(This post was originally published in the Cincinnati Enquirer and is also at the Entrepreneurship in Cincinnati blog)

Despite gains in the stock market and broader economy, it is still a buyers job market. Most companies receive scores of applicants for any job opening. Entrepreneurs are especially cheered in our community for creating new jobs and offering people a chance to grow quickly. But we should not pat ourselves on the back for giving people a job—rather, we must continue giving to our new hires if we wish to scale up success.

When I first started writing regularly here six months ago, we were a two-person company. Back then, my biggest challenge was finding our first paying customer. Today we have 14 employees, and my biggest challenge is figuring out how to make sure that the people we hire are performing at their peak as soon as possible.

The change in mentality comes when you realize that you can no longer do it all by yourself. At that moment, a founder can choose one of two paths with new hires: Either use a command and control, dictatorial method to maximize personal involvement, or provide your employees with what they need to make the right decisions for the business. I have always had success in my career by choosing the latter, and I have found that giving three specific things leads to remarkable results:

First, you must give responsibility. No business can grow if everyone is waiting for you, dear leader, to make every key decision. At the light-speed of a startup, you simply cannot be on top of everything. So you must have employees that are comfortable making calls and moving forward. I like to show new hires our organizational chart and flip it upside down to visualize how we operate: The people on the front-lines of the company are actually the most important for our success—so they are at the top. We execs at the bottom exist to support and coach them.

Second, give credit liberally to the people who deliver results. The most meaningful (and least expensive) way to reward people for their work is to recognize their efforts. Recognition is a great way to teach the entire organization, and people get goosebumps when the boss calls them out for good work. Just make sure you are recognizing what is truly important to your company’s success. If you give kudos for “working late”—then people will think that face time at the office is what counts. Instead look for keen decision making, risk taking, problem solving and teamwork success stories.

Finally, give your team a say in the culture. New companies are blank slates; so let your people pitch in to make the company their own. Working together to choose office space, name new products, or discuss policy creates a powerful ownership mentality.

Owning responsibility, getting credit, and having a voice in the company happen to be three of the definitions of a “best place to work.” Ultimately, this means you will further ramp up the success of your business because your employees will work harder, stay at your company, and convince their friends to join. You will find that giving up ends up being the only way to get ahead.

(This post was originally published in the Cincinnati Enquirer and is also at the Entrepreneurship in Cincinnati blog)

It is baseball season here in Cincinnati again, and whether you observe Opening Day as a religious holiday, or get surprised when fireworks explode in the afternoon downtown, one cannot help but join the spirit. We get to enjoy another 162 episodes of challenge and achievement. Of course we cannot help but re-awaken baseball metaphors to analyze and explain the challenges in the business world.

Entrepreneurship has a lot in common with baseball. In both a lone leader steps to the plate with intense pressure to succeed, a team is counting on you to get a hit, and even a 33% success rate is world-class. Unfortunately, too many rookie batters—and entrepreneurs—fail by swinging for the fences instead of legging out a single.

Startup founders get excited about billion-dollar stories such as Facebook, Google, Instagram and Groupon. These companies seemed to come out of nowhere with a killer idea, and we marvel at the fame and wealth that were created in the blink of an eye. The startup blogs and keynote speeches encourage young founders to “think big” and “change the world.” Such stories have pushed a thousand entrepreneurs to quit their day jobs or senior years in order to create “the next Google/Facebook/eBay.”

But nearly all of their efforts to hit a home run end up in failure. I meet many aspiring entrepreneurs who wish to create the next big idea right off the bat, yet struggle to succeed. I believe it was either Ted Williams or Albert Pujols who said, “I step to the plate just trying to get a single, and sometimes I hit a homerun.” Our startup ecosystem needs a lot more people swinging for base hits instead of long balls.

How do you hit for a single or double in startups? There are a couple of ways you can dramatically increase your odds of success. First, instead of immediately starting your own business, go work for another company that is at early stages and scaling up. Find a successful entrepreneur and join his or her team to soak up everything you can about what works and what doesn’t. Your learning curve will be vertical for years and you will be much more confident and ready when it is your time.

