More on Apple. The most influential brand on the planet?
It is only coincidence that I am writing about Apple twice in one day. But, this news which was released today from BrandChannel.com shows that in many respects, Apple may be the most influential brand on the planet.
The results of their recent survey show some interesting questions and a familiar name most common:
What brand would you most like to sit next to at a dinner party?
Apple.
What brand, if sent back 100 years, would have the biggest impact on the course of history?
Apple.
Which brand inspires you the most?
Apple.
If you were to describe yourself as being a brand, what brand would you be?
Apple.
What brand can you not live without?
Apple.
What brand is most likely to revolutionize the branding industry in the next five years?
Apple.
The company you would most like to argue with?
Microsoft.
Apple how I love thee
I’ve been traveling a lot lately. I spend a lot of time in airports waiting for flights and in coffee shops meeting various people. One thing I always pay attention to is what kind of computer that people around me are working on. A bit geeky I suppose. Anyway, I don’t know if it is the kinds of places I frequent or if Apple is just having a very good year but I’m seeing A LOT of Mac laptops. Of the 13 people working around me in the San Francisco terminal the other day waiting for our Seattle flight, 9 of them were on Macs. Frankly, I was astounded. At the coffee shop the next morning there were exactly 8 people working on laptops. 5 of them were on Macs. As I sit here working in the new Top Pot Doughnuts on Queen Anne this morning, there are 4 people working on laptops. Two of them are Macs.
According to preliminary data from NPD, Apple reportedly achieved 14 percent of the U.S. retail PC market share in February 2008, up from 9% just a year ago. This represents 60 percent unit growth and 67 percent revenue growth year-over-year.
This data is probably accurate but my day to day observations suggest that many in tech circles are switching. Low and behold, Apple’s stock isn’t in that bad of shape given what’s happening to the economy. I’m buying a little bit more stock today and will continue adding to the position over time and as I see how the economy unfolds this year. All I know is that I can’t recall other MP3 players, mobile phones or computing equipment where people were as religious as they are about these products. With Apple pushing business features into the iPhone, releasing a 3G version soon and positioning itself strongly for the utopia that is video-on-demand then it seems a reasonable bet to assume that this stock will keep pushing higher.
Elements of Sustainable Companies
My friend Mika Salmi reminded me of this post the other day because we were talking about the VC firm that backed him at AtomFilms back in the late 90’s. Sequoia Capital is a heavy hitter in the VC industry and I think this list of what makes a “sustainable” company is a great bullet list to internalize.
Elements of Sustainable Companies
Start-ups with these characteristics often foretells the success of a business and the likelihood of it becoming a sustainable, enduring company. We like to partner with companies that have:Clarity of Purpose
Summarize the company’s business on the back of a business card.Large Markets
Address existing markets poised for rapid growth or change. A market on the path to a $1B potential allows for error and time for real margins to develop.Rich Customers
Target customers who will move fast and pay a premium for a unique offering.Focus
Customers will only buy a simple product with a singular value proposition.Pain Killers
Pick the one thing that is of burning importance to the customer then delight them with a compelling solution.Think Differently
Constantly challenge conventional wisdom. Take the contrarian route. Create novel solutions. Outwit the competition.Team DNA
A company’s DNA is set in the first 90 days. All team members are the smartest or most clever in their domain. “A” level founders attract an “A” level team.Agility
Stealth and speed will usually help beat-out large companies.Frugality
Focus spending on what’s critical. Spend only on the priorities and maximize profitability.Inferno
Start with only a little money. It forces discipline and focus. A huge market with customers yearning for a product developed by great engineers requires very little firepower.
The update on print on demand in art and posters
I think Empty Easel is doing a good job following the evolution of art on demand. This blog post is a fairly reasonable overview of the two larger players in this $50 billion space which is the art economy. RedBubble is based in Australia. Our own Imagekind is based here in Seattle. While our traffic is comparable, I personally believe that it is difficult to compare RedBubble and Imagekind on a number of other levels not mentioned in this post. We do all our own printing which means that our quality control is carefully monitored. Further, we are based in the US. That means we ship faster and usually cheaper. Finally, we don’t currently sell tee-shirts, mousepads, coffee mugs or anything else that might not resonate with the serious artist or photographer. So, while they may now have comparable traffic, the quality of the traffic is not the same as it might matter to a serious artist. For now, we believe we offer the right product for artists. As more art purchasing moves online, which we know it will, we believe we are well positioned to make both customers and artists very happy. If it makes sense to offer other lines of products, such as tee-shirts, in the future then we’ll consider it. For now though, I think we’ll stay focused on what we’re doing. Both RedBubble and Imagekind are working hard to pioneer this notion of art buying over the web and, for our part, we’re going to prove that the internet is the ultimate distribution platform for creative types all over the world.
