Neat app!
So this is specifically trying to measure a customer's satisfaction with your customer service (not their satisfaction with a specific product or the sales process for example)? If you were trying to measure those other things, I wonder how this tool would handle it? And how do you make sure the results are focused on the customer service (rather than the other stuff)?
In my experience with measuring customer satisfaction, folks can be very happy with the quality of service they receive but absolutely loathe the product or the process they had to go through to purchase it and then ultimately give you a low score on "Would you recommend this company?"
I think this is an OK list of tactics but figuring out what works for your market and your offering and your target customers is where the magic really happens.
What matters is who your prospects position you against. If they are evaluating your offering versus another you have to position against that. Unless your prospects are comparing you to another startup, why would you?
And just because you are both in the same market space does NOT mean you should necessarily partner in my opinion.
This is an interesting story and I think the guys did a great job on PR but PR is not the end game here. How are you going to get women to sign up? And paying women to be "virtual girlfriends" doesn't count (or at least that's a different business).
I think it depends on what market you're in. If you are selling to app developers, TechCrunch is a good place to focus your energy. If you are selling to businesses (or folks that aren't in the tech industry), I don't think it gets you much.
I agree that leaving the core technical decisions to folks that don't have skin in the game is dangerous.
I really like the idea of bartering services. I've done that quite a bit in the past (not for coding but for marketing/graphics/other stuff) and it's an option I think most startups don't explore enough.
I didn't read that in this article. I thought the data was showing that even in roles where that were more male or female dominated, there was either no difference in how effective the people were seen to be at their roles (or the women were seen as more effective).
Yes and no. I've been used as a GLG expert a number of times. The only people who seemed to use their service (read willing to pony up for the very high per hour rates) were institutional finance research groups doing due diligence for M&A or similar transactions. That's a pretty specific market with very deep pockets.
I think the idea of describing a startup as "like X for Y" is OK for some but in general I agree that it comes across as not being particularly innovative. I think it makes sense to give prospects a frame of reference for an offering but there are other ways of doing it aside from defining your entire company in comparison to another one.
I like this post - I think it's really logical and fairly complete.
A couple of comments - Firstly I think a completely hands-off approach to market/customer research is dangerous. I think you need to actually talk to prospects to really understand how they think about problems and pains. Surveys can give you clues where to look but they are not enough. Secondly, I wouldn't think of "competitors" as just other products in the space. Other alternatives could just as easily be "do nothing" or "do it manually" and if it is then you will need to differentiate between your offering and those alternatives too. Lastly, when thinking about marketing tactics, it's important to think about tactics that will work for your target markets specifically and not just all tactics that might work for any market.
I think there aren't enough resources for Canadian startups but at the same time, I agree with this post that once you can show some traction, then funding is not as hard to come by. The trick is figuring out how to get to that point and pay the rent.
This bit "Learn what makes her happiest and what stresses her out. See how she responds to difficult situations or murky ethical quandaries. Find out how she treats others (and herself) when things aren’t going well." is really important I think. Lots of people can get along when everything is going great. The difference between just being friends and co-founding a company is how you get along when things are going badly.
LOL - this is my fav comment on this thread.
I feel like I have seen a shift in the comments on women in tech related articles on HN over the past few weeks. 2 weeks ago I had a really hard time reading the comments because they seemed either hate-filled or ignorant (like the comment above is mocking) but I feel like lately the discussion has become more intelligent. Or is that just wishful thinking on my part?