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Startup Motivation
"Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72." - Mark Twain
A Startup motivation can be measured in 3 things:
- Money: Need a big pay check? Middle stage & late stage startups have bigger payouts than early stage concept startups. However, the desire lasts for about 1-2 years.
- Title: If you are looking for a solid title and experience, early stage startups are much generous. Get a nice acceleration boost to your career. Large companies love startup experience. If the startup has high growth curve, rewards could be huge.
- Passion: Passion lasts longer than money or title. The internal desire to win at all cost. These people are very hard to find; however can help take your startup reach the promised land of glory. Passionate people make lots of money through their career, more than #1 and #2.
All startups are good.
"Be passionate, rest will follow."
Local food & farmers' market REST API
"and a new day will dawn; for those who stand long"- stairway to heaven
We are totally excited to announce @homecookme API! Search by food items, get details on a farmers' market or on a local business. This is our contribution to the local food and farmers' market developer community. From this data, we can build many applications.
The API is implemented using REST framework and the results are returned in JSON. Our customers can build mobile and web applications using our unique data which contains relationship between farmers' markets, vendors and the products they sell.
For example:
Search for food:
http://www.homecook.me/api/search?search=food
[{"class":"Users","id":1,"aboutMe":"Please contact us today at bilal@mytweetmark.com for any questions!","autoTweet":null,"backgroundUrl":"http://a1.twimg.com/profile_background_images/298837507/homecookme-mobile-app.jpg","blog":"http://www.homecook.me","businessAddress":"Concord, CA","businessName":"mytweetmark","businessPhone":"(925) 969-0494","color":"FFFFDF","countryId":1,"createTime":"2010-04-...
...
...
Returns local business that contain the term food in their profile fields.
For example,
users[0].userName = Returns beckmannsbakery
class Users implements Serializable {
static searchable = true
Long id
String userName
String password
String email
Integer status
Integer marketingId
Integer countryId
Date createTime
Date updateTime
String ipAddress
Integer numCategories
String firstName
String lastName
Date lastLogin
Integer loginTimes
String profilePhoto
Integer tweet
String token
String tokenSecret
String facebookUid
Integer permission
Integer autoTweet
String website
String blog
String color
String aboutMe
Integer followersCount
Integer friendsCount
String businessName
String businessAddress
String businessPhone
String facebookProfile
String backgroundUrl
byte[] oauthObj
}
Search for local business by name:
http://www.homecook.me/api/biz?biz=beckmannsbakery
{"class":"Users","id":95,"aboutMe":"We sell breads, pastries and pies in your local California farmers markets. Please come find us today in over 40 locations 
","autoTweet":null,"backgroundUrl":"http://a2.twimg.com/profile_background_images/274493898/BeckNewTwitterLower_nologoPSD.jpg","blog":null,"businessAddress":"104 Bronson St #6","businessName":"beckmann's bakery","businessPhone":"831-423-9242","color":"FFEFEF","countryId":1,"createTime":"2010-07-21T23:17:48Z","email":"tstumbaugh@beckmannsbakery.com","facebookProfile":null,"facebookUid":null,"firstName":"Peter","followersCount":270,"friendsCount":225,"ipAddress":null,"lastLogin":"2010-07-...
...
...
Returns local business and all the farmers' markets they belong. Also the products they sell.
For example,
users[0].farmerMarket.title = Returns title of the market.
users[0].product.name = Returns name of the product.
class FarmerMarket {
Integer id
String title
Integer status
Date createTime
String marketPhoto
String address
String city
String state
String description
String timings
String marketAdmin
String googleMap
String facebookLike
}
class Product {
static searchable = true
Long id
Long userId
Integer status
Date createTime
String name
String price
String quantity
Date updateTime
}
Search for local farmers' market by id:
http://www.homecook.me/api/market?marketId=22
{"class":"FarmerMarket","id":22,"address":"1700 W. Hillsdale Blvd. ","city":"San Mateo","createTime":"2010-07-22T18:47:49Z","description":"This farmers market is operated by pacific coast farmers market association www.pcfma.com/market_home.php?market_id=15","facebookLike":"<iframe src=\"http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FSanLeandroFarmersMarket%3Fref%3Dsearch%23%21%2Fpages%2FDowntown-San-Mateo-Farmers-Market%2F128414687202114%3Fref%3Dts&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=450&action=recommend&colorscheme=dark&height=80\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:80px;\" allowTransparency=\"true\"><\/iframe>","googleMap":"http://maps.google.com/maps/api/staticmap?...
