This is the fourth article in a continuing monthly series chronicling the growth path of Screenreach Interactive, a startup based in Newcastle upon Tyne in England’s North East. Screenreach’s flagship product, 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 Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
In our last post, we looked at Screenreach Interactive’s recent inroads in the radio and television industries, including its appearance on Popular U.K. television program The Gadget Show at Radio Festival, Europe’s top radio industry event, and its new “experience” for long-running U.K. current affairs program Dispatches.
But making a splash at major industry events and with high profile clients demands one thing – a compelling product. But a compelling product can’t be developed in a vacuum; it must address a clear market demand. As we have emphasized time and again on this blog, marketing and product development must work together from the get go. To quote guest commentator Ronald Weissman, “Great companies constantly test the market, for validation and feedback.”
The team at Screenreach has taken this to heart. With a new version of the Screach app expected to launch in February, every effort is being made to solicit input from beta testers and prospective users. In this post, we’ll look at how Screenreach approaches the beta testing process, what third-party tools it has found to make life easier and the lessons it continues to learn along the way.
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By Francis Moran
It is an article of faith that startups need funding.
For most, that means chasing external investors, whether they be friends and fools, angels or venture capitalists. Any CEO who has gone this route knows it can be an almost all-consuming task that gobbles up an inordinate share of that most restricted of resources, time. The biggest risk, besides failing to secure the necessary dollars, is that focus on the most critical objective of a new startup, developing and bringing to market an actual product, can take a back seat whilst the funding search is so fully engaged.
Too many startups fail to realise that there could well be another horse in the race to secure the money necessary to fund a new venture, a horse that is often running neck and neck with potential investors and that could, with a little judicious jockeying, beat the field to be the first past the funding post.
That horse is called your first customers and I am always amazed that so little attention is paid to this option.
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By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
It’s fairly safe to say that I struck a loud chord with my post of a few weeks ago that took Ottawa’s major economic development agency to task for preferring cheerleading from the sidelines to playmaking that would actually move the ball down the field. It wasn’t quite the best-read post of all time; it ran on American Thanksgiving, a day that saw our blog lose most of our south-of-the-border readers who typically account for about one-third of our daily visitors. But it did garner one of the highest PostRank scores of all time, a yardstick that measures levels of engagement — comments, tweets and the like — around posts. With the exception of comments from the new OCRI CEO and from the head of OCRI’s marketing agency of record — neither of whom is exactly what you might call a dispassionate observer — every comment, tweet and other reaction I received applauded my characterisation and concurred with it. Some went even further with my analogy, with, for example, one widely involved local angel investor telling me yesterday that far from simply standing on the sidelines cheering, OCRI has often stepped onto the field to take the ball away and out of play from entrepreneurs and others who are trying to score real goals for the technology sector in this community.
In a long telephone chat the day after my post ran, new OCRI CEO Bruce Lazenby didn’t argue with much of what I had written. Indeed, he told me, in the two weeks between the time he knew he was taking on the job and the time it was publicly announced, he conducted what he called some “mystery shopping,” asking people far and wide in the community what they thought of OCRI. “You must have been just appalled by what you heard,” I said, and he didn’t disagree. Nor did he disagree with my statement that OCRI was “a terribly tarnished brand.”
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This is the first article in a continuing monthly series that will chronicle the growth path of NanoScale Corporation, a growing nanotechnology company based in Manhattan, KS that is commercializing various advanced materials and compounds for improving indoor air quality, removing pollutants, and containing and neutralizing hazardous chemicals.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
When trying to sell a new and innovative product, and a premium one at that, into a somewhat conservative market, there is often no greater competition than the status quo.
The team at NanoScale Corporation knows this all too well. After years developing its intellectual property into a range of products for the defence, police and hazmat markets, NanoScale has focused its efforts around expanding in the civilian disaster restoration market. Here, restoration professionals work to repair, remediate and decontaminate commercial and residential properties damaged by fire, storms, water, sewer backups and mould. In North America alone, this market is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. It is a steady market sheltered from general economic volatility given that disasters and accidents happen all the time and the cost of restoration is typically covered by an insurer.
While NanoScale has made inroads into this market in recent years, it remains challenged to overcome the status quo and the reluctance of its potential customers to embrace new products and technologies quite unlike what they are accustomed to.
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Thank you for being with us for the 10th month of our blog. In case you missed them, here is a recap of our posts from November.
Moving forward with our two new series, Technology Marketing 101, and A Startup’s Story, we introduced a new startup, Teamly, and explored how it is managing to drive steady organic growth on a shoestring, and shared Screenreach’s recent adventures in radio and television.
Beyond our series, we offered best practices on how small business can work with government and universities to bring technology to market, explained what makes a good PR person and also what makes a great entrepreneur. We discussed the prior art wall and its impact on patent coverage, the importance of creating a well-researched, well-funded and coherent marketing strategy and sticking to it, as well as the benefits and determents of Google Plus brand pages. Of course, this list of posts merely scratches the surface of all that was covered over the course of the month. You’ll have to read them for yourselves by clicking the links below. And, as always, we welcome your feedback.
November 7: Breaching academia’s ivory towers by Jason Flick
November 10: Driving steady organic growth on a shoestring by Francis Moran & Leo Valiquette
November 14: What an IP coordinator should know: The prior art wall by David French
November 18: Making waves in radio and television by Francis Moran & Leo Valiquette
November 21: Taking the higher ground: from product to leadership positioning by Ronald Weissman
November 23: The layman’s guide for bringing technology to market by Francis Moran & Leo Valiquette
November 28: Beware the million-dollar cheque! by Peter Hanschke
And on a related note…
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By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
