NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement): To Have Or Not To Have: That is the Question

When aspiring start-ups (or fast-growth companies) set out to secure funding and further cement their brand, many entrepreneurs believe that any conversation requires first securing a non-disclosure agreement aka NDA before sharing their pitch—whether with a prospective investor, a vendor or even a next-door neighbor.

Throughout my own 25+ years, during which I’ve been a public company CEO, as well as an advisor to venture capital and private equity firms, I’ve been asked to review proposals from dozens of companies extending across a broad spectrum of industries (notably, many were technology-centric). I’ve also sat on the other side of the table while serving as a principal stakeholder representing a variety of entrepreneurial initiatives. Inevitably, the topic of executing an NDA was the first talking point—one that I vehemently eschewed.

My view has always been “ideas are great, but the ability to innovate supersedes any argument that a non-disclosure agreement is a requisite to a productive discussion.” My position has always been that imposing an NDA before even engaging in a preliminary discussion is superfluous. If someone wants to try and steal an idea, an NDA isn’t going to stop them. In fact, what often stops (and always slows) a conversation before it starts is haggling over the terms of an agreement that is terribly difficult and terribly expensive to enforce. What will stop them is the inability to execute (aka innovate). That’s always where the rubber meets the road.

Lo and behold, Eileen Zimmerman of the NY Times profiled this exact topic in a strong article in today’s edition within the Small Business section. Here are some excerpts from Eileen’s article:

It is a common quandary, and not just in Silicon Valley. Ten years ago, it was not unusual for entrepreneurs to request and potential investors to sign nondisclosure agreements. But today the agreements are largely considered a thing of the past. In fact, some investors say they walk away from a founder who even suggests signing one.

Thom Ruhe, vice president for entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation, said the declining use of N.D.A.s “is certainly not in the interests of entrepreneurs. It favors the V.C.” Although it is rare that an investor steals an idea, Mr. Ruhe said, it does happen. “But in the skewed echo chamber of the Valley, and the sycophantical networks that aspire to be just like them,” he said, “they’ve made the easier and less morally defensible position — no N.D.A.s — the coin of the realm.”

Even if a start-up manages to get an agreement signed, it can be tough to enforce, said Aaron I. Messing, a lawyer with OlenderFeldman in Summit, N.J. “It’s very hard to prove that you kept information confidential, and it was only disclosed under an N.D.A.,” said Mr. Messing, who represents both founders and investors. “And it can be expensive.”

Below are some guidelines to consider. They apply when engaging not just investors, but also manufacturers, partners and even customers.

DO NOT ASK UNLESS YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO PROTECT. Chris Schultz, an entrepreneur and partner in the angel investment fund Voodoo Ventures in New Orleans, said: “Everyone thinks their idea is extremely unique, but the idea is really 1 percent of the value. The value is in the execution.”

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. Before making a pitch, research the background of your audience. “Think through who you are sharing your ideas with,” said Patrick Riley, head of Global Accelerator Network, a group of 50 start-up accelerators worldwide. Mr. Messing advised making sure an investor did not have potential conflicts or overlapping investments. Reputable investors, he said, “have much to lose by stealing your idea.”

CONSIDER FILING FOR A PROVISIONAL PATENT. C. Andrew Keisner, a lawyer with Davis & Gilbert in New York City who regularly counsels investors and start-ups, said the reluctance to sign N.D.A.s was one factor driving start-ups toward patent protection. “If you’re far enough along that you’ve developed an app or a prototype, there is a big advantage to filing a provisional application,” he said.

PROCEED GRADUALLY. When discussing a start-up, founders should walk a fine line, conveying sufficient information about what is unique and proprietary, but not disclosing information that would let someone replicate the business. For example, said Mr. Messing, the lawyer, an entrepreneur could disclose “what an algorithm can do, but not the algorithm itself.”

For the full article from the NY Times, please click here.

 

 

NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement): To Have Or Not To Have: That is the Question

Microsoft rumored to be planning to replace 'Surface' branding with 'Lumia'

The content below is extract from the Mary Jo Foley’s blog article published at zdnet.com on June 28, 2014. She is an author of Microsoft 2.0 and she is covering various publications of tech-industry for more than 25 years.

