nagi – StartUpArabia

Don’t sell me features!

September 2, 2010September 2, 2010 nagi 1 Comment

I want to emphasize the importance of selling benefits, not features. Every business owner, marketing professional, or sales person needs to realize that their customers buy benefits, not features (although features can influence their purchasing decision and would act as the Reason To Believe or commonly known as RTB in the advertising lexicon).

To understand what I mean, go to an electronics store, to the computer section specifically, and observe the laundry list of specifications they put next to each laptop displayed. It’s strange that although the laptop is a device for the masses, store owners still show a whole list of features and technical specs that only an experienced person or a computer engineer can understand. It is only when you translate these list of features into benefits that you are able to understand what they mean and consequently more likely to purchase the products.

Think of your advertising campaigns. Are you selling features or the benefits?
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Positiveness of uncertainty

September 1, 2010September 1, 2010 nagi 2 Comments

It’s common to worry when we think of the future. It is like our brains, for self-protection purposes, are naturally preconditioned to consider all the negative things surrounding uncertainty. This does not only create doubt, stress and negative energy but it can also prohibit us from moving forward and taking actions.

However, it is possible to turn this around. How about starting to think of the positive things that could happen to you eventually, the infinite possible positive scenarios that the future will bring, how about associating uncertainty with positiveness. I am not recommending you jump foolishly in the unknown without doing a pros/cons analysis, all I recommend is to flip your mindset about uncertainty and anticipate pleasant and successful outcomes. It’s a thought process that you can control and influence.

This mindset shift about uncertainty has been personally very beneficial. It keeps me positively curious about what will happen next in my business, wondering what new thing will each day bring me. It is pretty much the same excitement of receiving a surprise gift. It keeps me moving forward.

What do Bruce Lee, Microsoft and Procter & Gamble have in common?

August 30, 2010August 30, 2010 nagi 1 Comment

The topic of today is about brand/product distribution, an often neglected but nevertheless crucial element for the success of your business.

Bruce Lee, the cultural icon, acted in 20 films by the time he was 18. However his acting career really took off 13 years later, in 1971, in his first real leading role in the Big Boss, which catapulted him to stardom. His iconic figure was essentially created in just 2 years, between 1971 and 1973 when he teamed up with Golden Harvest, a dominating production and distribution company based in Hong Kong.

Microsoft’s dominance in the software industry is essentially attributed to the deal with IBM in 1980 which awarded Microsoft a contract to provide the DOS operating system in the IBM PC computers. Due to that partnership, Microsoft benefited from a massively distributed product to market (and sell) its software.

What I learned from a taxi driver

August 29, 2010August 29, 2010 nagi 4 Comments

The original title of this post was “are you suffering from paralysis-by-analysis” because that’s the topic I am going to talk about.

Paralysis-by-analysis (also known as analysis paralysis) is when you can’t take any action because you’re over thinking the details, over analyzing or over planning.

Yesterday morning, I called up a taxi at 5 AM to go to the airport. I was greeted with a big smile by this young energetic Pakistani taxi driver. I asked him about the reason for his cheerful mood. Filled with enthusiasm, he started telling me about his life story and how he struggled to get where he is. He took pride telling me how he pulled himself out of total poverty by taking many small jobs. He emphasized that as a poor young man, he could not afford to have a lot of time to think or over analyze his next move. While he would try to do a benefits/risks analysis, he mostly followed his gut feel to proceed to the next best job. His secret, he said, was this:

“Something is better than nothing, because nothing is nothing. It’s important to do something.”

What I learnt from Sylvester Stallone

August 25, 2010August 25, 2010 nagi 6 Comments

There’s more depth to Sylvester Stallone’s story than what the movies that he starred in would let you think.

Sly knew what he wanted to do in his life since he was very young: he wanted to be in the movie business. But having little acting experience, a partially paralyzed face, and a slurry speech, he was turned down by hundreds of agent offices. To get one of his first acting jobs, he literally stayed overnight in one of the agents offices. After that nothing more came out for a while. He kept moving forward, rejection after rejection. Meanwhile he was starving, married, broke, jobless and desperate. He refused to get a regular job, to avoid being caught up in the rat race, to avoid being seduced with the comfort of a salary. He wanted to remain hungry for achieving his dreams.

