As far as I can tell startups have changed the way Americans watch and enjoy the Olympics, and never has this been more apparent than with the Summer 2012 Olympics in London. While we used to gather around the televisions in our living rooms with friends and family, cheering on our country, we’re now able to share the experience with more of our fellow Americans. Our cheers are able to spread much further than our voices alone could have ever carried them. For example, check out these 5 ways startups are influencing how we’re enjoying the Olympics this year:

1. People are turning in droves to Twitter to vent their frustration about NBC’s delayed showing of certain events; just check out #NBCfail to see what I’m talking about. Voices have been so strong there that NBC’s CEO is even jumping on to address some of the concerns. They’re also chattering with their friends about event results and athletes they’re excited about.
2. Instagram has introduced a powerful way for viewers and athletes to snap pictures behind the scenes of the people and the venues.
3. Fans are storing pictures of their favorite athletes, Olympic related crafts, and icons on Pinterest, creating a virtual scrapbook they can enjoy forever.
4. People are even finding Olympic swag to sport, by backing projects on Kickstarter.
5. And they’re snagging Olympic jewelry to wear from Etsy.

So whether it’s the outfit you’re wearing, or the way you’re talking- odds are you’re enjoying the Olympics in a new style.

While its IPO may have been over-hyped, there’s no denying that Facebook is a powerful tool in your marketing plan.  So we’ve come up with a couple content ideas for your fanpage to help increase the reach and influence of your brand:

• Share photos of your company at events or parties (and be sure to tag your customers if you can).
• Give a shout out to your most active fan each week.
• Announce and link to new products or features you roll out.
• Be responsive if someone has a customer service question.
• Create an album of photos of fans and employees using your merch and sporting your threads (encourage them to post these on your wall at any time).
• Share relevant industry news, including your own blog posts.
• Be sure to switch over to the new Timeline feature as it’ll show you’re ahead of the early adopter curve, and update your large cover photo as it gives you more room to promote your own branding/image at the top.
• Have clients and fans vote on new features or designs.
• Run a Facebook contest to develop new designs for your tshirts and other swag.

What have you seen work well with your Facebook fanpage?

By the end of the week you’re probably ready to kick back and relax. So grab some popcorn, pull up a chair, and get cozy with any (or all, go crazy!) of these 5 movies which each speak in their own way to entrepreneurship and the startupsphere:

1. The Social Network: Director David Fincher’s biographical drama chronicles the meteoric rise of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) from Harvard sophomore to Internet superstar, examining his relationships with co-founder Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) and Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake). Winning Golden Globes for Best Picture and Best Director, the film also racked up Oscar nods in the same categories and for lead actor Eisenberg.
2. Startup.com: From dot-com to dot-bomb, this docudrama follows the charismatic heads of an Internet startup company from their halcyon early days into the quagmire of contentious bickering that occurred when their company — govWorks.com — flamed out. Documentarians Chris Hegedus (The War Room) and Jehane Noujaim are poised front and center to capture the high hopes and heartache that have become inextricable parts of the wired world.
3. Jerry Maguire: After years of successfully navigating the shark-infested waters of sports management, Jerry Maguire (Oscar nominee Tom Cruise) experiences a crisis of conscience and leaves his high-powered job behind, with one loyal football client (Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr.) and a starry-eyed co-worker (Renée Zellweger) in tow. An irresistible little boy (Jonathan Lipnicki) adds the icing on the cake to this sweet, heartfelt Best Picture nominee.
4. The Godfather: When organized-crime family patriarch Vito Corleone barely survives an attempt on his life, his youngest son steps in to take care of the would-be killers, launching a campaign of bloody revenge in this Oscar-winning epic. (This one may not be so intuitive so let me explain, these guys are focused on getting a piece of the American Dream while their ethnic group is shut out of the system by the powers that be– similar to agile startups fighting big business david vs. goliath style.)
5. Wall Street: Enterprising stockbroker Bud Fox falls under the enticing spell of Gordon Gekko, an unscrupulous Wall Street arbitrageur. But when Gekko embroils his protégé in an insider-trading scheme, Fox develops a conscience and decides to turn the tables.

Bonus TV Show:

Pirates of the Silicon Valley: Based on a book by Paul Frieberger, this dramatization examines the tangled webs of tech giants Apple and Microsoft. Follow the entwined destinies of Apple’s hip founder, Steve Jobs (Noah Wyle), and Microsoft’s geeky genius, Bill Gates (Anthony Michael Hall), as they make history. The story is narrated from the point of view of fellow tech pioneers Steve Ballmer (John Di Maggio) and Steve Wozniak (Joey Slotnick).

Have you seen any of these already (and if so did you dig them)?

 

We know that it can be challenging to design good swag. But it’s important to dig deeper than a plain old logo. Push beyond the basics and create some threads that your customers will be proud to wear. That way, rather than being cooped up in a dresser drawer, your brand will reach even more corners of the world as people sport your swag while out and about.

