TWiST 37

Pete Kistler calls in to pitch Brand-Yourself, a platform to manage your online reputation (in short, SEO for people)

Jason and Phil’s comments:

Overall a poor pitch, decent idea which is what you want verses the opposite.  Jason comments he has been asked how to get things removed from Mahalo and other services so the idea has legs but the mystery of SEO and how to explain what Brand-Yourself does is difficult which leads to a credibility problem.

Pitch critique:

• Price seems expensive, the service provided isn’t clear
• Never said the name of his company or at least in the beginning
• Delivery was stiff and confusing
• Idea has potential
• The service that you provide isn’t necessarily clear, who actually does the work (me or you)
• Dashes in a domain name are “like wearing sneakers to a funeral” (Tyler)
• Website doesn’t convey trustworthy
• Re-brand your name it’s not unique, consider something unique, Phil comments on a post by Evan Williams about not being to literal with naming (If anyone can help me find the post Phil I’d be grateful)
• Consider adding a before and after profile as an example showing success
• An interesting showcase of your service would be to take a “problem” celebrity case and see if you can get your profile of them on the front page

My Recommendations (some website changes have been made since the show):

• Consider branding the site a bit better, I see a lot of stock images
• I like the video but I would consider a video showing an example of your work, don’t giveaway your method but show results.
• To create buzz I’d offer your service as a contest for 5 lucky winners (use a Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn campaign) with the caveat that they have to allow you to showcase your results.
• Promote your blog a bit better, it appears very active, I would move the link to the header.
• I see you removed the pricing for your service and moved to a form (for more info).  The problem with this approach, in my opinion, is without genuine credibility and a clear proposition of what you offer I think you will struggle with conversion.

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TWiST 35

Tyler Koblasa calls in to pitch Mingly, a social media CRM tool to help you maintain relationships.  The app basically monitors your social profile and inserts time based reminders in a to do list.  If you are interested in a beta invite Tyler is currently accepting email addresses at Mingly.

Brad and Jason’s comments:

• Be sure to internalize your message to yourself first before you pitch to be able to show your emotion and passion for the idea.  Being technically correct in your pitch is important but don’t be afraid to let your passion for the project shine through.
• Brad shares a TechStars tradition that for the first couple of weeks companies have to pitch their company to each new person that attends the weekly event, so people will get comfortable pitching their idea.

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TWiST 35

Ryan Clarke calls in to ask, I have great domain experience, should I consider outsourcing the technical end for my idea?

Brad and Jason’s advice:

• While you can try to outsource the work the chance of success is slim, the better approach is to get a co-founder that can develop your product.
• The opposite the opposite holds true, someone with developer experience that lack domain experience can succeed, if they listen to the customer they will be able to improve quickly.  It boils down to ideas are easy and execution is hard.

Ryan follows up with, how do I find a developer?

• Search LinkedIn for people who worked for companies that just went out of business or were recently sold.
• Consider Craig’s List
• Hacker News
• Friends of a friends

Finding a co-founder will be your first test as an entrepreneur, if you can’t do that you may have bigger problems down the road.  Also when choosing that person be sure they fit well right from the start because you will both ride the ups and downs together.

If you still can’t find someone consider teaching yourself to code, in the beginning your work will be rough but it will improve and may inspire others to come on-board after seeing some progress.

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TWiST 34

Anthony Colarusso who created myfaceshirt.com, a site that designs and prints the face of the buyer on a t-shirt. He wants to know, how to make his product more visible?

Jason’s advice:

• You need to get this viral and in the social space, DailyBooth may be a perfect place to start marketing your idea.
• Disadvantage is you are making individual shirts not bulk
• Reach out to high profile people and send them one and see if they will tweet or twitpic to their followers
• Consider adding their shirt to Threadless and creating an affiliate program
• The uniqueness of the idea limits your ability to scale
• Jason asked the question to the Mahalo Answers community, How would you market myfaceshirt.com? and received some good advice.

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TWiST 34

Jonathan Dusing of row27 Mobile calls in to ask, how do I defend my product against a big name competitor that wants to throw it’s legal weight around, how aggressive should I be?

Jason’s comments:

You have to be careful but you have to look at what you have to lose and what you have to gain.  You may want to consider taking the “unofficial” approach and be a bit more edgy with your product.  If that doesn’t interest you, consider contacting CBS to try work out a partnership.  If that approach doesn’t work, (fight up) use this to inspire your team to crush CBS, to make a product 10x better and reach out to more schools.  Write some blog posts and be aggressive about why your app is so much better.  Keep iterating, your advantage is that you are nimble and can pivot quicker than a large corporation.

