Wired Wednesdays TO

Last month was the first time I visited Wired Wednesdays Toronto (@wiredwedto). The key presentation was by Regan Fletcherfrom Yoono and consisted of three very interesting demos. It was a great event to visit both for networking and for motivational lessons from people with experience. As a side note—I found that guys from BackType have the best presentation skills.

I thought the presentation by Regan Fletcher, a serial entrepreneur on his fifth startup, was rich with insights one can only get from the experience of building companies from the ground up. He obviously has a very good sense of humor along with business acumen. Here are some key points that I took with me after the event:>

Learn How to Use a Shotgun

The benefit of a shotgun is instantaneous, extreme power. Obviously Regan meant this metaphorically. What it means is that if you want to hang with the big dogs you have to act like one. One of the examples he gave is getting VC funding. When you come to the meeting with a VC don’t get scared thinking that you are just a little company and they are some big company. You have to feel that you are giving them a favor by letting invest in your amazing product. I think this is what he meant; the last phrase from the analogy was “Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.”

I pretty much agree with this thought and think that if you don’t know to use a shotgun just yet: fake it ‘til you make it. I don’t advocate misrepresenting your business, what I am suggesting is if you want your company to be something (the top creative agency for example), then start portraying that exact image from day one.

2) Know the business you are getting onto

Regan mentioned that he constantly sees people who want to make better existing ideas and “easily” make money, while not really knowing the insides of the business. Regan mentioned that he usually never hears from those guys again.

I can say that when I started running Toronto4couples I had been reading blogs for awhile and knew how to run a successful newspaper. That’s why I thought that I was ready to take on a brand new web project, but the reality is…I wasn’t. I wish a year ago I was where I am right now in terms of my experience, my team—I ran into many pitfalls that completely screwed up my business plan. At the same time I wouldn’t be able to learn about all of those details if I hadn’t been running this business for the past year. Therefore, it is the best to get involved with something you know the best, but when you do approach unknown opportunities expect a learning curve, pitfalls, and DO NOT expect that you will be able to easily improve what other smart people have been working on day and night.

3) Embrace A..holes

You are going to run into some—that is a fact. Sometimes they can be so big, that you can’t possibly fight them. Use them to learn how to deal with challenges and LEARN from them. I always say that I learned what not do from my bad bosses just as much as I learned from the good ones. Same goes for challenges, embrace them, if what you were doing was challenge free then everybody would do it.

4) Fight with a shotgun for the A round of financing.

Regan says two things in this one: it is pretty much guaranteed that you are going to run out of cash faster than your business plan says and that it is easier to receive round A of funding then round B. That is why if you decided to receive financing don’t settle and fight as much as you can for that first round of financing. Appropriate cash flow is a lifeline of any start-up and determines your ability to have an ample amount of time to develop the product and start making money off it.

5) When everything else fails there is always porn.

This was meant as a joking way to finish the conversation, but Regan was half serious—porn companies adopt and push the development of new technologies. So there is always a possibility of selling your technology to a company like and to move on to the next creation of passion.

I think all of these are great lessons from someone who has been there and done that. Have some lessons of your own, share them in comments!

P.S. The next Wired Wednesday is on August 12 @ London Taphouse.

This was probably the first casual yet business event I went to in my life. Coming from traditional media I am used to black suites,politically correct speeches that are usually held in conference halls or hotels.

Needless to say that the crowd that attended the Casecamp was very different and very diverse. More than 500 people attended and I saw some people in suites and some in converse sneakers. I think the uniting factor was similar to Web 2.0 itself – transparency. It felt like everyone is just who they want to be without the need to put a facade so needed at a corporate job. Even the venue Circa itself was one of trendiest clubs I saw in Toronto and I am sure I will visit it again on a regular night.

The bottom line is the contrast between tradional media and new media was evident. I decided that I am finally where I want to be. Thanks a lot to Eli Singer for organizing it and lowering barriers so everyone can parcipate.

Bits of pieces I gathered from 15 minutes presentations:
Brian Segal from ComScore:

• Canadian spend the most time in the world visiting social media websites. It correlates to what I heard at the conference from Yahoo’s Daniel Maor
• The segment of internet useres over 30 is again the largest in Canada.

Bottom line: if you are in Canada and targeting  tradional audiences social media marketing should be integral part of your marketing plan.

Boxing Day 2007 at RedFlagDeals.com:

• Derek started while living with his parents in 2000.
• They make money from affiliate links
  
• When he first launched forums it was a failure due to the lack of existing traffic
• He mentioned that without 100,000 existing visitors they couldn’t approach big advertisers
• Boxing week is the most profitable week for them
• Last Boxing week the organic traffic from Google grew by 151%, already during November they ranked the highest for the keywords
• Last Boxing week they brough 8.5 millions in sales to one retailer
• Now there is RFD factor – when they mention the deal on the website the retailer is sold out in a very short time

Bottom Line:The success is based on transparency, user collobartion and constantly improving user experience.

Story2Oh!, Evolving TV Storytelling to Social Network

• for the fake story they got enormous amount of clicks and followers
• one woman in the audience got mad, because she had no idea that characters were fictional and she was actually following really closely the evolving drama
• they plan to run a whole season

Bottom line: I am not sure if the succes of the show was due to the new nature of the storytelling or because some people didn’t pay attention that characters are fictional. It will be interesting to see how they will monetize it when the time comes.

Update: Due to complain from the lady they took down the characters on Facebook

Radiothon Diaries, Harnessing YouTube for the Hospital for Sick Children

• SickKids used YouTube videos with a widget button at the top for the first time
• The Radiothon’s fund raised increased by 40-50%, but it is unknown if all of is attributed to YouTube
• It was a lot more work in terms of editing the videos than they ever expected
• The videos on YouTube were different from their typical TV spots.

Bottom line:no matter what industry you are – you can find a way how to use social media for your benefit. I think for fund raising with their limited funds for publicity it is even more true.


The TD Canada Trust Facebook Story
Sue McVey, VP Marketing Planning, TD Canada Trust

• Social Media was new to TD Canada Trust
• The biggest fear was the loose of control over the message comparably to tradional media
• They did receive some negative comments and left them intact
  
• They exceeded the goal and quickly gathered more than 10,000 fans on their Facebook page
• RBC launched the Facebook page couple of days after TD and that means they are doing something right.

Bottom line: It is hard for tradional businesses to start using social media due to the lack of control over the brand. Naturally there are only few companies whose customer service doesn’t suck. Still it is a needed component for staying competetive in the current marketplace. Develop contingecies on how you are going to deal with negative complaints. Metrics for social media are not as straight forward as for tradional media or PPC advertising, but they still exist and needed to be measured.

My readers know that this Friday is my last day at my 9-5 job. After that I am on my own. One thing I learned at my job that is all about networking, knowing right people is imperative to besuccessful in achieving your goals. That is why I am attending CaseCamp.org event in Toronto on April 29th.

I’ve never been to this event before, but from I what I understand it is really casual presentation of case studies by big names and open collaboration of the audience.This is totally Reality 2.0. It is a wiki in a real time. I Googled it and it looks like a lot of bloggers from Toronto will be attending it. I am sure they don’t know anything about me, but I was checking out their blogs for awhile – almost like a stalker.

Anyways if you live in Toronto and even remotely interested in social network marketing I urge you to attend CaseCamp. I am sure it will be inspirational and will allow for the opportunity to meet a lot of people that might help in achieving your business goals.

I think their wiki is down, but Facebook page still works. Check it out.

Here is the list of presenters:

P.S. trying to print my new personal business cards before the event, because I guess my current company’s won’t work:)