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TechCrunch Pitches and the Culture of Startup Mediocrity

July 4th, 2008 No Comments Posted in Marketing, Technology, VC Money

You’ll find the seed for TechCrunch Pitches burried in the comment section of this 1938Media video post. Yes, go and take a look, I assure you it is there. Little surprise that TechCrunch boss, Michael Arrington finds his gold chez Loren Feldman these days, but then again the idea of pitching your startup to VC big-wigs is hardly something new. Sony Corporation owns the rights to the ‘Dragon’s Den’ format, a TV show that originated in Japan in which entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to gain investment finance from business experts. The BBC was quick to adopt the format and Dragon’s Den has proved to be a huge TV sensation in the UK.

In the 1938Media video we see Feldman grilling a bewildered German web entrepreneur who turns out to be Martin Obert of Gloofi.com. In this ‘kitchen sink’ drama, Obert is supposed to have gate crashed Arrington’s house with the aim of pitching his website for some VC money. [Note: someone ought to write a book on how to create a start-up without VC money... or perhaps Twigged will do a post and get Kosso and a few others onboard?] The main interest of the video isn’t about Obert, Feldman or Arrington, rather it’s about the extent to which people are willing to go to stick their spoons in the great honey pot. And as with all Web phenonmena, it’s contagious: if one guy’s willing to do, you can bet your bottom dollar that there’s 1000 others who are willing to do it too.

So a couple of days pass after the video post, and then surprise surprise, TechCrunch launches a new feature: Elevator Pitches - a place “where founders and CEOs get a chance to pitch their startups to you, the Techrunch audience.” Now the whole entreprise could be a huge success were it not for one tiny problem: the ‘you’ word. Not only is there no open prospect of actually securing VC money from participating in the pitches, but to make matters worse your startup is scrutinized by the general public. So with no prospect of money or expertis, why do people participate in the pitches? Feedback? Free traffic? Give me a break. I’d be willing to bet that 99% of participants submit pitches with the hope that somone out there will send them an email with a 5 or 6 figure sum.

It’s the donkey and carrot scenario. Not only does TechCrunch Pitches highlight the growing culture of mediocrity in the Web startup world, but it is a prime contributor. Countless, redundant startup ideas are being churned out on a daily basis across the globe, driven at their core by the hope of investment funding. Many of the ideas put forward for seed money lack basic groundwork (market research, budget planning, implementation costs etc) and many of the entrepreneurs shield their real aspirations until they’re able to secrure funding. What TechCrunch Pitches brings to the table is the popularization of the VC funding process. It tells us that anyone with ideas and a video camera can be the next Bill Gates, what it omits to say though is that the road to success is about work, more work, and even more work.

Tags: elevator pitches, funding, greed, mediocrity, Pitches, startups, TechCrunch, VC Money

200+ of the Web’s top link directories

November 19th, 2007 2 Comments Posted in Internet, Marketing, SEO

When you’ve just built a new site, one of the first concerns is how to get people to come and see all the beautiful work you’ve been doing. One of the more popular ways to start pushing your site above the surface and on to the radar is by submitting it to web directories. But as with most things in life, the top prizes come at top prices. There is however, a multitude of free directories waiting for you to submit your url.

If you google ‘free web directories’ for example, you’ll find a query list of universal proportion. So not only do you have to contend with the sheer quantity of directories out there, but on top of that you have to embark on a process of weeding the good from the bad - the reputable site from the viral spam sites. So below is a list, in descending order by page rank and alphabet, of some of the web’s better directories. It goes from the ubiquitous dmoz.org to the lesser known, though nonetheless noble, LinkPrestige.com. At the very least, this is a good exercise in naming a directory! Happy traffic hunting!

♥ Quick Find ♥

[ Page Rank 8-6 | Page Rank 5 | Page Rank 4 | Page Rank 3 | Page Rank 2 ]

Hint: use these quick find links to jump to the relevant Page Rank section.

