Marketing - Learning to skate before you play Ice Hockey

 My University, Northeastern, below, wins 'the Beanpot.'  

2018, 'The Beanpot' is a favorite tradition in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, where I lived for ten years and went to college. It's an Ice Hockey Tournament between Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern University (my college) and Harvard.

Jack, my ten-year-old son, is learning to play Ice Hockey. Of course, first He's had to learn how to skate. No point teaching him how to use his hockey stick to hit a puck into the goal, when he can barely stay on his feet on the ice.

So every week we go down to the Ice rink in Bayswater, London, and he gets to skate for two or three hours. Last week, we bought him some Ice Hockey skates and had them sharpened.

- Initially, he was actually a lot more unsteady on his feet, as he adjusted to the new Ice Skates.

I see this effect when we initially bring digital transformation to Marketing or start to use more sophisticated CRM.

However, within a few hours, Jack was actually skating faster. I timed him, and he was about a quarter more quickly around the rink with the new skates.

8am on a Sunday morning he starts his Ice Hockey classes - Two hours each week. That'll be the big test. Can he stay on his feet when he's trying to score a goal and he has competitors snapping at him on all sides?

My son, Jack, at his first Hockey class

Our coach, wearing the Boston College shirt, is from Boston, where Jack was born.

A lot of companies can't skate at all, but they want to be Wayne Gretzky (a famous Ice Hockey player, who won a lot of championships) within, let's say, six months.

- and often, when they're not skating like a superstar after six months, they change their trainer

As a Marketing leader, you could tell your leadership team that We will achieve some notable victories, but 'first, we need to learn to skate around the rink without falling on our behinds'.

Of course, that doesn't sound very good. Some Marketers skate around the issue and say 'Sure, we can do that. But we do need to do x, y, z first' and just hope that this expectation will go away.

But the truth is that digital marketing is hard. It takes a lot of time, testing, experimentation. Yes, it takes money too! It's also not something that works with constant micromanaging.

It doesn't work overnight.

You see gradual, incremental improvement over time, with a lot of work.

You will also see better and faster improvements when the entire company is entirely behind the marketing efforts. 

-but frequently that does not happen.

I know it's a pain in the ass to hear this - 

- The adage is not 'Seize the day.'
- It's 'Rome wasn't built in a day.'

Marketing automation and analytics are the same. So why do a lot of startup CEO's expect this sudden, dramatic change in one month?

Impatience? Frustration? Lack of thought? These are all possibilities for their desperation. But I believe their problems stem mainly from not understanding how Digital Marketing works.

The standard rules of business often simply don't apply to startups.  Just like the world of Ice Hockey, the world of startups is crazy and chaotic. Sometimes fights break out in the middle of the action. Sometimes the action just carries on regardless. It's actually amazing how similar the two worlds are!

Marketers in the start-up industry need to start being more honest and say 'sure we can achieve some fantastic results. But it'll take a lot of time, commitment, effort and yes, some money too. 

In addition to the many challenges that startups face, Marketing leaders face additional ones. The industry is in one of it's toughest phases right now

- 80% of CEOs are unhappy with their Marketing heads. That percentage is even higher in startups. 

Even in incredibly successful startups I've worked at, like $18 Billion market-cap Nasdaq listed Zscaler, we went through three CMO's in just two years! Two other startups I worked at, change their entire marketing team roughly every six months.

'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat' (Winston Churchill) is a robust but effective message.

- But it's also a sobering message to hear. I have a lot of empathy with you as a Startup founder and CEO. I really want to tell you what want to hear. But I think it's better for both of us in the long run, to be honest with you.

- Then we can achieve some incredible results, working together!

For further reading on this topic, why not check out this excellent article 'The Trouble with CMO's' in Harvard Business Review.

The 'Five Eyes' Secret Service Conference in Australia

                   

The Five Eyes, often abbreviated as FVEY, is an anglophone intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries are parties to the multilateral UK-USA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in Secret Service intelligence. 

The origins of the FVEY can be traced back to the post–World War II period. At this time, the Allies issued the Atlantic Charter to lay out their goals for a post-war world. During the Cold War, the FVEY initially developed the ECHELON surveillance system to monitor the communications of the former Soviet Union. Now, it is used to monitor billions of private communications worldwide. 

