OpenView Venture Partners

A Great Example of A Terrible User Experience!- Introduction (part 1)

Thursday, March 11, 2010 by Scott Maxwell

As an expansion stage venture capitalist who strongly believes in companies developing great user experiences, I spend a lot of time designing and redesigning experiences in my head every day. For example,

- When I use a website, I redesign the experience in my head, mostly redesigning the UI to its simplest form.

- As venture capital advisors to our portfolio companies, we both use the products that our portfolio companies create and we give them feedback on the user experience.

- When I stand in lines with multiple cash registers and multiple queues, I redesign the lines in my head to create a single line (so that the customers are not frustrated when they get in a slow line).

- When I get stuck in a line at a toll booth, I think through what the state needs to do to have transponders as part of vehicle registration and how we should not have toll booths any longer.

In general, I have a really strong belief that a differentiated and valuable user experience is the single most important factor driving business growth strategies. Because of this belief, when I get a great experience, I notice (and sometimes even blog about it) and when I get bad experiences, I tend to redesign them in my head and then complain about them a lot.

This series of blog posts comes from a really bad series of user experiences and one really nice TSA agent at Logan Airport. The net result from my experiences is that I renewed my driver's license after spending a lot of time being frustrated, redesigning (in my head) the experience offered by a number of organizations, and wondering why any of a number of organizations didn't address a seemingly common issue...any of them could have improved my user experience, but none of them did.

I am writing about the experience not to complain about the RMV, but rather to point out how bad experiences effect people and to encourage you to really push your product and development teams, sales support and marketing teams, and customer service teams to really understand how their touch points with the users, buyers, and other market participants are perceived and, even better, how they could redesign the touch points and experiences to drive a much more positive perception!

Quick Follow-Up to Microsoft Office 2007 Help!

Thursday, March 11, 2010 by Katie Cohen-Hausman

The problem discussed in my blog posted yesterday has still been bothering me. I went home last night and did additional research. I searched a blog I have mentioned in the past, "The Professional Assistant." There is a post called "Make No Mistakes With Meeting Request Attachments in Outlook 2007" that gives a partial solution to the issue.

The author states the problem perfectly: "You sent a meeting request to a bunch of people. Your boss calls you up and tells you that you need to add an agenda to this meeting, but you don’t want everyone to get the meeting request again and have to accept/decline it. Trust me, people start to get irritated when this happens over and over again."

There is apparently a feature called "Forward as iCalendar" that will allow you to send an updated email instead of a new calendar invite requiring an accept/decline response.

I am going to try this out and see how it works. If it works well, I will adopt it as a best practices process for my operational support list. I am still searching for the best solution to the entire issue of inefficient calendar management for firm-wide/team meetings which do not require an accept/decline response. I am truly looking to help our management teams spend less time on these types of time wasting meeting responses.

Entrepreneurs love their hood!

Thursday, March 11, 2010 by Scott Maxwell

Mark Peter Davis has an interesting set of survey results on his blog comparing the Valley, Boston, and New York regions from the perspective of his readers. I get asked the question about regional differences periodically (since OpenView has and will invest in any region globally where there is a great expansion stage software/internet company) and the question has been raised more frequently recently. I don't really have a strong regional bias since I have found positives and negatives in every region, but take a look at Marks conclusions from the survey answers here, including that entrepreneurs love their hood!

Are You Ready?

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 by Cynthia Mignogna

As venture capital investors, we know the drill...it's coming up on the end of the quarter and the management teams in our portfolio companies start to become very quiet. Very, very quiet...

Startup and expansion stage technology companies are often so heads-down right about now trying to close the current quarter, that they often lose sight of the fact that this is also the time to make sure that their organization is laser-focused on next quarter.