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TWiST 34

Tommy Leap calls in to ask, how do I become an angel investor?  First you have to meet the SECs rules to become an angel investor.  If that is met, you have to understand the risk and create a portfolio that diversifies you enough to find a winner understanding that many startups will fail and only a few succeed.  If you don’t have a significant amount of discretionary income to meet the SEC rules but have a little extra cash, consider creating your own startup and have control of your own destiny.

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TWiST 34

Max Salmeron the youngest caller to date (15 years old) calls in to ask, if Jason has any advice for someone who wants to become a blogger.  Jason suggests you find something that you are passionate about and that you enjoy, start with one vertical and become part of that community.  It will be tempting to start multiple sites but more often than not, most lose interest trying to keep them all up to date and you never get traction, so stick to one and create good content.

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TWiST 33

Stephen Cross calls in with a good question , how do I determine the value of my community?

Jason and Shawn comment:

At Weblogs Inc they used Google’s keyword manager and worked backwards, started with AdSense and got a feel for pricing power and then moved to display ads.

Some advertisers are more cutting edge and you will find them quicker others will take longer it just depends on your niche.

Jason asks a great follow-up, how do you get advertisers willing to write a check to a niche website? You are selling people who influence the influencers (it’s a power play), help them innovate and insert their company  into the blogosphere, you are the expert.  This definitely will not happen overnight, it often takes 5 or more calls to get established and be sure to be short and to the point when you email.  A Jedi tricks is to call just before their assistant is at work or just after the assistant goes home.

At the end of the video is one of the funniest moments in TWiST history, you tell me.

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Congratulations go to Gary Vaynerchuk for the Unofficial Best TWiST Guest 2009!!!

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TWiST 33

Nicky Hajal calls in to pitch, Transissimo a site that is described as Mahalo Answers for translation.  “A community to help translate the world”

Jason and Shawn’s Comments:

• Good space the world is going global.
• Domain experience because of Nicetranslator, which is good
• Business model is lacking, how you will make money
• Didn’t understand what was unique about the idea
• Don’t get technical, you should be able to describe your idea to a twelve year old
• Consider a canned engagement ie. ask a question that you know the answer, this makes sure the audience is listening.
• Give a concrete example of the use of your product that will resonate  and show off the best of what you can do.  Paint a vivid picture of the use case.
• A better way to describe your idea is Mechanical turk of translation
• Jason asks to see some screenshots and a video of you explaining your screenshots.

Follow-up Questions:

You did a nice job pitching your idea how did you prepare?  Have you pitched the idea before or did you just practice?

I’ve presented in the past, but this was our first pitch for a Tumble Design project. When I initially contacted Tyler about being on the show, we weren’t sure when I would be on. So, I was beginning to put together a presentation in my head already when I got an email a few days later saying there would be a spot for me the next day.  At that point, I decided to focus the next 18 or so hours solely on preparing my pitch. Sixty seconds is such a short amount of time – I didn’t want to waste any with trying to figure out what to say.

I watched old Shark Tanks on your site to get a feel for where others did well and didn’t, as well as to have rough answers for common questions (of course, I wasn’t asked any of those ones!). The most effective structure seemed to be Problem -> Solution -> How it makes money.

I built a pitch around that framework and started practicing outloud, recording and listening as I went, figuring out what flowed well and what didn’t.

Of course, I would have loved even more time to improve the pitch but was very grateful I put in the preparation I did.

Did you place the screenshots on flickr and if so can you help me with the link?

Here are the screenshots: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tumbledesign/4245115195/in/set-72157623139470670 – Haven’t sent them in to Tyler/Jason because we are still working on a set of videos.

Any advice you would give the next guy/gal?

For the guy (or gal) that’s wondering whether or not he should go on Shark Tank, my advice is a resounding “Do it!”. It is extremely motivational and you really learn a lot in a very short time.

For the guy that’s up next, I would say that the one critical piece missing from my preparation was pitching in front of people that had never heard of our project before. The perspective of a person who knows nothing about what you do is invaluable.

For the senior in highschool: Don’t accept that car from your Dad!

How can the community help you that may want to get involved?

The most important thing for us right now is finding multi-lingual people out there that would be interested in giving Transissimo a try and contributing to our community. Any help on that front is extremely appreciated

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