Pollenizer: Building and Investing In Australian Web Startups » Pierre Sauvignon

Landing page: Learn from the spammers…

Pierre Sauvignon — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:26:43 +0000

There is quite a lot to learn from spammers when it comes to landing pages.
Check this one out: http://paleorecipebook.com/

The structure goes as follows:
#1 Hook
#2 Value (bullet points)
#3 More value (details)
#4 WOW! BONUS!
#5 OMG! More bonuses.
#6 Did I mention bonuses?
#7 Reviews
#8 More reviews. All these ppl can’t be wrong right?
#9 Buy button
#10 Security
#11 Buy button again

Notes:
- They don’t bother wasting precious below-the-fold space with the buy button.
- Content is king. Lots of work writing it all.
- Show the value. Be clever on how you articulate the value (top it off with “Bonuses”).

Bonus! (ha!)
Read this post by Fred Wilson on what made the Code Year landing page successful.

Bonus 2
You can let us know what you think about this for FREE! Using our powerful comment system below.

Definitions: Done and Ready

Pierre Sauvignon — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 03:45:16 +0000

At any point in time there are at least 6 web businesses being incepted, tested, built or grown within our walls.
That is:
- 6 backlogs
- Dozens of tasks created daily
- Dozens of tasks closed daily

When a task is created, how do we know that it is ready to be put in a sprint?
By defining what “ready” means to us!

Definition of Ready

The same applies to “Done”. When someone says that a task is “done” we know it means that the task matches our definition of “Done”:

Definition of Done

To illustrate all these points we’ve done (ha!) a “hello world” use case. You can find the PDF here.

How to find a good domain name

Pierre Sauvignon — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 04:11:53 +0000

Hi! My name is Pierre, and I’m a domain junky.
I own close to a hundred domain names and I haven’t bought one in over a week!
*cue for clapping*

Finding a good domain name is a real challenge. You’ll need a lot of creative juice to come up with something that domain squatters haven’t put their hands on… yet!
So challenging it is, but not impossible. Here are some tips on the process I follow:

1. Lexical fields
Start your process by identifying a dozen keywords that identify to your product.
I suggest using a good thesaurus (like this one).
Alternatively, if you can’t find relevant keywords you can use a name generator tool. There are plenty of them, my favourite is Wordoid.

2. Keywords mashing
Throw your keywords into a domain making tool (I use Panabee) and see what comes out. You might get lucky on a .com but most likely this will send you down a path that you didn’t think of.
Make sure you also run your keywords into keywords mashing tools such as BustaName.

3. Creative juice
If you find yourself in a crowded space (all your keywords are already used and abused), my favourite tool to get the creative juice flowing is Domize. Make sure you use the advanced functions that will let you enter multiple lists in a query. For example, type [red,blue,green][light,lamp] to search for redlight, redlamp, bluelight… etc. It’s awesome!

4. Repeat the process until magic happens
As you go on you’ll come up with new keywords that you can look up in the thesaurus and run by Panabee and Domize.

5. The shortlist
By now you should have a shortlist of available relevant domains. The next step before buying them is to check that you’re not setting yourself up for trouble down the track (trademarks, social squatters etc.).
So the obvious first thing to do is a Google search for your domain. See what comes up (a competitor you didn’t know of? Some hidden meaning you were not aware of?).
Next make sure you check twitter for availability. Twitter is an important part of most businesses so making sure that your – candidate – brand name is available on twitter is a must do. Netflix learned it the hard way.

6. Buy it now!
Don’t wait too long once you’ve found the domain of your dream. Nothing worse than seeing it being snapped away by someone else… so don’t wait and spend the bucks! I recommend using Gandi or GoDaddy. For .com.au we use CrazyDomains.

## Generic rules

Focus on the right extensions

.com
Finding a catchy .com has become very challenging but well worth the trouble as it is the default extension for most internet users. If you manage to get them to remember your brand name it is very likely that they will type it with a .com at the end.

.co
Increasingly popular and won’t be an issue if your are targeting a fairly geeky / nerdy market :) Don’t expect “normal” people to type it right though. The cherry on the cake it that it will save you a letter on Twitter :)
Examples: t.co, angel.co, pygg.co etc.

Ignore all other extensions unless you can have them as part of your brand name. ie. youtu.be, pitch.it, about.me, with.me etc.

Beware of dodgy domain name services

Stick to the big players (GoDaddy, Gandi).
DO NOT check domain availability on more obscure domain providers. Some of them have dodgy processes in place where they monitor the domain searches and automatically buy the domain you are searching for and re-sale it back to you at a premium…

If your product is good it will work regardless of its domain name

Finally keep in mind that a great domain name can be a powerful asset but you shouldn’t invest too much energy in hunting down THE perfect domain for your product. Your time and money would certainly be better spent at actually building your product rather than naming it :)

## The tools

Here are the tools that I use when in need for a domain hit:

https://domize.com/
+ The search speed
+ Very cool advanced commands

http://www.panabee.com/
+ Apple app store name checking
+ Creative name mixing
+ Shows you translations

http://wordoid.com/
+ Generates natural sounding names

http://www.bustaname.com/
+ Clever prefix and suffix
+ Includes synonyms

http://thesaurus.com/
+ The visual thesaurus is a great way to discover other lexical fields
+ Definition and synonyms all in one place

http://www.gandi.net/
+ A tad pricey but top notch service
+ Reliable and trustworthy

http://www.godaddy.com/
+ Cheap and dirty

http://www.crazydomains.com.au/
+ Cheap .com.au
+ Local company (Surry Hills)

Don’t fake focus!

