The Startup Success Podcast

Corey Maass

This week, Bob and Pat talk with Corey Maass, founder of theBirdy.com, about his startup, his journey to this point, and lessons learned from his earlier startups.

We also delve into the mysteries of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for startups and how to get there, the need to get out of your office, ways of getting user feedback, why desperation is not a strategy, the recent Business of Software Conference, and more.

Tired of being stuck in neutral in your startup? Why not do a MicroConsult with Bob Walsh? Instead of hypotheticals and too much information, Bob will work with you for an hour via Skype developing 8 to 10 specific todos that will get your startup in gear. Details at 47hats.com.

Play it now!

Download Show #124 here: Show #124 Or if you prefer, Subscribe to the podcast in Apple iTunes.

Bob Walsh blogs at 47Hats, is on Twitter at @bobwalsh or you can email him at bob.walsh@47hats.com.

Patrick Foley blogs at PatrickFoley.com, is on Twitter at @patrickfoley or you can email him at patrick.foley@microsoft.com

Relevant Links:

the Birdy.
the Birdy Roadmap.
the Birdy Blog.
Zopim.
Ultra Light Startups.

Mark and Adam

This week, Bob and Pat talk with Mark L. Smith and Adam Wride, founders of DigMyData. If you’re tired of amassing data about your startup instead of acting on it, DigMyData is a web service for you.

With DigMyData you can pull together the data threads of your startup into a meaningful, understandable, actionable picture. We talk with Mark and Adam about how DigMyData works, what it provides, how they came together to launch their startup and more.

And, Pat coins a new term: “Who’s your Peldi?”, after Peldi Guilizzoni, founder and CEO of Balsamiq, makers of Balsamiq Mockups and a key advisor to Mark and Adam.

Special announcements!

1. Pat and Bob will be joining Jason Cohen for Smart Bear 3. Get expert help, enter for valuable prizes and get your software idea validated. Today is the day – October 6 from 1 to 3pm Central Time. Go to Smart Bear 3 to sign up to ask a question or to just listen live.
2. We are in the midst of a major overhaul of the Startup Success Podcast, with a new look to the site, a new logo, transcripts and more on the way. Stay tuned.

Tired of being stuck in neutral in your startup? Why not do a MicroConsult with Bob Walsh? Instead of hypotheticals and too much information, Bob will work with you for an hour via Skype developing 8 to 10 specific todos that will get your startup in gear. Details at 47hats.com.

Play it now!

Download Show #122 here: Show #122 Or if you prefer, Subscribe to the podcast in Apple iTunes.

Bob Walsh blogs at 47Hats, is on Twitter at @bobwalsh or you can email him at bob.walsh@47hats.com.

Patrick Foley blogs at PatrickFoley.com, is on Twitter at @patrickfoley or you can email him at patrick.foley@microsoft.com

Relevant Links:

DigMyData

How Peldi Guilizzoni, of Balsamiq, joined DigMyData as our advisor and how he uses DigMyData to manage his multi-million “startup” from Italy: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/peldi/?p=3666

How Ruben Gamez, of Bidsketch, uses DigMyData to make sense of this web traffic: http://www.bidsketch.com/reviews/better-analytics-digmydata/

How Bob Walsh, of 47Hats and author of “The Web Startup Success Guide”, talks about how having data isn’t enough – you need DigMyData: http://47hats.com/2011/09/you-have-data-what-you-need-is-digmydata/

Marc Köhlbrugge

This week, Bob and Pat talk with Marc Köhlbrugge, founder of Betali.st. Each day, Betali.st features one or more prelaunch startups – It’s the daily news for the early adopter crowd. Marc takes us behind the scenes of Betali.st, talks with us about his two other startups, recommends what to do and not do when it comes time to prelaunch your startup and more.

Special announcements!

1. If you like the show, we’d like your vote at PodcastAwards.com under People’s Choice and Business podcasts!
2. Pat and Bob will be joining Jason Cohen for Smart Bear 3. Get expert help, enter for valuable prizes and get your software idea validated. Mark your calendar – October 6 is the day, go to Smart Bear 3 to pick your preferred time and register.
3. We’ve got a $500 discount on the upcoming Business of Software Conference. Good through September, this is a great conference. Just enter StartUpSuccess11 at Business of Software.

