Tag Archives: Personalized

How Do You Keep Your Culture in the Face of Rapid Growth? Ten Points

Situation: A CEO’s company is facing rapid growth. The CEO is concerned that the cordial team culture that he has carefully nurtured will be strained as the company adapts to this growth. The present culture is characterized by lack of politics and truthful, frank communications. How do you keep your culture in the face of rapid growth?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The company currently markets its culture, complemented by a solid history of performance. Clients receive highly personalized service at a competitive cost. This combination attracts and retains clients.
  • The company’s employees are a happy, competent group that enjoys what they are doing. This differentiates the company from other firms all by itself.
  • Identify the key attributes of the company’s culture. This will simplify internal and external communication when discussing what makes the culture special.
  • Use one several tools available to develop behavioral profiles of the current employees. This will help to understand how team members interact with each other. It will also help to build profiles for ideal additional employees as the team expands.
  • Hire an expert do a formal evaluation of the team around individual and group dynamics, as well as bottlenecks in the current structure and culture. This will help determine how scalable the company’s current culture is.
  • Grow at the rate the company’s culture allows, not at the rate that salespeople bring in new business. With gradual, careful growth size will less of an issue as it would be if the company were to simply grow as fast as possible.
  • The more the company grows organically – through additional business from existing clients – the fewer additional clients the company needs to meet growth objectives. This means adding fewer new employees to maintain target client/employee ratios.
  • If the plan is to grow larger, consider growing around core groups of 9-12 employees, perhaps in distinct locations with good communication between the groups. In the military, operating groups are 9 to 12 soldiers; the more specialized and highly trained the group the more it tends toward 9 soldiers instead of 12.
  • There is a Zen saying that a healthy tree grows as tall as it can. Use this as your guide.
  • The key role of the CEO is as CCO – Chief Culture Officer!

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How Do You Generate Near-Term Revenue? Seven Suggestions

Situation: A young company that focuses on personalized solutions needs to generate near-term revenue to meet expenses. There are also options for debt or equity financing, but the terms for each will equally depend on near-term revenue potential. How do you generate near-term revenue?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Think in terms of the referenceability of early customers.  As a new company, the first five customers define the company to future customers.
    • The core values of the company will help clarify how to make early choices.
    • Don’t just go for the easiest closes.
  • Create a chart of potential customer prospects:
    • Segment potential prospects into groups.
    • What is the deal model and key value proposition for each group?
    • Create a video and communications package to demonstrate the company’s benefit to each group.
  • There are trade-offs between the different deals that the company will pursue:
    • Small fast deals are most likely to meet immediate cash flow needs.
    • The biggest deals may involve the creation of LLCs. These will involve both more time and additional legal fees.
  • Make sure that early deals align with the company’s core brand.
  • Consider outsourcing to speed the provision of services to early clients. Build this cost into your billings. Assure that the funds from early deals flow to or through the company. This will improve the financial story to additional clients.
  • Consider serving special interest groups. Their potential value is that they work for their passion more than for money. If the company chooses to work with one or more of these groups, assure that customer selection aligns with company values.
  • The current focus for near-term monetization is on merchandizing. As an alternative, consider charging a separate fee for the use of company IP. This may give clients additional incentive to utilize company technology to monetize their investment.

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Where Should You Focus – Eyeballs or Dollars? Six Thoughts

Situation: A company sells personalized content as well as a tool kit. The long-term plan is to monetize storage of personalized content. When they speak to venture capitalists, the VCs advise them to focus on just building their user base and not to worry about revenue.  What would you do? Where should you focus – eyeballs or dollars?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Take advice from venture capitalists with a grain of salt. Remember that their game is to fund companies that they like incrementally, taking a greater share of ownership of the company with each increment in funding. The more you lack revenue, the more you’re dependent upon them.
  • Gain traction by offering free content with up-sell opportunities for premium access.
  • The give-away strategy is a great model to build your initial user audience. Consider micropayment options for special features, content storage, and so forth.
  • Going slow and steady may not be the right model for this space. Company growth for a web-based platform is different from the typical bootstrap model.
  • It’s hard to get good advice for viral marketing opportunities from CEOs who have bootstrapped their companies. Look for other input. Seek the advice of CEOs who have been successful in the viral online marketing space and learn as much as you can about their business models.
  • Gaming is another opportunity – premium or virtual world sales.

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