Sounds great in theory, but exactly what am I talking about? As busy as this time of the quarter usually is, it's also a critical point in the cycle to go through an operational review. This is not meant to be an exhausting strategic planning exercise (although ideas that might impact your strategy could possibly develop from this session), but is meant to be a time to gather your key management team together to:

Measure your expected outcome for this quarter against your budget, forecast and goals. You should have two months of actual financial and business data right about now, use that data to update your outlook for Q1. Are you on track?
Next, if you're not on track for the quarter, each functional manager should have a pretty good idea of the actions to take in these remaining few weeks to try to reach their goals, or alternatively mitigate any shortfall. Now is the time to reprioritize and reallocate resources, if necessary. Every member of the team should know exactly what they need to do in these remaining weeks of the quarter to make Q1 happen!
Next step. Make sure your management team is locked and loaded for Q2. You should already have your financial goals set for Q2, but equally important are the goals for each functional area, as well as your overall organization. It's also very important that your management team take any learnings from Q1 into consideration as they plan for Q2. Are there any missed goals that are going to impact Q2? Do you know what you're going to do to mitigate that impact? What about your Q1 successes? What can you take from those learnings to replicate them in Q2? Everyone should know now exactly what they need to do in Minute 1 of Day 1 of Q2, in order to make those Q2 goals happen!
As a side note. Some great ideas may have come up that might be of a more strategic nature. Capture those ideas in a parking lot, assign owners to them, and follow up on those ideas in smaller working groups (probably after you close the quarter, in order to keep focused on the task at hand).
Last step. Document next steps for Q1, document goals for Q2, ensure common understanding and consensus has been reached by every member of the management team. Go out and make those goals happen!

Are you and your management team ready for Q2?

Get Satisfaction, Get User Reaction

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 by Vlad Djuric

Last week, I wrote about the launch of "Kampyle for applications," a product which will allow SaaS companies to gather direct, in-application feedback from customers using their software, and how this product should Kampyle's competitive positioning and differentiation in the customer feedback/experience space. Other expansion stage companies in the customer feedback/experience market (such as UserVoice, Feedbackify, IdeaScale, etc.) only allow companies to gather feedback on their websites.

One company that deserved (but didn't receive) mention in the post was Get Satisfaction. I first heard of it from our resident web 2.0 connoisseur Tien Anh in early 2008. Coincidentally, a few weeks later, I wound up meeting the company's founder, Lane Becker, at Scribd's lavish 1-year anniversary party. I remember Lane asking a small crowd if anyone had heard of Get Satisfaction. I was the only one who had. Undeterred, Lane spoke enthusiastically for 20 minutes about his start-up and his vision for it.

Two years and $4.5 million in venture funding later, Lane's vision of revolutionizing customer feedback and support is quickly becoming reality. Get Satisfaction has created 20,000 customer communities that allow its customers' customers to share their ideas, suggestions, and complaints with one another. These online forums (check out Zappos') allow users to get answers from each other before submitting a support ticket. All answers are publicly archived and easily searchable, eliminating the need for questions to be answered more than once. This works to simultaneously reduce support costs and time to issue resolution. These communities also contain tons of customer ideas and wishes, allowing companies to leverage their communities for product innovation and marketing. Get Satisfaction's communities also increase the amount of user generated content on a site, which is a primary driver of SEO. Lastly, many studies have shown that businesses that interact with their customers transparently inspire high customer loyalty and retention, another positive externality of using the service. Starting at $20/month, it's a no-brainer.

Yesterday, Get Satisfaction announced that its brands can now create a tab on their Facebook fan pages to serve as secondary portals for users to express their views, suggestions, and complaints about

the brands and their products. When users begin posting a question, Get Satisfaction suggests similar threads to give users instant answers. Every question and idea will also be imported into the brand's Get Satisfaction forum.

Central Desktop already uses Get Satisfaction. Now I just have to get our other portfolio companies to join the party.

The Secret Life of Objects

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 by Jillian Mirandi

"If only the walls could talk" is a phrase that constantly sparks the imagination. Well, now it is a reality.