...
...
Returns all the businesses that sell within the market.
See Users class above for results.
Search for local farmers' markets:
http://www.homecook.me/api/markets?searchMarket=San
Search for local farmers' markets product (item):
http://www.homecook.me/api/product?productId=10
Search for local farmers' markets products by userId:
http://www.homecook.me/api/userProduct?userId=96
Search for local farmers' markets by userId:
http://www.homecook.me/api/userMarket?userId=96
We will continue to add more features to our API. Please feel free to ask any questions, bilal@mytweetmark.com.
Happy coding!
Psyche of a tweet vs auto tweet
Tweet vs Status:
- A tweet is small and rich in characters due to the limitation, i.e. 140 characters.
- It's textual, great for search and keywords.
- It's radius for viewers is much larger due to # tags, i.e. conferences.
- Great for marketing message.
- Great for distributing links with short descriptions.
More benefits on Twitter website.
Tweet vs Auto Tweet:
The benefits of an auto tweet are many compared to a normal tweet:
- Automatic, hence physical person doesn't need to be involved.
- Great for repeat marketing message.
- Great for distributing links with short descriptions, continuously.
- The tweet stays recent, hence high score on Google search results.
- Gain continuous stream of followers and views.
Technology is changing very fast. Recently at SXSW 2011, Tim Draper of DFJ mentioned Mohr's law in affect where in 5 years we will evolve 50 years growth. Lots to learn in Social media management systems (SMMS) space, however auto tweets is a great advancement from simple tweets. If you can educate your audience for it. Sometimes people don't like automatic, but that's their ignorance and preferential rather any real reason. Opinions are many, we have lots of analytic data to show results and many customers recommendations and thank you letters for rewards for using auto tweets from local food and farmers' markets all over Northern California.
The diagram below illustrates a communication threshold graph. Most awareness happens at the beginning when the content is published. However not everyone is available to view the content, especially on Twitter. The interest goes for a while and then new content is posted. The repeat of the content posting still shows audience interest, people that didn't see the post first time through.
Below you will see mytweetmark blog analytics chart. You will see the huge amount of page view increase, using auto tweets, data distribution and followers increase on twitter.
Please try our product today! If you have any questions, please feel free to email us.
@homecookme mobile: Search #farmersmarket and local businesses
The key differentiator for @homecookme with any other food startup is that we keep great relationships with local businesses and farmers' market associations. Announcing @homecookme mobile where we are going to help local businesses with not just auto tweets that gains them followers and Google SEO, but also give consumers & customers easy access to find local businesses and farmers' markets through iphone and android mobile phones!
@homecookme mobile key features:
- Search for local businesses, products and farmers' markets.
- For each farmers' market, shows list of local businesses that sell in it.
- For each farmers' market, shows Google map.
- For each local business, shows list of farmers' markets they sell in.
- For each local business, shows list of products and icons.
- Contact the local food business right from your phone!
Coming soon!
@homecookme: #Socialmedia for #local businesses and #farmersmarket
Hello:
We are helping local businesses with B2B and B2C in over 150 farmers' markets in Northern California. For local businesses, you will see profile page, products, farmers' markets, google maps and twitter followers. Our marketing is measurable through the increase of followers on twitter and page views, at a monthly subscription.
http://www.homecook.me
We started working on @homecookme last year summer (2010). 30% of our customers are first time internet business users. We signed up local businesses by talking to them personally because none of these people can be found on the internet. Around 30%-50% of the local businesses check their emails on a regular basis. We collected every business information through surveys, i.e. where they sell their products and which farmers' markets they visit. Most of them told us that the local farmers' markets associations don't do enough for them. They wanted marketing. We build out @homecookme with live customer feedback and signed up almost 50% of the active selling businesses in Northern California. The rest of the businesses that didn't sign up get our regular newsletter emails. Please view our latest newsletter below:
http://eepurl.com/dLq1M
Please contact us today if your business needs marketing. We have expertise in social media marketing for small businesses, local food and farmers' markets. We would love to work with you.