This is one of the systems Edward Snowden exposed in 2013, which is why he now lives in Russia (the US Justice Department wants him). Cybersecurity is one of the main concerns of all these Secret Service agencies. They are working on numerous issues related to national security, including cyber threats, internet security, cyber attacks, malware protection, encrypting and decrypting data, and creating secure government firewalls. 

The primary purpose of this conference was to agree on a public statement outlining the Five Eyes' policy on encryption. The issue has been in and out of the news ever since Edward Snowden released thousands of documents outlining the NSA's monitoring of the public's communications across all networks. 

Four areas they talked about that were covered extensively at Infosec this year were Ransomware attacks on Internet of Things (IoT) devices, AI-powered chatbots manipulating information, Russia & other malign dictatorships hacking democratic election processes to manipulate them, and Cyberwarfare damaging global trade. 

The conference went well. All the other countries in the Secret Service 'Group of five' - Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA, were exquisitely entertained at the best Hyatt Hotel in Canberra. But sadly, the miserly English had to languish in an unknown Hotel a long way from the event (someone quipped 'in the outback'). 

We were undoubtedly the other four nation's poor cousin this month. I understand we in the UK all live in the age of austerity, but some might say this is excessive. We're the country that invented James Bond for goodness sake........... We have always led the world in Secret Service operations.

 

One of the British contingents made an inappropriate joke about Snowden to the CIA. I suppose some of us in Europe are unaware of how poorly Edward Snowden is viewed in the US Secret Service and military circles. So why would you make such a joke at a packed assembly with a leading US Secret Service delivering a vital talk? 

I suppose some of us Brits are not convinced he was a traitor. Some believe that the information he released was in the public interest. Still, it must be pretty awkward for a 'freedom fighter' like Andrew Snowden to be living in the full-on brutal dictatorship that Russia has morphed into.

The top topic was Cyber Security, which is fast becoming the obsession of all Secret Service organizations. Companies like Apple and WhatsApp still protect their data against Western agencies. However, in Russia, China, and other dictatorships, all data (on Google, Whatsapp, Facebook, Apple, etc..) is easily accessible by their governments. So much for Silicon's Valleys 'values'. They only work when there's no real threat to their profits. 

Another topic on the agenda was the proposed inquiry into abuses committed by British undercover officers, going back to the early 1970s. These officers were dealing with some of the most dangerous criminal gangs in the UK and were consequently promised complete anonymity for their lifetime. 

The British Government is now going back on that promise. Like many businesses, these gangs that the agents were operating in go on in perpetuity, and they have long memories. These undercover officers were in extreme danger then, and many of them are still in danger now and will be for the rest of their lives. This inquiry will almost certainly uncover nothing useful after forty years or more, yet it will potentially unleash several hornets' nests. Is it worth it?

Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, chopped up, and burned (under the guise of a 'barbecue') in the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Istanbul, Turkey, in November 2018. I coincidentally also went to a friend's wedding in Istanbul, Turkey, during this time. If the Saudis had asked around, they would have realised that all embassies are bugged, so they are not the best location for a murder. 

But like the Russians and North Koreans, Saudis live in somewhat of a bubble. They only allowed women to drive a few years ago! Homosexuality and even adultery (for the women at least) are punishable by death. How very 'middle ages' of Saudi Arabia!

                              


Secret Service monitoring of communications is undoubtedly a subject that provokes much debate.

Without a doubt, a large proportion of effective computer hacking campaigns are state-sponsored, for example:

• North Korea creating the Wannacry virus that did immense damage to the NHS in the UK.
• Russia hacking into the US Presidential elections and potentially changing its result (and now China as well).
• The Chinese government's hackers breaking into private business websites, and stealing intellectual property to help boost its many state-run enterprises.

How the Financial Crash of 2008 could repeat itself

Professor Adam Tooze talked to a packed audience at the LSE: 'Each time a crisis is solved, it returns with a vengeance. If you look at crashes starting with  Long-Term Capital Management in '98, the .com crash of 2000, the financial account frauds of 2001

- or the mortgage-backed securities-driven financial meltdown of 2008, they are all increasing in amplitude.'

He continued to say that the big problem is that the Fed, the government, Central Banks, and so on have to move heaven and earth each time to fix the problem.