The summary of this article illustrates, how it would help or hurt Microsoft more if the company consolidated its mobile branding using the ‘Nokia’ and ‘Lumia’ brands instead of using the current ‘Surface’ branding?

Mary states:

Branding is hard. Branding is expensive.

And changing brands mid-stream is hard, expensive and sometimes (often?) ill-advised.

But according to known leaker @evleaks, Microsoft may be doing just that. According to his unnamed sources, Microsoft may be moving toward rebranding its Surface tablets as “Lumia” devices.

@evleaks also claimed that Microsoft may be negotiating to keep the Nokia brand longer than originally planned so that it can use it for future phones and possibly other devices.

Earlier this month, @evleaks published what looked to be some kind of Microsoft “technical branding” guidance document, which indicated that Microsoft planned to phase-out Nokia branding on a very specific schedule: 18 months post close of the Microsoft acquisition of the Nokia handset business for Lumia devices; through December 31, 2015 for Nokia X Android phones; and 10 years for Asha mobile phones. (From the way that planning document is phrased, I would guess it predated the close of the Microsoft acquisition of Nokia’s handset business in April 2014.)

I don’t have any first- or even second-hand information about these branding rumors. I’ve asked Microsoft but am not expecting any kind of comment.

I will note that Microsoft has spent a lot to land the Surface brand ever since officials decided to use it to refer to Microsoft’s mobile tablet family, rather than its large-screen tabletop devices. The company is continuing to advertise the new Surface Pro 3 massively on TV during the World Cup 2014.

However, the Nokia and Lumia brands have stronger recognition outside the U.S. than they do here. And Microsoft is doing better selling Windows Phones outside the U.S. than here in the States.

Consolidating the Surface and Lumia brands would fit in with the company’s “One Microsoft” messaging and positioning. And with Windows Threshold, the next major version of Windows due in spring 2015, Microsoft is expected to launch a single Windows SKU that will work on both phones and touch tablets. Would it be easier to land that unified message if the phones and tablets were all under the Nokia/Lumia brand? Possibly…

 

Click here to read full article

Microsoft rumored to be planning to replace 'Surface' branding with 'Lumia'

Creating Awareness Via Email NewsLetters: Works Better Than Ever

Below is courtesy of a special column from this week’s NY Times written by Media Equation’s David Carr.  His insight struck a confirming chord here at The JLC Group when considering our firm’s role providing guidance to several newsletter publishers, including our most recent client, Rareview Macro LLC and that firm’s product “Sight Beyond Sight”

Per Carr:

Email newsletters, an old-school artifact of the web that was supposed to die along with dial-up connections, are not only still around, but very much on the march.

In addition to the long-running morning must-haves like Mike Allen’s political tip sheet Playbook, other topics and approaches are gaining momentum across publishing. Quartz, Atlantic Media’s smart business site, has an increasingly popular daily newsletter. The revamped Newsweek has done well with Today in Tabs, a cheeky look at content that is so bad it’s good. And webby writers including Ann Friedman, Jason Hirschhorn, Alexis Madrigal, Robin Sloan and Maria Popova all put out much-followed newsletters.

• 
  

  Newsletters You Might Actually Be Happy to Find in Your Inbox

  
  

Bloomberg, Fast Company, The New York Times, Politico and many other news organizations are finding that they can grab attention — and readers — in the inbox.

How can that be? With social media, mobile apps and dynamic websites that practically stalk the reader, how can something that sometimes gets caught in a spam filter really be taking off?

Newsletters are clicking because readers have grown tired of the endless stream of information on the Internet, and having something finite and recognizable show up in your inbox can impose order on all that chaos. In fact, the comeback of email newsletters has been covered in Fast Company, The Atlantic and Medium, but I missed those articles because, really, who can keep up with a never-ending scroll of new developments? That’s where email newsletters, with their aggregation and summaries, come in. Some are email only, others reprise something that can be found on the web. At a time when lots of news and information is whizzing by online, email newsletters — some free, some not — help us figure out what’s worth paying attention to.

For the full column from The New York Times, please click here.

