Introducing Manpacks
I know what you’re thinking – What on earth is a Manpack?
It started innocently enough, my friend Ken and I were talking one day about various things and at one point in the conversation the idea of being able to provide guys with “the basics” (socks, underwear, t-shirts) via a subscription would be this great thing. We worked it out quickly, less than 30 minutes, that you could have multiple types of each item, you could change the number of each items you wanted and then set how often you want to receive your ‘Manpack’ on a subscription basis.
Within a few minutes of beginning this conversation the term ‘Manpack’ was floated and somehow it stuck. We’re quite excited to see how this idea grows, have just launched the site and are working on expanding a few areas.
So, whether you’re a guy who just doesn’t like shopping for underwear, don’t have time, or are tired of your girlfriend cringing at the holey, tattered pieces of cloth you call underwear, need some new socks to replace the stinky foot covers you are currently wearing or need a new t-shirt that doesn’t have holes in the armpits OR you’re a girl who’s boyfriend doesn’t seem to have quite the level of personal hygiene habits you’d like and would like to start pointing them in the right direction – head over to manpacks.com and set up a manpack right now and never worry about buying underwear again!
This entry was written by , posted on October 18, 2009 at 3:26 pm, filed under regular. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Notes from LessConf
Completely unedited stream of conscious notes taken at LessConf…
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conventions = evolution
conventions = reduced friction
conventions = reduced learning curbe
conventions = increased ease in design
conventions = restriction on innovation
conventions = lazy
conventions = unremarkable
plan via transactions/flow vs. page by page
conventions = unremarkable
do not break for sake of breaking
soup.io drop.io huffduffer
home screen – get to the meat asap
after sale, stop marketing, you’ve already sold the person, they believe in you.
responsible business = be lean
10% growth per month = good target
be true to core
industry standards exist for a reason
research possibilities
watch competitors for mistakes
don’t build it if someone else can build it faster/better/cheaper – partner with them!
if failure happens, learn from it and move on
popularity is rarely a good metric, popularity = expensive
popularity goes away
measure everything
know your differentiators
encourage user investment
know why people left, were there, why they didn’t do something, why they did something
happy customers = success and profitability should follow
do support well so that you can do less of it
use surveys – send to the right people (e.g. paying customers), be clear on expected goals
viddler = advertising: 25%, business: 75%
viddler servers = 8 origin servers, plus edgecast cdn (content delivery network)
viddler b2b reselling for video services
how you do things creates culture
do your own marketing
building is easy, marketing is hard
waste of time = raising money
helpful influencers may not be customers
grasshopper is avail. in Canada
PR is sales/marketing function
Grasshopper is related to the word entrepreneur – associate yourself/your company with words/people/things related or that you want to be part of
Small biz is 13 times more innovative. 44% of private payroll is small biz. 64% of new jobs are from small biz. 50% of priv sector employees, yep small biz
grasshopper.com/5000
Stay focussed (everone’s saying it, not everyone’s doing it)
Chargify, recurring billing solution by Grasshopper for web apps, billed by customer not access fees
@dh = aston martin, @andrewdraper = BMW (still have some work to do!)
Quote of the day “My dad is the Gary V of Car Washes”
New Users = Dating
Existing Users = Marriage
WOuld you be willing to date your app/website? Just be friends?