Then within a few years, we're all acting like nothing awful happened. You have the problem of Moral hazard endemic in this industry. 

2008 - 'Too big to fail' - 2018 now they're even bigger

Everyone remembers the phrase 'too big to fail,' right? Ironically, a result of the government fixing the last crisis is that there are even fewer banks, which are even bigger than before.

But in 2008, something REALLY BAD happened, and we were fortunate to get out of it. It cost a fortune - $13,000,000,000,000 (thirteen trillion dollars) of taxpayer's money, and we're still suffering the consequences.

- Brexit.
- The Election of Donald Trump as US President.
- The debt crisis in Portugal, Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy & Iceland.
- The rise of 'Popularism' and the far right in Europe. 
- Productivity growth stagnation (particularly in the UK).

They are all, arguably, consequences of the 2008 Financial Crash.

Federal Chairman Ben Bernanke's quote that 2008 was 'worse than the Great Depression' but for the US Government's intervention.

Banks on the brink of Bankruptcy in 2008

On the surface, it looks like it's all ok right now.......

The US Federal Reserve spending

But check this chart below, out - Our Economies had to go into a war-time footing, in 2008, last seen during World War 2. And we are not back to normal now.

The Housing Market

What about this, the housing market. See that big loopy curve at the end of the chart that looks entirely different from the rest? That's right now. 

This chart shows when the government deficit took off - they needed to spend a fortune to prop up the failing banks and financial institutions.

Government Debt and the UK's 'Austerity' policy

Check out when government debt started to take off, in this chart below: 2008, just when the Crash in the Financial Sector happened.

What would you think if restaurant review sites like TripAdvisor or Yelp were paid for by the restaurants?

That's precisely what happened at all the rating agencies during the crash. And it's still happening today. The rating agencies are paid by the companies they rate. 

During a Congressional hearing into the 2008 financial crash, an email was discovered from a rating expert.

He had written: 'Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters.' 

I had a personal experience of something similar when living in Boston, USA. I regularly met up with a major bank's head of the Mortgage-backed Securities Sales desk.

He used to laugh at his analyst projections, ignoring the last 'black swan' property crash.

Companies like Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs were shorting (Betting against) Mortgage-backed securities while another part of the company was selling them. 

I also knew a CEO at the helm when this financial meltdown happened. He was distraught for a time. He was scared he would be prosecuted for fraud and sent to jail.

However, He walked away with $30 Million in severance. US Taxpayers had to bail out his company for $189 Billion.

The biggest bailout in History - will the next one be bigger?

It became evident during the lecture how little could be done during the crash without the USA. The Federal Reserve guaranteed loans not only for US Banks but for banks across the globe. 

It's irrelevant what those in the European Union say; we would have all been sunk without the US's action. Professor Tooze said, 'The European Central Bank became the 13th Federal Reserve district.'

I still laugh when Politicians in the UK say that the UK Chancellor (equivalent to the Secretary of the Treasury) got us into the sub-prime disaster. Firstly, it was the banks that did that. Secondly, it started in the USA and was a global phenomenon.

Europe is still suffering from the effects of the subprime mortgage collapse. Spain, the size of Texas, has youth unemployment at 50%. Greece is in a similar position. 

Professor Tooze told us we are on a path of ever-greater fluctuation in Economic Downturns.

In 2015-2016, we narrowly dodged a recession spreading from Russia, Brazil, and South Africa, the collapse of commodity prices (notably, Oil), and the Chinese Yuan.

Where will the next crash start? - China? or the Banks again?

Professor Adam Tooze was particularly gripping when he revealed the comparative chart of the banks' vulnerability to a similar future shock. 

He pointed to Deutsche Bank as by far the most exposed, just adding, to much laughter, that no one could be surprised because Deutsche Bank was universally regarded as a “basket case”. 

No 2 did cause some consternation in the room - HSBC. 

Five of the biggest banks in the world are now Chinese. 

Fall-out from Silicon Valley Bank Collapse & Bailout 

(added 19/3/23)

SVB had grown extraordinarily fast, with total assets almost doubling from $116 billion at the end of 2021 to $216 billion at the end of 2022, making it the 16th largest bank in the US and the second largest bank failure in US history. 

According to LSE Economists Jón Danielsson &  Robert Macrae SVB's collapse shows us that the financial system is much more fragile than the public had been led to believe.

