The Business Smart-Tools Conference

Seth and I were recently invited to present OnCard Marketing and our iBakeSale program at a conference in Stamford CT on May 15th. It is a very exciting event that is focused on bridging the gap between the business world and the tech world. There are going to be speakers on a variety of topics and a few key presenters (one of them is us). Our focus with iBakeSale.com is to connect the tech, non-profit and business worlds and fits well with the theme of the conference. We are very appreciate to Valorie Luther of Creative Concepts for giving us the opportunity to share iBakeSale with all the business, tech and non-profit executives in attendance. Check us out on their website by clicking here. You can check out the conference home page here. We look forward to sharing the experience with you all on May 15th.

JT

Now presenting iBakeSale.com…

Seth and I have been debating for awhile now about the pros and cons of using the OnCard Marketing name for our consumer program. We’ve debated everything from OnCard Marketing, OnCard Rewards to OnCard Community. We settled initially for OnCard Community and even created a logo based off of the OnCard Marketing logo (see www.oncardmarketing.com). We were using that logo on the initial site design for about two weeks and were even able to sell merchants into joining our program under the OnCard Community name. However, we got to thinking about our consumer brand and decided that it was not a good idea to use OnCard anything. The main reason is that we don’t own the URL for OnCard. An Australian credit card company owns the website address for www.oncard.com, which is a huge bummer for us. Luckily, we already have the trademark for OnCard in the U.S. and they don’t have any presence outside of China and Australia.

Nonetheless, we are stuck in a dilemma where if we call the rewards program OnCard Community, consumers (with their very short attention spans) will shorten the name to OnCard, and then if we get lucky and people actually tell all their friends about OnCard, people will end up on the wrong website confused as to how they were told to sign up with a company based out of China. So, we decided that it would be best to keep the OnCard Marketing name for merchants and create a uniquely branded name (and logo) for our first rewards program, one that reflects the focus on grass-roots fundraising and community giving. I spent hours on GoDaddy.com pouring over hundreds of domain names, emailing lists upon lists of possible names to Seth. Most of them I have to admit, were garbage. But out of all that rubbish, iBakeSale was born.

We like it because it is fun and conveys a sense of community, fundraising, grass-roots organizations, and alludes specifically to a common community fundraising activity (i.e. the bakesale) that we are looking to replace with a more tech-friendly way to shop and save for organizations near and dear to our consumers’ hearts. This could include school PTAs, religious organizations, little league and other sports teams, extracurricular school activities, as well as small to medium size charities looking to increase their fundraising efforts, for free. We are currently knee-deep in tech development and should hopefully be done by end of April for the general public. We will begin testing it on a small scale this weekend. Will keep you updated as we near launch of the program…

JT

Building our network with LinkedIn…

When we started OnCard Marketing a few months ago, Seth and I were fresh out of Citigroup with a list of contacts that consisted mostly of friends and fellow financial services professionals. We absolutely had scarce few people we knew in media, advertising, non-profits, publishing, PR, law, accounting, etc. However, we realized very quickly how important networking was to reach the right people we would need to help grow our business. One of my friends suggested LinkedIn to me back in July. I had never heard of it but quickly found out that it was a rapidly growing professional social network or people in business spanning lots of different industries. It was free to sign up, so Seth and I joined the network. We started building our network with friends who were already using LinkedIn and gradually expanded it to business contacts and then even to prospective business partners, new recruits, vendors, etc. It has absolutely been an invaluable tool for us as we constantly look to expand our network and bring the best talent to our company that can help us grow. I have to believe most entrepreneurs would have to agree.

Bottom Line: If you’re just starting out as an entrepreneur, joining LinkedIn is a must. It’s free and will help you get in touch with many people who can help your business. You can sign-up at http://www.linkedin.com

JT

OnCard Marketing website complete!!!

We’re finally done with the our corporate website at www.oncardmarketing.com. It’s been quite a grind, but our designer and programmer have done a great job and really created a website and demo that we are extremely proud of. We can only believe that it will give us more credibility with investors and business partners. The demo was the hardest part, integrating some “dummy” functionality so that a user can click through it as though they are using it, even though it really doesn’t work (i.e. information is not being stored anywhere – no back-end database yet). It is quite comprehensive and we will begin showcasing this as our vision for the business, technology that we hope to begin developing over the next few months after we raise some more money…