To get your creative juices flowing, we’ll be featuring a different t-shirt design each month on our blog. This month’s example hits a little close to home– as it’s one of our very own.

The Company: Oh hey! We’re Printfection. You might have heard of us since you’re reading our blog. But in case you don’t already know, basically we put your startup swag on autopilot.

The Customers: We realized that part of our target audience is the marketing crowd. More specifically folks who work in the marketing departments at startups- like Marketing Directors and Marketing Associates. We also recognized that our shirts need to have unisex friendly designs.

The Swag: Meet the unicorn t-shirt (below). With our design we wanted to create something that spoke to what marketers do every day, that they’d be proud to show off- while still including some humor. The result was the saying “Unicorns are just horses with good marketing.” But text alone seemed a little boring, so we added a horse image to bring it to life. We made the front all about our customers, and included our logo on the back (with a small “powered by” because we’d like to think we’re helping!).

Thanks for checking it out. We would love to hear your thoughts! Oh and the even more exciting news: the first 10 people who share this post on Twitter including the hashtag “#printfection” will receive a unicorn shirt!

Stay tuned for next month’s shirt.

(If you’d like to submit a shirt design your startup created please write to realperson@printfection.com)

The Company: Pardot is a B2B marketing automation vendor that caters specifically to the SMB market.  Founded in 2007 by Duke graduates David Cummings and Adam Blitzer, Pardot’s software solution helps marketing and sales teams work together to generate and qualify sales leads, shorten sales cycles and demonstrate marketing accountability.

The Philosophy:  Pardot operates around the central goal of being the best place to work and the best place to be a client, and we wanted our office to reflect a trusting and appreciative relationship with employees. The open layout and laid-back atmosphere fosters communication, and a number of perks contribute to a fun, energetic and innovative work environment. As Blitzer says, “Life is short. You spend most of it working. Make sure you love what you do.”

The Space: 

The Features:

•  34th floor Penthouse suite with a great view of the Atlanta skyline
• Open layout to encourage collaboration and social interaction
• A Minimoto, a segway and a number of Razor scooters that employees use to get around the office.
• Fully-stocked kitchen as well as a beer fridge (employees can grab one at any time)
• A retro pinball machine, a putting green and a ping pong room
• Alternative workspaces including a Geek Desk, a large beanbag and two couches.

What We Love:

• Whoa holy spiraling staircase! All you need are a lunch tray and some snow to make that a good time.
• Super efficient intra-office commuting like segways.
• Their open layout is great for fostering accidental conversations and it’s nice that you can step away and get a change of perspective from their extra work areas.
• Awesome to see a company doing great things in a city that doesn’t get as much recognition- go ATL.

But enough about our thoughts, what’s your favorite part of their space?

(If you’d like to submit your company to be featured, feel free to drop us a line at realperson@printfection.com.)

Science has taught us that human beings are genetically hardwired to do one thing at a time with excellence.

But in the world of a startup you’re typically wearing multiple hats and caught up in a blur of day to day activities. Without having a few overarching strategic goals to work towards, your day to day activities and inbox can totally carry you away. You may be a multi-tasker extraordinaire but before you know it Q1 is over and you’re not able to reflect on and measure what you’ve accomplished, because you didn’t set any priorities. Nor have you pushed the company forward in any significant strategic way.

We all know that Steve Jobs had a big company to run with Apple, and he could have brought many more products to market than he did; but he chose to focus on only a handful of wildly important products. The point here is that his focus was legendary and so were his results.

Basically your company will be much better off if you, as a leader together with your team, take the time to identify a couple wildly important goals per quarter. These goals are the ones you must achieve with total excellence beyond the circling priorities of your day to day. You must be willing to make the hard choices. To determine your goals ask yourself “If every other area of our operation remained at its current level of performance, what is the one area where change would have the greatest impact?”

It may help to understand why you might currently be driving your company to take on too much, rather than focusing on one or two clearly defined goals:

1. As a leader, you tend to be ambitious and creative. The problem is that creative, ambitious people always want to do more, not less. If this describes you you’re almost hardwired to violate the first discipline of execution.
2. Another reason you might lead your team to go after too many goals is to hedge your bets.  You figure that if your company pursues everything, then it seems likely that something might work.
3. And finally what makes it harder is that these good ideas aren’t presented all at once, instead they filter in one at a time.

Perhaps it’ll be easier to take a step back if you can relate to any of those examples– at least now you’re aware! The success of your company in the long-term will depend upon your ability to focus on the right things.

If you’re struggling with identifying the right goals and executing them, you should check out The 4 Disciplines of Execution.

Since you’re probably busy dealing with your whirlwind, I’ll help you out by revealing key steps here:

• Discipline #1: Focus on the wildly important.
• Discipline #2: Act on the lead measures (not the lag measures).
• Discipline #3: Keep a compelling scoreboard.
• Discipline #4: Create a cadence of accountability.

How have you succeed or failed in setting the right goals?

You’re in marketing so you probably tweet no less than 10 times a day. I understand that coming up with new things to say can be taxing.

