If I Were Running That Company…

Posted on June 11, 2006
Filed Under Uncategorized |

I am always reluctant to criticize a company or the people behind it for the simple reason that being an entrepreneur is akin to walking the highwire without a net and nobody in that situation needs people throwing rocks at them. Entrepreneurs are the backbone of Silicon Valley and deserve respect, but having said that, there are occasions when I run across a company and wonder what the hell they are thinking and in the event they have investors behind them I wonder what the hell they were thinking before they invested and why they aren’t fixing the obvious problems after the fact.

Yesterday I was at the Techdirt Greenhouse event and saw a pitch from Renkoo, which I would describe as a group scheduling service. They called it personal relationship management but I have no idea what that means and they really did not offer any compelling explanation beyond scheduling negotiation so I’m sticking with scheduling.

After listening to the pitch the first thing I thought was that they should not think about what pain points they are solving but rather what business they are in to begin with. Scheduling is a feature set, while group forming and providing context within peoples lives is more likely the business they are in. Once you get over that hurdle it’s important to ask what market slices you are going after and why they should care about what you do… in fact, the first question any venture investor should ask of a company after the pitch is “why should I care” and every entrepreneur should be able to answer that question in 30 seconds or less.

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The market demographics are critically important today because of the generational shift that we are seeing right now. For Renkoo this is a very important issue because insofar as “personal relationship management” is concerned, if your target audience is under 25 they have already solved that problem with MySpace, Facebook, and other services that are the equivalent of public e-mail. For anyone under 30 the other important dynamic is that social circles are large and loosely coupled, while for those over 30 social circles tend to reduce in size and complexity and pivot around personal and professional axis’s which are typically exclusive of one another and have unique communication protocols. The point is, you can’t go to market with a service that relies on communication technologies (e.g. SMS) and protocols for the under 30 market to people over 30 and vice versa.

Speaking of technology, there are numerous innovations occurring in geo-tagging and “edge proficiencies” that just weren’t even mentioned in the Renkoo pitch. In our discussion group we talked about what Dodgeball and Meetro have, as well as a “Edgeio for social networks” concept whereby the service would figure out that I am in NYC next Mon-Wed and have a private dinner scheduled on Tuesday but am largely open on Mon for dinner and wednesday for breakfast, and subsequently initiate whatever communication protocol for the social circles I designate to look for “meet-up” opportunities.

Speaking of competing services, there must be 25 event and group scheduling services available right now… does the world need another? If the team behind Renkoo thinks we do then they should start out their pitch telling me why because that is the proverbial elephant in the room whenever a new service in a crowded market appears. Closely correlated to this is the topic of who pays for the service because in a world of free I’m not likely to shell out my hard earned dollars for something that doesn’t offer a significant “wow” factor. The economic model is obviously meaningful but far too many companies today are content to figure it out later while others, like Zvents, have thought about it upfront and built a service that backs into the economic model that they are targeting.

As always, I reserve the right to be wrong about Renkoo and I’m the first person to acknowledge that I totally miss a lot of these opportunities (e.g. the entire ringtone business!). Bu I am right on occasion and I don’t believe I am off base in suggesting that this whole Web 2.0 thing is getting to the point of being grown up enough that these services need to answer the questions I put forward and do it early because not only will investors be a lot less forgiving but so will the marketplace. Silicon Valley is a great big echo chamber, you have to get beyond what your friends in the business think is cool.

Lastly, Renkoo could in fact have some secret sauce that didn’t come across because the demo didn’t work. Folks, we are largely forgiving of live demo failures but that doesn’t excuse them completely. First impressions are everything and there is no excuse for not testing out a demo in the environment you will be giving it in before you give it live. For short demos, like what we had yesterday, don’t delve into technical or feature aspects because that just doesn’t matter, what these demos should do is tell a story around the experience of “someone like me” and that story needs to be convincing.

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