Once you are ready to start your own business, stick to what you know. If you have spent your career selling insurance, please don’t fool yourself into believing that you can create a social network for teenagers. Take the ten thousand hours that you have spent learning an industry or craft and build a business around that idea. Creating a new business of any kind is very difficult, but learning a new industry at the same time is near impossible.

Remember that a career in this game is long, and opportunities will keep coming. Just because you begin your startup career hitting for singles doesn’t mean that you will never be swinging for the fence. The great thing about successfully building one business is that you will have earned the resources and relationships that can be used to aim even higher the next time you step to the plate. Now, play ball!

When people step away from a career to start a new venture, perhaps the biggest shock is learning how hard it is to get things done. You no longer have the power to compel others to join your meeting, buy your products or answer your emails. Humbled and alone, you soon understand that relying on the kindness of others is the only way to survive. Veteran entrepreneurs understand one must tap into a complex social system of trading favors.

Trading favors is one of the most important survival strategies in human history. Favors were a form of currency long before the first coin was ever minted. If your ancestor was lucky on a hunt for meat, he shared with his fellow tribesmen, knowing they would remember his gift when they were lucky next time. Some scientists believe our brains grew larger in order to  to keep track of frequent, complex trading exchanges among people.

Even while they are inventing the most breakthrough technologies, entrepreneurs must go back to these social rules to give their companies a shot at a future. Other people hold the key to information or access that could mean life or death for a new venture. With little money in the bank and the clock ticking mercilessly, the favor of an introduction to a potential investor, customer, advisor or new hire can mean everything.

Unfortunately no one teaches these soft skills in business school, and few people openly talk about their strategies for getting the returned phone call or opened door. I have learned a few lessons along nearly a decade of small business trials and tribulations, and I offer these Five Rules for the Favor Economy:

First, you must give favors to eventually receive them in return. Do not even think about starting a business unless you have spent years assisting others. By building relationships and giving proactively, you will not only be in position to ask for help later, but you will learn much through the process.

Second, there is no better time to ask for a favor than when someone has asked one of you. Be sure that the other party knows what is on your “need list” when they come calling. For example, I provided helpful advice for a friend, and at the end of the conversation I asked if he knew any good leads in my industry. A few days later he happily made a very valuable introduction. An exchange of time, advice and contacts allows both sides to win right away.

Third, make it as easy as possible for people to lift that finger of help. For example, give them a sentence or two about your company that they can copy and paste into an email. This not only takes a little pain out of the process, but it shows your friend that you are all over the details.

Fourth, realize that favor trading can run years between exchanges, so be sure to keep old bonds strong with small touches over time. We all hate it when the person we have not spoken to in ten years suddenly sends an email or LinkedIn request with a desire for help.. I like to try to grab coffee with out-of-town contacts when I travel. One friend randomly calls contacts on his commute home each day to keep in touch.

Finally, I am not a big believer in returning favors with gifts. Recently a recruiter that I assisted went out of her way to find a wine store that could send me a gift certificate as a thank you. Fine wine is always nice to sip, but I would much rather have her volunteer to connect me with one of her many Chief Marketing Officer clients. Wine is consumed and forgotten; each favor as priceless and truly improves with time.

Despite thousands of years of human history, trading favors and carefully managing your contact list does not come easy to everyone. However no one can build a business without the non-financial help of others. As long as you remember to give, as much or more than you receive, chances are that enough doors will open for you to get a fair shot at success.

For many reasons, I’ve recently been spending a lot more time with startups that are building innovation for brand marketers. Since I spent 6 years as a brand guy at Procter & Gamble, then another 7 years as a leader as a global digital advertising agency, I seem to have picked up a few lessons about how to work with big brands. So I recently decided to share some tips with the wider world in a larger platform than this blog.

Today you can head over to iMedia Connection and read up on my “5 Secrets for Getting Big Brand Dollars from Big Brands”. Hopefully these tips will help marketing-related startups get deeper insights into their customers to bring forward win-win solutions. Read on...

As a startup investor, advisor, board member, it sometime feels strange to tell people that I also have my own startup, the Minimum Viable Concept Test–which in turn is a service that helps other startups in customer development and product positioning. It’s a bit like the Seinfeld episode where Kramer sells a book about coffee table book–that sprouts legs and turns into a coffee table.