How I learnt to use Digital Marketing

My first experience of digital Marketing working at a start-up was in Fintech, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, in 2009. We had a free stock trading dashboard, that over 400,000, mainly small private investors used to trade. Later on, we brought out a tool that allowed you to scrape data off the web, analyse and publish it, that the Wall Street Journal called 'Twitter for numbers'.

During the last 9 years,  I've mainly worked in the Business to business field. Therefore I have tended to gravitate towards managing email marketing, events, contact lists and business intelligence. However, over the last 5 years, I've been increasingly delving into digital marketing. 

Back in 2013, I took a course on HTML5 & CSS3, which enabled me to design web pages. These programming languages have also been useful when I've designed email templates for Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics (the two main CRM systems I've worked with). 

A few years later, I began to experiment with paid search. I took a course in Google analytics, SEM and Paid Search in 2015. Typically I've worked with an SEO expert, but over the last few years, I've also run quite a few paid search campaigns on my own. I feel confident doing so, but at the same time, I always feel like I can learn more, which I endeavour to do.

becoming adept at digital marketing is a journey, not a destination So if you're looking to get into this, I suggest just getting started as soon as possible, as I did. 'A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step' says the old Chinese proverb. So far I've found nothing to be overwhelmingly challenging. It's simply a case of application and learning.

Currently, I'm taking a Diploma in Digital Marketing at the Digital Marketing Institute. This is more costly and in-depth than the previous digital marketing courses I have taken. However, so far, I'm pretty happy with my progress.

This course has been great both to refresh basic concepts and learn new ideas. Some of it goes over old ground - like how to run campaigns in Twitter, Linkedin or email. Other parts are definitely teaching me new skills; for example in content marketing, strategy, metrics and Search Engine Marketing and Optimisation or running campaigns in Facebook and Instagram.

I also like that I get to take a formal exam at the end of it at a Pearson test centre (the same place I took the GMAT). These tests are a great way to 'check' my knowledge.

GDPR - LSE Lawyers round table discussion on Privacy and Data Protection

On the 25th of May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force. This regulation changes how big digital players are processing data; It forces all organizations to get their registered information on individuals in check.

With the challenges of implementing such regulation in organizations in mind, the Lawyers’ Alumni Group hosted a round-table Q& A discussion of the newly introduced law and its impact.

Led by Steven Taylor (LLM 2012), a specialist in privacy law and data protection, the session brought together a small group of select alumni who have an interest and experience in the practical application of the new regulation.

Below, Steve Taylor, who heads the legal team at a major US Private Equity group.

Anita Bapat, who gained a first in Law at the LSE in 2005, also made notable contributions. Anita is the Head of Privacy at Deloitte.

Since I've purchased annual subscriptions with several large data/Business intelligence companies like ZoomInfo/ Discoverorg over the years, I wanted to see what the Law said about this relationship. Specifically, I wanted to understand whether, if there is some issue, it is the data company, my company, or both who are liable.

It's significant since the EEC has the right under GDPR to fine a company up to 4% of annual revenue or 20 Million Euros.  There is a two-tier system of administrative fines, the first being up to 10 million Euros or 2% of annual global turnover.

Steve said that the responsibility lies with the data company (the data processor), not your company (the data controller). However, he said that you must also check your contract to ensure that the data company does not have special exclusion clauses that would pass that responsibility to you.

Steve told me earlier that he'd met and talked to Elizabeth Denham, the ICO commissioner overseeing GDPR in the UK. Elizabeth said that 'rather like doing your homework at school, as long as you are seen to be trying your best to comply, the ICO will not generally expect perfection'.

We had a long discussion on this subject, and the conclusion was that barely a single company that does extensive marketing could be considered 100% compliant right now.

Confusingly (like many aspects of this legislation) Elizabeth Denham has also, however, put her position across somewhat more strongly: “If your organization can’t demonstrate that good data protection is a cornerstone of your business practices, you’re leaving your organization open to enforcement action that can damage both public reputation and bank balance.”

There are two ways to establish if you can use a person's data; Consent and Legitimate Interest. The first is self-explanatory; 'Consent' means that your contact has expressly asked you to contact them. Typically this is facilitated with an 'opt-in' (or 'double opt-in) button on your email, advertisement, article, or social media post. 