Creating Awareness Via Email NewsLetters: Works Better Than Ever

Your Website Face-Lift; Strategic Planning and Pre-launch Check List

Strategic planning is the key to business success as it involves deep thought behind setting vision, mission statement and out-of-the-box thinking. This philosophy is particularly relevant for any business that is now planning a face-lift of existing company website so as to remain relevant and current within the framework of contemporary brand-enhancement strategies.

•    Review Previous Project Analysis

Before moving on to a new project, review of previous project analysis will generate valuable insight when calculating all of the pros and cons of the previous project. The strategic planning of a new project depends upon the review of previous project analysis. Real experts learn from previous mistakes and formulate strategies that overcome the shortcomings of prior resources used, and other weaknesses or errors in the course of moving to new project planning.

•    Brand Strategy Planning

Brand strategy planning is a planning of brand identity, company image and the value proposition that you want to convey to your target market.  Our business strategy planners think big and provide insight to your business planning and current needs from a professional view point. We aim to create bigger and better ideas for the aspiring brand names.

•    Website Pre-Launch Check List

While elementary and obvious to many clients, this pre-launched website checklist critical to use as benchmark when working with website designers and developers.

-    Check for Favicon

-    Cross Browser Testing

-    Cross operating system compatibility

-    Removing Borders for Links and Images

-    Set up 404 page

-    Loading time (Downtime & Server Speed)

-    Setting up 301 redirects if needed

-    Set up Web Analytics

-    Set up Google Webmaster

-    Check for broken links

-    Proofread all the content – Spell Check!

-    Check all links on header footer and body

-    Functionality Check

-    HTML Validation through w3c.org (Remove all warnings and Errors)

-    Copyright statement

-    Disclaimer

-    Meta Information of all pages (Title, Keywords, and Description)

-    HTML Sitemap

-    XML Sitemap

-    Robot.txt

-    URL optimization

-    Develop Newsletter (campaign for opt-in subscribers)

-    Social icons links to your social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, G+, etc.)

-    RSS Feed

Your Website Face-Lift; Strategic Planning and Pre-launch Check List

“Why Does Your Brand Exist? The 4 P’s Test for branding strategy

Thanks to Jennie Wong, for sharing this week’s interview of “Ask The Mompreneur” with Jaun Garzon, a marketing strategist. In her recent article “What is your firm’s branding strategy?” She discussed what the brand is and what is branding strategy? As explained by Mr.Jaun Garzon in an interview.

To help entrepreneurs and small businesses better understand the core of their brand and branding strategies, I use a system I developed called the 4 P’s of Branding. It boils down this hidden part of your brand into 4 aspects: your purpose, your promise, your personality and your positioning. By asking yourself these questions (in this order), you’ll be well on your way to understanding what your brand is all about.

Purpose:

Why does your company, whether you are 1 or 100 employees, exist? Why do you get up every morning and do what you do? Why did you start this business to begin with? Your purpose is about connecting your business to its “Why?” and ensuring that the branding decisions you make support because doing what you do, including putting it out for the world to see. For example, Southwest Airlines states their purpose right on their website, “To connect people to what’s important in their lives through friendly, reliable and low-cost air travel.” Whatever that reason is for you, that’s the foundation of your brand.

Promise:

It is imperative to know your target market and communicate such things you guarantee always to do for them (in your promotions, social awareness, sales brochures, etc.). Such guarantee may include pace, quality, attention to detail or any high-level benefit you can constantly offer. The goal is, customers should realize that if they opt to work with your company, you will stick to certain promises and can do everything to make it achievable. This promise is ultimately responsible for brand reputation.

Personality:

Brand personality depicts the personality of users consuming it. Brand personality can be feminine or masculine. For example, to get you the meaning of different brand personalities, think about two different motorcycle brands, Honda and Harley Davidson. You would unlikely to confuse the two, even though they both are motorcycle brands. Honda bikes are mostly used by low-mid income class individuals or young small families. It reflects affordability and fuel-efficient features. While, Harley Davidson is usually own by well off individuals who are never worried about fuel-efficiency and affordable cost. What most matters for Harley user are uniqueness, prestige and competition from peers.

Positioning:

Your customers are might be aware of products or services you are selling, but not necessarily aware of why particular product or service is valuable for them or how certain offering may add value in their lifestyle. Here brand positioning strategy works to divide the market into segment and sub-segments. You have to clearly define your brand through advertising and promotional efforts. For instance, Volvo and Mercedes are both higher-end cars, but Mercedes is all about prestige and quality whereas Volvo has positioned its brand as the safest cars in the world.