Then again, launching a startup to help other startups provides me with unique insights and perspective. One of the things I have learned through my testing is that video can be a powerful way to communicate an idea. As I wrote in this post a few months ago, the sight, sound and motion of video is tough to beat. In my MVC Testing, video continually leads to better customer understanding and feedback. It does not mean that simple descriptions in a one-page form are mistakes–as both are effective in drawing useful responses and both mimic how people learn about ideas in the real world. But video is a step closer toward creating actual in-market advertising.

I recently decided to practice what I’ve been preaching and commissioned the video below to describe the MVC Test:

I had a great time working with the gang at Elevator Insight, which has done similarly great work with several other companies in our portfolio. They have the process nailed down tightly and we got to this output in about a month.

I recommend that your business use video once you are a bit down in the path in customer development, and already have some early (preferably paying) customers. While the cost is reasonable enough to start with video, you can learn a lot by simpler communication forms–and leave yourself the flexibility to change the product and positioning frequently at the early stages.

Since a soft launch of this video last week, I’ve already gotten several positive comments and new leads. Stay tuned to this space in the next few months, as this is just one piece of an expansion of the MVC Test platform to make it even more useful to innovators around the world.

You should learn more about the MVC Test here, and follow me on Twitter here.

+Bob Gilbreath

Peter Schwartz – 1954-2012

Last Monday morning I got the call at 8 a.m. My friend and former business partner, Peter Schwartz, had passed away overnight. I’d just seen Peter at my office Friday afternoon and we’d made plans for lunch on Monday. I spent last week in a daze, working through the stages of grief as I trudged through assorted meetings with our portfolio companies and others in need of advice. The only thing that kept me from blowing everyone off and hiding under the covers all week was the belief that Peter would want me buggering on in the quest to make a dent in the world.

Chances are, dear reader, that you did not get to meet Peter; so the purpose of this post is to share the knowledge I gained from working with him. Peter spent his entire career as an entrepreneur, the height of which was his successful sale of a business where I was lucky enough to be his partner. There are five lessons that I learned in my seven years at his side, through many ups and downs, and the best way to honor Peter is to pass them on to you.

1. Passion Wins

I remember pitching alongside Peter for the digital agency business of Healthy Choice about five years ago. I was leading the pitch team and Peter’s role was to present the creative work we had developed. On his very first slide, though, Peter drifted from my carefully crafted script. He was clearly excited about the work, blowing past his allotted time and I worried that his passion had gotten the best of him.  I maneuvered my foot under the conference room table in preparation to provide a gentle reminder to get back on track.

I began to visualize weeks of preparation laid to waste as he continued to ramble on, stars in his eyes. And then I glanced over at our clients–the stone-faced looks had transformed. They smiled and nodded as Peter laid out his vision for  reaching Healthy Choice brand nirvana through our digital and creative strategy. They started to believe. And a few days later we found out that we won this crown jewel brand, which became an enormous driver of company profits and award-winning work.

You see, in a world of profits, losses, facts and figures, simple passion is too often lost and forgotten. But not for Peter. He came to every meeting with a smile and an idea. I don’t know where this reservoir of positivity came from, but it was infectious, and everyone around him benefitted. I grew to look for this passion in others and came to lean forward in situations where a passionate person was present. Simply put: Whether you are selling to a customer or painting a vision of the future to employees, if you can bring energy to the room you are half-way home.

2. Share the Wealth to Succeed

I have met a lot of entrepreneurs who have built a business without sharing equity with anyone else in the company. Some will string senior employees along for years with the promise of a small piece of the pie at some uncommitted time in the future. But that was never Peter’s way. Throughout his career he took the opposite tack and gave equity to leaders who he believed would help him get to the next level. I was one of the fortunate beneficiaries of this strategy in 2004, when I was asked to join Bridge Worldwide, the company Peter founded. Where another owner might hesitate to give up shares and votes, Peter chose to build a team of co-leaders who would challenge his thinking, treat the company like it was their own, and become force multipliers. Peter believed that by giving up 75% of his shares he could attract and retain a team that would help him build a business that would become 10x as valuable. And guess what? That’s exactly what happened at Bridge.

