Stephen Shu, PhD

In entrepreneurial settings, sometimes one has to get creative about developing new business with new customers. Getting things done in a quick period of time with maximum impact is a necessity more so than in larger corporations.

Thought I would just share a few random business development techniques that came to the top of my head with respect to freelance work, seminar development, and new venture or initiative development. The post was motivated by offline and online discussions I’ve had with folks approaching me over the past few weeks. I’m comfortable with at least two of these techniques (as I have both done them myself and seen others do it), but I’m a little bit skeptical of one of the techniques (perhaps you can tell me which one):

1. Figuring out how to get a whitepaper done – Lot of times these papers are sponsored by a company. In other cases, a freelance person may decide to write one and then make it freely available on the web to develop a brand identity associated with thought leadership. A third technique, which I’ve not seen written about as much, is to proactively solicit a few corporate sponsors for a whitepaper. Although this technique sometimes requires more sales skills, it is a way to spread out costs across a number of companies. The resulting work may also seem less biased towards a single vendor (depending on how you do it).
2. Figuring out how to get a marketing seminar done – Rather than having a start-up bear the entire cost of sponsoring a roundtable or summit on a technology subject, some larger companies have been known to co-sponsor technology seminars with smaller partner companies. Consider fleshing out the idea on a one-pager, indicate the structure of the seminar, the co-sponsorship costs, and how many co-sponsors you need to get the deal done. If there are unknown variable costs that you are not sure how to finance, better try to pin these down or you will have a hard time selling your idea to the co-sponsors.
3. Figuring out how to launch a new venture or business initiative – In the past I have seen my name appear in a business plan along with a number of other possible participants with bigger names, etc. When things are forming up, a plan document can give people an idea of how things are going to play out, and the intent is to rally people together. While some of the names appearing in the plan indicated "prospective participant", I noticed that mine did not have such a clear marking. The first time I saw the plan for the venture was the first time I even heard about the venture. I understand the plan had been shown to other folks too.

Now I think that each of the ideas above can be twisted a bit to get them to work properly, but perhaps people have other experiences. Again note that I have used two of these techniques before, but I have seen people do all three. I am *not* advocating all three techniques.

Steve Shu

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If you’re tired of the Michael Jackson news, all of my venture capital feeds are highlighting Fred Wilson’s (VC at Union Square Ventures) use of podcasting, tags, and RSS for accepting and listening to elevator pitches on his iPod submitted by others. You can find info here, here, here, here, here, and here on what’s going on and what the talk is all about … all from bloggers in and about the venture capital space.

It’s rare that I post anything like this, but in my 20 years of drumming (and 10 years or so of playing electronic drums now), I’ve never seen a good video that shows an example of all three side-by-side. This SONIC LAB drumkit shoot-out provides an excellent example of how far technology has come in the drumming market.