Saturday, February 6, 2010
Interview with the Minnov8 Gang: The W3i Story & App Trends
Thank you Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson for hosting me today on your weekly Minnov8 podcast. I've enjoyed listening to your show for quite a while now, and it was great to be mic'ed up this week.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
My First App Marketing Column For ClickZ
Check out my first monthly app marketing column for ClickZ entitled "Five Application Marketing Trends" which provides a summary of the top five application marketing trends impacting digital marketers.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Five Application Trends Coming Out of 2010 CES
Consumer apps were everywhere at the 2010 CES show. Here are five of the application trends for online application marketers that I noted from my attendance at CES:
1) Optimism rules at 2010 CES show. Gary Shapiro, Chief Executive of CES, said the CES show “seemed more upbeat than a year ago, reflecting a return to optimism for the industry,” reports Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat by VentureBeat. Attendance at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show reportedly reached 120,000 visitors this year, an increase of about 6 percent from last year. Participants were reverberating with the latest device and the latest apps to go with it.
2) Apps will be everywhere. Thanks to Apple, apps are now sexy and offer the consumer more value from their device, and the marketer the ability to enhance their device with little effort, as well as a potential new source of revenue.
3) Integrated, multi-platform app strategies are being considered. Brands should create apps that are integrated across multiple devices: mobile, desktop, social, browser, and other emerging platforms like television set-top boxes and car electronics. Cooliris bases its success on building its app for both mobile and desktop platforms. They were recently selected to develop Media Gallery for the Nexus One Device.
4) There will be a mobile app for almost everything, but adoption outside of iPhone is still low. With the phenomenal growth of the Apple AppStore fueling over 2 billion downloads from some 100,000 plus apps, the race is on from other mobile device companies to woo app developers. (Living in Minnesota, one of my favorites announced at CES is the SmartStart app by Directed for remote starting a car from a smartphone.)
5) Top app marketers will start focusing on improving their key operating metrics. Most app marketers are doing a poor job of developing key operating metrics and reporting surrounding their app marketing initiatives and campaigns. There is a lot of emotional decision making rather than data driven decision making. This appears to be starting to change, as better analytical thinking and tools are starting to take root with top app marketers.
If you identified other app trends, share your thoughts by submitting a comment.
1) Optimism rules at 2010 CES show. Gary Shapiro, Chief Executive of CES, said the CES show “seemed more upbeat than a year ago, reflecting a return to optimism for the industry,” reports Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat by VentureBeat. Attendance at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show reportedly reached 120,000 visitors this year, an increase of about 6 percent from last year. Participants were reverberating with the latest device and the latest apps to go with it.
2) Apps will be everywhere. Thanks to Apple, apps are now sexy and offer the consumer more value from their device, and the marketer the ability to enhance their device with little effort, as well as a potential new source of revenue.
- Apps in television set-top boxes: Samsung announced the launch of Samsung Apps, a multi-device application store with content partners, including Blockbuster, USA Today, and others. Samsung plans to make apps available for a range of devices from mobile phones to HDTVs.
- Apps in car electronics: Ford recognizes that users want information on demand. Ford’s Sync feature uses an 8” touch-screen in the dashboard as well as voice commands. You can catch up on Twitter, listen to Internet radio, check movie times and get free online maps with turn-by-turn directions.
- App Store for Netbooks - Intel launched a beta version of its app store, called the Intel AppUp center for netbooks. Currently offering about 100 apps.
3) Integrated, multi-platform app strategies are being considered. Brands should create apps that are integrated across multiple devices: mobile, desktop, social, browser, and other emerging platforms like television set-top boxes and car electronics. Cooliris bases its success on building its app for both mobile and desktop platforms. They were recently selected to develop Media Gallery for the Nexus One Device.
4) There will be a mobile app for almost everything, but adoption outside of iPhone is still low. With the phenomenal growth of the Apple AppStore fueling over 2 billion downloads from some 100,000 plus apps, the race is on from other mobile device companies to woo app developers. (Living in Minnesota, one of my favorites announced at CES is the SmartStart app by Directed for remote starting a car from a smartphone.)
5) Top app marketers will start focusing on improving their key operating metrics. Most app marketers are doing a poor job of developing key operating metrics and reporting surrounding their app marketing initiatives and campaigns. There is a lot of emotional decision making rather than data driven decision making. This appears to be starting to change, as better analytical thinking and tools are starting to take root with top app marketers.
If you identified other app trends, share your thoughts by submitting a comment.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Consumer Application Thought Leaders – Interview with Kris Tufto, former CEO of Jasc Software, Developer of Paint Shop Pro
Kris Tufto was the CEO of Minnesota-based, Jasc Software during their growth phase from from 1998 to 2005, a period that saw Jasc grow from what was rumored to be $5 million in revenue to over $30 million in revenue before their eventual sale to Corel in 2004. Jasc Software was most widely known for their Paint Shop Pro graphic editing program. Kris is presently working on his second ramp up at Minnesota-based Marketing Bridge, a SaaS-based channel automation software.
Interview December 10, 2009
Rob Weber: What Minnesota tech entrepreneurs do you most respect/idealize?
