OneAccord Revenue Growth Luncheon - Nashville TN

5 Lessons from the Front Line of Tech - and what they mean to you. 

The following is a summary of the Keynote speech given by Dave Parker on September 21, 2012 from Revenue Growth Conference in Nashville TN. The slides are provided here. 

1. The Startup Movement

Events like Startup Weekend and books like Eric Ries’ Lean Startup are part of a global startup movement. 

Startup Weekend is a 54-hour event where web developers, designers and business people build a product over the weekend from Friday night to Sunday night. How successful is the program? It has 57,000 alumni, has launched 5,005 startups through 673 events in 90 countries – many countries you wouldn’t have anticipated.

Ries recently spoke at an event at the White House where he was met with Rock Start status. The topic? How can government employees create lean government? Can the pricipals of lean manufacturing apply to startups as well as government? The answer looks like a resounding yes!

The ecosystem for startups includes co-working spaces, incubators and accelerator programs. One of these programs includes the Founder Institute, a program I run in Seattle.  This 15-week program has three mentors in weekly on various topics. To graduate you have to launch a company, not just do the homework. This NYTimes article covered the program well. But it’s much larger then Seattle and has chapters in over 30 cities worldwide, has graduated over 500 companies.

What does it mean to you?

Remember back to when you started your business? Maybe it’s time to lean into mentoring a young person or supporting a University Entrepreneurship or tech transfer program.

2. Mobile Everywhere

For the first time more then 50% of the US mobile phone users are smart phone users. This means that more people are now accessing the web via mobile apps then via a mobile browser. Apple sold 2M iPhone 5 units in 24 hours – which pushed it’s stock to over $700 a share.

The web is moving to the small screen.

The recent fund raising success of Square at $3.25B valuations, shows how the market is moving away from POS systems and to mobile phones enabled with a very simple credit card reader. So much so that Starbuck's backed the investment. 

Even in healthcare, an iPhone can now replace very expensive Lung Monitoring equipment. 

What does it mean to you? 

You should have a mobile strategy for your business – assuming that people are trying to find you from a mobile location. Think about what you need to do to become mobile ready? Do you need an App for your business? 

3. Internet Advertising

Google’s revenues last year were $37.9Billion – 96% was in Internet advertising.  With that, traditional marketing is dead, unless you are a big brand. Here’s a link to the infographic on ad spend.

Social media ad spend will grow from $3.8B in 2011 to $9.8B in 2016. The lion share of the spend will be from national brands.

What does it mean to you?

With advertising moving to pay-per-click (PPC) or Cost per Action (CPA) you need to invest in figuring out if this method of promotion will work for you. Spend some time to look at what your competitors are doing. Don’t forget to focus on conversion and Revenue.

4. Social

These slides on social didn’t include a reference to Facebook - but started with the example of Crowd Funding and the Pebble Watch through KickStarter.com.

Social media is speeding word of mouth advertising – like it or not. You can no longer hide from customer feedback, so you should embrace it and get in front of the process to manage your message.

Pinterest.com is the fastest growing social media site ever and now has more traffic then Yahoo!

Coming into the political season, there are dozens if not hundreds of social media startup being tested by two separate billion dollar startups – the presidential campaigns. All focused on understanding what you think and what you will tell your friends.

What does it mean to you?

You need to have a social strategy - that includes leading with customer interaction.  You need the tools to manage your social engagement and web automation - need more information on managing customer engagement go here. The good news is that every 20-something you meet is an expert. Don’t forget the programs need to produce results.

5. Cloud Computing

“Cloud computing” is simply hosted virtual servers on the Internet. Today you can rent server time and space via Amazon Web Services (AWS) vs. ordering rack mount servers from Dell, waiting 6 weeks and then having to have staff install them in a closet in your office.

This increased server capacity at a rapidly decreasing cost means companies that want to build new tech product can do so with highly efficient use of capital. One example is Bump – a mobile app to share contact information. Bump was able to get to 1M users while spending $4,000 on servers and development.

Companies like Box.net have raised capital on a $1.2B valuation based on taking the backup and storage needs for the enterprise and moving it to the Internet or cloud.

What does it mean to you?

You should never loose data again on your computer. You can back up your entire hard drive for $9.99 on Google Drive. It also means it will change how you purchase technology. Now multi-vendor based vs a system integrator that has to physically touch your hardware.

No Punting!

During the political season we are in everyone in the other Washington is punting the ball downfield for the next group to deal with our real problems.

The good news for us as business people:

• We didn’t ask anyone to succeed the first time
• No one bailed us out of the challenges
• We don’t need anyone permission to go and make a difference now

It’s time to remember back to when you started your business and:

• Mentor a young person
• Support a startup
• Invest
• Hire

Change your Community, your Country and the World.