There are numerous strategies floating in the market to make your product a BRAND, but these 4 simple P’s of branding strategy could help you define the scope and purpose of your brand. If there is any anonymity between your brand and 4 P’s then you must to revamp your strategies.

“Why Does Your Brand Exist? The 4 P’s Test for branding strategy

Case Study for Corporate Marketers, Bankers, Branding Gurus and PR Positers: Skybox Inc

Skybox Imaging Inc. Team

How to differentiate your disruptive and innovative company from the rest? Have your chief cheerleader (presumably your CEO) make an epic statement in which your entire company and your constituents can continuously hang their hats on..  The following is a classic example:

“We think we are going to fundamentally change humanity’s understanding of the economic landscape on a daily basis.” Skybox co-founder Dan Berkenstock

The above words from an entrepreneur whose offering is seemingly perceived to be something simple: satellite technology.

If you are an aspiring tech czar in the capital raising mode, a brand enhancement specialist, a venture capitalist doing due dili, or a mere investment banker who is working with an advanced-stage company whose execs are also looking to you to help ‘craft the value proposition” to investors, your target audience will always be more inspired when you perspire passion to the point where its dripping from your pores.

The context of the above quote is in connection with a very compelling piece written by WSJ reporter Christopher Mims in his aptly-titled column “KEYWORDS”

Below are select extracts from the June 16 WSJ article: The story itself is not merely about enterprise valuation techniques and not only about the next great technology innovation, the story transcends borders for those who can read in between the lines..

Silicon Valley lately has seemed like the land of wild—or at least puzzling—valuations.

Facebook bought WhatsApp, a messaging service with paltry revenue and at least a half-dozen sophisticated competitors, for $19 billion. Uber was just valued at $18.2 billion in a round of private-equity financing. Even Beats Electronics, a company with a music service in its infancy and technologically inferior headphones that could fall out of fashion at any moment, was valued at $3.2 billion to Apple.

But Google just bought a company that could have a bigger impact on its bottom line and on the world than any other recent acquisition by the search giant or its tech brethren—for just $500 million.

For 1/38th the price of WhatsApp, Google acquired Skybox Imaging, which puts satellites into orbit 185 miles above Earth on the tip of the same Russian missiles that once threatened the U.S. with nuclear destruction. And here’s what Skybox could allow Google to accomplish: Within a couple of years, when you want to know whether you left your porch light on or if your teenager borrowed the car you forbade her to drive, you might check Google Maps.

That’s because by 2016 or so, Skybox will be able to take full images of the Earth twice a day, at a resolution that until last week was illegal to sell commercially—all with just a half-dozen satellites. By the time its entire fleet of 24 satellites has launched in 2018, Skybox will be imaging the entire Earth at a resolution sufficient to capture, for example, real-time video of cars driving down the highway. And it will be doing it three times a day.

And yet, as I discovered when I visited Skybox recently at its modest, low-slung headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., satellite imagery isn’t even the business in which the company’s founders see themselves. As at Google, the business of Skybox isn’t data, but knowledge.

“We think we are going to fundamentally change humanity’s understanding of the economic landscape on a daily basis,” says co-founder Dan Berkenstock.

Here’s an example of what he’s talking about. In 2010, an analyst at UBS discovered that if he bought satellite images of parking lots of Wal-Mart stores, he could predict the company’s sales figures before they were revealed in its quarterly report, because cars in lots equal shoppers in stores.

“We’re looking at Foxconn every week,” Mr. Berkenstock says, because measuring the density of trucks outside the Taiwanese company’s manufacturing facilities tells Skybox when the next iPhone will be released.

Skybox can determine how much oil is being pumped out of the ground in Saudi Arabia by imaging oil-storage tanks from above. The company can peg the likely price of grain months in advance by measuring the health of every square yard of cropland on Earth. One city has used Skybox’s data to determine who built illegal backyard pools and might use it to identify water-restriction violators during a drought.

It’s competitive intelligence as spy craft. And it’s compelling enough that a Skybox employee once told a reporter for Wired that the company might someday simply become an unreasonably profitable hedge fund.

