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Brand building mistakes France’s (and most International) entrepreneurs make

10 points by nreece 17y ago

RobertScoble 17y ago
157 French Startups that are on Twitter: http://twitter.com/cgiorgi/french-startups http://twitter.com/cgiorgi/french-startups I guess they are all hyping and wasting time, at least they are if you listen to the people typing here.
- sailormoon 17y ago
  I guess they are all hyping and wasting time I know you're trying to be sarcastic but basically ... yep.
pierrefar 17y ago
I think this rant boils down to the battle for power: does the entrepreneur have the power or does the media covering startups have the power? If you think it's the entrepreneur, then you can ignore everything Scoble says and be happy it about. You might even disagree completely and call it a rant. If you think the media has the power, then Scoble's post is a to-do list to be followed like the gospel truth. Personally, I think the truth is somewhere in between, and a lot closer to Scoble's view than not. Regardless of what we the entrepreneurs think, the media has a limited bandwidth and it's regularly saturated. If you want to differentiate yourself, you gotta market and feed the media the info you want them to cover in the format they want you to use.
hristov 17y ago
Let me summarise this: Mr. Scolbe leaves his home in the Bay Area and goes to France. He then discovers that the French are very different than the Bay Area people he interacts with and gets very deeply insulted.
- RobertScoble 17y ago
  Dude, this is my sixth time in France and in the past two years I've traveled 260,000 miles: most of that was to places outside of the US. When I attended a conference recently in China they had Twitter running on the screen there. Same at LeWeb (which was in France). It's pretty damn rare and lame that a company isn't on Twitter.
  - hristov 17y ago
    Yes, maybe they have heard about Twitter in other countries. But maybe in France things have not gotten to the point yet where not being on Twitter is considered some kind of a grave personal insult that requires an angry rant. I actually hope things have not gotten that far in America either. Oh, and by the way, I wonder did the Chinese have an opinion on foursquare?
forensic 17y ago
Fuck. I had no idea I was so uncool until I read this rant. Apparently being an entrepreneur means reading the marketing soundbytes of over 1000 twitter feeds. I guess the media likes twitter because they can just write headlines and omit the articles.
- sailormoon 17y ago
  Nonsense isn't it. I suppose the reason Scoble loves twitter so much is that he literally has nothing else to do but use it all day. The rest of us, however, do. I mean seriously - I don't want to sound too negative but this is just completely out of touch with anyone who actually does real work. Scoble's disappeared up his own Social Media Consultant ass. Meanwhile, back in the real world, no-one cares a jot about any of that stuff and the priority is to Actually Get Stuff Done. Maybe Scoble would understand this stuff better if he was technical.
  - RobertScoble 17y ago
    Yeah, that's why 500 startups are on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Scobleizer/tech-startups http://twitter.com/Scobleizer/tech-startups They are there just to serve me, right? Uh, huh.
    - furyg3 17y ago
      "Everyone else is doing it" is hardly a spectacular decision making strategy. Just because something is popular, doesn't mean it's important to your business model. Twitter can be a powerful tool for some, but for others its still just a toy. We used to (and still do) see people who don't have a flashy website as old and outdated. Maybe I'm wrong and this same scenario will happen again, only this time with Twitter. Personally, I have my doubts. Regardless, that hasn't happened yet (certainly not in Europe).
      - RobertScoble 17y ago
        http://twitter.com/cgiorgi/french-startups http://twitter.com/cgiorgi/french-startups 157 French Startups that are on Twitter.
sailormoon 17y ago
This annoying post could and should be retitled "list of hoops I personally demand a company to jump through or I throw a tantrum". I mean seriously. Have you ever decided against trying out a new web site because the CEO of the company behind it isn't on Twitter? Scoble is living in his own little world.
- RobertScoble 17y ago
  How many startups a day do YOU really try? I bet not many.
  - sailormoon 17y ago
    You're right. Not many. And it has absolutely nothing to do with Twitter or any of the other points you mention. Word of mouth remains the absolutely most powerful marketing force and as far as I can tell will remain so for a long, long time.
tomjen2 17y ago
There are two of his points that are worth considering: No demo - that is obviously stupid. No business card - likewise. The rest of his points assume that you want to get noticed in by people like Robert Scoble. Personally I would want to get noticed by potential users and I doubt having a midnight call with Arrington would be a benefit there.
paraschopra 17y ago
Funny, nowhere in the post he mentions that having an amazing product experience is essential to brand building. Apparently, product doesn't matter to the brand image but being on Twitter does.
- RobertScoble 17y ago
  That was implicit in the article. Geesh. I don't treat my audience like preschoolers.
markmywords 17y ago
If you follow these steps you raise awareness in the USA while potentially neglecting your home country of operations. Scoble should not discount the local context.
- RobertScoble 17y ago
  Ahh, ye olde "hype is bad" argument. Sigh. I guess you programmers are all working at companies that are growing as fast as Facebook, huh? Well, keep doing what works! Almost every startup and major company in the world is using Twitter now. I guess they are all wasting their time creating hype.
- RobertScoble 17y ago
  French radio was talking incessantly about Twitter this morning. You are mistaken. You really should get to France and see the local market.
  - pqs 17y ago
    Journalist in France and in Spain talk a lot about twitter, but here, in France and Spain, very few people use it. Only those that think that hype means building something. Hype is hype. Vapour. Nothing. That's the main view here.
yardie 17y ago
Here we go again with one useless blogger calling other companies failures. As an American living in France I'd like to point out that most of the "hot" web apps he speaks of are basically useless to me because they don't work outside of the valley and big US cities. The French CEO doesn't hear of foursquare, in fact most Americans don't know of foursquare, because when you type in Paris you get a fuckin crêpe shop in Astoria, Queens as the top result. And so on and so on. Most of the companies listed only have traction in US, period. Pandora sounds good but I'll stick to Spotify and Deezer because it's available right now where I'm at. BTW, Twitter is great, but what happened to sending an email if you have questions. I have a hard time believing you can ask a good question or get a reasonable response in 140 characters. Lots of companies are on twitter but it's not their point of contact, just a tertiary channel.
- RobertScoble 17y ago
  I talk all the time to CEOs via Twitter. I guess they found a way to answer in 140 characters. As to Paris, it's only been turned on for two weeks and I didn't see a crepe shop in Astoria, Queens, but I guess I missed that cause I don't like crepes. The rest of the tips left were freaking awesome, though, and I greatly appreciated the few people who left them. Um, the whole post was actually about companies doing it right if you looked at it the right way. I didn't name a SINGLE company who was doing it wrong. Glad you are such a careful reader!
davidw 17y ago
Whether you agree with him or not, some people are not following the "would you say it to his face?" rule. Go ahead, criticize, but do so in a way that's professional and polite.