Thank you.
Bilal Ahmed
CEO/Founder
bilal@mytweetmark.com
Social Business Tweet Algorithms
Twitter is great for business because it allows us access to search terms, i.e. #<search-term> which allows us to tap into other communities, or other groups of people. With @mytweetmark, we carefully find important search terms on twitter that can be beneficial for our business customers growth and influence. When using search terms with auto tweets, our customers enjoy constant flow of new followers, get added to twitter lists and also their profiles appear on top Google search results pages. Google indexes tweets first due to real-time nature of tweets. Below we will describe a few algorithms written for local food customers.
Food Business Product job:
Every 30 minutes, the process starts up, pick a local business randomly and generate a tweet for their product.
Syntax:
Our #food #<search-term> Visit <user-link> Also at: <farmers-market-address>
Food Business Marketing job:
Every 4 hours, the process starts up, pick a local business randomly and generate a tweet for their farmers' market.
Syntax:
Visit #food #<search-term> <user-link> in <farmers-market-name>
Food Business Location job:
Every 30 minutes, the process starts up, pick a local business randomly and generate a tweet for their location.
Syntax:
Our #<search-term> #food product, #<product-name>: Find at <user-link>
Farmers' market job:
Every 1 hour, the process starts up, find a local farmers' market and generate 2 tweets for their location and customers.
Syntax:
#farmersmarket <farmers-market-name> cc #food #<search-term> @business-1 @business-2 ...
#farmersmarket #realfood #localfood <farmers-market-name> <farmers-market-link>
@mytweetmark job:
mytweetmark has additional auto tweets per customer that can be managed on the console and analyze metrics to measure the page views per auto tweet.
@homecookme uses the following search terms:
"celebrity", "business", "blogger", "marketing", "media", "writer", "entrepreneur", "technology", "artist", "socialmedia", "localfood", "farmersmarket", "smallfarm", "agchat", "realfood", "buylocal", "organic", "natural", "local", "farmersmarkets"
NOTE: Popular #<search-term> can be obtained from wefollow.com
Startup metrics: Viral factors, Retention cohorts and Engagement metrics
In this blog I will cover how to calculate 3 main essentials for Startup metrics:
Viral Factors: A simple example is importing address book. If I import address book of 100 users and send out invites for 10000 users, the child registration conversation has to be over 100%, e.g. viral factor of 1.00 for a startup to be in a growth mode.
- Build a dashboard.
- Build summary tables.
- Measure # of users.
- # invites send out.
- # open.
- # clicked.
- # converted.
- # of child registrations.
- # calculate viral factor: total child registered/total parent registered.
- Google chart intervals of viral factors, 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 15 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days.
Measure how many times your users are coming back to the site.
- Build a dashboard.
- Build summary tables.
- Measure # of users (newly registered).
- # of user logins.
- # calculate retention co-efficient (cohort): amount of logged in times/total users registered
- Google chart intervals of retention cohort, 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 15 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days.
Engagement Metrics:
Measure by product/feature, how many uploads, viewed, etc. metrics on how the adoption is increasing or decreasing.
- Build a dashboard.
- Build summary tables.
- Measure # of users (newly registered).
- # of uploads, # of views, # of comments, etc. aggregate.
- # calculate engagement co-efficient (cohort): amount of users engaged in content/total registered.
- Google chart intervals of retention cohort, 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 15 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days.
Lessons learned:
- Don't over complicate the problem: Hadoop is a solution; Metrics is about finding the problem. Learn how to read metrics and make decisions that impact the metrics directly.
- Build vs. Buy: Build in-house analytics solutions. It takes only a couple of days to build internal metrics. Building metrics helps understanding of analytics and making educated decisions.
- Analytics companies: Google analytics, Kissmetrics, Kontagent, Mixpanel, etc.
- Extra points: Add country, email domain, age, gender, locale, etc. to viral factors, retention cohorts and engagement metrics to really understand your user demographic.
- Syslogs can be essential data to determine additional engagement metrics.
Enjoy implementing your startup metrics!
