Allan Chao Startup Consultant Startup V8 allan@startupv8.com UC Berkeley Extension, Summer 2012

Question of the day:

What do you need for an idea to be a viable business?

The Agenda Quiz

Quick review of last session

4 topics today…

Website Introduction

CMS Tools

Market Research

The process of building a website

Team hands-on time!

Quiz Time

Good luck!

10 minutes max

Quick review of prior material Pitch

Elevator Pitch

Components

Focus is critical

Angel Investors

Investor’s fund

Investor’s point of view

Pitch deck (details at right)

Naming Tools

USPTO, domain, Secretary of State

namecheck.com

CrunchBase

Dropbox

Pitch Deck

Cover

Mission / Vision

Summary

Team

Problem

Solution / Demo

Technology

Marketing

Business Model

Competition

Milestones / financial forecast

Conclusion

Components to a Website Domain Registration

$10/year = the data record of who owns what virtual

property

Email (free with google apps) = what happens to an email to me@anything.com

Web Hosting varies greatly, $10-$2,000/month = actual physical server cost, with hard drives,

networking, and electricity

Web code code is free, engineers cost $$$ = the HTML, PHP, or anything else that happens

when the website is accessed by a visitor

Domain Registration www.________.com

Getting the ownership of virtual property

A lot like owning real land. Once you own it, you can build on it, sell it, or anything.

Generally very cheap, $10-20/year per domain

Registrars: Namecheap.com

Godaddy

Use a dedicated registrar, not a “secondary” reseller

Buying already-registered Domains Domains that are already registered

Legitimate reasons Domainers (domain name speculation) Cyber Squatters (typos, near existing brand names)

Depending on the name, cost can widely vary Usually at least $1,000, up to millions Private sale (sometimes through broker) Auctions: SEDO, Godaddy

Entertaining website that is not accurate at all: http://www.valueis.com Why? Because it’s the brand.

Pro tips for domains Top Level Domains

.com, .org, .net The rest only get for branding protection

Some companies/products are named for the domain del.icio.us , task.ly , bit.ly , fold.it , chronolo.gy , my.betali.st Domain hacks better for tech-savvy crowd, not for mainstream

For startups, register domains for 1 year Startups tend to die or change their names, so no reason to register

for longer

Get the privacy add-on to avoid junk mail and scams.

Lots of scams out there! Be very careful with your domain.

DNS = Domain Name System Foundation of how the internet works

Technically, converts www.______.com 135.57.249.152

Commonly called the “internet phone book / address book”

Frequently part of your registrar, you can tell it what to do with the domain for various instructions

http://_____.com

http://www._____.com

http://somethingelse._____.com

Email to ____@_____.com

Google Apps Free* and Awesome!

* free for small accounts, like startups.

Better than the alternatives

Lots of great collaboration tools

Email

Calendar

Documents

Chat

Moderately-easy setup (requires DNS changes)

What about the website? Must set up DNS

Point to someone else’s server We will do this for the market research phase

pointing to other web apps (launchrock or CMS)

Point to our own server (must buy hosting) A CMS like Wordpress or Joomla running on our server

Or, our own custom code (web application)

We will do this in a few sessions

What are CMS? Content Management System

Modify a website without programming

Generally built for non-techies, but even techies use them

Easy to install, easy to update, easy to manage

Examples

PHP-based: Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, CakePHP

.NET-based: DotNetNuke, Umbraco

Proprietary: Wix, Weebly, SquareSpace, Moonfruit

Many, many, many more

Pros and Cons of CMS Pros

Easy to install

Easy to update

Easy to manage

Requires minimal programming or engineering effort

Cons Limited by feature-set of the

chosen platform

Platform change cost is very high

Not a good foundation for a custom web application

A lot of things “out of your control”

The Bottom Line:

Sometimes, use a CMS to start, but plan to start over later.

Launch Page Send people to it while the “real site” is in development

Real website will take lots of time to build

Launch page gives some info, gets them interested

Collect email addresses for a mailing list Contact them as you progress.

Do a “hot” launch, not a “cold” launch

Assess business opportunity Run advertising to see marketing costs (CPC, CPA)

Analytics on visitor data

Launch Page: (a.k.a. Coming Soon)

http://sixrevisions.com/design-showcase-inspiration/25-beautiful-examples-of-coming-soon-pages/ , http://launchsoon.com/gallery.php

Building a Launch Page Use an online Launch Page builder.

You will replace it later, anyway. Consider it temporary.

May have a small cost. Consider it a “bridge” cost.