10 points by nreece 17y ago

157 French Startups that are on Twitter: http://twitter.com/cgiorgi/french-startups http://twitter.com/cgiorgi/french-startups I guess they are all hyping and wasting time, at least they are if you listen to the people typing here.

sailormoon 17y ago
I guess they are all hyping and wasting time I know you're trying to be sarcastic but basically ... yep.

pierrefar 17y ago

I think this rant boils down to the battle for power: does the entrepreneur have the power or does the media covering startups have the power? If you think it's the entrepreneur, then you can ignore everything Scoble says and be happy it about. You might even disagree completely and call it a rant. If you think the media has the power, then Scoble's post is a to-do list to be followed like the gospel truth. Personally, I think the truth is somewhere in between, and a lot closer to Scoble's view than not. Regardless of what we the entrepreneurs think, the media has a limited bandwidth and it's regularly saturated. If you want to differentiate yourself, you gotta market and feed the media the info you want them to cover in the format they want you to use.

hristov 17y ago

Let me summarise this: Mr. Scolbe leaves his home in the Bay Area and goes to France. He then discovers that the French are very different than the Bay Area people he interacts with and gets very deeply insulted.

RobertScoble 17y ago
Dude, this is my sixth time in France and in the past two years I've traveled 260,000 miles: most of that was to places outside of the US. When I attended a conference recently in China they had Twitter running on the screen there. Same at LeWeb (which was in France). It's pretty damn rare and lame that a company isn't on Twitter.
- hristov 17y ago
  Yes, maybe they have heard about Twitter in other countries. But maybe in France things have not gotten to the point yet where not being on Twitter is considered some kind of a grave personal insult that requires an angry rant. I actually hope things have not gotten that far in America either. Oh, and by the way, I wonder did the Chinese have an opinion on foursquare?

forensic 17y ago

Fuck. I had no idea I was so uncool until I read this rant. Apparently being an entrepreneur means reading the marketing soundbytes of over 1000 twitter feeds. I guess the media likes twitter because they can just write headlines and omit the articles.

