I arrived a bit late but was able to get some of Dave Bascom’s presentation on SEO.com and buying the right domain. LauchUp #7 was held at SEO’s office and was attended by over 50 people.
Amp Session – Dave Bascom – SEO.com
We were once Web Targeted and then we bought SEO.com. After we bought it a number of things happened. 1) We started getting phone calls. 2) We started getting thousands of visits per month. 3) Rumors started to fly that we had bought the name for $5 million – we didn’t deny them.
The domain name gave us instant credibility as a name. The fact that we showed up at the top of search also gave us considerable credibility because SEO is our business.
When you are looking at creating a domain and company name, generic may not be right. Consider getting the right name up front. Large brands have had to build the brand versus having the brand.
In the Weeds – Jessie Harding – “Building your Brand”
Over 2000 companies are started each year with very little brand preparation. So here are the steps that usually happen.
- Head to GoDaddy and buy a domain name (look for something cool)
- “coolnameio” is a find
- Pick your favorite font
- Add a generic icon image
- Add a bit of “glass mirror” effect
- Stamp BRANDED as complete
Tropicana tried a re-brand and they lost 20% of sales in 2 months. They focused on keeping a leaf consistent in the brand and let go of the Orange with a straw in it. To do the right thing for your brand preparation consider:
- Think of a friend. If you describe them you don’t give their physical measurements, but you describe their personality.
- What’s your companies voice – hip, serious, new, thoughtful
- How does your company “dress”
- What things does your company do
- Who are you really
- A brand is about a feeling – “Who am I when I am with you (your brand)”
For ideas you can look to BrandNew or knowem.com for names. Contact us if you want to get in touch with Jesse.
PITCHES
Fanfare – Brian Henderson
How many are excited about live music? This site is for you and I hope that you will look back to this evening and know that you were there at the beginning of what will change the entire live concert industry.
Fanfare brings together Fans, Artists and Promoters. The process works like this:
- An artist posts their information and content
- Fans in a specific area commit to attend a concert and pay a small amount, like groupon to gain momentum
- Once a threshold is met a promoter is contacted and commits to the event
- First fans to commit are given a VIP status and code to invite their friends with (they also receive a small commission on sales?)
- The venue is upgraded if needed and concert
We are right now collecting information on geographic fans at Facebook. We will start by rolling out bands in the small to medium sized markets. We are targeting a $500 million market and expect to capture 40% of it. Our board includes Jayson Ahlstrom from yearbook and Leah Wilcox, an NBA promoter.
Q? Are you planning to tie in to Music Genome?
A. That is in the plans. We also plan on tying in to Pandora and other sites.
Q? Who are your competitors?
A. There is a company in San Diego that is called Eventful. They have a site that is based on an ad model. In their FAQ they describe their intent as bringing in the big acts.
Q? How about ticket fees?
A. Ours will be better than the big guys.
Q? What is your domain?
A. fanunite.com. We are in negotiations with SanDisk who owns fanfare.com
Q? How can we help?
A. We are gathering music fan preferences from Facebook. If you are interested become a fan of fanfare.
Q? What is your revenue model?
A. We are taking a little from everything including ticket sales. We expect our largest portion to be primarily from Promoters.
Q? Will you post content from past concerts?
A. We expect people to post on YouTube, but memories are not our market.
Q? What about the big artists?
A. We won’t compete against the big contracts since they have deals already. I break the market in to Mega acts, Legacy Acts and up and coming acts. We are targeting the last two groups. They tend to be willing to play to an audience for a “sandwich.” They just want to perform.
Q? Great idea, so why aren’t you running yet?
A. If you have 100,000.00 we can be running in a week. Otherwise we are putting together the content and the backend, then we will launch.
Bizari – Cody Campbell and Andrew Ray
India has cell phone infrastructure but they don’t have Internet. We use Amazon and other websites to buy our goods here in the US. In India only 5 million or .4% of the population have access to the net.
We are developing a text message based eCommerce solution. We are building the partnerships and are bringing this together with MicroFinancingInstitutions (MFIs). Our competitor is ngpay who has a web enable phone app. Again they are not based on SMS, so they are missing the other 495 million users who have only cell phone access.
Q? Shipping for rural areas?
A. The system is one of the largest in the world and works. There are over 155,000 post offices that were designed by the British and are run on the backend now by Deutsche Post.
Q? How about the security of the fund transfers?
A. Credit cards are not an option since they don’t use or have them. Nokia is working on creating a telephone based transaction system.
Q? Is there anyone on the board who is Indian?
A. We have a director from Tata telecom.
Q? Are you running yet?
A. We have run a pilot here locally. We are headed to India this summer to do a pilot in India.
Q? Have you partnered with any product retailers?
A. We are starting with the MFIs who sell their own line of products as well as provide product supplies to their customers.
Q? What are the other markets for this?
A. We have heard interest from the Phillippines, but we are going to focus on India first.
Inzolo – Dustin
We help users to manage their money using a zero based budget program on the Internet. After you load your total spending to the site you can categorize the expenses. We then set you up with “envelopes” that help you to budget how you will spend your money in the future.
As you add a new paycheck in to the system it will automatically move money in to the right envelopes automatically based on a percentage or fixed amount. Our revenue model is based on a freemium model. We give the basic package for free and add a monthly for additional features.
Ask: This is a one man show and I am busy so I could use help with:
- Monetizing / partnering ideas
- Additional revenue ideas
- Encouraging social
- Encouraging FUN
Q? Is it hard to get the credit card information?
A. OFX is free mostly but there is no good documentation on it. Mint and Thrive use yodley (sp?).
Q? How about security?
A. I use SSL. To access OFX you need the account and PIN #.
Q? Have you contacted Dave Ramsey?
A. He has his own tool that he uses. I have been told that I cannot use the term “Financial Peace.” Inzolo means “peace.”
Q? What is the largest bank you can work with?
A. Any of them that have OFX or that can export a Quicken file because you can import a Quicken file in to our system. Wells Fargo charges a fee to access their OFX connection.
Q? iPhone app?
A. I have a read-only version that I had someone develop for me.
Q? What marketing have you used?
A. I have used basic blogging and twitter. I have also commented on personal finance blog sites and offered free memberships.
Q? Have you thought about creating discussion groups on your site like Mint?
A. That is not in the plans yet.
Q? Do you have a tutorial? How about usability testing?
A. No video for the overall site. I tried to get feedback from family and they didn’t care. Those who are interested in the system have given really positive feedback and have said it is the best they have seen.
Q? Maybe you could create games or goals and other motivators?
A. I would love to do that so that we can help get the next generation out of debt.
Well. That was it for the Pitches. Jeremy wrapped by reminding us of the next event on June 3, 2010.
