Nose to the Grindstone: Marketing Your Firm

Its now been just over 2 weeks since we launched our new website — introductory post here. As a consumer website, getting the word out is crucial to the success of FamilyFantasySports.com as we kick off our first free leagues during NFL 2008.

We are continually pushing our name, concept, and ‘value proposition.’ We are email, calling, writing, commenting, faxing, and generally hustling. We have not spent any money on advertising, although we did spend $140 to issue our press release over PRWeb.

The June 24th Guerilla Marketing Weekly Intelligence email from Jay Conrad Levinson really spoke to our current situation. The title of the edition is Patience in Marketing.

It lays out a typical advertising situation that a new business might find itself in — advertising in a local newspaper. The article then goes on to quote an article written in 1895 in London about advertising — it is a list of 20 statements. Here are numbers 1, 6, 11, and 17.

Which Universities Have No Chance at Entrepreneurship?

I chose to go the George Mason’s School of Public Policy to pursue my PhD for three main reasons 1) it offered a flexible part-time program with many interesting fields of study 2) it was a newer, aggressive school that had attracted many top faculty in recent years (Richard Florida, Francis Fukuyama, Zoltan Acs) and 3) and it was in DC, my wife’s hometown, and a vibrant region of power, technology, and culture that allowed the school and its students and instructors to engage in the policy debates of the day.

In entering a school of public policy I was quickly introduced to the field of economic development and the terms Taylorism and Fordism — terms were meant to convey the scientific management of the industrial process and increased efficiency and economic output. (FORD being an early example with its assembly lines) Many also use the terms to describe a system that capitalizes on mass labor in a negative way.

The Collegiate Way blog has an interesting posting about an article in the Atlantic Monthly by a Professor X titled The Basement of the Ivory Tower. Apparently the article basically explains that many colleges just take in students and keep them in, in order to achieve revenues.

From the article by Professor X:

I work at colleges of last resort. For many of my students, college was not a goal they spent years preparing for, but a place they landed in. Those I teach don’t come up in the debates about adolescent overachievers and cutthroat college admissions. Mine are the students whose applications show indifferent grades and have blank spaces where the extracurricular activities would go. They chose their college based not on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but on MapQuest; in their ideal academic geometry, college is located at a convenient spot between work and home. I can relate, for it was exactly this line of thinking that dictated where I sent my teaching résumé.

Chinese Earthquake Uncovers Entrepreneurs

Pretty interesting article by James T. Areddy few days ago in the WSJ (free sub) about the incredible business activity that has sprung up in the wake of the massive Chinese earthquake. From the piece:

The May 12 Sichuan earthquake left 19-year-old Yin Dan homeless. It also awakened the entrepreneur in her.

When workmen started building temporary housing nearby last month, one wandered up the hill looking for a shave and a haircut.

The chance encounter spurred Ms. Yin, who had been employed in a beauty shop, to go into business for herself. Now, she is the sole proprietor of “Earthquake Disaster Relief and Convenience Barber Shop,” located in a green tent.

“I have ideas. I want to open a bigger shop, a beauty shop in the city,” says the young woman, slumping into her swivel chair during a rare break from customers. “This is a chance.”

The response of many in the disaster zone is a reminder of how profoundly capitalist ideas have taken hold in China in recent years. For nearly a decade, the private sector has created most of China’s jobs and more recently accounted for more than half the economy. Now, in the rubble of towns of Sichuan province, businesses are sprouting from under tents, inside car trunks and behind makeshift stands. And despite the government’s massive outpouring of food, shelter and cash, few victims seem to believe they will be living off charity indefinitely.

While much of the activity outlined in the article appears to be ‘entrepreneurship’ by necessity, with China’s growing entrepreneurial institutions and culture, there is no doubt that these entrepreneurs have a chance to be high impact entrepreneurs (creating jobs and high rates of growth).

Many entrepreneurs on campus begin through necessity (needing money for tuition, room/board, or b/c they can’t find a job) and later achieve high impact status (read the history of Kinkos).

One wonders whether anything like this occurred after Katrina or whether this is occurring in Iowa right now?

Great Entrepreneurial Book List from NDE

Just received an email from the NDE (National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship) and they have a great 2008 reading list on entrepreneurship. They did include Richard Florida’s Who’s Your City; a book whose entire life-cycle I witnessed up close while I worked with Richard. It was an amazing process. Here are some (4) reviews from NDE’s list — which is well worth checking out:

Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World

Timothy Brook (Bloomsbury Press, 2007)

You may be wondering how a book about Vermeer makes it on a listing of books about innovation and entrepreneurship. In this fascinating book, Brook uses the subjects and objects of Vermeer’s paintings to provide history of the development of global capitalism. Vermeer’s rise paralleled the Netherlands’ rise as a major economic force, and Brook tells these stories by tracing the emergence of trade in new products like tobacco, porcelain, and furs.

Creative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital

Spencer E. Ante (Harvard Business School Press, 2008)

It often seems like the venture capital industry has been around forever, but, in reality, someone had to invent it. That someone was French business professor and investor Georges Doriot, and his achievement occurred not too long ago. Beginning in 1946, Doriot and his firm, American Research and Development Corporation, virtually created the modern model of the venture capital firm. This well-written biography examines Doriot’s life and his impact on the world of business finance.

WSJ Independent Street Offers 15 Entre Bloggers

Wendy Bounds at Independent Street offers 15 Entrepreneur Blogs Worth Reading. We didn’t make the list, but that is not too much of a surprise. The list offers many usual suspects — Guy, Mark Cuban, Duct Tape Marketing, etc and is in line with our current media/social cycles (the first blog offered is green — the Eco-Capitalist blog).