Origin stories are entertaining, people want to hear about you
You have no ownership the first tiem a user visits
New users have higher standards than existing users
Have fun, be quirky – users/people love it and relate to it
PATTERNS
bright colours
conversational copy
fun/funny – smile
not romantic
create intimacy through friendship
everyone fights
cost/billing = money
users’ users = kids
performance = sex
roadmap = time
others = others (competition + partnerships)
enlightened hospitality
Wufoo php profiler: http://particletree.com/features/php-quick-profiler/
Fun is important
Long term relationship requires keeping the romance alive
“since you’ve been gone” notification system for users logging into application best way to let existing users know
Intimacy with users – hand-written thank you cards
‘Golden Ticket’ mailings
intimacy/passion/committment
Books:
Call to action by bryan and jeffrey eisenberg
Landing Page Optimization, Tim Ash
Small Giants Bo Burlingham
Ultimate Question, Driving Good Profits and True Growth Fred Reichheld (Would you recommend the service/app to friends/family)
Why Marriages Succeed or Fail by John Gottman
Predictably Irrational Dan Arielly
Sway Ori Brafman, Rom Brafman
Halle Barry = good inspiration to be nice to customers (pretend everyone you talk to is her)
The most important decision you will ever make building a business?…
Service not technology, experience is business relationships the currency
Execute on extraordinary experiences everyday
Low expectations = easy to be extraordinary
Your choice of co-founders will be the most important decision you make in building your business.
ensure it’s someone you trust
equity = alignment
finding a co-founder is like finding a wife
E-myth = great book (totally agree), this book has come up 3 times in conversation today + in Mike’s talk
There are people out there that love to do what you hate
Stake keeps you up at night
Share your passion, not in it for the money
Freshbooks, first 2yrs = 10 customers (abysmal failure?)
Now = 30+ employees
Passion is the fashion (ok i made that up…was not spoken at lessconf)
3am test – is you make a call at that time will they pick up?
if they come over for breakfast with family and it’s not weird – that’s a co-founder
Product company = brand, product, market, pricing and marketing & communications
Design for SEO does not work for the long run. Design for people does
Started: 40 clients for free, Now: 3 clients for free
Be yourself
Trust, honesty, intelligence, passion, fun – it matters how YOU perceive them
add a point for “focus” (stated again)
“We don’t share that information”
37signals job board = $30-35,000/month (3 days to build)
New 37 signals app = Haystack
Free converts to pay, but if you can get people to pay first they’ll stay longer
Marketing is everything – not just something you do specifically
Failure is not a good thing, mistakes are ok though (big difference) – apparently 4 months of work and then throwing it out, realizing you missed the mark is simply a mistake, not an all out failure
Common theme – hardest part of job is all the things you can’t do/don’t have time to do
Frustration/impatience is common – embrace it
Note: receding hairlines seems to = success in web space
to be better designer, be a better writer
From Jeff Bezos: focus on the bits of your business that don’t change (that aren’t going to change in 10yrs) – the basics, invest in them
Always go in a little over your head (to grow)
nervous = good
price indicates quality
Find the sweet spot – experiment until 10% more drops sales and 10% less drops sales
have an interest in profitability to succeed in business
the more profit models = stronger company (e.g. if only 1 stream of income and times change and streams goes away so does business)
income models change as customer values change
Customer solution profit = spend a lot of time with customers, create custom solution that they’ll renew/use for years, starts costing deeply, increases over to profits for years to come
Pyramid profit = lowest price offering is so low no one can undercut, highest is for upscale market
Multi-component profit = same product sold at different prices for diff. markets (eg Coke fountain v
s machine vs grocery store)
Switchboard profit = when you have group of sellers + group of buyers and reduce friction between each (small cut of each transaction) (e.g. Paypal, Ebay, Amazon)
Time profit = innovator generates product, profit comes from speed, drops at some point based on competitors, etc eg. Apple
Multiplier profit = take 1 skill/asset/product and package/license in many different ways (eg. Disney, have a character, becomes movie, toys, clothes, them park etc) licensing/morphing
After-sale profit = e.g. after buying a laptop, need a laptop bag, bag is after though, less competitive but more profitable
Installed-base profit = create low-margin initial product, creates need for follow-up product (eg. Gillette, give away the razor to sell blades)
Transaction scale profit = focus only on big transactions, same amount of work to sell $200k house vs. $10 million house, so focus on big-ticket items
Local Leadership Profit = saturate small local market, instead of expanding out (usually physical like restaurant/coffee shops), helps fuel next area to focus on after saturation (e.g. Walmart, Starbucks)
Value chain profit = corral, you’re the one with more power/control because of area you’re in, capturing the valuable place
Low-cost business design profit = take radical biz design to make near zero operational cost (e.g. Craigslist, Wikipedia)
Innovators dilemma (Biz Book recommend by Derek Sivers)
More pyramid…
Freshbooks, 37 signals, Grasshopper all use pyramid profit model
deter competitor entry into space by protecting the actual profit
bottom of the line should be sold at great efficiency (Google does well)
who or what could come in and offer something that undercuts you and destroys you? what can you do to appeal to upscale market(s)?
