at some point. • Team up to make both of your services/products better.
40. Build Market Sale
41. Build Market Sale
42. Build Marketing Sales
43. Resources
44. Thanks! brad@bradmontgomery.net ! Twitter: bkmontgomery IRC: bkmontgomery