Good Tidbits for Startups from Tony Conrad…
Tony is the Founder of about.me and a partner at True Ventures
A few I liked:
What is the best advice you could give a fist-time entrepreneur about marketing and ad spend online?
Worry about your product first – make your customers happy and they’ll be the best advertising you can’t pay for. Per marketing spend, wait until you start to understand what the value of each customer you acquire is (that sets the ceiling on your spend per user) – then test out a ton of different channels to find the best ones for your business. You can find some great advice here via Sean Ellis: http://startup-marketing.com.
What is the most important quality that you look for when growing your company and team?
Talented people who believe in the vision. Especially at the early-stage, skills are flexible and there’s not a lot of specialized work – focus on hiring really hardworking, talented people who believe in what you want to build – they’ll kill themselves to be their best and to make the company successful.
If the total size of the niche community you are aiming to serve is no more than 1 million (for example), should you build your product to target them, or try to find “the bigger picture” and design the product for a superset of the community?
Start with one type of user and solve that one users problem incredibly well.
They’ll be the best marketing channel for you and be your best product feedback overtime.
What are some of the criteria for investment potential? Do you look only for web based “disruptives” or do you seek other businesses or new product ideas?
Passionate Founders with an unfair advantage in a market that they want to change.
The Web has been a driving force in new businesses – but we invest into other verticals which have been changed by the Web as well
Hello Tony. What is the cheapest means of building traction on a startup that has very limited funds but a much needed service.
Talk to your audience (in person.)
If you can focus on making one small group of users really happy, they’ll spread it naturally overtime.
See more here: http://sprouter.com/tonyconrad
