Crowdsourcing can be used nefariously, too. The specific opportunity of squatting on public parking spaces, then "selling" them to higher bidders, exists because parking is sometimes priced below market rate. And even if it's priced at market rate, the market rate will be artificially boosted if squatters suddenly take up all the spots.
But opportunities like this exist all over the place. Crowdsourcing and coordination are great when they lead to new opportunities, but it kind of sucks that companies like this are out there coordinating for the sake of monopolizing some existing resource.
I'm a huge fan of delegation, though I think the author's points are all excellent. Here's how recommend doing both: Hire someone to process and review customer complaints. Give them very specific guidance about how they're to handle customer concerns. If they can solve the problem within some predetermined short amount of time (say, 20 minutes), they should solve it. If it will take significantly longer, then they should escalate it to someone who can probably solve it faster, and can provide a more remarkable support experience.
The support screener should also summarize all the different types of tickets we get into categories for executive review.
> Don't explain what your company does. ... Google would never send someone an email saying "I work at Google, a search company in Mountain View which is organizing the world's information".
The Google comparison is a poor one, since Google is extraordinarily well known, and most start-ups aren't. And even they do describe the team each position is on, at least on its job postings.
If I were getting enough cold emails that I wanted to filter some of them out, I'd be likely to avoid emails that made me do work to research what a company does. A brief sentence about what they do, and why the recruiter/CEO/etc. thinks I'm a good match, would go a long way toward getting that coffee date.
There's definitely a tradeoff there — the flip side is that after reading a bunch of company descriptions, they all start to blend together. So counterintuitively, a full description can cause your email to be ignored. In my mind, it's all about creating a (genuine!) connection with the person, and being cautious about consuming their time.
Hmm, good point. Maybe there's a sweet spot there where you give enough detail to explain what your company does and what you're looking for from the person you're reaching out to, but don't go too long. Like, maybe 1-2 sentences max. "Our company is seeking to disrupt X industry through disintermediation, and I thought you looked like the badass engineer who could help us take our user interface to the next level."
> Micheal Austin, a vice president at BYD America, praises Proterra’s designs but downplays any rivalry, calling the other company only “a competitor on some levels.”
He's right, and this is why Tesla recently opened up its patents for use by others. Sure, BYD and Proterra do compete for some cities that are ready to make the investment in electric buses. But both of them are mostly competing with cities that are likely to stick with the status quo, and their efforts to market their buses will help both of them by broadening the market.
> With its $35 per-hour, per-guard flat rate (paid after an event has gone on without a hitch), Bannerman is shooting right for the middle of those two markets.
Here's an interesting business idea for lovers of analysis and market research: Create a database of various industries, measuring especially these variables:
1. Cost of the service/good provided
2. Some very rough quantification of its value (NOT its cost)
3. The ease with which customers can obtain those services/goods; this includes how long it takes for the customer to obtain the services/goods.
Then, identify large gaps - places where there aren't many options at a certain price, or at a certain level of value, or where the ease of obtaining the services/goods is very high.
Sell subscriptions to this data to entrepreneurs looking to start or pivot companies.
I used to do this as a job; it's a form of market research. Usually you focus on a single vertical (mine was pharma) — getting the numbers right is HARD.
It reminds me of Jim Collins' concept (not original to him, I know) of shooting lots of little bullets and seeing which one hits, rather than wasting gunpowder on one big cannonball before you're even sure you're aimed in the right direction.
Except he mostly used that concept to describe how companies decide which individual products or strategies to focus on, while the idea of a pivot is that you shift your entire company to do something else. (Reminds me of another Collins metaphor - it's important to get the right people on the bus first, and then you can decide together where to drive.)
But opportunities like this exist all over the place. Crowdsourcing and coordination are great when they lead to new opportunities, but it kind of sucks that companies like this are out there coordinating for the sake of monopolizing some existing resource.