Aron Schoenfeld

Every entrepreneur wants their startup up and running the day they cultivate their idea, but development takes time. This time gives you ample opportunity to create partnerships, develop strategy and test your website so it is ready for use. Only then can you set a launch date. The question then becomes how do you launch your site, especially in the age of social media where everyone will post, like and share that they have a new profile on your site or that they were the first users of the site. This launch strategy is essential and should be part of the preparation your company undertakes.

Yesterday, February 1^st, a new company Wahooly.com was supposed to launch at 4pm EST. They integrated with Klout.com and offered their first accounts as a perk on Klout. TechCrunch covered their launch with a post/article that was released at the exact time the site was supposed to be launched and the same was done on many other tech sites. The Wahooly.com site even had a countdown to launch for 24 hours and at 4pm, it shut off and said “NOW.” There was only one problem, the site never launched!

For over 3 hours, the only message on Wahooly’s twitter was “DNS is propagating, should be live for some as it makes its way across the world.” I am not writing this post to criticize the Company and I feel bad for Dana Severson, the founder, as he is doing all he can and I am sure that if he wasn’t bald before, he is now. But as I am sure he will tell you, the site itself and not the launching issues will define his site.

As the saying goes, failure to prepare is preparing to fail. The lesson here for entrepreneurs is not that you should hide your launch until the site is live but rather having a plan in place for all scenarios. I am sure the team at Wahooly wishes they had a plan in place to deal with this. Maybe it is in how they communicate and maybe it is delaying publicity until a day after the site is up. While we all want to get our site launched, it must be done in a manner consistent with a plan and that plan needs to have backup plans for things that may go wrong. This should be part of your cohesive strategy not just for launch but also for every aspect of your company.

Some of the things that could have been done:

• Email to everyone apologizing for the delayed launch
• Video message from the founder
• Use social media to update people on the issue and give a time when it will work rather than have people try continuously to visit a site that has yet to launch
• Take down the login page and post an apology

Remember, issues like this don’t destroy a company, but rather how you handle them will make or break your company. Turn the negative into a positive and provide users with more of a reason to come back and talk positively about you. Customer service is not just a department, it is a brand strategy and a lack of it at launch is indicative of a long-term issue. Team Wahooly needs to fix its brand image first, at the same time they fix the site, because their website is only as good as the users that join.

I got a LinkedIn request to connect the other day from someone I have never heard of. It said I was his classmate when I went for my MBA, but I am pretty sure I never met this person before. Further confirming my suspicion was that I got a few Twitter mentions from the same person asking for my email address and for me to add them on LinkedIn so we can connect. I responded that I only connect with people I have some professional relationship with already and that they can send me an email introduction. This got me thinking about how people use social media to network and how people connect with others on social media sites. What is the value of a connection or friend? How can we measure followers and members of a circle?

After thinking about this for some time, I realized that every social media site serves its own unique purpose and they are used in different ways. While some people view it as a popularity contest and accept requests from anyone, using the sites properly will lead to increased value for you and those connected to you. Below is a listing of the sites as I see them and some guidelines to using them effectively.

1. Facebook. This site is a true social networking site for friends to share content and pictures and keep up with each others’ lives. Friend requests should only be sent to actual friends or people you have met a few times. Facebook friends do not mean you are really friends but rather want to share content. If you don’t post any content of value, you will lose your followers. And if you get a friend request, you DO NOT have to accept it. Be selective as much of your personal information is shared on this site and there is nothing wrong with not friending someone or un-friending them if they add no value.

Tip: If you have someone you want to follow, like a celebrity, but you aren’t friends with them, subscribe to their feed instead of sending a friend request.

2. LinkedIn. This site is great for managing professional relationships and tracking those who you have done or continue to do business with. It allows you to see who is connected to whom and receive recommendations from people to boost your own profile. There are many people who use this site as a business “facebook.” And they connect to people that they want to meet, instead of connecting with people they actually are professionally connected with. This dilutes the value of your professional network and makes LinkedIn just another place for content sharing. Over the last 2-3 month, I think there is more of an emphasis on using LinkedIn for group management as opposed to just building your network. I think that LinkedIn is evolving and there will be some increased functionalities over the next year that will help make this site stronger and focused. But in the short term, build up your recommendations and try and keep your connections to real connections so that they may be leveraged the way initially intended.

Tip: If you are trying to connect with someone and the request does not meet any of the criteria that LinkedIn asks to confirm how you know the person, you should not be connecting with that person.

3. Google Plus. This is the most interesting social network on the internet now. It is growing rapidly and slowly gaining in popularity, despite the fact that most people aren’t quite sure how to use it. The integration into your Gmail page is great and a excellent way to take your email contacts and turn them into connections. I happen to think that “circles” are a great way to accept all friend requests and qualify them so you can manage the content that is being shared. To me it feels a bit more like a subscribe button. I think the biggest issue with Google Plus is that it lacks a lot of the creativity and functionality of the other sites; it will be interesting to see how it evolves.

