What are the lead indicators of someone like that? What kind of behaviors do you look for in a person?

The reason is that it also sounds like most people are not understanding what is going on around them in such a way that they are willing to pound the pavement nor use data creatively. Hope this helps.

Would love to hear thoughts on how to work partnerships with the big fish ISPs/etc. — I've never played that game before.

FWIW, in setting up small channel partnerships for two startups, I found about a 1/10 hit rate (i.e. for every 10 good leads, several could get through the partnership process, but only one of them actually had the capability to sell). I've heard others tell me this is there experience as well.

What are the lead indicators of someone like that? What kind of behaviors do you look for in a person?

The reason is that it also sounds like most people are not understanding what is going on around them in such a way that they are willing to pound the pavement nor use data creatively. Hope this helps.

Would love to hear thoughts on how to work partnerships with the big fish ISPs/etc. — I've never played that game before.

FWIW, in setting up small channel partnerships for two startups, I found about a 1/10 hit rate (i.e. for every 10 good leads, several could get through the partnership process, but only one of them actually had the capability to sell). I've heard others tell me this is there experience as well.

I think many startups make the mistake of trying to directly market themselves rather than market the interesting problem they are trying to solve (which, oh-by-the-way, is hopefully solved better by them than anyone else). It's just very hard to get the press and the public interested in some new technology or website devoid of a more interesting & broad context. But to the extent a company's product or service can uniquely and credibly support fun or interesting insights, then you may be on to something.

Their current troubles (and $100MM marketing campaign aside), I can remember even 8+ years ago when major news outlets would quote “popular searches on Yahoo!” as an insight to current trends. The SiteAdvisor research studies we published were based on a similar strategy.

In an era where you have air guitar concerts, there is definitely a market for any web product. But finding, pitching and convincing your customers to open up Wallet is whole other problem.

A simple way to test traction is to create landing pages and tailor the content for different groups. Good example is Listerine changing its pitch from “Surgical antiseptic to Floor cleaner to finally Solution against Halitosis”. That's when they found success. Same product, different message.

This was, perhaps, the most profound sentence in this entire post (or, well, in the comments).

Internally at our company, for years we've debated about how exactly we should be differentiating ourselves. I've always wondered about that. Even for a services company, that's probably secondary. What we “merely” need to do is solve the problem of indifference, raise awareness of our existence, and educate our potential market about what we do (our value).

This really comes back to an abundance vs. scarcity mentality. If there is plenty of business to go around, then business development becomes more an issue of awareness than differentiation.

Wow! I re-read that line a few times. I now think it should go straight into gems-of-wisdom-for-entrepreneurs

Your choice of words and phrasing will come in handy for me. I am a tech guy [read: programmer] with little marketing vocabulary

Since long, I've been trying to say something similar to entrepreneurs who worry way too much about competition and differentiation while building a product. Functionality and aesthetics are the inherent qualities of a product that help it really succeed. Differentiation, marketing & sales strategies are accidental, even if very important. (I use the terms inherent & accident as used by F.P.Brooks in his seminal paper on software complexity – “No Silver Bullet”).

If entrepreneurs spend too much time and energy on the accidental aspects while their product/service is still under development in the labs, chances are that they over-react to each new information about a competitor-feature / differentiating-feature and end up creating products that have a bit of every functionality / feature out there, but none of which is compelling.

[aside-and-on-a-total-tangent: I am still waiting to see that scanned copy of the letter from Alan Kay May be just a twitpic? ]

I tend to think people radically overestimate the risk of competitive startups. Startups are mostly competing against indifference/lack of awareness/lack of understanding, not each other.

Your post came in when I just finished reading Duncan Brown (Infuse)'s short but insightful post on influencer marketing and differentiation (or the lack of it).

http://blogs.influencer50.com/infuse/2009/09/30…

I quote Brown: “Isn’t it ironic that marketing people demonstrate a continued lack of creativity?”

Curious: When faced with questions about Hunch's differentiation in the market, say in comparison to other recommendation services such as Jinni and TasteKid, how do you react? I find it a bit disconcerting when people ask market/business related questions just for the sake of asking them, without actually using the competing products / services.

In this new age social web2.0 world, understanding one's market as well as the ability to influence it (at least to the extent that the market tries out your product/service, for _free_) is a fascinating exercise.