Seth Goldstein of SocialMedia Networks and Billy Chasen, creator of chartbeat have now founded stickybits, the "fun and social way to attach digital content to real world objects". What you do is find a bar code, or buy some sticky bar codes (20 for $10), and scan it with your iphone. Each bar code is programmable by the first person who scans it and attaches

some content. You can upload a picture, message, audio clip, whatever you want. Each additional person who scans the object will see the programmers' message, and are then able to add to it. For brands, a future business model is to charge brands to claim their bar codes and place their own messages on it first (content marketing strategy).

Just think of the possibilities! Essentially, I could stick a bar code on the Eiffel Tower or the Pyramid of Giza and in a sense "own" a little digital piece of it. Or more practically, attach your resume or pitch to your business card (business development services and personal recruiting support), attach a video to a birthday card, make in inventory of old photos, or just attach a bar code to a bottle and see where it ends up.

When It's Time To Raise Captial

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 by Glenn Michael

A lot of companies that have built up their business through the start-up phase are anxious to find new ways to grow their enterprise even further. They have a solid product or service, a profitable distribution model, but may need to take on some expansion capital to continue to move forward at their desired pace. At this point, management teams start looking for investors and organizing their plans for the future. At OpenView Venture Partners, we do everything we can to help our portfolio companies become more and more successful. We are a unified team of individuals with a wide range of expertise and experience. Building a great company is not an easy task, and keeping the momentum steady can be even more challenging. It is crucial to identify pain points, make sure you have the right players on your team, and search for new ways to improve your business approach. The world is always changing, and to succeed, you have to change with it. If you have reached the expansion stage and are considering raising capital, we'd love to get introduced to see if there's a potential fit for an investment in your company.

Microsoft Office 2007 Help!

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 by Katie Cohen-Hausman

Calendar maintenance is a primary concern when you are trying to schedule for multiple people, let alone an entire office! To streamline this process, I have been attempting to update the entire firm's individual calendars with our 2010 holiday schedule, along with some specific recurring team meetings. This update should have been fairly simple, as Outlook supposedly has a group update feature that allows for multiple updates instead of my having to go into every calendar and input the information.

Alas, my simple solution is turning out to be far from it. After two hours of searching, I have not yet discovered a way for me to update everyone's schedules in one swoop without them having to see or respond to a meeting request. Outlook does, however, have the ability to create group schedules but this method remains flawed for our needs as each individual would need to accept each meeting invite or set up an automatic acceptance (another potentially flawed feature). Neither of these options is the most efficient use of time.

As a Boston venture capital firm, we have prospective portfolio companies actively looking for investors and our current expansion stage portfolio companies looking for assistance. Our partners, associates, analysts and operational support people need to take the time necessary to help each of these companies. Scheduling is of utmost importance but not everyone has the time, or forethought, to maintain their individual calendars with the precision necessary. Figuring out a way for me to take over a portion of everyone's calendars opens up time for OpenView team members to focus on our portfolio companies and ensures that firm-wide meetings and dates are known to all. By taking on this responsibility, I am enabling everyone to focus more on what we specialize in, building great companies.

Wish me luck on my continued search for an Outlook 2007 Calendar solution! (Suggestions are always welcome!)

The Next Big Thing List?

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 by Scott Maxwell

As an expansion stage venture capital financing firm, we are constantly searching for the next big thing. The WSJ has been kind enough to furnish The Next Big Thing List, which is actually pretty interesting to take a look at and dissect. As I reviewed the list, I could not help but think of how crappy the list is for several reasons:

1. Many of the companies on the list cannot possibly be the next big thing, mostly because their product markets are too small, their differentiation is too weak, their long term competitive advantage is too weak, or the competitive intensity of their markets is too strong to allow them to become "big things." (btw, none of these are criteria...wtfwsj?)

2. Some of the companies on the list are already hot and probably should be on a "Currently Hot" list rather than The Next Big Thing List. For example, Zynga and the Huffington Post are both hot and strong at this point.

3. The criteria for determining the ranking of The Next Big Thing List is horrible. The Market Potential has got to be the number one factor in determining potential, doesn't it? What happened to differentiation and market competitiveness? If this criteria was submitted for a grade to a college course at a community college, I suspect it would get a failing grade.

