Last week we were announced in the Top 50 Cool Awards – Online Business Award
The internet has forced modern companies to re-think established business functions, from marketing and distribution to human resources and project management. This award was developed to recognise Australian businesses that are harnessing online models to achieve positive commercial outcomes.
Overall RetailCare came 28th and a Honorable Mention in the Online Business Award !
WHAT IS THE SENSIS API?
Breaking News – Australian student goes onto Global Student Entrepreneur Awards (GSEA) Final in New York!
Breaking News – Australian student goes onto Global Student Entrepreneur Awards (GSEA) Final in New York!
Shervin Mossammaparast, Bachelor of Commerce and Law student at Monash University has made into the GSEA Finals on 17 – 19 November. Shervin startedhttp://www.avancer.com.au/ in 2010, an online retailer of home appliances focusing on providing excellent customer service and cutting the cost of home appliances with a more efficient distribution model. Australian Chairman of GSEACarlo G Santoro wishes Shervin best of luck and success in the GSEA competition and entrepreneurial journey.
| PURPOSE | Clarify my purpose, goals and objectives! Ask yourself … Why am I attending? What do I hope to gain/learn? |
| PREPARE | Have I arrived prepared to take part, reviewed the agenda, etc. Is there any quick research I need to do before attending? |
| ENGAGE | Be present, listen, actively engage with speakers and other participants. Keep my phone off. Who can I meet/connect with? |
| MIND MAP | Take notes of key points, issues, ideas and actions using the Mind Map Pad in your pack. Do my Mind Map notes show the big picture as well as detail? Should I do it by hand or using iMindMap? |
| QUESTION | Note down any questions or things to research later. What is one great question that will honour the speaker? |
| REVIEW | Review /clean up my Mind Maps and notes to lock into long term memory. What was of most value? |
| PLAN | Plan to put the new skills, knowledge/ insights into action. What will I do when I get back to work/home? |
| ACTION | Do something with what you’ve learnt ASAP! What are key action items? Who needs to do what? How can I convert the information into value? |
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1. Experts are clueless
Experts—journalists, analysts, consultants, bankers, and gurus can’t “do” so they “advise.” They can tell you what is wrong with your product, but they cannot make a great one. They can tell you how to sell something, but they cannot sell it themselves. They can tell you how to create great teams, but they only manage a secretary. For example, the experts told us that the two biggest shortcomings of Macintosh in the mid 1980s were the lack of a daisy-wheel printer driver and Lotus 1-2-3; another advice gem from the experts was to buy Compaq. Hear what experts say, but don’t always listen to them.
2. Customers cannot tell you what they need
“Apple market research” is an oxymoron. The Apple focus group was the right hemisphere of Steve’s brain talking to the left one. If you ask customers what they want, they will tell you, “Better, faster, and cheaper”—that is, better sameness, not revolutionary change. They can describe their desires only in terms of what they are already using—around the time of the introduction of Macintosh, all that people said they wanted was a better, faster, and cheaper MS-DOS machine. The richest vein for tech startups is creating the product that you want to use—that’s what Steve and Woz did.
3. Jump to the next curve
Big wins happen when you go beyond better sameness. The best daisy-wheel printer companies were introducing new fonts in more sizes. Apple introduced the next curve: laser printing. Think of ice harvesters, ice factories, and refrigerator companies. Ice 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. Are you still harvesting ice during the winter from a frozen pond?
4. The biggest challenges beget best work
I lived in fear that Steve would tell me that I, or my work, was crap. In public. This fear was a big challenge. Competing with IBM and then Microsoft was a big challenge. Changing the world was a big challenge. I, and Apple employees before me and after me, did our best work because we had to do our best work to meet the big challenges.
5. Design counts
Steve drove people nuts with his design demands—some shades of black weren’t black enough. Mere mortals think that black is black, and that a trash can is a trash can. Steve was a perfectionist, and he was right: some people care about design and many people at least sense it. Maybe not everyone, but the important ones.