Will need to set DNS records to point the domain to the host

Online Tools that build Launch Pages LaunchRock

Kickoff Labs

Unbounce

MyBeta List

Wordpress theme: Launch Effect

Wordpress Platform Much more robust than a simple launch page…

Lots of very useful features Lots of customization

Can run a whole business website Many small business websites are running on Wordpress It’s my tool of choice for small business websites

Can even be customized at the programming level Extensible to be like a custom web application Very simple custom web applications can use a wordpress

foundation.

What is Wordpress? Wordpress.ORG

A free, open-source platform. Managed and improved by the goodwill of many programmers around the world.

Built for all (simple) websites, NOT just blogs.

Easy to use, but requires installation

Wordpress.COM A company (for profit) that makes it simpler to get

started with wordpress.

Free to start, but charges for “add-ons”

Can be limiting, and doesn’t have the full flexibility of Wordpress.ORG

Wordpress.com Step 1 - home

Wordpress.com Step 2 - signup

Wordpress.com Step 3 – theme

Wordpress.com Step 4 – dashboard

Wordpress.com Step 5 – editing

Wordpress.com Step 6 – site is live

CMS vs Custom Application CMS

Easier, faster, cheaper

No technical skills

Limited by platform

Custom Application

Harder, slower, costlier

Lots of technical skills

Unlimited… dream big!

Our strategy: use a CMS to put something together quickly, as a placeholder, while we develop our main web application

Our Goals Is this a viable business

opportunity?

What is the market interest in this product?

Who are the competitors?

Who are the ones we need to be most concerned about?

Who are our users/customers?

Do some customer development!!

Google SERP SERP = search engine result page

Just do Google searches for related keywords… see what comes up

Which ones are direct competitors?

Which ones are niche focused?

Which ones are unrelated?

Google Insights and Google Trends

Google Analytics The purpose is to

understand who your visitors are

Where are they coming from?

What are they looking for?

What are the trends?

Requires minimal setup

Complex tool with lots of data

Learn it during the marketing pilot, then use it for the real product.

Google Adwords The purpose is to understand what kind of advertising works best

What keywords are best?

What ads work best?

What is your conversion rate?

How much does a user cost?

Costs money to run set a budget before starting

Requires significant setup

Complex tool with lots of data

Learn it during the marketing pilot, then use it for the real product.

In-Person Market Research Run focus groups

Ask them lots of questions

Have them take surveys

Do interviews with potential customers

Use your existing relationships

Reach out to new people

When to stop? It’s a judgment call, stop when you feel comfortable.

Perfect results don’t guarantee a successful product

Yet, a product can still succeed despite terrible results

Before we begin… Building a “web startup website” is very different from

building a “small business website” Just like starting a “web startup” is very different from starting

a “small business” – remember last session?

By a factor of at least 100… Much more difficult

Much more expensive

Much more time consuming

You get what you put into it (money, time, effort)

Why so different? When you build a web application, you’re actually

building something completely new that’s never been done before.

When you build a small business website, you’re actually just using someone else’s web application

All the small business website builders are web startups Wordpress.com

Wix

Weebly

SquareSpace

Moonfruit

If you use that, you are just a customer “user” to their startup.

Software Product Development

Creating the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Functional Requirements

Wireframes

Graphic Design

Code

Content (Copywriting, Social Media accounts, analytics, etc.)

Deploy (aka Release)

Functional Requirements Questions to answer

What customer problem does this product solve?

What are the customer use cases?

How will the customer use this product to solve his problem?

How will the product make money?

Sitemap

Wireframes

Graphic Design

Content Every single screen… text, images, videos

Instructions to the user

Search-Engine-friendly URLs and content Long tail keywords

Content Uniqueness

Any emails that are sent?

Blog posts?

PR releases?

Social network accounts (Facebook, Twitter)?

Analytics tools

Code HTML, CSS, Javascript, Jquery, Node.js, Django,

python, Ruby on Rails, PHP, .NET, Java, ….

Traditional Software Development

Agile Software Development Start Small

Minimum Viable Product

Iterate quickly

Track user data

Flexible software

Release frequently

Cycle weekly or every two weeks

Homework (In Teams) Register the domain

I recommend namecheap. A different registrar is OK if you already use a registrar. Set up Google Apps (for the email and calendar)

Set up Launch Page I recommend LaunchRock. Using a different launch tool is OK, but may be more time

consuming. Get it the launch page running live, and test it

Market Research

Investigate the Google SERPs for related keywords Set up Google Analytics, optionally Google Adwords Spread the word about your new startup and send people to your launch page

Begin the Design Write out the functional requirements Design a sitemap

Don’t forget… Work on the pitch deck as much as possible with your team.