We’ve heard about your broadband efforts and are in complete support of them. We believe Newburyport would be a wonderful anchor city. A quintesential colonial town on the seaside, filled with a diverse population. We broadband.
Please note that we have Verizon FIOS installed right up to our city’s border only to be stopped due to some petty manager’s decision.
We’re a progressive city of approximately 19,000. So much so, an indelible mark of progress is seen in our wind tower, which can be seen from Interstate 93, we have North Shore Web Geeks that meet monthly and everyone drools over the various pubs here. A great time is had by all when they come!
We’re on the edge of the chasm, just waiting for the right vehicle to take us forward. Will it be Google? We hope.
If you would like more information, just ask!
BTW, Wave ROCKS! Buzz ROCKS! Yeah!
My wife, Sherri and I have been married for 23 years. I’ve always tried to do interesting things on our anniversary or Valentines day to make things a little special. Here are a couple of examples: Money was tight on our tenth anniversary so I just bought her some jewelry but I was resolved to do something great on our 11th. With the help of a friend, I flew her to Vegas and had a limo pick us up for renewal of vows at the Little White Chapel. It was great! Elvis sang to us and we came away laughing as always! A couple of years ago, I blindfolded her and took her to a lighthouse for dinner. I drove all over the place to end up about one mile away from our house. We had a great dinner.
This year, I’m doing something COMPLETELY GEEKY! I’m going to use Twillio!
I’ve got a server (or not going to tell you where.) I’m going to get an 866 number from Twillio. I’m going to take their sample code (PHP) and put in love messages. I will be launching URLs with the text message and it will SMS her with a phone number. She dials the number and gets the luv message. Fun, huh? I’ll tell you how it goes. Hopefully it won’t be spam love, just sappy… Check them out!
If you’re thinking about what to do, here are some great technologies that you can use:
Oneforty.com has tons of great apps including 8 for apps and services for dating, crushes, flirting, missed connections:
· Flirt140 http://oneforty.com/item/flirt140
· Plenty of Tweeps http://oneforty.com/item/plenty-of-tweeps
· Misd.me http://oneforty.com/item/misd-me
· My Tweetheart! http://oneforty.com/item/my-tweetheart
· twittypop http://oneforty.com/item/twittypop
· Flirtings http://oneforty.com/item/flirtings
· Crushtweet http://oneforty.com/item/crushtweet
· HotTweeters http://oneforty.com/item/hottweeters
Happy Valentines!
A friend who’s the global head of sales for a large software company told me that today, he’s bringing out the spinning plates and crayons instead of the traditional PowerPoint presentations and the White Papers that accompany them. Due to their business and typical audience, they typically focus on their technical value propositions.
Here’s the way I looked at the differences - in the eyes of the customer type:
Have you thought the differences in your startup? Maybe this table will help you tease out the notion a bit. What kind of presentation do your target customers respond to?
Do you always spin plates when the customer wants white papers? Perhaps vice versa? How do you distinguish between the two?
The terms alpha and beta to describe a startup’s launch product are simply wrong. Last week, I wrote about so many startups failing to launch and many of the sites are in “beta” mode. Alpha, beta, bronze, silver, gold, it’s all stinkin’ thinkin’. Startups must be focused on the customer and providing value to them. Orient your release names towards customer acquisition and let your early adopters tell you when you can start charging.
Why? If you’re not focused on getting paid, how and why are you in business? Secondly, if you change to this kind of naming convention, your potential paying customers have the notion that others have adopted it. It’s true, early adopters have, they just haven’t paid for it or have paid a lower fee.
Consider the following names for your release stages:
Demo – Enough to truly demonstrate your value propositions. This should be completely out in the open if you’re confident that no one can imitate you easily. If they can, I would suggest that you don’t have enough to get to market in a big way.
First Adopter(s) – Just enough code beyond your demo for your first adopters to grasp your value proposition and consider paying for the product (unless you’re freemium of course.) The great part is that you can add more features until your early adopters say “Yep, we love it and you can start charging for this. In fact, we’ll start paying for this!” (Next question of course, how much would they pay?)
Paying Customer – You’ve validated your principle value proposition and customers are willing to pay. There might be other more suitable names but your customers get this one. Potential paying customer: “When did you release this product?” You: “We had early adopters in March.”
Once you have paying customers, lean and agile notions start to shine. No more traditional phase names as you’re continually putting customer-driven features in front of them.