6. You can’t go wrong with big graphics and big fonts
Take a look at Steve’s slides. The font is 60 points. There’s usually one big screenshot or graphic. Look at other tech speaker’s slides—even the ones who have seen Steve in action. The font is 8 points, and there are no graphics. So many people say that Steve was the world’s greatest product introduction guy. Don’t you wonder why more people don’t copy his style?
7. Changing your mind is a sign of intelligence
When Apple first shipped the iPhone there was no such thing as apps. Apps, Steve decreed, were a bad thing because you never know what they could be doing to your phone. Safari Web apps were the way to go until six months later when Steve decided, or someone convinced him, that apps were the way to go—but of course. Duh! Apple came a long way in a short time from Safari Web apps to “there’s an app for that.”
8. “Value” is different from “price”
Woe unto you if you decide everything based on price. Even more woe unto you if you compete solely on price. Price is not all that matters—what is important, at least to some people, is value. And value takes into account training, support, and the intrinsic joy of using the best tool that’s made. It’s pretty safe to say that no one buys Apple products because of their low price.
9. A players hire A+ players
Actually, Steve believed that A players hire A players—that is people who are as good as they are. I refined this slightly—my theory is that A players hire people even better than themselves. It’s clear, though, that B players hire C players so they can feel superior to them, and C players hire D players. If you start hiring B players, expect what Steve called “the bozo explosion” to happen in your organization.
10. Real CEOs demo
Steve Jobs could demo a ‘Pod, ‘Pad, ‘Phone, and Mac two to three times a year with millions of people watching, why is it that many CEOs call on their vice president of engineering to do a product demo? Maybe it’s to show that there’s a team effort in play. Maybe. It’s more likely that the CEO doesn’t understand what his/her company is making well enough to explain it. How pathetic is that?
11. Real CEOs ship
For all his perfectionism, Steve could ship. Maybe the product wasn’t perfect every time, but it was almost always great enough to go. The lesson is that Steve wasn’t tinkering for the sake of tinkering—he had a goal: shipping and achieving worldwide domination of existing markets or creation of new markets. Apple is an engineering-centric company, not a research-centric one. Which would you rather be: Apple or Xerox PARC?
Unique + Valuable = Has a market
12. Marketing boils down to providing unique value
Think of a two-by-two matrix. The vertical axis measures how your product differs from the competition. The horizontal axis measures the value of your product. Bottom right: valuable but not unique—you’ll have to compete on price. Top left: unique but not valuable—you’ll own a market that doesn’t exist. Bottom left: not unique and not valuable—you’re a bozo. Top right: unique and valuable—this is where you make margin, money, and history. For example, the iPod was unique and valuable because it was the only way to legally, inexpensively, and easily download music from the six biggest record labels.
Bonus: Some things need to be believed to be seen. When you are jumping curves, defying/ignoring the experts, facing off against big challenges, obsessing about design, and focusing on unique value, you will need to convince people to believe in what you are doing in order to see your efforts come to fruition. People needed to believe in Macintosh to see it become real. Ditto for the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. Not everyone will believe—that’s OK. But the starting point of changing the world is changing a few minds. This is the greatest lesson of all that I learned from Steve. May he rest in peace knowing how much he changed the world.
Not a fan of all Apple products ..love the iPad and the Iphone. Jobs was an innovator – sad day !
here is a good read ! http://www.startupsmart.com.au
Shmarlo Digital Assets
By Oliver Milman
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
Carlo Santoro had started a business, RetailCare , before deciding that he wanted to take the plunge again.
After securing various domain names Santoro sought to turn them into a viable business under the Shmarlo Digital Assets umbrella.
He talks to StartupSmart about how he’s faring.
Can you please explain what your business proposition is?
Shmarlo Digital Assets is a new company set up solely to commercialise concepts that I have been sitting on for some time.
Dating back 10 years I began purchasing and collecting domain names – www.office.com.au, www.gstcalculator.com.au www.posstore.com.au – with the intention of building them into online digital businesses in the future.
With a portfolio of more than a thousand domain names this year I have begun to launch some of those businesses.
