COMMENTS
I look forward to read your summary post! Cheers! Andre
Hi Dharmesh,
I'm a Sloan student, but unfortunately took 15.390 last semester! I'm a fan of OnStartups and would love to meet you sometime. Mind a party crasher tomorrow?
Nikhil Garg (nikhil at sloan dot mit dot edu)
A topic near and dear to my heart too...
I am an independent marketing consultant (recently retired from Intel) specilializing in first-of-their-kind business-to-business products. I'm also a teacher by inclination and occasionally in practice. It sounds like a fun session today.
Dharmesh, you might want to challenge today's students by posing a question about the role of competition as it applies to startups. It sounds counter-intuitive, but competition can actually be a huge benefit for a startup because (among other things):
1) It validates the entire product category. Would you buy a hybrid car if only one manufacturer was selling them?
2) You get to share the marketing effort to educate customers about the category (as opposed to your product specifically). It helps if you're not the only one explaining to the world what a hybrid car is.
3) You have a point of reference to make claims for your own product. How do you say "mine is better!" if there's nobody else? You are simultaneously the best and worst in your market niche.
4) And of course it motivates you to hustle! It's tough running a race at your best time if you haven't got someone else on the track with you.
--Carl
PS: Say hello to Howard for me when you do see him...
Dharmesh - Is there going to be a video or podcast available? We just launched votelicio.us and I would love to hear what you have to say about sales and marketing for startups.
Hi Dharmesh,
Did you ever get around to posting a summary of how the session went? I'd be curious what issues were at the top of the students' minds.
--Carl