I am not sure that the list could be worse and wonder what the probability that the next big thing actually is on this list, particularly if the currently hot companies are screened out. Perhaps the WSJ will be kind enough to keep the list for 5 years and then review their list at that point?

What do you think about The Next Big Thing List?

Is the economy improving? February Results Continue to Indicate Mixed Results

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 by Scott Maxwell

As you develop and execute your business growth strategies, the economy is probably the biggest unknown and has been since Q408. My sense from February results for the software/internet economy is that business is better than Q1 of last year, but not as good as Q4 of last year. The March results will be telling and the quarter will help predict the results for the year better, but my overarching sense is that the economy continues to improve at a relatively slow pace.

Some data points that I am hearing/seeing:

- Recruiting support firms, particularly executive search, that I have spoken to have very good backlogs.

- I have never experienced such full airplanes in my travels. I assume that this is coming from reduced capacity in the airlines, but at least some of it must be from economic growth and increased sales activity.

- Lead generation services and sales support and marketing firms seem to have mixed results, with many reporting really positive results and others working hard to find work (not sure what to make of this).

- The news from the Venture Capitalist also seems mixed when I normalize for the positive bias of most Venture Capital Advisors.

I suspect that the net of all of this will be reasonable economic growth for the quarter, but not the knock-out quarter that the software economy had in Q4.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 by George Roberts

Remember when you were a kid and adults would ask you "What do you want to be when you grow up"? Many of us would respond with I want to be a doctor, a fireman, a nurse, a policeman, an astronaut, the president or any number of other roles we all aspired to be at one time or another as kids growing up.

Now as an operational Venture Capital partner I get to ask that same question all the time. Only instead of asking kids I ask founders and CEO's of early and expansion stage companies that are looking for investors to raise growth capital to scale their companies.

Somewhere between early and expansion stage in every company several good things have occurred...

1.) You have released a functioning product/service that relieves a pain point in the marketplace

2.) You have paying customers

3.) You are starting to understand and build a distribution model to sell your product/service

Also, during this time because of the stress on early/expansion stage software companies to generate cash flow, many of you are also likely suffering from a bad habit I refer to as doing Anything For A Buck (AFAB).

This is when you need to ask yourself the question "What do I want to be when I grow up?" The reason this is so critical is until you actually answer this question you can't determine what the correct strategy is to scale the company in a capital efficient manner to maximize your potential in the market place.

There are several old statements that drive this home...

The shortest distance between 2 points is a straight line...

You can't be all things to all people...

And when you answer this question lots of good things can happen like...

1.) Product Management can focus on the right target segment for input into development
2.) Developments road map becomes clearer and more focused making it easier to achieve
3.) Marketing gets easier, they now know who to target and the types of leads to generate for sales
4.) Sales win rate goes up since all the leads they receive are qualified and easier to close
5.) Customer support's satisfaction rating goes up and support tickets go down since the product
is built, marketed and sold to the right segment

An the list goes on and on...

As kids everybody has to grow up sooner or later and the same is true with companies... so if you have not answered the question yet, you might want to start thinking about it!

All the best!

G

More on Inside Sales - Compensation and Survey Insights

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 by Firas Raouf

Isaac Garcia, CEO of CentralDesktop, sent us a few good resources on inside sales...

2009InsideSalesReport.pdf 2009 Inside Sales Metrics and Compensation is all about how expansion stage software companies are leveraging inside sales. Interesting tid bits I got out of it:
- Survey data indicates that inside sales is typically adopted post the start-up phase and in targeting early majority technology buyers and beyond. I may be biased by our heavy SaaS based portfolio... but we see inside sales as the starting point for any distribution model, including the start-up and early adopter phases.
- Average team size is 12 reps. I suspect that is highly correlated to the revenue size of the companies in the group. We believe that the smallest team size should be 4 reps, with a recruiting ramp in classes of 4-5.

