What Technology Entrepreneurs Need To Know from A to Z

This Blog Has Moved

jldnaylor — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 11:35:23 +0000

This blog has moved to:

http://www.kenovatech.com/blog/

Is “Crossing The Chasm” Irrelevant In Today’s Modus Operandi?

jldnaylor — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 14:16:13 +0000

In 1991 Geoffrey A. Moore wrote a revolutionary book called “Crossing The Chasm”. When I say “revolutionary”, I mean from a technology perspective, because, as Michael Gerber pointed out in “The E-Myth”, new companies are typically started by technicians, not marketing / sales experts. So, for these people, i.e., the start-up entrepreneur Crossing The Chasm was a fantastic wakeup call…I recall when I finally got to it it inspired me.

What Geoffrey did in Crossing The Chasm was take traditional marketing concepts, applied them to selling technology, then wrote the book around the different approach needed in order to sell technology. Or, in Geoffrey’s words, make it “easy to buy”. Which is based on the premise that your target early adopters, the pioneer uses of the technology, must have a physical connection, relationship, with the next level of adopters. E.g., think of the first person you met who had an iPhone, these early adopters were probably the reason you got one (if you got one).

I bring these references up because I heard or read the other day that the Crossing The Chasm principles no longer apply in today’s on-line driven community. I believe this to be a flawed statement and I still recommend our clients read the book. It provides great information on the fundamentals of marketing, especially in regards to selling technology and the principles still apply.

Although the ubiquitous us of the internet didn’t start until about 4 years after Crossing The Chasm was first published, I believe 99.999% of the book would not be different if the chronology was the other way round. I believe if the book was written today, the only difference would be the names of some example companies and the inclusion of FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. That is to say, although I use internet search engines to find stuff, I usually buy my stuff based on a personal physical relationship, or a cyber relationship on one of these social media platforms.

So for those of you who read or heard that Crossing The Chasm is redundant, please don’t pay attention, it is still a great book and will give you a great foundation for you and your business.

Why This Blog and Why Now?

jldnaylor — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 03:46:02 +0000

I’ve been in the technology industry since the mid 80′s, developing software largely for or with entrepreneurs, start-ups and early stage companies and I believe I’ve experienced just about everything that can happen with these types of organizations.

I worked for one software “start-up” for 15 years, riding the internal rollercoasters that never seem to end, while waiting for the big deal to come through and solve all our problems. A couple of big deals did eventually materialize, but they only created more, bigger and worse problems.

Due to organizations like CEO Space and the myriad of networking groups I attend and belong to, over and over I see starry eyed entrepreneurs with the next Facebook idea jump on the start-up bandwagon and go careering down the tracks at 200 mph repeating all the mistakes I’ve experienced. Although we created KENOVA Technologies to help these pioneers, we felt that a blog might enable us to help the people we’re not able to work with.

You see, I remember the pain, partner arguments, sleepless “daemon” field nights, robbing Peter to pay Paul, and all the other things that go hand-in-hand with startups. So if I can blog on topics that prevents just one entrepreneur from losing his friend’s and family’s savings, then it’ll be worth the effort.

Having said this, this is not a doom and gloom blog, but more a reality check of dos and don’ts, best practices, recommendations, things we’ve found work and don’t work and whatever else readers want / need.