Yet these known uses of satellite data—which have never been available in the abundance that Skybox says it can achieve—are just the beginning. It’s the unpredictable applications that could be the biggest.

If Google can get a cut of those services by charging a licensing fee for the underlying data, it could be a new business that might move the needle on Google’s revenue mix, which, ample as it is, remains stubbornly linked to search advertising.

Case Study for Corporate Marketers, Bankers, Branding Gurus and PR Positers: Skybox Inc

6 Rules for New Brands Seeking Minimum Viability; Do It Right, Not Right Away.

Thanks to Denise Lee Yohn for her observations in the HBR Blog Network.

Many brands fail due to having no or otherwise, a vaguely pre-defined brand strategy. Some entrepreneurs assume that their new product or innovation is so brilliant that they only need to “make it available” in the market and people will immediately embrace it.

 

Others, typically technology companies, develop core applications that have multiple possible uses, and because they are not sure enough which of the applications will be the most compelling, so they just place them in the market to let the consumers decide.

In both of the above mentioned scenarios, entrepreneurs overlook the brand strategy and its importance related to the success of the brand. Pre-defined brand strategy aligns the internal employees with the common ground of brand goals and objectives, as well as helps determine the product differentiations and parities.

Most entrepreneurs are usually in such a rush to get a new product launched, they forget the value of brand strategy as the foundation for a successful launch. And some mistakenly presume brand strategy with the product strategy, without realizing that the brand is much more than mere product.

At The JLC Group, we often caveat guidance to clients with a basic tenant: “Do it Right, Not Right Away.”

Today, entrepreneurs like Eric Ries have introduced a new hypothetical concept to test product or brand hypothesis with minimum resources called Minimum Viable Product (MVP) or Minimum Viable Brand (MVB). It is comprised of the core brand elements that are mandatory to assure internal focus and alignment as well as external relevance and differentiation. The MVB model revolves around 6 WHAT questions, to be answered for better brand strategy:

1)    What we stand for – Brand Promise

2)    What we believe in – Brand Values

3)    What people we seek to engage – Target Market

4)    What differentiate us – Point of Differentiation

5)    What we offer – Brand Credibility

6)    What we represent – Brand Image

These are the six questions that need to be addressed and understood within an organization prior to making a new product launch. Contrary to popular belief, customers’ brand perception determines the value and strength of the brand, but it’s an organization that creates perceptions on customer’s mind about the brand through promotions and marketing efforts. What I personally believe, we should never leave any determinants in the consumers’ court to let them decide the future of the brand. This is something organizations need to inject effort from their end.

6 Rules for New Brands Seeking Minimum Viability; Do It Right, Not Right Away.

Madison Ave Marketers Move To Wall St With Index For Advertising Pricing

Having spent more than 15 minutes within the “World of Wall Street” and since migrating to the fringes of Madison Avenue, we’re always intrigued to notice how the world of marketing and advertising continues to merge with Wall Street-style advertising buying and selling schemes. As best evidenced by Media Post Communications latest initiative,  this Madmen enterprise seeks to emulate respective roles of financial behemoths Standard & Poor’s aka “S&P” and Dow Jones’ by providing an index that enables tracking of real-time benchmark pricing for ad placements.

The initiative’s goal, profiled by Stuart Elliott in today’s NYT Advertising section starts with a new index called “RTB”, which stands for Real-Time Buying, is to provide a gauge for pricing based on the top 500 on-line publications.

Suffice to say, we’re fluent in the topic of index trading, whether in form of exchange-traded-products (ETFs), futures contracts and/or options on underlying indexes. These products are intended to provide pricing transparency and the means by which ‘investors’ can manage investment portfolios. The world of advertising, according to most industry experts, is bereft of pricing transparency. It is a world that until recently has been stuck in the ’60s, no different than the days gone by in which Wall Street fund managers were dependent on telephones to communicate with brokers who could provide visibility as to latest pricing for stocks and bonds.