How to get deals done
Appeal to the person on the opposite side of the table with PERSONAL INCENTIVE. Not reason. What’s good for their company is one thing. What’s good for the being is another thing entirely.
FYI. This is not the same thing as a bribe. It’s more about being sensitive to their own motivations.
12 ways to recognize a bad SEO firm
Ok, actually Eric Enge did most of the work over on his blog by writing about the first 11. So, I’ll just link to him then 
But, I’d like to add one more to this list because I think its important if you are trying to compete effectively with other companies in your sector. And, who isn’t trying to do that? Any SEO firm that isn’t naturally curious what other companies in your space are doing from an SEO perspective AND doesn’t or isn’t willing to share that information with you is not a good SEO firm. Getting a snapshot of the competitive landscape looking through the SEO prism is the first thing a firm should do, in my opinion. If you don’t know who you are fighting against and how good they are then you are going into SEO battle alone.
Entrepreneurs vs. arm chair quarterbacks
I was sitting on the plane the other day next to a mid level marketing manager at Microsoft. This person was pretty proud of the fact that they read all the blogs to keep up with what is going on within the Seattle start-up community. I was given all manner of explanations as to why Redfin will never work and why Pluggd needs to add more differentiation to their product offering. As I listened, this conversation made me think about a broader phenomenon…
When you start companies, there will always be a lot of people who don’t want to see you succeed.
While they’ll rarely say it out loud, these will be former co-workers and other “pundits” who are secretly jealous by the very decision you’ve made. As I thought more about corporate America, I remembered what the game used to be like for me. 50% of your expended energy is invested on internal politics. The other 50% is spent trying to actually make a measurable and noticeable impact on anything. It seems funny to me now, but looking back I remembered all the actions and behaviors of most everyone. They spend a lot of time doing “work” and then spend a lot more time shopping around the results of their “work” to try to convince someone more important than them (e.g. upper management) how useful and important their work product is. They have to spend time and energy doing this hand waving because in reality, the work most people do within larger companies really isn’t that impactful to the overall business anyway.
My smartest of friends who work for large companies don’t kid themselves. They know that a lot of the trips they take and things they do are as much boondoggles as they are useful. Or, they know that they can’t really get done as much as they like but they are hamstrung by the big paycheck and nice perks. I can relate to that. It’s not an easy thing to walk away from and in most cases it isn’t a good idea to do so!
But the arm chair quarterbacks will be the ones who get under your skin. They are drawing paychecks from a company somebody else started. They have never raised money against their own ideas. The have never put themselves out for others to put under the microscope. They will never be need to be judged against their true abilities because their faults are hidden within the infrastructure of something much larger than they are. So, entrepreneurs I hope you pat yourselves on the back today. You live and die on how you do. That earns you the right to say whatever the hell you want about things because now you don’t have to appear politically correct in meetings so you’ll get that holiday bonus or that promotion. You are not perfect and the armchair quarterbacks will be sure and remind you of that fact. But you have courage in spades because what you do is too scary for most people to try.
Zappos: Anatomy of a success story
How is this for revenue growth? The best way to finance a company? Revenue.
* 1999: Almost nothing
* 2000: $ 1.6 mm
* 2001: $ 8.6 mm
* 2002: $ 32 mm
* 2003: $ 70 mm
* 2004: $184 mm
* 2005: $370 mm
* 2006: $597 mm
* 2007: $840 mm
* 2008: Over $1 billion (goal)
CSS Development Collection Project
http://www.ironmyers.com/
This CSS Development Collection Project is put together by Jake Myers and looks to be one of the more extensive CSS resource directories I’ve yet seen. Definitely worth a bookmark. You’ll use some of this stuff.
10 Things you need to know about WordPress 2.5
Thanks to TechnoSailor for doing this review of the new WordPress platform. Besides the obvious interface updates, you’ll notice a new and dramatically improved visual editor for making posts. The TinyMCE team has worked closely with WordPress on this release and it looks much better. You’ll also notice a new batch image uploader for those of us who like to add a lot of images to our posts.
This is not yet a public release but it looks to be a serious update of the best blogging platform on the planet.
