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Here’s a good one I came across tonite for all you would-be entrepreneurs out there… A Couple of My Rules for Startups.

A few other tips for startups I’d add to this list…

• Spend lots of money on chairs, but cheap out on the desks (I would cite wherever I saw this recently, but I can’t remember). If you have a good chair, you can sit tight and get stuff done for hours. A cheap chair will have you whining within days. On the other hand, a desk is pretty much a desk.
• You really shouldn’t need to spend more than $50-60 per batch of business cards. Check online, there are some great, cheap printers out there.
• Save money on software, try out OpenOffice.

What’s in a name? A whole lot of importance, really. An article from Wall St Journal today called Name That Firm covers examples of a few do’s and don’ts for naming your company. The name can really play a role in predisposing people towards doing business with you (or not), so be sure to put some thought into it, and try not to settle 100% on names that come to you while you’re trashed at a bar. A few of the critical factors from my perspective:

• memorable
• can be pronounced by people in your target market
• somewhat unique/distinctive, ie. keeps you from being confused with other companies
• at least hints at what you do

Just this weekend I finally checked out for myself this whole people-to-people lending thing you may have heard about. In a nutshell, a company named Prosper has basically created a marketplace which brings together people who want to borrow money with people who want to lend money. Typically, that function would be filled by a bank, which would layer on all kinds of overhead, thereby increasing the rates charged to the borrower and reducing the rates paid to the lender. Prosper cuts out that middleman and just fills the role of exchange.

From a marketing perspective, this is just a brilliant idea. It creates an eBay for money. One of the charms of eBay is the personal aspect of it– instead of dealing with a faceless mall, you actually deal with real people. Same on Prosper– you can communicate with the people who want to borrow or lend the money. This is giving lenders a greater sense of playing a role in the borrower’s life. Kind of like ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’-era America banking. Check out Prosper for yourself.

 I’m sure I’ll have more to say on it in the future. For example, if you want to borrow money, what are the best ways to market yourself to a community of lenders?…

Has anyone else ever been part of a new product failure? Please let me know what that’s like. Just kidding, we’ve all been there. Here’s a good post on new product development: Attention All Industrial Innovators - Got a Failure to Launch? which cites a magazine article claiming that most failures are based, in short, on not developing products that consumers want. Now, it sounds easy, but it’s hard hard hard. Not necessarily that hard to actually do, but hard to do within the context of most companies, which are filled to the rafters with people (me included) who will spend all day telling you why they know exactly what the customers want, so why waste time asking them yourself. Also, companies are filled with engineer-types who want to obsess about features and 2.3% improvements. Also, you’re in a rush, so who has the time to stop and ask anyone if you’re going in the right direction.

Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll fix whatever the problems are in version 2.0.

A: When it starts eroding your brand image and costing you sales

According to the Wall St Journal, Victoria’s Secret has learned that Apparently, You Can Be Too Sexy. In a nutshell– the brand which began as a classy, upscale alternative to both Frederick’s of Hollywood cheese and sleaze and frumpy department store skivvies got sidetracked by its attempt to bring in younger shoppers. To the extent that its bread-and-butter audience of 30+ women started to get turned off and turned away.

Interesting case study in how pursuit of a new market can cost you. It’s all about focus, focus, focus; brands ignore that at their peril.

I’m really no fan of real estate agents. Is there any other profession filled with so many vapid smiles and low-value-adding, yellow-jacket-wearing, shopping-experience-ruining part time disasters? Sure, you read about agents who are worth their wait in gold. Good luck finding one or getting a call back. So here is Seth Godin today with some advice for real estate agents: quit now. Hey, that’s pretty bold, especially since he was addressing a crowd of realtors when he gave that advice. But his point (which, it turns out, is regrettably not that everyone who sells houses should jump off a cliff, which would have been much more entertaining) is valid. To whit: get out of the commodity business. Find something unique, and create your own industry. “I am the world expert in under-priced townhomes in low income neighborhoods!”. Find some way to stand out, so that you are no longer competing with every other part-time dreamer within 200 miles.

I have free advice for the niche-seeking realtor who’s ready to hear it. Guaranteed to be successful, as well as 100% unique, as far as I can tell:

• Listen to what your clients tell you. Find out what they want, and then find similar houses to show them. It seems simple, but in my experience, most realtors focus on selling what they have rather than showing me what I want.

Good article here: Why “Harmless” Stereotypes Kill Marketing Campaigns. Stereotypes tend to have a negative connotation, but they are the shortcuts we need to use to make sense of our complex world. Life is much easier when you can put things into neat little boxes. The problem is that, while stereotypes typically have at least some grain of truth, they are not completely accurate. At best, they are a ‘lowest common denominator’, which by definition will be innacurate most of the time. It doesn’t help you that the LCD will average out over time. As a marketer, you sell to individuals, not averages.

I was reading something the other day which broached this topic. A marketer was describing the widely held belief that hispanics are family oriented. Ipso facto, the best way to market to hispanics must be to plaster pictures of large, happy families all over the marketing. In practice, this proved to be less effective than aspirational pictures (in this case, a nice suburban house with white picket fence, not a smiling face in sight).

In general, I think you need to check your assumptions. Ideally, let the data lead you to the best marketing approach. You trust your gut and all the things you ‘know’ at your own peril.

The Ezine Articles Blog has a good post on the Use of Controversy in Your Articles. In context, that article is about whether you should use controversy to attract attention to promotional and ‘expert’ articles you write. But I think it has broader application into your general marketing effort - your advertising, your whitepapers, your industry presentations. Many of the points raised in the article are valid regardless of medium. One that jumps out at me is:

Never insert controversy for controversy sake alone. Your ideas must stand alone apart from your controversial statements.

Now, from an intellectual and ethical position, that is certainly true. From a get-attention-at-all-costs perspective, it will certainly cost you some traffic. For example, consider Drudge Report, pretty much any of the British tabloids, or conservative talk radio (today I heard a talk show host obviously filibustering to fill air time making the case that if you want to require gun licenses, you should also require book buying licenses. Somewhat inapt comparison made just to get the rabble stirred up IMHO).

Obviously, creating controversy can be effective. For example, manufactured-controversy headling techniques such as ‘10 things they don’t want you to know about…’. But avoid the temptation to lower your moral bar and get down in the mud just for some attention. Consistent use of controversy squanders your goodwill and believability, both of which are precious commodities.

Here’s a bit of humor for a lazy Sunday. Check out The Apple Product Cycle, a hilarious tongue-in-cheek look at the incredible media hype which gets attached to every rumored new Apple product these days. Funny stuff…

When was the last time you shopped at Sears? Can’t remember? Me neither. Sears has been dying a slow, painful death for years now. It’s been popping up in the news again lately, with lots of public flogging about management’s inability to have brought the company back to some semblance of life. At the Origin of Brands blog, positioning guru Laura Ries has a good post on this topic - The Sad Saga of Sears.

Unlike most of the news and pundit articles you’ll read on Sears, Ries narrows Sears’ primary problem down to this: lack of focus. Sears forsook its strong position in hard goods (appliances, tools), instead choosing to pursue the supposedly greener pastures of bedding, towels, socks and shirts. It wound up offering crappy clothes which no one wants and losing its preeminence in hard goods. Oh, and then it bought K-Mart, which is like a train wreck buying a car crash.

Hard to imagine a scenario where Sears will re-emerge as a strong player in retail.