2009LeadGenerationReport.pdf 2009 Inside Sales Lead Generation Metrics and Compensation is all about how expansion stage software companies are leveraging inside sales for lead generation.
- Companies with lead generation specialization within the sales team are ones that have passed the start-up phase into the expansion stage... which is when tiering a sales team starts making sense.
- Marketing evolves from being responsible for generating leads... to being responsible for fostering leads until the leads turn into qualified leads (see my post on Lead Management Science Not Art)
- Only 26% of companies puts the lead gen team in marketing... Unfortunate reflection of the fact that typical marketing managers are not process oriented enough to run a process-intensive lead gen team. On the other hand, lead gen and qualification is the responsibility of marketing... and human based lead qualification is an essential compon

ent of that function.
- I agree with the Bridge Group that a ratio of 1:3 for lead gen to sales rep is the right ratio. 1:2 makes the sales team resource heavy... 1:4 makes it cost heavy.

Isaac also pointed us to Phone Works a services firm that specializes in building inside sales teams. In particular, the Q4 2009 VP Sales Compensation Report and Q4 2009 Inside Sales Compensation Report.

Another reference point is a recent post I wrote about inside sales in general... Inside Sales - Science not Art

Give us a call if you're looking for investors that provide sales support and marketing strategy implementation. Why did I just say that? Ask Compendium.

Atlanta's Growing Startup Community

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 by Mark Barry

One of my favorite places to hang out in Atlanta is the Barnes & Noble/Starbucks at Georgia Tech. I enjoy meeting local entrepreneurs here because of its proximity to mid town and the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC).

ATDC is a start-up accelerator that helps Georgia technology entrepreneurs launch and build successful companies. Founded in 1980, ATDC has helped create millions of dollars in tax revenues by graduating more than 120 companies (Mindspring, RelevantKnowledge, Novient, Magnet Communications, Air2Web, Knowlagent, Fast-Talk, just to name a few), which together have raised more than a billion dollars in outside financing. ATDC has provided business incubation and acceleration services to hundreds of Georgia startups—most of which are not based on Georgia Tech research, but which benefit from the close proximity to the university.

Recently ATDC expanded its mission by merging with Georgia Tech’s VentureLab and with the Georgia SBIR Assistance Program. The change will enable ATDC to greatly extend its reach to serve more technology companies along multiple growth paths and at all stages of development. ATDC has opened its membership to all technology entrepreneurs in Georgia, from those at the earliest conception stage to the well-established, venture-fundable companies.

The team at ATDC is made up of seasoned entrepreneurs and investors dedicated to helping technology entrepreneurs succeed. This is similar to our model at OpenView Venture Partners via OpenView Labs with exception to exclusive focus on software companies at expansion stage. OpenView Labs provides operational support and serves as a catalyst in helping companies accelerate their growth and ultimately produce better returns for the company and its investors.

The primary lead at ATDC is Stephen Fleming, Vice Provost Enterprise Innovation Institute and Acting Director ATDC. Stephen has over 14 years of private equity experience and 15 years in operational roles at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Nortel Networks, and LICOM (a venture-funded startup). He has assembled an impressive team of entrepreneurs at ATDC as well as funding a mechanism for early stage start-ups.

Another great organization in Atlanta is the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG). TAG is dedicated to the promotion and economic advancement of the state's technology industry and provides leadership in driving initiatives in the areas of policy, capital, education and giving. TAG also brings the technology community together through events, initiative programs and networking opportunities. Tino Mantella, President of TAG, has done an excellent job of establishing TAG as one of the premier technology associations in the country.

Several years ago, I served as President of the Southeast Software Association (SSA), a special interest group (SIG) under TAG. The SSA consists of high-tech and software professionals looking for ways to grow their business and future businesses within the Southeast. Members look for opportunities to network with other professionals for career advancement and possible partnerships. These professionals are interested in learning about new emerging technologies and how they might apply to their business or the creation of another business, in which they would seek funding. Naturally, this is an excellent organization to be associated with if you are an early to expansion stage investor.