Tired of being stuck in neutral in your startup? Why not do a MicroConsult with Bob Walsh? Instead of hypotheticals and too much information, Bob will work with you for an hour via Skype developing 8 to 10 specific todos that will get your startup in gear. Details at 47hats.com.

Download Show #121 here: Show #121 Or if you prefer, Subscribe to the podcast in Apple iTunes.

Bob Walsh blogs at 47Hats, is on Twitter at @bobwalsh or you can email him at bob.walsh@47hats.com.

Patrick Foley blogs at PatrickFoley.com, is on Twitter at @patrickfoley or you can email him at patrick.foley@microsoft.com

Relevant Links:

BetaList
openmargin
PressDoc
Ben The BodyGuard

Ian Mac Donald

This week, Bob talks with Iain Mac Donald, founder of Skillpages – a million-person social network unlike any other. From one point of view SkillPages is all about turning what you do – and the skills you used to do it – into search engine findable pages and letting people interested in those skills tap their social network for advice on you.

Finding skilled people, recommended by your friends and their friends, is the flip side of SkillPages. People who have skills – and there’s hundreds of thousands of skills – are getting fanned and those pages are moving up in organic search results. Meanwhile, when people click those results, they realize that by joining they can see what their friends recommend.

Iain walks us through how SkillPages gained a million members in less than six months, building a network-effect startup, a Darwinian approach to the consumer Internet, and how he raised the funds that will let SkillPages tackle monetization next year sometime. SkillPages is Iain’s second startup – having sold his first broadband company for a sweet $100 million, and candidly talks about what’s it like the second time around.

I think the best part of the interview was when Iain explained the details of exactly how he executes – and it’s not what you think – and the excellent Irish startup ecosystem. And, Iain gets into the secret sauce behind SkillPages: The Skill Graph Taxonomy and for dessert, how he finds what to invest in.

Tired of being stuck in neutral in your startup? Why not do a MicroConsult with Bob Walsh? Instead of hypotheticals and too much information, Bob will work with you for an hour via Skype developing 8 to 10 specific todos that will get your startup in gear. Details at 47hats.com.

Download Show #120 here: Show #120 Or if you prefer, Subscribe to the podcast in Apple iTunes.

Bob Walsh blogs at 47Hats, is on Twitter at @bobwalsh or you can email him at bob.walsh@47hats.com.

Patrick Foley blogs at PatrickFoley.com, is on Twitter at @patrickfoley or you can email him at patrick.foley@microsoft.com

Relevant Links:

SkillPages
The SkillPages Blog
Link to slides mentioned: http://www.businessinsider.com/mary-meekers-web-2010-11#-15

Joe-Fernandez, CEO of Klout

This week, Bob and Pat talk with Klout CEO and Founder, Joe Fernandez about this highly influential measure of your online reputation and influence.

Highly influential? Yes. As the web increasingly become the place you work, your Klout score is rapidly becoming the metric you will be judge by if part or all of what you do depends on your online reputation, and your ability to influence others.

Think of it as an emerging standard, already accessed and used by over 3,000 companies via their API, not unlike your credit score. Already, people are getting jobs, angel funding, access to opportunities based on their Klout score.

In this interview we get behind the scenes with the founder of Klout. You will not want to miss this show.

Tired of being stuck in neutral in your startup? Why not do a MicroConsult with Bob Walsh? Instead of hypotheticals and too much information, Bob will work with you for an hour via Skype developing 8 to 10 specific todos that will get your startup in gear. Details at 47hats.com.

Download Show #119 here: Show #119 Or if you prefer, Subscribe to the podcast in Apple iTunes.

Bob Walsh blogs at 47Hats, is on Twitter at @bobwalsh or you can email him at bob.walsh@47hats.com.

Patrick Foley blogs at PatrickFoley.com, is on Twitter at @patrickfoley or you can email him at patrick.foley@microsoft.com

Relevant Links:

Klout web site.

Klout blog.

Pitch '11 - September 8th

This week, Bob and Pat talk with Duane Nason, organizer of Pitch ’11, a new huge startup event Sept. 8th at AT&T Park in San Francisco.

Take a hundred-plus startups showing what they’ve got and at least 1,400 attendees. Mix with VC’s and angel investors, a dozen-plus Silicon Valley Startup organizations, geek swag, swank baseball surroundings and garlic fries and beer. That’s Pitch ’11.

We talk with Duane about this event, and why he decided to put on such a huge startup event. Pitch ’11 costs attendees $40 until September 1st; $80 afterwards – and it should be fun. Details at http://www.pitchevent.com.