The second is trickier to define. 'Legitimate interest' is often a basis to contact business customers. Many companies are happy to go this route. Other companies steer away from it and insist on only contacting prospects that have 'opted in' to receive communications.

The GDPR protection levels are lowered for business customers since they are typically seen as less vulnerable than business-to-consumer contacts (especially in certain highly sensitive categories like financial services).

For the ICO definition of legitimate interest, click here.  Most agree that it means that you have a good reason to hold and use that person's data.

To fall within 'legitimate interest,' you must be able to apply three rules to your data use:

• Purpose test – is there a legitimate interest behind the processing?

• Necessity test – is the processing necessary for that purpose?

• Balancing test – is the legitimate interest overridden by the individual’s interests, rights, or freedoms?

Steve also reassured us that if you are a start-up, you might be fined 4% of annual revenue, which could actually be a reasonably small amount, rather than 25 Million Euros; Most startups wouldn't recover from a twenty-five million euro fine, after all.

We had an outstanding discussion on Brexit and how that will impact this European legislation. Here, Anita really came into her own, She knew all the details. 

I thought that data companies could lobby and have this legislation removed in the UK. Although EU legislation was enacted into UK law after we left the EU, the UK now has full legal sovereignty. Thus the UK can choose to abandon GDPR if parliament votes for that.

But Anita told us that GDPR had already been enacted into UK Law on May 24th, one day before the European GDPR date. The Data Protection Act 2018 is thus both an extension of the 1998 UK Data Protection Act and implementing the same regulations as European GDPR.

Our conversations were too detailed and wide-ranging to include all of them in this blog post... However, some points that Steve made, to remember;

Article 27
Requires a company to have a representative in Europe

Article 37
Requires the company to have a Data Protection Officer. This person must have an understanding of the Law and GDPR and also must be an expert on handling data.

Article 33.2
This covers breach notifications. As soon as you are aware of a data breach, no matter how insignificant, you must notify the ICO within 72 hours.

My main takeaway from this discussion was how uncertain, even highly trained legal privacy experts are, regarding how these laws will actually be applied. 

Steven said that if ICO digs deep enough, it will be able to uncover breaches of the GDPR rules anywhere, even at tech giants like Facebook or Google.

Does that give the ICO the right to do so just to generate more revenue via fines? How will the ICO determine the extent of their dig and who they dig for breaches with?

For example, 281 billion emails are sent every day. How can the EEC monitor all of these? Will they concentrate on large companies? Or flagrant breaches of the legislation? Steve said that the latter is the most likely.

Thanks to Sharon Park, LLM graduate in Information Technology Law at the LSE, and Technology, Resilience and Cyber Associate at The Financial Conduct Authority, for editing this post for me to ensure Legal accuracy. 

My conclusion: If a room full of lawyers and experts on GDPR is still unclear of all the implications of this legislation, then yes, GDPR can be a minefield for us Marketers. But it doesn't have to be.

I aim to continuously revise and update my position on this and keep in touch with legal experts every step of the way. As more case law is created around GDPR, then we will have more clarity as to how to follow GDPR to stay within the legal requirements in Europe.

Update 18th June 2021: As I had already suspected back in 2018, GDPR is now vulnerable in Post-Brexit Britain. The current government has been talking about dismantling it and replacing it with a UK common law system of privacy.

The ethics of data privacy is another question, which is covered well in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. 

Our highlights from Salesforce at the 'Trailblazers' Conference

Bella at Salesforce

I've worked with many Marketing Email Marketing and CRM tools, from Microsoft Dynamics and Click Dimensions to Hubspot, Eloqua, and MailChimp, to Marketo. I've been most impressed with Salesforce, and Pardot, particularly in the quality of their support. Salesforce and Pardot are truly built to work together as a combined sales enablement (Salesforce) and Marketing/CRM/Email tool (Pardot).

Ronan Twohig, Account executive, Salesforce, Emer Merriman, Marketing Specialist, Salesforce and Isabella Hernandez, Marketing Executive, Buzzmove

My colleague and I, Bella Hernandez, met up with our team at Pardot in the SMB arena at the excel center in the Docklands. It was great to see Ronan Twohig again and meet Emer Merriman.