sailormoon 17y ago
Nonsense isn't it. I suppose the reason Scoble loves twitter so much is that he literally has nothing else to do but use it all day. The rest of us, however, do. I mean seriously - I don't want to sound too negative but this is just completely out of touch with anyone who actually does real work. Scoble's disappeared up his own Social Media Consultant ass. Meanwhile, back in the real world, no-one cares a jot about any of that stuff and the priority is to Actually Get Stuff Done. Maybe Scoble would understand this stuff better if he was technical.
- RobertScoble 17y ago
  Yeah, that's why 500 startups are on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Scobleizer/tech-startups http://twitter.com/Scobleizer/tech-startups They are there just to serve me, right? Uh, huh.
  - furyg3 17y ago
    "Everyone else is doing it" is hardly a spectacular decision making strategy. Just because something is popular, doesn't mean it's important to your business model. Twitter can be a powerful tool for some, but for others its still just a toy. We used to (and still do) see people who don't have a flashy website as old and outdated. Maybe I'm wrong and this same scenario will happen again, only this time with Twitter. Personally, I have my doubts. Regardless, that hasn't happened yet (certainly not in Europe).
    - RobertScoble 17y ago
      http://twitter.com/cgiorgi/french-startups http://twitter.com/cgiorgi/french-startups 157 French Startups that are on Twitter.

sailormoon 17y ago

This annoying post could and should be retitled "list of hoops I personally demand a company to jump through or I throw a tantrum". I mean seriously. Have you ever decided against trying out a new web site because the CEO of the company behind it isn't on Twitter? Scoble is living in his own little world.

RobertScoble 17y ago
How many startups a day do YOU really try? I bet not many.
- sailormoon 17y ago
  You're right. Not many. And it has absolutely nothing to do with Twitter or any of the other points you mention. Word of mouth remains the absolutely most powerful marketing force and as far as I can tell will remain so for a long, long time.

tomjen2 17y ago

There are two of his points that are worth considering: No demo - that is obviously stupid. No business card - likewise. The rest of his points assume that you want to get noticed in by people like Robert Scoble. Personally I would want to get noticed by potential users and I doubt having a midnight call with Arrington would be a benefit there.

paraschopra 17y ago

Funny, nowhere in the post he mentions that having an amazing product experience is essential to brand building. Apparently, product doesn't matter to the brand image but being on Twitter does.

RobertScoble 17y ago
That was implicit in the article. Geesh. I don't treat my audience like preschoolers.

markmywords 17y ago

If you follow these steps you raise awareness in the USA while potentially neglecting your home country of operations. Scoble should not discount the local context.

RobertScoble 17y ago
Ahh, ye olde "hype is bad" argument. Sigh. I guess you programmers are all working at companies that are growing as fast as Facebook, huh? Well, keep doing what works! Almost every startup and major company in the world is using Twitter now. I guess they are all wasting their time creating hype.
RobertScoble 17y ago
French radio was talking incessantly about Twitter this morning. You are mistaken. You really should get to France and see the local market.
- pqs 17y ago
  Journalist in France and in Spain talk a lot about twitter, but here, in France and Spain, very few people use it. Only those that think that hype means building something. Hype is hype. Vapour. Nothing. That's the main view here.

yardie 17y ago

Here we go again with one useless blogger calling other companies failures. As an American living in France I'd like to point out that most of the "hot" web apps he speaks of are basically useless to me because they don't work outside of the valley and big US cities. The French CEO doesn't hear of foursquare, in fact most Americans don't know of foursquare, because when you type in Paris you get a fuckin crêpe shop in Astoria, Queens as the top result. And so on and so on. Most of the companies listed only have traction in US, period. Pandora sounds good but I'll stick to Spotify and Deezer because it's available right now where I'm at. BTW, Twitter is great, but what happened to sending an email if you have questions. I have a hard time believing you can ask a good question or get a reasonable response in 140 characters. Lots of companies are on twitter but it's not their point of contact, just a tertiary channel.

RobertScoble 17y ago
I talk all the time to CEOs via Twitter. I guess they found a way to answer in 140 characters. As to Paris, it's only been turned on for two weeks and I didn't see a crepe shop in Astoria, Queens, but I guess I missed that cause I don't like crepes. The rest of the tips left were freaking awesome, though, and I greatly appreciated the few people who left them. Um, the whole post was actually about companies doing it right if you looked at it the right way. I didn't name a SINGLE company who was doing it wrong. Glad you are such a careful reader!

davidw 17y ago

Whether you agree with him or not, some people are not following the "would you say it to his face?" rule. Go ahead, criticize, but do so in a way that's professional and polite.