Pierre Sauvignon — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 04:53:14 +0000

I was recently travelling in Europe and as I was waiting for my Nice to Dubai flight to board I noticed the following billboard ad:

Thoughts in my mind went as follow:

1. I wish I was the target audience ;)
2. What a great focus!
3. Wait a minute…
4. lol, @mick would love that!
5. This is a great location for such ads. This gate is pretty much solely used for Nice > Dubai flights. Meaning that when rich Dubai business men and other royal holiday makers are travelling back from Monaco, Cannes and the French Riviera in general this is where they have to sit and wait for Emirates to start boarding :)

So I think the learning here is that focus shouldn’t be faked. But if you do fake it, try to be subtle about it :p

It will go viral

Pierre Sauvignon — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 03:22:07 +0000

Photo by Daniel Broche - Click to view original on Flickr

The Pollenizer team is constantly exposed to a flux of new entrepreneurs with web-businesses ideas. This stream comes to us either via our Bootcamp sessions, Pitches rounds, Investors network or more broadly via the various social media tools our antennae can reach.

This is awesome!

Seeing so much entrepreneurial energy in the Australian web industry is one of the best thing we could all wish for. This energy is fueling us everyday to build more great web products and hopefully shape tomorrow’s web landscape.

However we, too often, hear the same ~~sad~~ stories.

Extracts:

My idea is simply Facebook but better

No it’s not.

You’ll need to sign an NDA first and then I’ll tell you about my idea

No we won’t sign your NDA.

I want to patent my idea

Really? Nothing better to spend your money on?

My project will succeed because it’s highly viral!

Ha ha ha!

My target market is pretty much everybody on the planet. They’ll all love it and pay money for it!

Bye now…

Etc. etc…

This might sound harsh to some but this is the true reality. The quicker entrepreneurs can overcome this secretive / overly optimistic cliche, the quicker they will actually start to walk on the road of success (I love metaphors… ;).

All this was admirably summarized in this hilarious video from James Yu – Check it out!

Let us know in the comments if you think ~~I should be a vegetarian~~ this is the right way to look at it :)

Best Job Application Ever :)

Pierre Sauvignon — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:12:50 +0000

Sometime ago I wrote a blog post advertising a Project/Product manager position open at Pollenizer. I received a flood of applications, some good ones, some bad ones as you can expect. Today I received a nice email from James Goldie with this video attached:

Now that’s what I’m talking about! Needless to say that we are now all looking forward to meet James :)
…and I might just watch it one more time :)

Easy measures to cope with extraordinary traffic surge

Pierre Sauvignon — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 05:06:02 +0000

Photo Credits: BenJTsunami – See original here.

From time to time one of our portfolio companies gets to be featured on a prime time TV show (A Current Affair, Today Tonight…). This has obvious benefits for the business in terms of publicity, but it comes at a price for the poor servers that have to serve millions of requests in a very very short time frame.

In that context you can assume that your site WILL go down at some point (unless you’ve spend big bucks to build a very solid infrastructure which IMO would be a mistake in the agile startup context). So in this post I will list easy simple measures that you can take to make sure that when your site gives up, it does it in the nicest possible way for your business :)

Let me first detail the actual impact that coverage like this has on a website:
In the next 30 sec following the first mention of the site’s name, traffic will start flooding in. We are talking 3-5000 new visitors per… second. And that’s the whole challenge!

A traditional traffic increase coming from a mention on a popular blog, social news site or newspaper (Techcrunch, Digg, SMH…) brings you lots of traffic but does it quite gently. By that I mean that new visitors will come gradually across a couple of hours or even days and this is easily explainable by the fact that not everyone gets to click on your site’s link at the same time since readers would become aware of the story at a different time (as they read through their RSS feed, browse the blog, read the newspaper at the local cafe and then come back to their computer and enter the link).

On TV it’s a different story. When a show with an audience greater than 1 million drops your site’s name you get instant massive traffic as a large part of the show’s audience (the ones watching TV with a laptop on their laps raise your hand ;)) decide to have a look at your site in a very short time frame (under a minute really…).

See illustration attempt on this award winning piece:

Before the storm:

- Get your 503 page ready: Make a nice but simple error page (inline css, no images etc… ideally it should only take 1 request for your server to display this page). Explain to your visitors what’s happening and tell them what to do next (no dead end).
Example:
Have a simple form where they can leave their email address (outsource that to Wufoo for example so that your database doesn’t die while recording 100.000 email addresses…).
Have links to your Twitter and Facebook pages where visitors can follow you etc. That will give them something to look at and a way for you to get back to them. So redirect traffic to friendly places (Twitter, Facebook) that have the infrastructure to deal with the traffic.