Straight away we were deep into a conversation about how I could make some adjustments to better integrate Salesforce with Pardot. Then right away, I was like 'hey Emer, I want to get a better insight into our Marketing ROI. How can I best accomplish that?'

B-2-B Marketing analytics - What we may be missing

Emer asked me about our product suite, and it turned out that we are missing one component that can achieve this, the B-2-B analytics suite. We fixed up a demo next week, so I can best understand this and then, hopefully, remedy the situation.

But also We're going to talk through a couple of those questions I had about the best practices in Salesforce/Pardot integration.

Ronan then asked me 'hey, Rudy, how is that rolling out and implementing Pardot coming along, the one you mentioned a couple of months ago when we were at the Shard?'

Bella asking the Salesforce trailblazer scout for directions 

I was happy to report to Emer and Ronan my first 2 months' progress; I wrote my marketing plan, pitched it, and had it was agreed by my CMO, in the first week. By the following week, I had implemented Pardot for all our campaigns.

Emer said 'wow, two weeks, that's amazing!'  But it's no big deal - Pardot is easy to use, and there's plenty of content and people to guide you if you get stuck.

In fact, it's worked so well that I've even begun using it for more extensive B-2-C lists, of over 80,000 contacts, that's despite B-2-C not being in my job description. But in the start-up world, you do what you can to help.

Why do I love these Salesforce headphones so very much? 

1. Is it the cute logo? 2. is it that they light up with a warm glow? 

Yes, all our contact data is now inside of Salesforce, we are fully integrated, and we are running a range of campaigns from LinkedIn inmail, to events, to Email. Not only that, but the data quality is far better and more actionable by the sales team than it was previously.

I have also set up lead scoring and marketing automation, including nurture campaigns; we can roll this out for all other parts of our business too.

Ronan Twohig kindly suggested that I come and present what I've accomplished in Pardot at a Salesforce conference coming up, which sounded cool. Small businesses actually generate over 1/3 of Salesforce's total revenue.

The keynote was terrifically entertaining and informative; the CMO, Simon Mulcahy, is a natural presenter and he brought on some real powerhouses of digital and b-2-b marketing, from Ulster Bank (part of RBS) and Adidas, to run some live demos. The marketing feats they had accomplished using Salesforce were quite mind-blowing.

Simon Mulcahy, CMO, of Salesforce, hitting it out of the park with his keynote.

I was particularly taken with Simon's concept of 'trailblazers' - how it's people like 'us' - intrepid pioneers, innovators, game-changers, who are doggedly trying to improve the organizations we work for; we are the ones who are driving growth in our companies. That was a powerful message.

Which CRM provider dominates now?

There are a plethora of platforms right now. Which will dominate five years from now, in 2023 and beyond?

Along the way, I ran into a few old colleagues and friends. Bella and I had a good chat with Pedro Jose, a rockstar Sales engineer at Vlocity, a Salesforce company. I worked with him at Sigma. Pedro was pivotal in signing our biggest deal last year with Telstra, for $15 Million.

Pedro Jose, Director of Solutions Consulting at Salesforce.

He worked like a maniac on Telstra, flying back and forth from his home in Portugal to Sydney, Australia, many times. He was 'all over it'! That deal was also important from a marketing perspective; since it was our first big account in the APAC region.

I'm glad to report that Pedro was thrilled at Vlocity, performing exceptionally well and being treated even better by Salesforce.

We rounded off the day with Bella rocking the floor of over 5000 salesforce event attendees with her killer tunes, breaks and massive bass.

What I got out of the event

1. I learned valuable information that will make me a more productive marketer and will enable me to carry out more effective marketing at my company.

2. I connected with those who can help me in my journey; not least of all some of the salesforce team. This was sadly lacking when I ran global demand generation at my last company (with another CRM provider).

Financial Management for start-ups

Most founders of start-ups want to end up in one of two places; Becoming a public company (by having it’s IPO) or being acquired by another company. Each of these scenarios has played out at 2 of the last three companies at which I’ve worked. If, as an entrepreneur, you want to reach either of these goals, someone in your organisation must have a good grasp of finance.

It's been about ten years since I completed my MBA. But all the lessons remain fresh in my memory. I majored in Finance, so I was fortunate to have studied with a lot of, primarily US (my business school was in the USA.), finance professionals from organisations like Blackrock, State Street, Fidelity and Bain Capital. I was even more fortunate to have completed an internship at a New York Investment Bank, Bryant Park Capital. 

During my internship and studies, I learnt a lot about - valuing companies, presenting financial data to investors, powerpoint (doh! I'm an MBA, of course!). Most importantly, I started to understand the special language that Finance professionals use; Market Cap, Fifo/Lifo, beta, default risk premium, arbitrage, hedging and so on..

Back at business school, I hit it off with one of my professors, Don Margotta, who is an expert on corporate governance and shareholder activism. I want to share a few of the ideas here, that ignited my passion for Finance.

Here are some of the books, that did the same; Liar's Poker, Barbarians at the Gate, and Black Swan (where Nassim Taleb proceeded to pull apart all the concepts I'd devoted hundreds of hours learning in my Statistics classes).

First off, Time value of Money. This one is crucial. A pound today is worth more than a pound you get tomorrow, which is worth more than a pound you make the next day and so on, like this. The interest rate drives this value.

If I said all Finance calculations stem from this one idea, I wouldn't be far wrong. For example, you could get a good read on the value of a company by using this method to calculate the present value of all it's future cash flows.

Or if you thought the company had legs, you could use the perpetuity equation here:

PV of a Perpetuity = PMT/I

PMT = $1,000,000

Interest rate = 2.5%

Company Value = $40 Million

When they start negotiations, a lot of Investment Bankers will use earnings multiples to value a company; these vary for industries and countries, one may be x 4, some may be x 20. You will use the EBITDA figure for a company - Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, which is a standard measure of a company's operating performance. Here's a good example of one such valuation, using two parameters - High & Low:

At Bryant Park Capital, I began using Capital IQ, to find comparable public company data to estimate a Private Company's value. I also used Bloomberg, when I was at MFS Investments, for the same.

I hope I've given you some ideas about valuing your start-up.

I have concentrated on the Financial value in this article. However, it's important to remember that sometimes a large company will buy a startup because it has strategic value rather than financial.

-

Enterprise level marketing for your start-up, with Salesforce's Pardot

Tommie O'Brien (pictured below, right) at Salesforce, kicked off the presentation at the Shangri La Hotel on the 34th floor of the Shard (pictured below, left, view from the Shard). I was deeply impressed by the demo, which illustrated a relatively high level of sophistication for Small businesses.

For example, when setting up workflows, they demonstrated a real-time and highly effective way to re-engage prospects that hadn't signed up for an email offer; by sending them targeted ads across Facebook, LinkedIn and AdWords.

Marketing Automation lies at the heart of most Start-up demand-generation programs. During my career, I have run Marketing Campaigns using various tools, from Salesforce, Marketo, Hubspot, Dynamics, and more. Last year I had to learn to use Microsoft Dynamics with Clickdimensions whilst running global campaigns for a company of around 500 employees, Headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

Currently, I'm switching from using Microsoft Dynamics to Salesforce. I've never learned to run campaigns in Pardot, so I thought that this session would be particularly helpful. After just 3 weeks, I can tell the level of support on Pardot is streets ahead of Microsoft Dynamics.

I had to learn to use Dynamics by reading manuals and watching videos online. Particularly challenging was trying to coordinate fixing several severe bugs in the system with our IT team based in Canada.

The Salesforce team initiated some helpful discussions around lead generation forms - often, these forms ask for too much information. I know I have been guilty of this. According to Salesforce, 3-5 questions maximum is the standard and really first name and email are enough. The part of the talk devoted to the automation workflow was fascinating and got me thinking about how I run campaigns.

And they had some great insights on Lead scoring; they talked about the usual ones, like Job title and company revenue. But there were some surprises. This slide shows that they can track your prospect's sentiments about your company and products across social media like this:

That can give your sales and marketing team an edge over your competition. Pardot can also allow you to create buyer personas within Salesforce so that you can use these to gauge your ideal prospect for even more accurate lead scoring. But what really blew me away was the analytics on the dashboard and Pardot's ability to measure marketing campaigns' effectiveness in a way that will appeal to CFOs and CEOs.

You can demonstrate return on investment for entire programs and dig in at the granular level to show what specific leads generated what specific revenue. As a metric-driven marketer with an MBA in Finance, I aim to accomplish this.

