Magnus Marketing Blog

Oh, boy, I may have written about this before, but many start-ups never see the light of success because of greed and unrealistic expectations. I was talking with a former salesperson who worked with start up and small businesses, we ended up passionately laughing together about our respective "careers". He said, most of the companies he worked with are gone and the options wallpaper - not pretty at that. He, like me, went from three year stints with tech firms to six months to less - that is when he too, became a consultant and then looked for more mature firms. He validated my opinions about the VC's and how, more often than not, they tend to take over firms and run them straight to the ground - all the while hoping to "strike it rich". A terrible oxymoron for companies that are supposed to be the economic driver of this country!

Just because a firm has a product or service and a few people buy it or like it or review it favorably DOES NOT MEAN it is the next Google. For every MILLION startups, probably ONE is Google! It takes YEARS to build a brand and build brand equity, HELL IT CAN TAKE A YEAR JUST TO GET ONE PAYING CLIENT. And, just because you get that ONE client, doesn't mean that the implementation will go well or more clients will immediately follow.

I keep working with start-ups that have so much promise, but with founders that seem to put greed or instant gratification ahead of actually building a business. They run for the VC's instead of finding out if the product has a sustainable market, they get a meeting with a larger firm and hope they will buy them out - not considering that slowly growing the firm can yield a few MILLION dollars, they build a product and go-to-market without considering if the product has any sustainable VALUE - all the while wanting to be GOOGLE. Amazingly, by doing really STUPID things, these firms which ACTUALLY MAY HAVE SUCCEEDED - end up in the wrong hands, end up becoming a mess in the client, cause the founders to lose everything, etc. and get steamrolled along with employees, managers, and clients.

A lot of tech products are me-too solutions and not innovative or comprehensive enough to fight the big boys, some have real innovation - but lack the resources, others are not business solution oriented enough. It takes a lot of backwork and time to build a company. Do the right things, do the market research, the trial sales, the marketing, hire the right people, prove you have a sustainable product and market before running to VC's or stay the hell away from VC money - if your solution is good enough - it will build a market ON ITS OWN. Resources will come to you if you have something worth coming to.

Be a SMARTTREPRENEUR NOT A DUMPRENEUR and maybe you actually will have the next big thing!