- Have a landing page: To ease the load on your servers prepare a static landing page in the same spirit as the error page. The idea is to spare your database and servers as much as possible. Greet your visitors and direct them to what has the most value to your business (if it’s sales then direct them to featured products, if it’s membership then collect their email address, if it’s downloads for your iphone app then give them the direct link to itunes straight away, etc. What’s important there is to go to the point, successfully convert their visit and… get rid of them! Next! ;)).

- Don’t do last minute changes / tweaks. If minutes before the program starts you decide to upgrade the database well… you are minutes from a disaster :)

- Have your whole team on standby: Often the large audience shows are on outside of the regular office hours (that’s why they have large audiences :)). So make sure that you are organised with your team so that you have everyone you need around you.

- Beware of collateral damages: You shouldn’t have your email application running on the same servers than your website but in case you do beware that your communication tools will go down with you site… Which would leave you with no live site and no way to reach your system admin etc… So as much as possible silo your tools so that when one goes down it doesn’t have a domino effect on your whole infrastructure.

During the storm:

- Watch the conversation happening and engage: Make sure that your team is ready and watches the Twitter, forum and Facebook conversations. Your competitors will certainly be there trying to collect the traffic and doing so by eventually damaging your brand name. So you need to be there and engage.

- Don’t panic: No live changes! And if the site is down so be it. Just stay calm and no, standing behind your tech team asking them “is it back?” every 2 seconds won’t make it come back faster :)

- Collect the data: Monitor the traffic and record everything you can for later analysis.

After the storm:

- Keep your eyes open: It’s current practice for shows to share footage across the network’s channels and the piece on your startup can be aired again the following day in a different show and at a different time. So beware of the second wave of traffic the next day.

- Learn from your mistakes :)

Is there anything that you would add to this list? Let me know in the comments :)

I’ll be curious to know what coverage in a show like Oprah does to your site… Apparently something in the lines of “ten months’ worth of average daily volume in one day”.

Project/Product Manager position at Pollenizer

Pierre Sauvignon — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 02:34:30 +0000

Photo credits: x-ray delta one – Four divers

Pollenizer is hiring a Product/Project Manager

Pollenizer is looking to hire a Junior / Mid-weight Project/Product Manager.

Woohoo! Is that person you? See below.

The lucky winner will have to do stuff like:

Spend half of his/her day in Jira and/or wire framing cool products
Spend the other half in meetings and Skype calls / chats
Spend the third half doing another gazillion things

The profile we are after (in no specific order):

You know your web by heart (Facebook and the other birds)
You can appreciate a good UI / Product design
You can jabber English
You can eat in front of your screen juggling in between a sprint planning and a saturated inbox
You can run a Skype huddle under your blanky in your bed at 11pm
You have an entrepreneurial streak
You can tolerate French, Scottish and Ginger people
You can handle working while Kylie Minogue is playing on the stereo (in other words; you have a good headset – or you’re deaf)
You carry the fire

Things that are not required but a nice plus to have:

You can code a little (PHP and/or Ruby)
You know your way around Photoshop / Illustrator / InDesign…
You have some practice with the AGILE methodology
You can speak Swahili and laugh at dads jokes (would make Mick and Andy happy)

Things we know you don’t know you know we know (huh?):

We are after a Junior or Mid-weight person. Meaning we don’t expect you to be a rock star at anything. It’s gonna be our job together to make sure you become one
We expect you to work hard and we will reward you for it
If you are coming from another planet you will need a visa (We don’t have time to take care of any sort of paperwork for you so it’s your job to organise something. If you can get a Working Holiday Visa then you can tick that one off.)

What we will give you:

A decent wage based on your hard work, profile and experience
Front line exposure to the vibrant startup community in Australia
A great office space (in Surry Hills) buzzing with startups and entrepreneurs
The chance to work with a team of web veterans
The ability to quickly get experience in all aspects of delivering a web project
We will make your Skype window look like a xmas tree

About Pollenizer:
Check out our website, read our tweets, come over to the office for a chat…

How to apply:
So if you’re still reading this you might want to apply.
Well that’s the easy bit, just shoot me an email (pierre-at-pollenizer.com) and tell me what makes you tick. Include a resume, your past experience in similar roles and anything else that you think will make you the woman or man for the job!

Note:
We also have a position open for a Junior Web Designer and we are always on the look out for agile, obsessive and passionated developers in our Indian office :)

2010 Trends in Tech and Services

Pierre Sauvignon — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 07:40:49 +0000

Pollenizer looks into its Crystal Ball (via Pasukaru76 on Flickr)

To start the new year I’ve decided to ask my colleagues and myself what we think the year 2010 will be made of in terms of trends and innovations in the internet / tech field.

Here is the compilation of our “visions”: