This is the 12th article in a continuing series chronicling the growth path of Screach, a startup based in Newcastle upon Tyne in England’s North East. Screach is an interactive digital media platform that allows users to create real-time, two-way interactive experiences between a smart device (through the Screach app) and any content, on any screen or just within the mobile device itself. We invite your feedback.
By John Hill and Leo Valiquette
Investment. It’s big news in the startup world. Sites such as TechCrunch and The Next Web are full of stories about how much a company has raised and what it wants to do with it. But if you’re set on putting together a round for your business, you’ve got to think about more than just passing around the tin.
There are mountains of articles out there about what investors are looking for, and how to have those conversations, so have a look around and get an idea of how to go about it the right way.
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By Leo Valiquette
March break aside, we kept up the pace last month with a great lineup of content that featured some excellent posts from our guest bloggers. Hot topics included opportunities in the global smart TV market, criteria for hiring a worthy writer and the risks and rewards of having a product that is truly unique in the marketplace.
In case you missed any of it, here is a handy recap of our posts, as ranked by the enthusiasm of our readers:
March 20: Calling Canada’s startups: There’s a $200B TV market ripe for the taking, by Jason Flick
March 19: Is that writer worth the cost of the ink?, by Leo Valiquette
March 26: The ballad of the undifferentiated product, by Francis Moran
March 27: The ‘Accelerator Bubble’ will pop, but not for the reason you think it will, by Jesse Rodgers
March 25: Three (not so) simple strategies to avoid ‘losing the plot’ in marketing, by Rob Woyzbun
March 07: Oracles, shamans and storytellers, by Bob Bailly
March 13: It’s still rock and roll to me, by Francis Moran
March 21: Best of: My three buckets of customer segmentation, by Francis Moran
March 06: You can’t rely on the channel to grow sales in new markets, by Jeff Campbell
March 11: Drafting your own patent disclosure document, by David French
March 12: Don’t give your customers reasons to ask for apologies, by Leo Valiquette
March 18: Some dos and don’ts of governance, by Denzil Doyle
March 14: Before you jump on the content-marketing bandwagon …, by Leo Valiquette
March 05: From courting Hollywood’s A-list to navigating the Chinese New Year, by Leo Valiquette and John Hill
Image: March2013CalendarPrintable.com
By Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Marketing Tech Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, Ventureburn and StartupNorth.
Better ingredients. Better pizza. Better social strategy
Pizza Hut misses an opportunity to address its customer complaints using social media and as a result, puts a bad taste in Douglas Karr’s mouth. This short case study compares two companies, Pizza Hut and Papa John’s, and illustrates why one succeeds over the other.
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By Jesse Rodgers
The incubator/accelerator market has a growing number of people watching and waiting for its bubble to pop. The reasons cited for this looming pop should be obvious: most accelerators aren’t going to perform as well as some TechStars programs and not even close to Y Combinator. Poor performance (measured in the number of short-term wins) along with the short-term nature of the funding behind most of the accelerator programs will cause them to run out of money and simply fade into startup history.
But that won’t pop the bubble.
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By Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Version One Ventures, Ventureburn, MarketingProfs, Techvibes and SmartBlog on Social Media.
Does your product pass the toothbrush test?
Are the products you are building important enough that people will use them at least twice a day? Boris Wertz of Version One Ventures uses the toothbrush as a metaphor for user engagement. He states that “High repeat usage = large potential business.”
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