Startup life: Direction, Execution and a pack of cigarettes
Startup life is tough: You need a thorough commitment and focus. Recently I was watching NBA basketball and Jeff Van Gundy mentions inspiration of Kobe Bryant: Motivation, Skill and Will. My variation is a little different; Direction, Execution and a Pack of Cigarettes:
- Direction:
- Start with an idea
- Pivot or change according to business requirement
- Generate revenue
- Profitability is achieved when business is paying for itself
- Exit or merge into bigger offering
- IPO
- Execution:
- Do it yourself because technology is easier to implement
- Find folks with synergy to work with
- Find amazing advisors and investors
- Facebook engineer right out of college makes $120k/year in bay area, California. Architects $180k/year
- Lots of attitude to hire any technical talent and the positions are in high demand
- Contractors make $150/hour and more
- Pack of Cigarettes:
- Not literally
- Skilled folks like to be comfortable
- Move in herds
- Do what makes you happy
- Skilled people have lots of choices
Startup Pivot: Leaner than LeanStartup
In the past 14 months, @mytweetmark has launched 6 websites. Fail fast, pivot and try again. Some of them died, some of them are doing great but more coming! Here is the @mytweetmark lifestream:
- January 2010: @mytweetmark launched - Saw need for blogging and metrics, cheaper advertising option to Google and Facebook utilizing open Twitter API.
- January 2010 - March 2010: Cloned @mytweetmark to 5 sites,
- @mytweetmark - Auto tweets
- @drspiritcom - Spiritual thought sharing site
- @mytweetsports - Sports score sharing site
- @viralfactors - Viral analytics
- @homecookme - Recipe sharing
- March - April 2010: SXSW affect, killed @drspiritcom, @mytweetsports and @viralfactors! Chirp affect, chip monks coding away at chirp. Many implementing similar ideas to @mytweetmark..
- June - March 2011: First mover advantage in signing up all the local businesses for over 150 farmers' markets in Northern California and Austin. Not signed are still on email campaigns, receiving offers.
- March 2011: SXSW affect, launching @winehomeme for wine sharing and iphone mobile applications!
Some of the lessons learned:
- Speed is everything.
- Execute fast and learn on the metrics.
- Make decisions.
- Implementing new technology is much easier and faster.
- Follow LeanStartup
- @twitter is amazing marketing platform.
- Never be ashamed of fail.
- Quit whining, continue doing.
- Action speaks larger than words.
- Meet as many angels and VCs you can.
- Pivot on feedback.
- Time to market is everything.
- Understand competition.
- If your execution sucks and late, the market will be taken.
- If your execution is early, determine whether the opportunity is worth the wait?
- Only the first one gets the dinosaurs, i.e. the hockey stick chart or biggest piece of the pie, market share.
- Startup is not about weekends, or weak ends (VC terminology). It feels like a weekend every day!
Startup Mentors and Advisors
Startup life is hard. The road is long and there are many road blocks. Mentors and advisors are important aspect of the journey. Below I will outline keys to finding successful mentor-ship:
- Available: Startup progress is a game of timing and momentum. How available an advisor is makes a huge difference whether they are able to help you at critical junctures.
- Synergy: Do you drink beer with your advisor? Not literally, but are you on the same page? Do you look straight in to eyes of your advisor?
- Previous experience: What is the qualification of the advisor? Do they have resume credentials to help you unblock the road.
- Domain expertise: How much do they know in the area of your business. Can they help you on technical side or the business side?
- Outdated Skills: At a recent visit with Tim Draper, the founder of DFJ, he pointed out Mohr's law where in 5 years, we will make a leap in technology and business of what we achieved in 50 years in the past. Is the advisor still part of new wave of startups or their skills outdated? Early stage startups require a completely different skill than late stage startups.
- Motivation: What's the motivation behind the advisor helping you? Is it corporate titles, money or passion. Passion lasts longer than everything else.
- Introductions: How eager are they to make introductions to people that can unblock the road and help you grow your business?
- Big picture: Do they see the big picture and your business growth or are they just hanging for the ride?
So there you have it. Choose your advisors and mentors properly and put them on your weakness. If all the above are answered correctly, you will enjoy the ride and I am sure they will be part of your success as well.
Happy advisor and mentor hunting!