Of course not every employee should be on the cap table, but it doesn’t mean they can’t all have ownership-like incentives. At Bridge, Peter championed our decision to offer profit sharing for every employee. This was absolutely unheard of in the advertising agency world, and we took a risk each quarter in sharing our deepest financial details with all 350 employees. Something amazing happens when you trust your employees with the company’s financial progress and gains–people start to care about something bigger than themselves. They made better choices in, say, inventing a new solution to sell a client, or limiting travel spending without draconian checks & balances.

3. Always Be Pivoting

Many people assume that our company was another “digital startup,” but Peter actually founded the agency that would become Bridge Worldwide in 1979. Over the years he shifted the agency as new opportunities presented themselves. Early on the company was known for owning a $5,000 machine that could project slide shows at big corporate meetings. This was a long time before briefcase-sized projectors and PowerPoint! Bridge shifted away from events to technology marketing services and then again to healthcare collateral. But in the mid-1990s Peter saw the potential of the Internet, and ended up creating Procter & Gamble’s very first website in 1995 (for its professional dental care group).

The digital business expanded and Peter refocused again to take advantage. Together we learned to continually evolve with our clients–shifting from the low-cost local web shop to a world-class leader in mobile/social/local. While other digital agencies came and went, we grew revenues over 20% a year for eight straight years and held on to a majority of our clients. Of course the work we did for these clients changed dramatically over that time as we led our clients to move forward along with their customers in this new space.

My kids learned in school recently that sharks must keep swimming in order to breathe or they will die; business is the same way. There is never a current market or customer base to rely on in today’s economy. We must continue to discover new ways to generate revenue and pivot before we have to.

4. Do Whatever it Takes to Win

It’s funny but I don’t really remember what Peter did in college or what piece of the agency business he was best at. The truth is that Peter was a business chameleon–able to shift to whatever the company needed of him. On any given day you might find Peter in the office at reviewing project budgets, grabbing the pen and whiteboard in a strategy session, reconnecting with a client CIO, or writing up creative ideas for a new business pitch.

Peter knew he was master of none of these tasks, but he never hesitated to dig into whatever was needed of him. A true entrepreneur knows that the buck stops with him, and that by grabbing the marker or helping to build the presentation every once in a while he sets an example for others.

5. Re-Invest in What’s Next

After we successfully sold Bridge Worldwide to WPP at the end of 2010, Peter decided to leave the company and “retire.” He could have spent the rest of his life playing tennis, hoisting beers on the beach, or picking out luxury cars. Instead, Peter jumped right into investing in other entrepreneurs–putting money into our seed-stage companies at CincyTech. And most recently, Peter was launching a new startup with a small team. It’s goal: To save local journalism.

We now know that one of the keys to creating a startup community in a city near you is to convince successful founders to recycle their dollars and lessons into other startups–including new companies of their own. Peter introduced me to CincyTech and served as my investment mentor; and he was later one of my first customers for the Minimum Viable Concept Test.  Though he is no longer with us, his legacy lives on in local companies that will, in turn, sprout millionaires and seed the next generation of innovative businesses here in Cincinnati.

Bonus Lesson: Peter Believed in You

When speaking with friends this week, the most meaningful memories we all shared were the times when Peter pumped us up. Whether it was providing advice to someone thinking about marriage or a founder pitching him a startup concept–no matter how half-baked the idea–Peter took the time to encourage you. His quirky smile, encouragingly nodding head, and enthusiastic advice were a fresh bit of positivity when we all feel the pressure of the harsh world around us.

Perhaps that is my most important lesson for aspiring entrepreneurs: Find a friend and mentor who believes in you. You’ll meet lots of other folks willing to bring you a dose of cold, hard reality–but everyone needs a pal who can pick them up when they are down and will lend enough energy to get back on the startup horse. On your journey to become an entrepreneurial hero, you’ll need the help of a someone like Peter who can provide that magical spark to light hope into your darkest days.

I was lucky to have Peter as that pal for me, and I will miss him more than words can say.

You should learn more about the MVC Test here, and follow me on Twitter here.

