The Domain name matters

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01. Finding a Great Startup Domain Name

02. Choose a Specific Name

03. Tools to use when searching for a domain name

04. Most Brands Stick With .COM

05. Buying a Premium Domain is an Option

Points to consider:

Sounds positive and upbeat- Avoid negative connotations and meanings. Fewer syllables are also better.

Keep it simple – The easier the word is to spell, the better for consumers. Top of mind names are very important when scaling a business.

Choose the right Top-Level-Domain for the brand. What is the intent and growth trajectory of the company? That can help determine the ideal URL for the brand positioning into the future.

Do your research – After you come up with a name, look it up. Do a legal name search. Does it already exist? Is it trademarked? Are there similar companies or brands that currently trade under your intended brand name?

Select the right plan:

Use The Right Domain Name Extensions (.com, .org, .net)

Brandable Over Generic

Short Is Better Than Long

Make Sure It’s Easy To Type

Avoid Hyphens And Numbers

Think Long-Term Over Short-Term

Check If It’s Not Trademarked Or Already Used

Use Domain Name Generators When Stuck

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Building Startup Sales Teams

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01

Don’t hire sales people too early. In the early days, the founders should be able to sell (and should be selling). Yes, yes, I know. You’re an engineer/designer/whatever. You’ve never sold anything. Doesn’t fit your personality. But here you are. Praesent nec tincidunt felis. Vivamus a facilisis nisl.

02

You don’t need sales people, you need sales. Don’t think VP of Sales — think “Revenue Engineer”. (Not the greatest analogy, but just like you won’t hire a development “manager” as one of the first 5 people in a startup, you shouldn’t hire a sales “manager” either — not as your first hire).

03

Don’t hire several sales people at once.  Your goal is to figure out the “pattern” of what kinds of people are best based on what you’re selling and who you’re selling it to.  You need some feedback from the system so you can continue to iterate on your hires.

04

If you’ve never hired or been around sales people before, be prepared for a bit of a shock to the system. They’re not bad people, they’re just different from you, especially if you’re an introverted geek like me. Nulla sit amet augue at justo vestibulum lacinia in vel augue. Vivamus volutpat risus et faucibus convallis. Mauris aliquam quam et mollis dictum.

05

Resist the temptation to create complicated compensation plans. If it requires a spreadsheet with multiple tabs and lookup functions to figure out the commission, it’s too hard. Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to confuse yourself and your sales people later. For now, start simple.

06

Agile methodologies can work in sales as well. Iterate! Refine your demo script, your slides, and any other collateral information. Capture the lessons learned by the best-performing people and spread it to the rest. In the early stages of your company, your story and pitch should be getting better every day.

07

Sales people will generally act in mostly rational (but often surprising) ways based on incentives. The rules of the game defines the behavior of the players. Don’t say you weren’t warned. There is a passing of title (property or ownership) of the item, and the settlement of a price, in which agreement is reached on a price for which transfer of ownership.

08

ALWAYS connect incentives somehow to ultimate customer happiness and success. If you reward just “deals getting done”, you’ll get deals — but at too high a price. You might get push-back that sales people don’t control/influence customer happiness, but they do.

09

Make sure you understand the economics of your business. Figure out your total COCA (Cost of Customer Acquisition). This includes sales people, marketing people and marketing campaigns. Quick example: Let’s say you paid a sales person $10k, a marketing person $10k and you spent $5k on Google AdWords (for a total of $25k) last month.

10

Your life-time-value (how much revenue you expect to generate per customer) should be higher than your COCA. No, I did not need a degree from MIT to figure that out. Once your LTV is a multiple of your COCA, you’re ready to start turning the knob and scaling the business a bit (hiring more sales people). But, if your LTV is way lower than your COCA.

Number aren’t what matter.

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Quality in time

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Pointers to Believe

01. Customer Feedback / Culture Feedback

01. Customer Feedback / Culture Feedback

02. Product Is Never Done / Culture Is Never Done

03. Measure/Analyze Product / Measure/Analyze Culture

04. Clear Product Omissions / Clear Culture Omissions

05. Product Use Cases / Culture Use Cases

06. Product Feature Pruning / Culture Feature Pruning

07. Technology Debt / Culture Debt

08. Product Design / Culture Design

09. Shipping Product / Shipping Culture

10. Product Rewrites / Culture Rewrites

Mistakes are to be learned from

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Not mapping out and getting to know all the stakeholders in a deal. And after the deal

This is a skill you need to learn quickly in the enterprise. The person that contacts you often is just one of many stakeholders in the purchase. Don’t assume whomever you are currently talking to you is the buyer, or even in the end, the decisionmaker. Every deal is at renewal risk if you don’t get to know, and map out, all the key stakeholders.

Not being responsive to every key concern.

I remember my CTO once arguing with a Fortune 500 company on a “security” concern they had which really made no sense. It literally made no sense, and in fact their app did the same thing. But that didn’t matter. They were concerned. That meant we had to be concerned. You can’t do everything. But you can be responsive to every key, top concern.

Not visiting enough customers in person.

I never lost a customer I visited in person. But the ones I didn’t, were the ones that silently churned. Even / often when the usage was high. More here: I Never Lost a Customer I Actually Visited

Not hiring a full-time RFP person

If you are going to do a lot of RFPs, they need an owner. They are too much work to just dump on a product person, success person, sales leader, etc.

Not hiring a full-time Chief Security & Compliance Offer

Hiring a CSO way early if you are truly going enterprise. It just makes the customers so much more comfortable. And then security audits, reviews, etc. go so much faster and easier.

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