Not living the startup life in Silicon Valley? Got startup questions you want answers to from someone who knows? Jason Cohen, founder of four companies including Smart Bear and WPEngine, Pat, and I are doing a live call-in Startup Clinic September 1st online at 3:00pm Central Daylight Time (4p EDT / 1p PDT). Sign up at http://bit.ly/rrbDTn.

Tired of being stuck in neutral in your startup? Why not do a MicroConsult with Bob Walsh? Instead of hypotheticals and too much information, Bob will work with you for an hour via Skype developing 8 to 10 specific todos that will get your startup in gear. Details at 47hats.com.

Download Show #118 here: Show #118 Or if you prefer, Subscribe to the podcast in Apple iTunes.

Bob Walsh blogs at 47Hats, is on Twitter at @bobwalsh or you can email him at bob.walsh@47hats.com.

Patrick Foley blogs at PatrickFoley.com, is on Twitter at @patrickfoley or you can email him at patrick.foley@microsoft.com

Relevant Links:

Pitch ’11.
Sign up for the second Smart Bear Live show and startup clinic.

Bjoern Herrmann

This week, Bob and Pat talk with Bjoern Herrmann and Max Marmer of the Startup Genome Project, an ambitious effort to define which factors most indicate success for a startup.

Based on 650 – and now 2,700+ – study responses, there’s some remarkable observations – not hard and fast edicts – to be mulled over.

Here’s one tidbit – defining your startup as B2C or B2B is no longer a useful distinction: a much more useful question is are you building an Automator, Social Transformer, Integrator or Challenger?

Tired of being stuck in neutral in your startup? Why not do a MicroConsult with Bob Walsh? Instead of hypotheticals and too much information, Bob will work with you for an hour via Skype developing 8 to 10 specific todos that will get your startup in gear. Details at 47hats.com.

Download Show #117 here: Show #117 Or if you prefer, Subscribe to the podcast in Apple iTunes.

Bob Walsh blogs at 47Hats, is on Twitter at @bobwalsh or you can email him at bob.walsh@47hats.com.

Patrick Foley blogs at PatrickFoley.com, is on Twitter at @patrickfoley or you can email him at patrick.foley@microsoft.com

Relevant Links:

Hermann’s and Max’s Guest Page.

Get the Project’s first report.
The Startup Genome Project.

Noah Kagan

This week, Bob and Pat talk with Noah Kagan, founder and Chief Sumo at AppSumo.

Noah shares all secrets of the Groupon of web apps for online people: how it works, how they get their great deals, why it works. If you’ve missed AppSumo, you’ve missed out.

Tired of being stuck in neutral in your startup? Why not do a MicroConsult with Bob Walsh? Instead of hypotheticals and too much information, Bob will work with you for an hour via Skype developing 8 to 10 specific todos that will get your startup in gear. Details at 47hats.com.

Download Show #116 here: Show #116 Or if you prefer, Subscribe to the podcast in Apple iTunes.

Bob Walsh blogs at 47Hats, is on Twitter at @bobwalsh or you can email him at bob.walsh@47hats.com.

Patrick Foley blogs at PatrickFoley.com, is on Twitter at @patrickfoley or you can email him at patrick.foley@microsoft.com

Relevant Links:

Noah’s Guest Page is here.

AppSumo.

@appsumo at Twitter.

ProductivityToDo.com

Bob and Pat talk about Bob’s new startup, ProductivityToDo.com, and what it will be when it launches in the next week.

It’s point/counterpoint time as Bob describes and Pat pushes back on what this new more-than-a-blog could, should and will be.

Tired of being stuck in neutral in your startup? Why not do a MicroConsult with Bob Walsh? Instead of hypotheticals and too much information, Bob will work with you for an hour via Skype developing 8 to 10 specific todos that will get your startup in gear. Details at 47hats.com.

Download Show #93 here: Show #115 Or if you prefer, Subscribe to the podcast in Apple iTunes.

Bob Walsh blogs at 47Hats, is on Twitter at http://twitter.com/bobwalsh or you can email him at bob.walsh@47hats.com.

Patrick Foley blogs at PatrickFoley.com, is on Twitter at http://twitter.com/patrickfoley or you can email him at patrick.foley@microsoft.com

URLs mentioned/relevant to this show:

• ProductivityToDo.com