This document summarizes a class on starting new ventures in electrical and computer engineering. It discusses breaking down features into prioritized stories for product development. It then covers strategies for marketing with limited budgets, including search engine optimization, email marketing, and social media. Several case studies of startups are presented that illustrate how to build awareness, attract early adopters, and scale strategies through content marketing and storytelling.
1. Duke ECE 490L: How to Start New Ventures in
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Poornima Vijayashanker
poornima@femgineer.com
Jeff Glass
jeff.glass@duke.edu
Akshay Raut
ar118@duke.edu
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2. Review
• Breaking down features into stories
• Prioritizing product development
• Process for shipping consistently
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5. Case Study #1: Food on the Table
• Creates
weekly meal plans and grocery lists, and hooks
into grocery stores to find best deals for ingredients
• Began with a single customer!
• Interviewed customers are local super markets.
• Signed up 1st customer and dropped off groceries
weekly.
• Collected $9.95 on each visit!
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25. Case Study #2: Mint.com
• Why?
Makes your financial life easier.
• How? Putting all your financial information in one place.
• What? Aggregating accounts, creating budgets,
automatically sending alerts, capturing investments, and
tracking loans.
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32. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process
of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page
in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic")
search results. In general, the earlier (or higher
ranked on the search results page), and more
frequently a site appears in the search results list,
the more visitors it will receive from the search
engine's users. SEO may target different kinds of
search, including image search, local search, video
search, academic search, news search and
industry-specific vertical search engines.
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35. SEO Will Only Work If...
are patient, it is a long term strategy.
• You’re customers are searching for your product or
services.
• You adhere to ALL the following strategies.
• You
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36. SEO Has a Longer Shelf Life
• Tweet:
minutes maybe hours.
• Email: 7 days max!
• AdWords: turn it off and you’re history.
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37. Google Wants to be TOP Search Engine
needs to provide clean content
• Relevant
• Timely
• Accessible
• Fast
• It
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39. Crawlers LOVE
• Links
• Clear
site structure
• Clear navigation (internal links to webpages)
• HTML & CSS (JavaScript & AJAX is harder)
• Categories
• Short URLs
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43. How to Become Crawl Worthy
• Optimize
headlines and titles.
• Title
Tag
<head>
<title>Example Title</title>
</head>
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44. How to Become Crawl Worthy Continued
• URL
•
Good URL Structure: http://www.dmoz.org/Games/Video_Games/History/
•
Bad URL Structure: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/
• Images
are indexed too! Provide clear image tags and
names.
•
<img src="http://www.example.com/example.png" alt="Keyword">
• Link
traffic: guest blog posts and press pieces.
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46. Easy Methods to Create Content
• Be
observant
• Turn conversations into posts.
• Showcase: customers (case studies) and experts
(interviews).
• Start linking to other sites! (People check their referral
traffic sources.)
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47. Tools
• OpenSite
Explorer: search engine for links
• Who is currently linking to you
• Search for broken links
• Who is linking to competitors
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48. Tools Continued
• Google
Keyword Tool
•
Search volume
•
Competition
•
Long tail keywords
• Google
•
track links
•
referral traffic
•
conversions
•
Analytics
setup goals
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49. Improve Search Rankings
• Do
an SEO Audit of entire site
• Long tail search terms
• Consider location - submit to local directories
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51. Why We Think E-mail Sucks
• Inbox
clutter
• Low open rate and/or high bounce rate
• Lists & quality of content affect results
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52. Truth
most targeted communication channel
• $2.1B being spent on e-mail marketing
• Everything matters in email: delivery timing, subject,
sender, and message
• The
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55. Building Up Your List
• Opt-in
• Remind
them that they opted in!
• Segment your list e.g. paid v. non-paid, prospects v.
customer
• Frequently opened
• Location
• Characteristics
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56. Types of E-mails
• Drip
Campaign aka auto-responders, weekly emails
• Sales
• Newsletter
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57. Goals of a Drip Campaign
• Provide
valuable info: e.g. sign up workflow, share
your expertise, countdown to an event
• Keep customers engaged and stay relevant!
• Not to spam
• Consistent frequency: weekly or monthly
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58. Drip Campaign Process
Create list.
Automatically
add or pull
together
contacts.
Create
stages and
frequency.
Figure out
your
message.
Week 1.
Week 2.
Value of
product.
Schedule it
out.
Use an e-mail
marketing
tool.
Review stats.
Open rate.
Bounce.
Links clicked
on.
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59. Drip Campaign: 2 Week Trial
1. How to get
setup.
2. Feature benefits
to business.
3. Additional
resources e.g.
customer support.
4. Reiterate
value
proposition.
5. Close
First day.
Day 2 or 3.
Day 5.
Week 2.
14th day.
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71. Building Up Followers
• Follow
a diverse set
• Follow what they share
• Follow their followers
• Engage in conversations
• Take conversations offline
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77. EXERCISE
KEY OBJECTIVE(S)
AGENDA
Understand how to build
a feature within the
context of a business
goal, and break it down
into stories.
10
minutes
1.Choose a business goal from last
week’s product roadmap exercise.
2.Pick one feature.
3.Break the feature down into stories.
4.Highlight scope creep!
DELIVERABLE
RESOURCES
Stories for one feature.
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