More customer solution…
ongoing monthly leases/payments = spend initial effort/time for short-term loss and long-term profits. How can you get to know customer needs so they stick with you longer.
Hostbaby.com = this model done to web hosting
More after-sale…
comparison shop..take months to make decision on initial purchase (e.g. laptop), then buy batteries, adapters, cables, bag etc.
more people competing for big tickets, but not for smaller ticket items (e.g. tvs vs. cable)
customized for big ticket product
entrepreneurs curse = everything runs through you, feel trapped. usually their fault, need to teach their process so that others can repeat using same philosophy.
if you care, sell when not passionate anymore.
when you make a business you get to make your own utopia.
pick a narrow thing and optimize (eg. Amazon with books)
do what you love follow your passion is more in play now than ever
the platform (Internet) has stripped the gatekeepers of power
consumer makes the decision not the company
marketing is a funny little bitch
word of mouth owns
marketing shifted as we got more connected
focus on what you love the most you’ll make enough to succeed
patience is truly a virtue. don’t get caught up in stats
brand equity is the game
tell your story. live your story. people love a great story.
This entry was written by , posted on at 2:36 am, filed under regular. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Finding the Gap
Relatively recently I’ve started trying to push past simply having a service oriented web design/development company and have started creating a few websites/applications that focus on a niche area of interest. These areas may not look like much on the outside but coupled together they create a great little network of sites/apps that on their own don’t generate a huge amount of revenue (yet) but together create some great business opportunities.
Boxseat focuses on the niche of inventory and customer management within the luxury suite market of sports venues (how’d we find this niche? Easy, my wife works in the industry so we had first-hand knowledge and feedback on the problems and our solution.
Manpacks focuses on helping men stay in clean socks and underwear – arguably not a niche, but the way we present the offer as a subscription that will automatically b at you doorstep at set intervals definitely is.
Hotbottle focuses on independent bands and their desireto not only tour but to be able to play better attended and better paying shows.
And finally, Pwointer, a geo-location service that we’ve created for companies that want to track employees/associates using pre-existing services like Twitter and/or sms-based GPS devices, etc. – think of it as automatic social media for people on the move!
In addition we’ve been working on a couple of other cool web-based services with some of our clients that we’re super excited about and over the coming months we’ll be able to talk about as well.
So, all that horn tooting aside – find a niche that interests you and work it! There’s still loads of opportunities out there to be the master of your domain (or in this case, niche, and no pun intended). Go ahead, don’t be shy, create something – at the cost of developing web-based services these days how can you not?
This entry was written by , posted on October 15, 2009 at 6:03 pm, filed under regular. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Succeeding while failing
I’ve done a lot. played in bands, released albums, played shows, toured, worked for others, been laid off, worked for myself, started businesses, ended businesses. And you know what? I’ve failed. Atleast by strict definition of the word. Personally I don’t think I’ve ever failed, just gathered experiences to help make decisions in my next adventure, whatever it may be.
With each experience I seem to manage to learn something that either helps me make a decision to do or not do something with the next thing I choose to do.
I guess that’s sort of how life works, but it seems that most people forget that and are scared into inaction by either listening to others telling them they’ll never be able to do ‘that’ or simply not paying attention to what they’ve done in past experiences.
So, I may have not succeeded in selling lots of records, playing shows to large groups of people, or made a million dollars (yet), I certainly haven’t failed to experience.
This entry was written by , posted on October 14, 2009 at 1:46 pm, filed under regular. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.