Well, now that I have given you a little insight into Atlanta's high tech community, I'm off to meet with a serial entrepreneur who introduced me to it all, Steve Bachman. Steve has thirty years experience in sales, marketing, operations, and corporate management in the technology industry with startup and fast growth technology product and service companies. Steve’s experience includes a successful track record with self funded and venture capital funded businesses, with multiple successes in creating shareholder value through profitable company growth and sale of businesses to McAfee, NetIQ, Computer Associates, Xcelerate, and Renaissance.

One of Steve's recent ventures is AuditMyBooks, a software as a service (SaaS) solution that automatically analyzes small and medium business (SMB) accounting records to detect errors and possible fraud. This has become an increasingly important and growing problem in the industry and one that Steve hopes to tackle. I'm confident that Steve will assemble the right team and grow the business to a stage in which expansion stage capital from OpenView Venture Partners will help to accelerate their growth!

Retrospectives: The Key to Continuous Sales Improvement

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 by Ori Yankelev

www.scrumalliance.org/articles/83-delivering-the-w-one-game-at-a-time
At OpenView Venture Partners one of our core values is continuous improvement. It is a value that is ingrained in our culture and that we practice on a daily and weekly basis through a management methodology called SCRUM. Those of you who are familiar with SCRUM know that is just one flavor of agile product development methodology, and is not generally applied outside of product development. That being said, ours is a slightly modified version of SCRUM, but the guiding principles are still applied, and we coach many of the operational and management teams in our portfolio companies on how to apply these principles.

SCRUM allows for continuous improvement by having a team follow a regimented work rhythm, punctuated by frequent “retrospectives.” The purpose of a retrospective is to surface impediments and bottlenecks in a process, and to identify solutions and opportunities for improvement. From there, you prioritize the impediments and ideas for improvement and systematically implement solutions.

Applying a retrospective to a Sales team will take your normal pipeline reviews to a whole new level. It starts with trust, candor, and commitment from everyone that the focus is on improving the process and the team’s performance overall. As the team gets more practice retrospecting, they will become better at identifying the root causes of problems and bring more poignant and actionable ideas to each retrospective.

Companies that have embraced this approach in their sales and marketing teams have seen almost immediate improvement in sales performance and productivity. Some companies have similar meetings, but without the rigor and commitment from everyone on the team, the meetings are not likely to provide quite as much value as a true retrospective.

Do you retrospect?

If you are interested in learning more about retrospectives and scrum check out these links:

Agile Retrospective Cheat Sheet

Agile Scrum News Letter

SCRUM Alliance post on the New England Patriots

OpenView's Operational Support: Lead Generation Strategies

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 by Devon Warwick

Today I got my hands on a great report that was recently released by The Bridge Group, Inc., a Boston-based consulting firm that works with B2B (business to business) technology companies to help build and strengthen their inside sales teams. The report, titled “2009 Inside Sales Lead Generation Metrics and Compensation for Technology Companies,” is exceptionally relevant to my work at OpenView Partners, a Boston Venture Capital firm, as I focus on developing Lead Generation programs and business development strategies for our expansion stage portfolio companies.

So how does The Bridge Group gather their data? They have surveyed over 125 North American technology companies (Hardware, Software, Hardware & Software, SaaS/Hosted) on how they have execute their inside sales implementations. Pretty impressive if you ask me!

Some interesting takeaways from The Bridge Group's survey results:

• 60% of all companies surveyed use Saleforce.com as the CRM of choice
• The average size of a Lead Generation team is 6 reps
• The average ration of Lead Generation Rep to Field Rep is 1 : 3.5
• The average years of experience that a hiring manager seeks for the Lead Generation role is 2.4
• The average tenure of a Lead Generation rep is 2.4 years
• The average base salary on the Lead Generation team is $47.5k base, with a total compensation of $75.3k
• The average quota for leads passed along the Field Reps is 16 “opportunities created”
• Average time on the phone a day is 4 hours, and the average number of calls made is 46/day
• 45% of calls are made into leads that were derived from marketing
• 17% of leads convert to qualified opportunities
• The average contribution of the pipeline that can be attributed to the Lead Generation teams efforts is 48%

The OpenView Labs team has implemented Lead Generation programs within five of our portfolio companies, and remarkably, most of these statistics/averages are very simliar, if not identical, to the standards that we hold our new Lead Generation hires to when they are brought on board to support their respective sales teams.