 

So I’ve composed a couple tweet ideas that should help you get the word out about your brand.  Go on and take a brain break:

• Ask your followers their opinions about 2 different swag store-front designs or 2 different t-shirt designs
• Give a shout out to your favorite fans on #followfriday
• Let your followers know whenever you’ve just rolled out a new product or feature and ask for their feedback
• Pose a trivia question about your company and give the first person to answer correctly a merch giveaway code
• Tweet out pictures of happenings around your office
• Retweet your colleagues’ thoughts
• Share news articles that might be relevant to your customers

Hope this helps. Chirp on my friends!

If you work in marketing you probably wake up every morning asking yourself, “What would Don Draper do?” Luckily this Tumblr blog has you covered. But if that simply won’t cut it, I suggest Don-ning (get it!?) your office with these 5 Mad Men worthy items, sure to help you capture a level of success similar to the brilliant ad man’s.

1.) Grab the iRetrophone (a fully-functional, stationary iPhone dock with working handset) to assist in seeding your PR stories across the country.

2.) Be sure you always have drink glasses and a heavily stocked liquor cabinet, to get through the day.

3.) Snag a heavy duty mid-century stapler for creating a book of all your emails.

4.) Don’t forget the cat-eye glasses for seducing your co-workers.

5.) And finally, be sure you’ve got a  postage scale handy to weigh the amount of fan-mail you receive each day.

Or, on second thought, just buy yourself this poster and get on with creating amazing advertising campaigns!

You probably need a beer. If not for your sanity, than for a game of beer-pong. I know I do; it’s just been that kind of week.

One of the coolest things about Colorado, and Denver specifically is the thriving craft beer community. It’s actually pretty similar to the startup community in that these folks are generally launching a business from scratch to bring their creative brews to the public. And more often than not they do it through boot-strapping. For more insights on the process check out Sam Calagione’s (Founder of Dogfish Head) book Brewing up a Business.

(via @wbw2011)

Anyhow over the past year or so, there’s been a lot of talk about how the craft beer movement is taking over the US. So I thought it would be fun to take a look at a couple craft beer startups currently trying to make their way on Kickstarter.

Here’s a guide to 5 awesome projects to keep your brewskies flowing this week:

1.) Craftie: the perfect app for craft beer lovers: Craftie will be unique because it focuses solely on craft beer, and will house a robust database of the country’s finest breweries and the great craft beers that they produce. It will provide detailed descriptions and allow you to log breweries you’ve visited and beers you’ve tried.

2.)  Firefly Brewing Co: Created by the guys who run Brew & Wine Hobby, a homebrew shop in East Hartford, CT- this project sets out to open a brewery in Bristol. They are committed to recycling, reusing, and supporting American manufacturing where-ever possible. And they plan to start with a 7 barrel brewhouse fabricated from re-purposed dairy tanks, modified syrup tanks, and miscellaneous stainless vessels.

3.) TwinHops Brewing Co: Founded by Scott, Brad, and Rick Burton; three brothers with a passion for great American beer this brewery will specialize in traditional, non-traditional, and experimental styles of beer. And they want to open up in Denver!

4.) Blacklist Brewing Project: it’s like a beer-art-of-the-month-club: Teaming up with MN and WI artists they take a fresh look at beer and how beer should be experienced; creating narratives and artworks that will give you something to talk about. They take pride in producing unique and innovative beers that will push boundaries, break styles and aim to defy expectations, and not just by adding more hops.

5.) Seventh Son Brewery: Vlad and Colin are hoping to open up this brewery in Columbus. Their first two offerings will be a hoppy, yet balanced American Strong called “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son” and his ornery brother, a Foreign Export Stout named “Black Sheep.”  And they aim to produce 1000 barrels of beer in their first year.

No reason not to drink up, my friends!

The Company: Wistia is an internet video company that was founded in April 2006 by Brown University graduates Chris Savage and Brendan Schwartz. These days its a small group of guys (and gals) that are obsessed with online video and the benefits it can bring to any business. They’ve developed applications to help companies track the ways consumers watch, use and interact with online videos, and as such provide hosting, managing, and tracking of video statistics.

The Philosophy: For their office Wistia wanted to foster creativity and allow for comfort. Since they believe that whiteboards are great for unbounded creativity (they encourage people to  brainstorm and sketch ideas, turn lists into diagrams and flowcharts, and express concepts and relationships instead of getting hung up on particulars), Wistia included a lot of those.

The Space:
 

Check out their office video and more importantly, their new fridge.

The Features:

• Open floor plan with individual desks
• Separate rooms for meetings
• Whiteboard walls & whiteboard tables
• Couches
• Ping-pong area
• Lots of food
• A semi-scary treehouse

What We Love:

• Didn’t you just read there’s a treehouse; need I say more!?
• Plenty of space to jot down your ideas
• A combination of rooms for private meetings with open space for accidental collaboration

What’s your favorite part of their space?

(If you’d like to submit your company to be featured, feel free to drop us a line at realperson@printfection.com.)