Tommie told some great anecdotes with his classic Irish wit; I couldn't help thinking Tommie would go down a storm in my old hometown, Boston, which is pretty much run by Irish Americans. And, of course, they love anyone from the old country, particularly if he or she has a lot of drive and a good sense of humour.

One of Tommie's best stories was about him setting up a new internet provider in his new home. The provider was terrible, and he was forced to contact them multiple times whilst suffering from flu and working from home.

He received prospecting advertisements and emails from the company, which only exacerbated his annoyance with their poor service. Imagine how much money this company is throwing out the window!

At the end of the talk, Rory O'Neill, Data and Systems Manager at the Drum came to talk about his experience using Pardot. I know the Drum very well. When I was at Visual IQ (now part of Nielsen), we exhibited at several events.

I learned in the presentation that Rory is responsible for sending 35 Million emails a year. My last email contact list was 30,000 strong (B-2-B) and the largest I've worked with was 400,000 (B-2-C).

I asked him a question at the end, seeking his advice as to what first steps he would take if he was in my shoes, rolling out Pardot at my company. He recommended that the most important was that I consult with the sales team and get them on board with our plan. He also offered to give me some advice on that if I got in touch with him. I will definitely take Rory up on his generous suggestion.

For more information on how to set up Marketing automation for your B-2-B business, sign up for my free guide here

Moonshot thinking to unleash innovation

Before you say, yeah, right, but moonshot thinking is a waste of time, take a look at this slide below.

While moonshot thinking only gets 10% of the Company's budget, it is responsible for generating 70% of the revenue in the long run.

Yes, Moonshot projects are, by their very nature, hard to quantify, but Dr. Pablo Rodriguez demonstrates that these projects are nevertheless crucial to an organization's growth. 

It's worth trying to solve those crucial but seemingly impossible problems, especially ones that may only come to a head 5 or 10 years from now. You could transform your Company or even yourself!

We played a great exercise where we were asked to count the number of red balls on this slide in 10 seconds. Quite a few got the correct answer - 10. However, when Dr. Pablo Rodriguez asked us to tell us how many green balls there were, no one answered right. There were fewer of them and they were larger.  

This demonstrates the danger of over-focus. By being so intent on solving one problem, you may completely miss solving a much greater, more significant, and simple solution. Many scientific discoveries were made 'by accident', so counting the green balls, when the exercise measured the red.

            

A good example is when Sir Alexander Flemming invented Penicillin, the first antibiotic. He made this discovery when testing bacteria. However, if He hadn't been experimenting, he would not have made this 'mistake' that changed the world and the face of medicine.

One of my marketing professors at Northeastern University has demonstrated this issue with a paper looking at how over-reliance on marketing dashboards can hinder creativity and innovation within this function.

The problems Alpha has solved, whether for improving performance at Telefonica, radically changing health habits across the globe, or bringing power to underdeveloped regions, all required phenomenal, high-performing, cross-functional teams. 

I asked Pablo how he selected his teams; his answer surprised me. I thought he would say that He chose the most talented individuals. But He said that He picked those who had the greatest passion for solving problems. 

If you think you might be that person, Alpha is hiring right now. They are owned by Telefonica but, despite having Telefonica's CEO José María Álvarez-Pallete López, on their board, they are fully independent of it.

Pablo has worked as an entrepreneur, at various start-ups in Silicon Valley, and in Academia. He showed the curve of an idea, where Academia often can do best in advancing innovation at the very early stages. In a later stage, it could be a start-up. Dr Rodriguez's projects sit in the middle of that, between Academia and start-ups. 

He makes a great point that in the 20th Century, the government primarily initiated innovation; The creation of the internet, the human genome project, and yes, of course, NASA pioneering the first men to the moon were all government-backed missions. 

But now, far more innovation is driven by corporations. This can come in many forms; Alpha, an innovative organization owned by Telefonica; or a Start-up like Cloudlock, founded by one of my classmates in the MBA Programme at Northeastern University Business School, and bought last year by Cisco for $293 Million 

This was a brilliant lecture, as good as the one I attended on Venture Capital. I thoroughly commend Professor Milan Vojnovic and Dr Pablo Rodriguez.

If you are still sceptical about Moonshot thinking after reading this, I want to leave you with a great quote about it from one of the founders and CEO of Google:

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