+Bob Gilbreath

As I wrote in my last post, there’s nothing more rewarding than helping a customer win. Today I’m proud to share that Roadtrippers, an early customer of the Minimum Viable Concept Test, is officially on the journey to what I believe is great success.

I first got to know Roadtrippers’ CEO, James Fisher, almost a year ago when he started at Cincinnati-based accelerator, The Brandery. I was immediately impressed by his multi-disciplinary knowledge and passion for, well, road tripping. Once the dust of accelerator activity settled in the Fall, we had a chance to continue the conversation with James at CincyTech, our early-stage VC fund. I had just begun MVC Testing CincyTech prospects at that time, and we jointly decided to run a test before James and his team had finished development.

I’d rather not share the actual Roadtrippers test results in this blog, but let’s just say that we were very encouraged by the consumer reaction. The Roadtrippers team was able to uncover target audience insights, gauge favorite features, match itself against competitors, and even get an early read on business model assumptions before launch. CincyTech was impressed enough to lead a $250,000 investment round.

The MVC Test itself deserves no credit. Rather, it was James and his team who built a powerful idea based on consumer needs, and used lots of input throughout the process to hone the service.

Of course, Roadtrippers is just a few miles down the proverbial road to success. We all expect a few speed bumps and fender benders on the journey (along with a lot of bad puns). But my belief is that the strong team and effective planning before hitting the road will significantly improve Roadtrippers’ odds of winning.

If you’re heading on the road any time this summer, check out Roadtrippers and make the journey even sweeter.

You should learn more about the MVC Test here, and follow me on Twitter here.

+Bob Gilbreath

A few days ago I returned from my annual pilgrimage to the South-by-Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas. As always, the SXSWi event was a great opportunity to network with old new friends, support the companies we invest in, and get a first look at what’s coming next technology services and tools. Much of the news coverage of the event revolves around speculation of which startup might “breakout” and go viral after capturing the attention of SXSW attendees. Twitter’s big coming out party at SXSWi happened in 2007, and Foursquare made a national splash at the 2009 event. Since two data points obviously make a line, the world was waiting to see which startup would have the upward arrow pointing at it this year. While there are a handful of winners of the buzz award at this year’s SXSWi, I do not believe the ideas that capture the attention of this very small, extremely tech-forward group will be big enough to break out.

Most of the startup buzz this year focused on a group of new apps with “social discovery” benefits. These apps build on the popularity of existing social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare and solve the “problem” of helping you physically locate people you know (or might want to meet) near you at any given time. They are mobile-first apps that stay active in the background on your smartphone. When someone interesting and relevant gets close (around 100 feet), you receive an alert and can either send him a message or approach her directly. There are already several players in the same space competing to the the one that wins a battle to scale, including: Highlight, Glancee, Kismet, Sonar, Banjo, and Meeps. There are probably more, but 6 is enough to seed a problem in your minds (more later on that).

I had heard of none of these apps until touchdown in Austin last week. Within a few seconds of turning my phone on again at the arrival gate, I received 4 or 5 messages from people who wanted to connect through Banjo, using a Twitter Direct Message. Each of these people sent a similar, non-personalized message such as the following:

Now, I would love to meet this person or any one of my +6,000 Twitter followers. After all, making new connections is the number one reason why I went to SXSWi. However this generic outreach was a total turnoff. I’m guessing that Banjo’s marketing strategy is to send such mass DMs in order to drive awareness, but it flies in the face of the benefit it was built for: to encourage real-life meetings between people who know each other or share common interests.

My second experience came with the Highlight app a few days later. During a very interesting seminar about how technology can make conferences like SXSW even better, tech legend Robert Scoble took over for a few minutes to rave about Highlight. He told a story of standing in the hotel lobby the previous day and discovering through Highlight that the editor of Al Jazeera was nearby. As Scoble described: “I am a big fan of what Al Jazeera is doing, and wanted to meet with this guy. He wanted to meet me, too, and we ended up having a great discussion. Without Highlight, this great meeting wouldn’t have happened.” Well, within seconds everyone with an iPhone was pulling up the App Store and installing Highlight in hopes of making a similar priceless connection.