There are a couple of differences. First of all, we typically advise our portfolio companies to push their Lead Generation reps to generate 10 qualified leads a week, rather than 16 a month. Ambitious, yes, but it has worked so far! Also, none of the Lead Generation programs that we have built have been around for 2.4 years (the average tenure of a rep according to the survey), however, we have something different in mind to keep motivation high. The goal is to promote these bright individuals internally once they have proved themselves as a Lead Generator/Qualifier. I am proud to say that recently two of the Lead Generation reps that we hired, trained, and coached for one of our portfolio companies were promoted to Sales reps within 5 months.

To download The Bridge Group’s Lead Generation Report, go to http://www.bridgegroupinc.com/lead_generation_metrics.html. Also if your role falls within the realm of inside sales/lead generation in the tech-space, whether you are a manager or a rep, I suggest following Bridge Group’s blog (in addition to mine!) http://blog.bridgegroupinc.com, as they offer a great flow of suggestions and industry information that will help you stay on top of your game.

It's all about how you market it---Why Hurt Locker won the Oscar

Monday, March 8, 2010 by Brian Zimmerman

I was very shocked to see Hurt Locker beat Avatar for best picture last night. I saw both movies and enjoyed them both. On paper, everything I saw led me to believe Avatar was a lock. Big revenues, big marketing, big budget.....it just seemed right.

Then I dug a little bit deeper into why it happened. I found a great article detailing the marketing strategy the Hurt Locker used and it was brilliant. The article can be found here.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3i88e2a9a4c588f422d370afe237b52edf

Take a look at the article and let me know your thoughts. When offering sales and marketing support to our expansion stage portfolio company management teams, I am going to really think about how they did it.

Back to basics of entrepreneurship

Monday, March 8, 2010 by Diana Winings

Where do you go for inspiration as you work to grow your expansion stage company?

I came across an article on Forbes.com about some very young entrepreneurs that provided some inspiration to me as I develop OpenView's recruiting support practice, and I thought that it would be an interesting read for anyone working in growth venture capital or at a startup.

I admire the drive and determination that the young entrepreneurs mentioned in the article have to "build something great", which is one of OpenView's values. We are always on the lookout for candidates with these values for our portfolio companies and for OpenView... I will have to keep an eye on those who were mentioned in the article for opportunities in the future!

The Only Two Negotiation Books to Read

Monday, March 8, 2010 by Jeremy Aber

One of the most important skills of any good software licensing attorney (or venture capital advisors), is their ability to negotiate and deal with difficult situations. I have read so many negotiations books, that now they all seem to sound alike. However, I go back to two books that out of every book I have read, work time and time again.

1) Getting To Yes - by William Ury and Roger Fisher. Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In.

Amazon Link

2) Difficult Conversations -by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen, and Roger Fisher. How to Discuss What Matters Most.

Amazon Link

So why are these two books so great?

Well the first one is really focused on the concept of 'interest' based negotiations vs. positional negotiations. What they mean by this, is finding out why the other party wants something, instead of focusing on what they want (the position). This may seem simple, but it is something that is too often forgotten in a negotiation.

The second book is focused on how to have productive difficult conversations. These type of conversations can be anything from a difficult business conversation to one with your spouse. This book addresses the too often ignored issue of the emotional part of conversations or negotiations; and yes emotions can have a dramatic impact on the outcome/final decision.

Oh, and who is behind the books? The Harvard Program on Negotiation. In my humble opinion, this group is the best in the world on how to negotiate. They don't have gimmicks or one-liners, but they do have some of the deepest thinkers on how to negotiate (in any arena) or situation. Any company looking for a growth capital or expansion capital should take a read.