The good (or bad) news is that Madmen from Madison Avenue have embraced a broad assortment of trading technology tools and strategies typical to today’s financial markets.. Below excerpt courtesy of Stuart Elliott’s column

“There is so much sophistication being brought into the marketplace,” said Robert D. Liodice, president and chief executive of the largest trade organization for marketers, the Association of National Advertisers, “and through programmatic we are giving ourselves the ability to understand data better to help in our real-time decision-making.” Mr. Liodice said he was told about the MediaPost plans by Joe Mandese, editor of MediaPost, who has been testing the index for more than a year with colleagues like Jeffrey A. Loechner, the company’s president.

MediaPost plans to have the index go live on Thursday. The index, using 100 as a baseline, will be available on the MediaPost website, mediapost.com, as well as in MediaPost newsletters like Real-Time Daily. There will also be 15 subindexes covering websites by categories like entertainment, games, magazines, music, newspapers, portals and sports.

 

Madison Ave Marketers Move To Wall St With Index For Advertising Pricing

How To Use Social Platforms To Boost Reach: 6 Ways to Get More Social Media Shares for Your Blog

We are used to observing social media sharing on a routine basis; as soon as we connect to the internet and login to our social media accounts we see likes, tweets and pins. These social media platforms are great ways to expand the reach and share content across the digital border. In the digital world of businesses, it is rightly said that “Content is KING.” However, what I believe, whether the Content is King or “Jack of All Spades,” it must be truly optimized for reaching your audience via effective social sharing.

Here are 6 ways to get more social media shares for your blog.

1) Use floating social bookmarking widget to increase the shares. The sharing bar keeps moving when a person scrolls down the post.

2) You can use two or more headlines (aka double-whammy headlines) for the post to grab attention of the readers. Much like the approach we use in this blog.

a) How to use social platforms to boost the reach

b) 6 ways to get more social media shares for your blog

3) Reframe the content each time. Do it by posting a part of a blog with an image and tag the link of the whole blog in the end. For instance, you have seen many articles and blogs saying Click here to read full article or See more.

4) Repost your content after a specific interval of time such as 3 months or 6 months to get it noticed by new followers.

5) Use Popup to encourage users share your blog.

6) Last in sequence, but not in importance. Make sure your sharing button is not hidden or dead and it is always prominent at the eye-catching location.

Do you have more ideas to increase the social sharing? Let us know your experience in the comment box…

How To Use Social Platforms To Boost Reach: 6 Ways to Get More Social Media Shares for Your Blog

Are powerful Brand Mantras really helping increase Brand Equity?

The answer is straightforward; YES, they can magically increase the brand equity and its vital components such as brand awareness, brand resonance, brand perceived quality, and brand loyalty. Brand Mantras are 3-5 small word phrases (not a Tagline or Slogan) that confine the overwhelming promise and essence of the brand and its values.

The term Brand Mantra was initially coined by an American advertising executive, Scott Bedbury, former Nike and Starbucks marketing specialist. It encapsulates the point-of-differences (PODs), point-of-parities (POPs), and the competitive frame of reference into one brand idea. Fundamentally, the brand mantra is an imperative part when marketers design the strategy to position their brand. Great brand mantras can effectively position the brand in prospective buyers, creating highly perceived overall value of the brand.

Mercedes – “Quality and Prestige”

According to Scott Bedbury, he invented this term during his tenure in Nike, giving probably the best brand mantra ever for Nike, i.e. “Authentic Athletic Performance.” Remember that brand mantra is something different from slogans and taglines, because Nike’s slogan or tagline is what everybody knows, “Just do it.”

Actually, marketers derive taglines from brand mantras and they serve as a critical building block not only for the brand tagline, but for the complete brand equity or organization itself. When brainstorming mantras, marketers should focus on their core values, vision, mission and the corporate culture of the organization, without compromising on the brand positioning aspect as well. Your brand and your values should incorporate with each other. If there is something tricky between these two elements, then on off the chance that you’re on wrong track and your customers might perceive the branding as negative. Some people also describe brand mantras as the DNA of the organization that can effectively help in decision making process for branding strategies and user expectations.

In my experience, creating great brand mantra could help you hit the targeted audience smoothly in positioning world of brands. The mantra is an emotional attachment of a brand that let people knows how uniquely it will benefit them and how they feel using the certain branded product. So you can say that powerful “Brand Mantra” not only provides the brand positioning and brand image, also helps decide the prospect of the brand and organization.

Are powerful Brand Mantras really helping increase Brand Equity?