He finally realized it wasn’t working, he changed his approach, he decided to start writing. He wrote a bunch of screenplays, but still, rejection after rejection, he kept trying until he sold 1 screenplay for 100$ (Paradise Alley that was shot a few years later). He kept going. At that time, he barely had 50$ on him. He was so broke he couldn’t even feed his dog anymore. He went to a liquor store and sold his dog for 25$. He was so attached to his dog that he went out of the liquor store and wept like a kid. It was the lowest point of his life.

Get off your chair and start selling!

August 24, 2010August 24, 2010 nagi

Whether you started your business because you have a particular skill, a certain passion or out of frustration from your 8-5 job, you need to be constantly wearing the salesman hat; Why? simply because the lack of cash will kill your business. Cash is the oxygen to your business, once you run out of it, you run out of business. And constant selling is one of the best way to secure the cash.

As a founder, a business owner or a business partner, your job is to constantly secure enough cash for your business. Business won’t show up to your door. Users will not turn into $$ with a magic wand. People do not care about you. So get off you chair, go out and sell.

Put a target to meet 10 prospects, 20, even 50 per month. It’s a numbers game, out of 10 prospects, maybe 1 will become a customer (so 10% acquisition rate), maybe 2, or 5. You will only know by trying. And the good news is, your acquisition rate will eventually get higher with proper focus, constant learning, and practice.

Protect your revenue base with the long tail strategy

August 23, 2010August 23, 2010 nagi 1 Comment

In short and simple terms, the long tail strategy consists of selling a huge number of items in relatively small quantities. Items can be products or services. Quantities can also refer to prices.

As an example, Amazon.com and Netflix.com generate most of their revenue by selling a huge variety of products that are in low demand or have low sales volume. Google makes most of its advertising revenue not from large advertisers, but from the hundreds of thousands of small advertisers.

The importance of laser beam focus

August 22, 2010August 22, 2010 nagi

I can’t stress enough the importance of business focus. Lack of focus can literally make or break your business, especially as a young fragile startup, with limited resources. It is very important to focus on your core strength, on your unique selling proposition, on a specific feature set, on your specific target audience, core product… whatever it is, just focus all your energy on that one thing and become the best at it.

When laying out the business model, and the financial forecast, it is easy to assume that out of all your potential customer base, you will get x% and project some monthly revenue numbers around them. However, when it comes to starting up a business, although focusing on revenue is a great thing, it is still not focused enough.

Consider focusing more by asking: which target audience is it best to focus on? which sector or industry? which product will you sell? Once you identify your target audience, sector and product, my tip is to go even a level deeper: Focus on getting 1 customer first, just 1 customer. Focus all your efforts, resources on getting that first customer. Hustle, follow up and do anything to close that first deal. Then, and only then, move on and focus on getting the 2nd customer, then 5 customers, then 10 and so on…

What is your exit strategy?

August 21, 2010August 21, 2010 nagi

As a startup founder of www.loomni.com, I wonder what are the possible exits for my company in the future? It’s a topic I think every founder should really think of. How many other Maktoobs can we really have in the region? It took 10+ years for the exit to happen. And it was a foreign company who acquired an Arabic company. I think it is a bit sad to see that the biggest web acquisition in the region was a foreign acquisition.

Although it was a really awesome story deal for the Maktoob team, it was great to place Arabia on the world map, It gives hope to young founders, but should the biggest web acquisition in Arabia, sized at around $175M (I do not have the accurate figure) – a relative average deal based on US standards – worry Arab founders? Did the Yahoo-Maktoob deal set a valuation ceiling for future acquisitions? Can local Arabic companies hope to exit their companies for higher valuation deals?

The other questions would be, who are the potential acquirers of web startups? Should founders rely on foreign corporations for their exit strategies? Can startup founders hope for any big exits from within the MENA region?

I wonder…