Tip: Use your circles effectively. Try and classify people properly and make sure that you tag your posts to be visible only for the circles that are appropriate.

4. Twitter. Many may argue that this should not be included in a listing of social networks as Twitter is a bit different. However with the ability to follow people, I think people use it as a means to be recognized. Most people follow people with a large following, and re-tweet, message and #ff people to grow their own following on the site. Not only does it not work in most cases, but it also drains on the quality of your twitter feed. Once you learn how to tweet effectively, it is essential that you post content that is relevant, timely and helps create a conversation. Using twitter correctly and following those who are relevant to you can be one of the best ways to gather information and knowledge. So it is imperative that it be used in a way that fosters this environment and is not a contest of how many followers you have. Remember, sites like Klout measures how far your messages reach, not how often you post or whom you follow.

Tip: You do not have to follow people who follow you. Having a large number of followers is great but you will often find that those with the most followers follow the fewest people. Only follow those whose content is interesting to you since the feeds move very quickly and you want to keep it as relevant as possible. 

The common theme with all of these is that you should not accept requests from or follow those that have no relevance to you. Less is more when it comes to connections as those few connections add value to your use of social media. Seeing your 4^th cousin once removed post pictures from when they were three may be cute but is often irrelevant and takes the place of more meaningful content. Focus on letting these sites work the way they were intended, to allow you to manage your true real life connections on the internet.

Over my short “career” as an entrepreneur, there are two traits that seem to play an important role in the success of a startup. The first of these is the track record and network of the founder and the second being a great team. The former is about traction and your Klout. If you have successfully exited a company or founded a company that is well known, the people you engage with in real life and social media are those with a large sphere of influence and can help you expand the reach of your company rather quickly. For instance, when a VC leaves to start a company, he has a much easier time raising funds and getting to launch because his circle already includes those that would fund him and publicize his company.

However, in my eyes, having a great team is more important and has a longer lasting impact on your company and more importantly, you as an entrepreneur. There is no one person that knows everything about business or starting a business. Some people are idea people and others are more process and execution oriented. Some people are great leaders and others can be great employees. Some people are great at design and structure and some are great at programming. Very rarely will two people have a similar set of traits from top to bottom. It is figuring out how to match these skill sets together that make a team successful.

The expression goes “know what you know, but more importantly, know what you don’t know.”  I would say that 75% of building a team is understanding this concept and being able to recognize your strengths and weaknesses. Most founders of companies have limited, if any, technical knowledge on how to actually design and develop their website or product. They go out and have to find someone who knows what they don’t and start building a team.  As I wrote about in a previous blog post, just because you found a company or have an idea for one, it does not qualify you to be the CEO. Maybe you are a marketing person or a PR person. In those cases, you need to find a salesman and programmer.

Building a team is not just about compensating for missing skills sets; it is about identifying the traits that all team members must have as that will be the glue that holds you together. Maybe it is a love of travel for a new travel website or religious beliefs that you share that create some connection. Whatever it may be, this commonality is your 75% that hold you together and the combined skill sets make up the last 25%. How you assemble this team and use the collective talents will be what makes or breaks your company in the long run and define you as a leader. The team you assemble will be part of the company and set its culture for years to come.

Big reach and access to VC money based on your inner circle gets you to launch. But if your team can’t put out a great product or leverage its collective knowledge and resources to build the company beyond launch, your company will not have a chance to make it to the next level.

I was recently interviewed by Alexis Miller for the International Business Time Television series on entrepreneurship. See the interview below.

Whether your company is successful or not, it is exciting to tell people that you are a founder of a startup. The fact that you actually started something is more than most people can say and gives you some credibility as an entrepreneur. But the fun part comes when you need to make your business cards and you start “handing out” the titles that you will use. The titles of CEO, Chairman, Chief Revenue Officer, Chief Marketing Officer and other big name positions are always fun to give out. But what do they mean, especially when you are first building your product, and how can they affect the company in the long run.

One of the cool things about being a founder is that you will always be the founder. No one can ever take that away from you and it is a part of the company’s history. However, every other position is negotiable and very often, the founders find that they are not right for those jobs. This may not occur at the outset, but often that is because everyone wears multiple hats and works to get everything done together. In the early stages of a company, there is very little separation of duties and tasks; everyone pitches in wherever they are needed. But as the company grows, management must grow into their roles and this is when it is essential to know your strengths and weaknesses.

