This post was inspired by Startup CXO and was originally published by Techstars on The Line. If you’re new to the Chief Customer Officer role, we’d like to share some advice we wish we had learned earlier in our careers. There are a few common misconceptions about customers and the service organization. If you don’t realize these as misperceptions, you can spend a lot of time dealing with issues that are not real, but perceived. We have identified five of these common misperceptions, although we are sure there are more. Misperception #1: The service organization fully controls churn (customer attrition) In a lot of organizations you’ll see the service organization be measured solely on customer churn. If you really think about…
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Innovating in New York City
Innovating in New York City Last week I wrote about speaking at the NYC Lean Startup Meetup. One of my other key takeaways from this, which I’ve known for a while and have been meaning to blog about, is just how vibrant the tech startup community is here in New York. I know others have been blogging about this like mad – Fred has some thoughts here, here, and here, and Charlie has some here and here. Chris Dixon’s seminal post on this is here. (I even blogged a bit about why NYC is a good place to start a business back in 2006 here.) I’ve had a little more time for networking and speaking in the past year than…
Techstars Roundup: Why I Mentor Other Entrepreneurs
Techstars Roundup: Why I Mentor Other Entrepreneurs Yesterday was Demo/Investor day at Techstars in Boulder, Colorado. A lot of people have written about it – Fred, Brad, and a great piece by Don Dodge on TechCrunch listing out all the companies. My colleague George and I co-mentored two of the companies, SendGrid and Mailana, and we really enjoyed working with Isaac and Pete, the two entrepreneurs. I posted twice earlier this summer on the TechStars experience. My first post on this, Where do you Start?, was about whether to be methodical in business planning for a startup or dive right into the details. My second post, One Pitfall to Avoid, was about making sure you don’t create a whizzy solution…
Techstars: One Pitfall to Avoid
Techstars: One Pitfall to Avoid George and I met with our Techstars “mentee” companies again yesterday. As was the case with the last meetings, the sessions were energizing and fun and great to see new companies unfolding. One lesson I was reminded of yesterday with both companies is a timeless one, since at least the beginning of the commercial internet: Don’t create a “solution looking for a problem” I call this the Pointcast problem, after the mid-90s service that pulled headlines into screensavers and clogged corporate networks until the fad passed. One of the companies we’re working with has this challenge looming in front of them. They have a very cool concept and technology. It’s clear that it solves some…
First day at Techstars: Where do you start?
First day at Techstars: Where do you start? I’m a new mentor this year at Techstars, a program in its third or fourth year in Boulder (and this year also in Boston for the first time) that provides a couple dozen companies with seed capital, advice and mentorship, and summer “incubation” services in a really well conceived for-profit venture started by David Cohen in Colorado. Yesterday was my first day up there with my colleague George Bilbrey, and we met with three different companies, two of which we will tag team mentor through the summer. I won’t get into who they are at the moment, mostly because I’m not sure what the confidentiality issues are offhand, but I’ll make the…