More web research tools, with real life examples

Monday, March 8, 2010 by Tien Anh Nguyen

As promised, this week I am coming back to the exploration of web research tools with some real examples for using those tools to research venture capital topics such as venture capital firms, growth equity funding, venture capital advisors.

Before you start your ambitious web research undertaking, be aware that you will have to roam far and wide on the Internet and sometimes travel off the beaten path. Basic college skills such as note-taking, summarizing and reference citing will come in handy to keep your burgeoning data trove organized. However, there are awesome tools online to help you do this on the fly. I will just list out 3 that I like the most here: Delicious, Evernote and Diigo.

I will start with Delicious first. This is the grand daddy of online bookmarking tools, and it is a formidable database of great links, an easy to use bookmark organization application and a great way to explore any topics.

For example, let's search links in Delicious that are tagged with "venture": http://delicious.com/tag/venture. This is a continuously updated streams of web pages tagged with the keyword "venture." What if we want make it more specific: let's add another tag "capital" and also a location "Boston": http://delicious.com/tag/venture+capital+Boston. This is a great list of venture capital funds in Boston area (of course, it is not exhaustive, but this is actually much easier to navigate that the thousands of results that Google gives for the same query "venture capital Boston".

If you have a delicious account, you will be able to organize your bookmarks using tags, and then compare and contrast them with the community database of 5.3 million users and 180 millions bookmarked URLs.

Evernote started out as a desktop-based scrapbook application, very much like Microsoft OneNote, but it has since evolved into a full function note taking, web clipping, thoughts organizing and data synchronizing application that has the ability to permeate all aspect of the digital world: your desktop, the Internet, your smart phone etc. For intrepid adventurers in web exploration, Evernote is a godsend!

I reserve Diigo for the very end because this is a tool that I use the most. They have made great strides since launching in 2006 and going through 3 versions. To the uninitiated, Diigo is "just another Delicious", but Diigo really shines in the way it lets people collaborate together in while doing online research, in real time or asynchronously. In Diigo, the online bookmarks are meant to be shared with other users in Diigo, as well as across the Internet through other communication platforms (including Delicious, Twitter etc.), and are really the center of lively discussion.

Diigo also acts as a great content recommendation tool, as it is almost like an Amazon.com for online links. From one bookmarked page, the user can explore other bookmarked pages on the same site, explore lists that that page belongs to (and hence seeing similar content previously bookmarked by other members), participate in online discussion groups that grow around that content, and so on.

For example, a quick search in diigo for "Venture capital" leads me to an awesome list of venture capital and venture funding related sites created by another user: http://www.diigo.com/list/damniwala/venture. Here is high quality content selected from all over the web, served up for immediate consumption!

You can even see all the pages as a slideshow: http://slides.diigo.com/list/damniwala/venture

How does OpenView Venture Partners help its portfolio companies?

Monday, March 8, 2010 by Amanda Maksymiw

Last week I was at the Marketing Segmentation Forum hosted by Boston venture capital firm, OpenView Venture Partners, with the help of our senior advisor Luke Hohmann. Throughout the two-day interactive workshop, Hohmann provided the fundamental components and actionable processes any company can follow to define its target segments. Between the sessions I was able to catch up with some executive team members of expansion stage companies which have received venture funding from OpenView. Read our press release to learn more about the segmentation forum.

When senior teams were questioned on how OpenView has provided the most impact or value, they more often than not pointed to our Extraordinary Execution Workshop - not the expansion capital. The workshop is an intensive two-day meeting to help our companies identify aspirations and strategic priorities for the year.

"Using the Extraordinary Execution Workshop, the entrepreneurs get an advantage over their bigger competitors," mentioned Hohmann. "The workshop helped guide us to where we need to be," added Shane Vaughan, VP of Marketing of Balihoo.

To learn more about the Extraordinary Execution Workshop, read our case study.