My first project out in the marketplace is talk2car which is a cutting edge iPhone application that makes it possible to send a short message via the app to the owner of any other vehicle on or off the road that has the Talk2Car app downloaded.
Senders are identified by an ID linked to their registration plate so the privacy of both drivers is protected at all times.
It’s the first of its kind on iTunes and uses reverse communication technology – a twist on social media where users are communicating with recipients that haven’t met yet.
The financial model for the business is that we have developed a social media dashboard in the back end for corporate fleets to be able to upload their database of plates and they can then watch the real time feedback coming in.
I am also in the midst of launching the second venture from the domain portfoliowww.deals4business.com.au, a B2B deals site.
The mission is to help the retailers of Australia get better rates for beneficial top tier services, for instance accounting or rebranding services to help them reinvigorate their businesses in this harder-than-it-used-to-be market.
How did you come up with the idea for it?
Like they said in The Castle, I’m an ideas man focused on digital-related business concepts.
Thoughts come to me at odd times during the day or night. I always act on my hunches and buy the relevant domain name(s) immediately.
My hunches have proven valuable as I have had plenty of offers but I have always believed that there is more value in building them into a functioning asset than just selling the names.
Talk2car has been an idea of mine for many years. I love cars and I love driving.
Driving along I wanted to talk to others so I built it. I wanted drivers to communicate with more than a look, smile or fingers.
It amazes me that this was an untapped area for communication. When you use Talk2Car it isn’t lonely on the roads any more.
Deals4business was a simple idea which stemmed from the growing trend for consumer deals sites but I just felt that retailers – particularly traditional traders with shopfronts – are up against the new wave of online-only businesses and only getting retail pricing from business services.
These prices are often well outside an SME’s price range but it’s obvious that the businesses that are investing in the future are the ones that will survive.
I knew that something needed to be done to help them get a better deal and this is it.
How has the business been funded?
Talk2car and Deals4business are entirely self-funded. Shmarlo Digital Assets is the driving company for these ideas and I’m looking to find partners, investors and exit opportunities.
How are you attempting to gain and retain customers?
I played with social media to learn how it worked. I was interested in how people engage.
I prefer organic, via the web and circulation of PR. It’s early days but so far the response to Talk2car has been very pleasing.
There is a marketing plan in place to engage once it reaches a critical mass.
I always plan everything to ensure my hunch is valid. I don’t just get excited. I validate and test.
Overall, what would you say was the most challenging aspect of starting up?
I find doing business plans and the development of the product or idea quite easy but the difficult part is actually acquiring the customers and getting traction in the marketplace without using cash to do the mass marketing that would really get things up and running a lot faster.
Not using cash makes me think more and I love that. In my main business I do a lot of thinking for others and I surround myself with thinking people.
What is the greatest threat your business faces?
The biggest threat is any number of competitors copying or expanding on what I am doing.
Talk2car is very different to what is currently available in that market niche. Eventually all ideas come down to securing the customers and growing at a pace to make the business sustainable.
What would you have done differently if you started up again?
I don’t think I would do anything differently. The important part of any tech-oriented start-up is to actually get the product to market in a working state and then get the feedback from the customers using the product to enable modifications and improvements to be made.
It’s very easy to get caught over-developing a product without it being used and tested.
This is the biggest learning curve I have experienced with business start-ups in the past but I have successfully avoided it this time around with the Shmarlo businesses.
What are your revenue projections for the coming year?
With Talk2car, anticipating the expected growth in USA, I believe the revenue would be approximately $250,000 in the first year.
With www.deals4business.com.au I am planning for $1.5 million revenue in its first year.
I really believe this is an achievable result in this market where retailers and Australian business in general really need support. Often the people that need it most can’t afford full retail price.
What are your plans and ambitions for the business?
I have a pipeline of ideas that I am hoping to launch in the coming months.
I am planning for Shmarlo Digital Assets to become a highly successful incubator over the coming years for many of the ideas I have developed.
I work on a build once and use many times philosophy, so all the trial and error goes into the first time and from then on my attention is on creation.
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