I, too, took the plunge and began playing around with the tool. Unfortunately my experience wasn’t as remarkable as Scoble’s. Highlight did ping me with some relevant and interesting connections as I walked around Austin. Some old friends popped up, but I had already met them during the days before. Most of the other connections were too broad or just not worth following through on. For example, I frequently found people who were also Facebook fans of, say, Red Bull and Modern Warfare 2. Not exactly a relevant match. At the Austin airport on my way home I made an outreach attempt – pinging a minor startup celebrity whose seminar I attended a few days before. I sent a nice, personalized message through Highlight in hopes of a response…Alas, my overture was unanswered and I had flashbacks of prom date rejections from decades before. Highlight got a lot less relevant when I arrived at the Atlanta airport for a 2 hour layover. Suddenly no one popped up on the app. Even at a crowded, international airport there was no one else with my somewhat broad interests (c’mon! Red Bull and Modern Warfare?!).  It seems we were a very long way from SXSWi.

But just as I about gave up hope, I did have one brush with another technology/marketing celebrity that I admire. I received a Twitter @ message from Joseph Jaffe just as I was about to power down for the flight home:

I was excited but puzzled by Jaffe’s message.  I quickly googled “chipping norton” and discovered that it is a lovely place in the Cotswalds region of England, which I visited on a business retreat a few years ago. Thus, my reply:

And Jaffe’s response:

So, let’s just say that Banjo has a few bugs to work out…But it’s more than bugs that plagues the prospect for such Social Discovery Apps’ chances for success. First, while the technology has a certain gee-whiz factor, the benefit of these services is weak. Simply put, whether you are launching a new laundry detergent or the latest and greatest mobile app, to succeed with a large user group, your new business must solve an important pain point or be incredibly entertaining. I believe Social Discovery Apps fall far short on both. The “pain” of needing to meet people with relevant interests around you and the “benefit” of attempting to meet with them is just not that compelling. Actually…there is one app that is succeeding with this problem and need–it’s called Grindr, and it offers a way for gay men to meet each other. Grindr is winning because of a specific audience focus and (ahem) need, dating. With Highlight, Banjo, and the rest, there really isn’t a clear “thing to do” once you have found someone that matches up with your interests. There is also the problem of having a handful of people like Scoble and Jaffee who a lot of people want to meet, but who don’t necessarily offer reciprocal benefits–an imbalance of power and interest, so to speak. I’m sure this is a problem with Grindr, too, but I digress.

The second big barrier to Social Discovery Apps’ success is the Catch-22 of network effects. You know the story by now–the first guy with a fax machine feels like a jerk until everyone in the world gets one. To bring social discovery apps into the analogy, the first guy with a  fax machine also has to wait to see which of the 6 competing phone line providers signs up everyone in the world. That’s right, not only are relatively few people using these apps, but those few early adopters much choose among the list of players I named above–plus probably another 3 or 4 that launched since I started this blog post.  Again, if there aren’t many people online then any benefit that the app offers is moot.

Then there are the costs. Although all of these services are free, technology consumers increasingly calculate the indirect costs before trying something new. In Social Discovery Apps, the costs include a faster-draining battery (as they must “work in the background” continuously to find people), and overall privacy concerns. In my Minimum Viable Concept testing I have found privacy to be a significant and growing issue for a number of people. In fact, I see that any “free service” is viewed with skepticism by people who now know enough to question how their data will be used to power someone’s business model. And there’s the stronger physical privacy concerns. I personally ended an experiment with Foursquare after my wife worried that strangers could see when I was checking in from out-of-town. It was a small concern for her, but I weighed it against the much smaller benefit I got from using Foursquare–and quickly logged off permanently. Alas, someone else is now the mayor of my local dry cleaner.