It is also important to remember that you can give yourself whatever title you want at the onset, but that can easily be stripped from you as your company grows. When you grow the company and take on investors, part of the due diligence they perform will be focused on the management team in place. While you may think you are right for the job of CEO because you are the founder of the company, the investment may come with you being replaced by the VC’s own CEO. Getting fired from your own company is not a pleasant experience or something that anyone ever wants, but at the end of the day, it may be essential to your company’s growth.

Knowing your role and what you do well are essential. There is a tremendous difference between having an idea and executing on it. While title and roles in the company don’t matter much at the onset, they should still be real and something that you are capable of handling and growing into as your business expands. Outsiders and clients will view you in this capacity and you always want to put the best foot forward by being able to handle your job. And there is nothing wrong with just calling yourself the founder until you have time to figure it out. At least that way you will save some money on business card printing!

Small business owner vs. entrepreneur: What’s the difference or are they the same? This question is something I have been struggling with for a while, not because I don’t know the difference, but because I think it is very hard to define. The main reason for that is the challenge in defining an entrepreneur. The term is becoming overused and almost generic. Almost everyone that I know who starts a business calls himself or herself an entrepreneur. From friends who started making baby/kids clothing, to lawyers who started their own practice to people who started websites and blog to those starting their own companies; everyone calls themselves an entrepreneur.

I recently posted this question on the KAYWEB Angels group page and received some interesting responses. However there seems to be some common thoughts between all of the answers, which are that an entrepreneur is about creating change and having a vision often bigger than their company. These are two unique traits to entrepreneurs that can differentiate them from a small business owner.

Both small business owners and entrepreneurs are risk takers. In many cases, these two groups put their financial future at the mercy of their business. Taking out mortgages or lines of credit, running up credit card debt and borrowing from friends and family are pretty common for people starting a business. But what differentiates the small business owner from the entrepreneur is the vision and the mindset. Small business owners want to build a business where they can work for themselves, make money for themselves instead of someone else and support their lifestyle. Entrepreneurs dream of creating the next great platform that will change how people do things. For entrepreneurs, the thought of a small business never enters their mind, as they are always dreaming of creating the next Facebook or changing an industry. While their business may grow and level off as a small business, the mindset of an entrepreneur is to pivot or create the next great idea beyond their original one.

A great example of this is someone who wants to create a kids clothing store. The small business owner will buy other people’s fabric and designs and use them to create the standard shirts, hair clips, smocks, towels etc. The entrepreneur will dream of creating a new product that can change the way kids clothing functions, such as a new type of clip that is childproof or shirt that is stain proof, or a new way of producing or marketing the clothing. While small business owners may consider themselves entrepreneurs, they lack the vision and passion to be unique and create a new way of doing things.

While these two things may set small business owners and entrepreneurs apart, there are probably numerous ways to differentiate the two, including comparing the strict definitions of the terms. But to me, the difference is greater than the definitions; it is about a mindset and a little bug inside of you that says, “I am an entrepreneur.” It is something that other entrepreneurs can sense and it makes you part of the entrepreneurial community. That feeling and sense of community is something that serves as a true differentiator.

Gary Whitehill, founder of Entrepreneur Week, once told me that one of the hardest things to understand in life is that you’re not what you are, but what you’re perceived to be. In this day and age of social media, I think this is one of the most important things for people to remember. First impressions last a lifetime and in today’s day and age, our first impression is made with the information that people see about us online. Let’s be honest, when we connect with a person at a meeting or are introduced through a mutual contact, the first thing we do is go to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to learn more about this person. If the individual has no information available or a spotty resume on these sites, part of the excitement of the initial introduction is lost immediately. The person will now have to overcome this void in order to make a great first impression.

In today’s age of the internet, you are your own brand and how you market and sell that brand will make you a success. You need to take an active role in building that brand so that when you do meet someone you are prepared and give off a great first impression. Some of the ways this can be accomplished are:

• Start a blog about your industry – Portray yourself as knowledgeable and people will listen to you and ask for your advice. This will give you a lot of credibility.
• Learn the industry – Make sure you know the names of the key companies and players in the industry. You don’t want to look dumbfounded when these individuals’ names are mentioned.
• Network – Build up a network of contacts in your field and related fields so that you can leverage their knowledge. Attend industry events and roundtables so that you can be more visible and be an active participant so that people know who you are.
• Learn how to make a great first impression – Make sure you know how to attract someone’s attention when you meet them. People have short attention spans so make sure you know how to get engage them from the first moment. You only have one chance at a first impression!

This is an especially important lesson for entrepreneurs. Very often entrepreneurs are young and have no track record. The only information people have about you is what they can find online. When you are going out to raise capital or to sell your product, people want to know who you are, what you stand for and what kind of person you are. You need to use all the tools available to you to create a certain perception of yourself in the eyes of others. This perception can often be the difference between getting the funding you need or the potential investors having no faith in you. You are the most important thing that you are selling so make sure you are perceived that way.