Bottom Line: The one thing that this project has taught us is that it is critical that we to be crystal clear with what we expect. Although we thought we were clear with our extensive document that outlined exactly what we thought we wanted, things inevitably changed over the course of the project. I have to imagine that this is natural, to add some additional things and remove other as you see the site take form. The key here is to maintain crystal clear communication with your designer and programmer. We probably could have done a better job at this, and our designer and programmer could have pushed back a bit more when they felt that we were asking for too much. This was our first major development project, and as we’ve found, things always got pushed back, delayed, etc. I have no idea why this happened, but just be prepared. If you do one thing, don’t promise to show anything to anybody until it is complete (or near-complete). There are a ton of things that can delay the project and then you’ll be risk ruining the credibility you were hoping to build with your new corporate website/demo. We managed to salvage this credibility by showcasing only parts of the site that were working, but this is not advisable…

JT

Starting to build our website…

So Seth and I had a couple conversations with this web designer and really like her. She’s creative and has designed some pretty amazing websites. We decided to hire her and her programmer to design our site. Seth and I have have worked tirelessly on a schema for the site we want, complete with layout, page flow, graphics, and text. We’re handing it over to her as our road-map/blueprint for what we want. She’s going to put together some preliminary designs so that we can review, tweak, and then have her programmer start actually building the site. We’ve already purchased the URL at www.oncardmarketing.com a while back when we incorporated (highly recommended), so I need to hand over the info to the website programmer who will make sure that things are working smoothly on the actual site as the project moves along.

The big thing that we want in our site is a pretty complete demo of the service we’re hoping to sell to merchants. It’s complicated, but Seth and I have a good idea of what we want it to look like. I just hope that our design team can make it look as good as we envision it. We’ll keep you posted…

Bottom Line: When choosing a web design firm, pick somebody who has a large portfolio of sites that vary in look and feel. This shows that the designer has versatility (good thing), meaning that you’re more likely to get a site that is as original as possible. Also, if the designer has a personal relationship with somebody you know (i.e. they’ve done good work for somebody you trust), all the better. With designers, you don’t really need referrals. Their work speaks for itself. If you like the websites they’ve designed, and they’re willing to do it for the right price (don’t spend over $100/hr), then go for it. This is your corporate identity, so don’t skimp. If the site looks like crap, you’ll lose credibility, so spend the little extra to make it sharp.

JT

We need a website!

Seth and I have been talking a lot recently about building a corporate website for OnCard Marketing. We realize we need to have a web presence (since we ARE a technology company) and having an informational site would be the first step towards enhanced credibility. Once again, we find ourselves trying to do something neither of us have ever done before, building a website that is. I started pinging my contacts with emails trying to see if anybody know a web designer. At this point, I just need an education and don’t care how great the person it. We’ll evaluate that once we have some names. I’m calling a bunch of web designers I found using google adwords (great resource for finding stuff you need). The problem is I don’t know any of them and the price they’re charging is pretty steep (too steep for us).

Seth has a friend a few years older from his fraternity at Cornell who has a friend in graphic design. We checked out her work yesterday and are actually very impressed with some of the work she has done on websites. I’m so happy we finally found somebody who knows something about web design!! I’ll reach out to her and have a couple conversations about the project, our company, and the site we are hoping to build. I’ll let you know where this goes…

JT

Recruiting a CTO…

Two months ago, Seth and I determined that we needed a full-time technologist with us at OnCard to help manage (and understand) all the technology-related issues from outsourcing. We began a two-month search for a CTO (chief technology officer), which was the most laborious and tedious process we’ve gone through so far (it’s only been two months). We thought it would be most cost effective to put out a job posting on Craig’s List (we couldn’t afford Monster which was almost $1,000). This was the first mistake we made in the process. For those out there who swear by Craig’s List, I apologize, but for those looking to recruit a corporate executive, I would advice you to look elsewhere.

The basic process went like this:
Post job description on Craig’s List (pay $70)
Wait a week
Get 70 resumes
Throw 40 in the garbage
Engage in phone interviews with 30 candidates
Pass on 20 of them for not being the “right fit”
Schedule in-person meetings with 10 remaining candidates
Pass on 8 of them for not being the “right fit”
Give offer to one candidate
Candidate required excessive comp package we couldn’t afford
Down to last candidate – gave offer
Candidate took offer at another firm that was “later stage”
Back to the drawing board…

Besides the fact that most candidates were completely under-qualified, the remainder were primarily IT consultants phishing for new business, not a full-time start-up position. So we were back to square-one and decided to hold off making a decision on hiring a full-time employee. We focused on soliciting proposals from third-party tech development firms who could “manage” it for us and keeping our eyes out for qualified CTO candidates through our growing personal network.

Bottom Line: Don’t use Craig List for recruiting anybody in a start-up. Your best bet is through your personal network. I would recommend LinkedIn (more on that later). If you don’t have a personal network (i.e. you’re just starting out, don’t have any personal relationships and have never heard of LinkedIn), look to outsource the responsibilities to a third-party firm (even if you get names off Google). Get a few quotes and references and then make a decision.

JT