New business research at Linkedin
LinkedIn, with help from BusinessWeek’s CapitalIQ, has added a company directory and research information to its business network. For now, it seems you can only get to this directory through Linkedin. You have to get to the directory through individual user profiles and the Linkedin blog explains more on this process. At the moment, there are 160,000 companies in the database. The Linkedin demo video does a decent job explaining how you would access and benefit from this new feature.
Linkedin has always been a great tool for recruiters and start-ups looking to find new staff. Being able to do more background information on the companies behind the individuals seems to be of obvious value.
Great, free flash web photo component
You designers have long known about the Airtight Interactive photo viewer. It’s free. It’s flash. It’s easy to use. For those of you who haven’t used this code, go check it out!
Seriously good filesharing!
Dropbox is super cool. Seriously. Need an easy way to share a file with someone? Just drag the file into your dropbox and get your URL. What if you make a change to the file later? No worries. The latest version of the file stays in synch. What if you need to recover a previously deleted file? No problem. What if you want to easily drag a whole folder of files or images at once? No problem.
Of all the filesharing systems I’ve seen, this is the best so far. And, over 10,000 others must have liked it too because that’s how many Diggs this thing has so far. Sure, you could always FTP files up to a webserver if you know how to do that. But, even that method doesn’t keep version changes of the same file up to date.
The tone down in Silicon Valley
Sure, I admit that I’m not going to represent a scientific study as to what technology investors in the Bay Area are feeling right now but I am quite happy to share commentary from several VC’s I’ve communicated with over the last few weeks. At the moment, Imagekind is working on a Series B round. As a board member, I occasionally participate in these meetings either in terms of helping to set them up or simply to support the effort as (one of the) entrepreneurs behind the concept.
Based on my dialog with these investors, I have come to develop better understand how the downturn in the economy is affecting the overall tone here (I am currently writing from a Starbucks in San Mateo).
1. For whatever reason, the venture community responds and lags behind the overall economy by about 6-12 months.
2. Indeed, it is taking longer to raise money and valuations are generally negotiated lower now.
3. This is not the case for a select few start-ups that are known and understood to have competitive investor discussions.
4. Unknown start-ups with unknown management will have a hard time getting deals done this summer and should prepare accordingly.
5. For “consumer plays”, a premium is still placed on high numbers of unique visitors. Not necessarily early revenue.
6. VC’s seem to be “sticking to their knitting” more now. That is, a late stage VC would have been known to make more exceptions in their investment patterns during the prior two years in that they might have invested $2 million when their normal “sweet spot” investment size was $7-$10 million. You’ll see fewer of those exceptions over the next 12 months. Prioritize and schedule VC meetings that are most appropriate for your deal size.
7. For whatever reason, VC’s seem more willing to consider deals outside their traditional geographies now. Globalization taking hold? Seattle, India, China, Dubai. It matters less where the good deals are now. If you’re good and you have a good story you are less likely to hear things like “we really like you but you’re in Seattle and we’re in Los Angeles.” You’ll see California investors announcing more deals in India and anywhere else they can find a competitive advantage.
8. In spite of the economy, Bay Area VC’s still have a lot of money to put to work. They want to put it to work. But, they are more cautious than they were a year ago. The money is there if you’ve got a good investment opportunity. Thus, Seattle entrepreneurs should make investor pitches in this area a priority. Connecting the right firm for your deal is 50% of the work. Do not prioritize based on the biggest names, names you know, names you read on Techcrunch etc. Do your homework and there is plenty of money to be deployed here.
9. Close times are back to normal. That is, even really good deals will go through a slowed diligence process now. Imagekind got its first $2.6 million term sheet in about 14 days after the first phone call. There is a less frenzied tone in the air but certainly the tone is more energetic than what I sense in Seattle. Checkbooks are out but your spreadsheets had better be detailed because lots of hand waving is no longer in fashion.
10. Spending time in the Valley is highly recommended for Seattle companies that pertain to specific technology “micro-trends”. For example, there is a specific VC audience for certain companies that are catering to “minipreneurs”. That is, companies like Etsy and Imagekind who enable the “micro business person” to make a bit more money. There may not necessarily be a VC with these specific religions because there are just fewer VC’s in Seattle. Making those matches makes both the investor and the entrepreneur happy because both view it as a win-win of a personal nature.
11. Make no mistake. The economy has turned full blown grins into mere smiles down here. That might even be understating the mood by a good margin. Even so, VC’s don’t seem to believe that the tech economy has Reaper knocking at its door. For now anyway.
That’s all for now. Off to the next meeting.
Marc Andreeson on Bear Stearns
By now you know about the fiasco at Bear Stearns right? How it got gobbled up for like 2% of its marketshare?