The list is worth reading and is organized well. At the end she asks for more blogs worth reading. Feel free to share Campus Entrepreneurship with her at IndependentStreet@wsj.com. Thanks.

FamilyFantasySports.com — GMU

Yes. This campus venture is my startup! The one I have blogged about periodically. This week, we officially launched our new site:

FamilyFantasySports.com, the first fantasy sports site dedicated to family play.

Our inaugural, free leagues will coincide with the NFL’s 2008 regular season. Our leagues will be powered by STATS LLC, the world leader in sports information.

I have been working on this new venture over the past 6 months and am happy to have reached this milestone. Here is our press release (via Yahoo! news) and below is a blurb about us from Rotonation.com (a leading fantasy sports news blog).

With fantasy sports becoming more and more part of the mainstream, it is only logical for a family-orientated fantasy sports site to creep onto the horizon. Family Fantasy Sports launched today hoping to corner this new niche in the fantasy sports industry.

Further, the site puts a strong emphasis on education, health, and wellness: All prizes are orientated towards these goals. They also have a kids’ corner and grown-ups’ blog geared toward these topics.

Feel free to check out the site, sign up for our newsletter, and send me any and all feedback. I will share some of our successes and struggles on this blog as we ramp up over the next few months and execute on our strategy. Thanks.

Samee Desai’s Dissertation Defense: Destructive Entrepreneurship

Today I hauled myself out to the main campus of George Mason (in Fairfax Virginia). What got me to battle the beltway? My friend and colleague Sameeksha Desai was defending her dissertation.

She is a serious and innovative researcher who I have blogged about in the the past. Her work covers post conflict entrepreneurship (think Rwanda, etc) and begins to define/explore a concept called ‘destructive entrepreneurship.’

This term appears to come from Baumol’s 1990 work, Good Entrepreneurship, Bad Entrepreneurship, and Destructive Entrepreneurship. While Baumol didn’t delve to deeply into the destructive, Samee has!

Destructive entrepreneurship is anything that destroys economic capacity; whether it be land, labor, or capital.

So, for example, in an unstable post-conflict environment entrepreneurs will make decisions that are often short-term in nature (b/c the future is very unclear) but cost the economy greatly in the long run. The policy implications of this were discussed in Samee’s work.

While her work focuses on post-conflict entrepreneurship, the destructive nature of much of it is similar to what we see in many urban cores in the US. This idea was discussed extensively after Samee’s presentation and its clear that her work can shed a lot of light on traditional urban issues.

Her work is fascinating and I am trying to find some things to post.

Column From Y Combinator Participants

The Globe and Mail in Toronto (where my friend Richard Florida offers his blog) has a great column by Michael Parkatti and Michael Marrone, current Y Combinator participants. For a bit on Y Combinator click here.

The one of the reason’s that we follow Y Combinator is because it is on the leading edge of new funding/advising models. The column is enjoyable and provides some insights into the paths of two young entrepreneurs (which include much time on campus). They will be writing columns each week during their three months in Cambridge at Y Combinator.

From their column:

For those unfamiliar with Y Combinator, it can be roughly described as a Venture Capital firm that provides seed funding for startups. However, their obvious corollaries with the traditional venture capital industry end there.

From a first-time founder’s perspective, Y Combinator is exactly the sort of program that provides the means to achieve our ambitions. On top of the seed investment, they also provide many of the intangibles (product advice, connections, ready access to hundreds of potential investors) that first-time entrepreneurs usually lack. In exchange they receive a small percentage of equity from each founding team. For the current three-month session (June to August), 22 teams have converged on the Boston area.

For two Canadian guys from St. Albert, Alberta and Belleville, Ontario who are long on ideas and short on connections, it’s exactly the opportunity we were looking for to take our startup to the next level.

WSJ On Facebook App Ventures

Pretty interesting piece in today’s WSJ by Riva Richmond about successful and unsuccessful Facebook applications. At this point, Zuckerberg and Facebook are the kingpins of the campus entrepreneur space. While Gates, Brin, Dell, Smith, and others have far more money and reach, Zuck/Fbook are as hot as a pistol.

Its amazing how many other businesses have formed and are forming around Facebook. A ‘new’ industry or cluster in the way that the iPod opened incredible opportunity to other firms and to customers. Clusters are huge in economic growth theory (see Porter), but they are usually geographically (and industry) centered.

The facebook and ipod clusters center around a specific product/lifestyle. I will have to think about this a bit and whether and how these types of clusters — distributed clusters if you will — differ from more traditional clusters.

From the piece (which is worth reading and is full of great cases and stats) by Richmond:

In May 2007, Facebook Inc. invited software developers to create free software programs that members of the social-networking site could use to entertain and inform each other.

A year later, it’s time to ask: What has worked and what hasn’t?

There’s plenty to pick from. So far, more than 250,000 developers have requested the Palo Alto, Calif., company’s tools for building such applications. And more than 24,000 programs have been created, allowing Facebook users to send each other virtual hugs, share movie picks and play games, among other things.

Edson Awards More Money — ASU

Just received a news update that the Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative at ASU has awarded another round of seed financing to student entrepreneurs on campus. According to the East Valley Tribune,

Sixteen fledgling businesses operated by Arizona State University students have received a total of $200,000 in grants from the Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative to help them become established.

The student-owned enterprises will receive between $2,000 and $20,000 each in seed capital and will be provided office space at SkySong, ASU’s innovation center at McDowell and Scottsdale roads in Scottsdale.

Nearly 150 student entrepreneurs applied for funding this year. Winners were chosen based on an initial application process and a live presentation to a panel of seven judges.

Congratulations to all the campus entrepreneurs at ASU taking part in the Edson program. What a great resource to be taken advantage of and it appears there are plenty at ASU looking to do just that.

Why don’t more schools offer these types of programs? Any thoughts?