Overall, the fact that Social Discover Apps make it into the mainstream press with little benefit and significant costs suggests that our digital startup world (or at least the fishbowl of SXSWi) has “jumped the shark.” Perhaps we have reached the point in digital startup evolution where the biggest problems are already solved, and we must come up with new gimmicks to keep up the flow of investors’ dollars and reporters’ ink. A few months ago, Bloomberg Businessweek wrote about the “alternate reality” of Silicon Valley, where many of today’s new startups “could be falling out of touch with the rest of the world.” The article went on to tell the story of one startup, Color, which raised $40 million from investors before launching an iPhone app that enabled people to share photos with strangers nearby. Sounds a bit like a SXSWi Social Discovery App, eh?  The CEO, serial entrepreneur, Bill Nguyen, said Color would be “ideal for parties” and “an interesting way to meet people in cafes and bars.” Well, Color was soundly rejected upon launch, as people actually didn’t want to be photo voyeurs, and the company quickly pivoted away.

Too many startups make products for people like them, which is predictable but not interesting. (Roger McNamee)

Whether you are a seasoned investor or a 19-year-old startup founder, it is often a trap to focus too closely on something that fits one’s own very narrow interests. As we approach the 20th anniversary of the first web startup, there are still a lot of big issues, touching billions of lives, that breakthrough technology can help us solve. Ironically, the startup I heard mentioned most often at SXSWi was a company that barely had a presence at all: Pinterest. The company’s CEO spoke at a panel, but there was no Pinterest party house or costumed mascots for the firm roaming the streets of Austin and giving away novelty pins. Many SXSWi veterans have been caught off guard by Pinterest’s success–since it didn’t get to 16 million monthly visitors by winning over the digital geeks and VC power brokers first. Pinterest became a winning Social Discovery App by offering something that people want and do today–collect and share interests. While Banjo and Highlight attempt to make us do something we normally avoid–meeting strangers–Pinterest is a better way of doing something that a lot of people like to do already; or as the New York Times writes: “Unleashes the Scrapbook Maker in All of Us.” By shooting for a big, existing need across a large group of people, Pinterest gives both hope and guidance to those of us who dream of startup success.

So I would encourage you not to settle for solving small problems that only impact a tiny niche of users. Get out into the big, real world out there and find a huge problem that needs solving or a better way of doing something that people absolutely love. If you need some data to test whether or not your idea is big enough, I’m standing by and ready to help you with a Minimum Viable Concept Test!

You should learn more about the MVC Test here, and follow me on Twitter here.

+Bob Gilbreath

Dear reader, thank you so much for your visit. Perhaps you discovered Howard Greenstein’s article over at the Inc. Start-up Tool Kit, which came on suddenly and led me to rapidly deploy this very modest website. Whether you found me by accident or on purpose, welcome. My name is Bob Gilbreath, and this is the home of my new research service, the Minimum Viable Concept Test, or MVC Test for short. In the weeks and months ahead I will use this space to share more information about this new tool for startup founders and investors. But for now, let me share a brief summary…

I have spent my entire career working to create and understand new products and services. This journey started in the late ’90s when I became a brand marketer at Procter & Gamble. I was lucky enough to get placed within the group that created successes such as Febreze and Swiffer–along with a lot more failures that you likely never saw. During this time I learned the art and science of understanding people’s unmet needs, creating solutions, and presenting them in a compelling way. After many fits and starts, we gradually developed and discovered tools that brought more rigor to the new product development process. We improved our hit rate and created new-to-the-world categories, adding billions of dollars in revenue and improving the lives of people around the world.

Flash forward a few years and I found myself on the investor side of the table, evaluating and assisting consumer digital startups. I quickly discovered that too many investors and founders were making some of the same mistakes that we committed in new product innovation at P&G. The most obvious issue is that new ideas are frequently assessed via gut opinion or “the focus group of one.” These personal opinions frequently cause investors to make bad bets or miss potential winners. I yearned for concept testing and volume forecasting tools like the ones we used routinely at P&G. Alas, I found a few do-it-yourself surveys, but nothing with the level of rigor and insight that is needed to make million-dollar bets. So I decided to make one myself–along with a great deal of input from my group of advisors with experience across research, startups, and investment groups.

The result is the Minimum Viable Concept Test. Until now, I have been in stealth mode, working with a handful of investors and entrepreneurs to validate the methodology and prove value. The results have been fantastic. Now I am beginning to reach out to other partners and look forward to sharing further details in this space and at SXSW in a few weeks. In the meantime, if you’re curious to learn more, drop me a line.

+Bob Gilbreath