Wordpress Marketplaces: Matt Mullenweg Vs. Small Potato

November 5th, 2007 6 Comments Posted in Blogging, Marketing, Wordpress

I’m going to talk a bit about ‘Small Potato‘ (SP), a blogger who surfaced after completing a Wordpress-theme-a-day challenge for 30 days (a trend that was initiated by Phu Ly of If Else) which resulted in some excellent free Wordpress themes. He is a self-professed entrepreneur and web designer, keen to cultivate a candid, ‘man-of-the-people’ approach to blogging - a trait that has seen him embroiled in a ~~trifle~~ controversy over the growing market of premium Wordpress themes and the monetary greed and poor design standards it occasionally incites.

His latest venture comes as a counterpoint to Matt Mullenweg’s theme marketplace, in which the latter proposed to set up a system whereby designers could sell premium themes to Wordpress.com users. SP was quick to point out some of the fallacies in Matt’s model, particularly the 50/50 money split and the idea of capitalising on what SP calls the “uninformed WordPress.com users” whilst allowing themes to go GPL free to the informed Wordpress.org users, a move that would put the whole notion of GPL licensing into question. While SP was quick off the mark with his attack, he was even quicker to follow suit and propose his own marketplace (still a work in progress) - a model that would only accept themes compliant to what SP calls ‘quality inspection’ (I’d like to know what that actually means) and one that posits the designer as principal beneficiary.

SP’s marketplace offers the designer web traffic, exposure and 100% financial remuneration for his/her designs. In return he would require each designer to write 2-4 pieces of blog content for WPDesigner.com per month. So whereas Mullenweg asks his would-be designers for a cut in the cash generated by sales of so-called ‘premium themes’ and seeks to exploit the financial potential of millions of WP.com users (is this a sign of Mullenweg approaching a final big ‘cash out’ with WP?), SP asks his designers for a couple of blog posts. So on paper, Mullengweg’s model could be construed as exploitative, but in reality both models seek to exploit, it’s just that the measurement of currency is slightly different. What SP doesn’t gain in the short term in terms of hard cash, he will be rewarded in the long term with more blog content, more traffic and therefore the chance for cash through publicity, hosting and any other venture he puts forward through WPDesigner.com.

So while SP may like to appear altruistic and philanthropic on the surface, underneath we all know that these are strategies for personal gain, just like Mullenweg’s ‘open source’ Wordpress has become. False pretenses? No, just parts of a huge game that we call blogging. And we accept this. Why? Well it’s as old as the study of capitalism itself. In the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith famously wrote: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”

But why do I care? I mean do I really gives a monkey’s ass about Wordpress and what ever else goes on behind the scenes? Well put it this way, if someone pressed the delete key on Wordpress and WPdesigner.com, twigged.net and any other .com, I’d still go on living. But at the same time I’m aware of the fact that the Internet, and the blogging industry in particular, have begun to play an increasingly important role in the formation of 21st century human culture. The Internet and web business is fast becoming the way we sustain life, much akin to the field or the factory in the pre/industrial ages; so it is increasingly difficult not to pay attention to it. Approaching web trends through the business of people such as SP is a way of bringing things back down to earth.

Love him or hate him, Small Potato certainly knows how to divide an audience. It is his ability to turn a shot in the foot into a new wave of blog traffic coupled with an insatiable desire to take on new projects and think beyond the box that account for his web popularity. Personally, I have a rather arcane ‘inspector gadget’ image of SP, sitting in a dark room, black swivel chair, one hand stroking a large fluffy cat, the other strung to the mouse, fingers clicking, scanning the web, taking mental notes, monitoring trends, plotting his next devious move!

Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category:

TechCrunch Pitches and the Culture of Startup Mediocrity

200+ of the Web’s top link directories

♥ Quick Find ♥

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Wordpress Marketplaces: Matt Mullenweg Vs. Small Potato

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