Kris Tufto: Seymour Cray (Cray Research), Bill & Richard Lawson (Lawson Software), and Joel Ronning (Digital River).
Kris Tufto: By the way, did you know that Jasc’s founder, Bob Voit was from St. Cloud? You didn’t know that so many great tech companies had their roots in St. Cloud, Minnesota, like W3i, did you?
Rob Weber: Digital River is truly one of the great Minnesota start-up success stories. I understand that Joel Ronning was on your Board of Directors while at Jasc. For those of us who do not know Joel as well as you do, can you tell us what you see as his greatest strength as a tech entrepreneur?
Kris Tufto: Joel’s greatest strength was his understanding of the power of distribution and how to build an aggressive culture.
Rob Weber: What were the core things you needed to do to grow Jasc Software during your tenure?
Kris Tufto: From an internal perspective, develop a Product Management function, better organize our sales process, and reorganize various employees to different roles. From an external perspective, I had to formalize software distribution channels, change industry trends as it relates to the product cycle, and implement a global release strategy.
Rob Weber: You mentioned software distribution a couple times now. What were your core software distribution strategies at Jasc?
Kris Tufto: We broke them down into four channels, and those were direct, retail, VARS, and International. With our direct channel, we relied on Digital River as our commerce platform. Many consumers expected to purchase Paint Shop Pro direct because it was shareware. In my last years at Jasc, we utilized paid search marketing as well as affiliate marketing, but during my tenure they did not provide substantial growth opportunities. In retail, we relied on big box partners like Best Buy, CompUSA, and Walmart. Best Buy was our top partner. With VARS, we mostly focused on North America, with partners like Software Spectrum and Tiger Direct. International was a compilation of direct, retail and VARS, depending on the country.
Rob Weber: Fast forward four years to today, if you were still running a consumer software company like Jasc Software, what would you expect to change in terms of software distribution?
Kris Tufto: Retail would be only a fraction of what we were seeing back then. We would rely much heavier on direct marketing, like paid search and affiliate marketing. I would also use W3i’s distribution channel.
Rob Weber: In the consumer application world, there is a lot of buzz around social apps and mobile apps. What do you think about using these new platforms in a consumer application business today?
Kris Tufto: At Jasc, we were very Windows centric. We would look to new platforms like Google Operating System. The problem in using alternative operating systems is the development resources they require. When you have a very big legacy code base, it is a tough decision to port to a new Operating System.
Rob Weber: What were the unique challenges you faced in growing Jasc in Minnesota?
Kris Tufto: The Midwestern culture is not a high tech culture. It is not fast moving, it is more engineering oriented and methodical-- where you take the time to get everything right. In high tech, you need to create a culture where you expect to get only 80% right. At Jasc, I threw out “Minnesota nice”.
Rob Weber: How did you compete while at Jasc with your Paint Shop Pro application while facing a David versus Goliath competitor in Adobe and their Photoshop application?
Kris Tufto: We looked at Adobe Photoshop as the sun. In order to beat them we always focused on edge markets and motored around them.
Rob Weber: Kris, I think the world’s consumers and designers who use photo and graphic editing software owe you and your team at Jasc a big thank you. Why? You guys came around and lowered the price point significantly in the product category of photo/graphic editing applications. Jasc was in many ways as good as Photoshop, and in some ways better at a much lower price point. Before Jasc, there was no substitute $100 product, there was only Photoshop at over $400.
Kris Tufto: You are right, Rob. Adobe didn’t think Jasc was a real threat until they released Adobe Photoshop Elements as a competitive response in 2001 to 2002 timeframe. This validated our model, and caused us to work even harder.
Interview December 10, 2009
Rob Weber: What Minnesota tech entrepreneurs do you most respect/idealize?
Kris Tufto: Seymour Cray (Cray Research), Bill & Richard Lawson (Lawson Software), and Joel Ronning (Digital River).
Kris Tufto: By the way, did you know that Jasc’s founder, Bob Voit was from St. Cloud? You didn’t know that so many great tech companies had their roots in St. Cloud, Minnesota, like W3i, did you?
Rob Weber: Digital River is truly one of the great Minnesota start-up success stories. I understand that Joel Ronning was on your Board of Directors while at Jasc. For those of us who do not know Joel as well as you do, can you tell us what you see as his greatest strength as a tech entrepreneur?
Kris Tufto: Joel’s greatest strength was his understanding of the power of distribution and how to build an aggressive culture.
Rob Weber: What were the core things you needed to do to grow Jasc Software during your tenure?
Kris Tufto: From an internal perspective, develop a Product Management function, better organize our sales process, and reorganize various employees to different roles. From an external perspective, I had to formalize software distribution channels, change industry trends as it relates to the product cycle, and implement a global release strategy.
Rob Weber: You mentioned software distribution a couple times now. What were your core software distribution strategies at Jasc?
Kris Tufto: We broke them down into four channels, and those were direct, retail, VARS, and International. With our direct channel, we relied on Digital River as our commerce platform. Many consumers expected to purchase Paint Shop Pro direct because it was shareware. In my last years at Jasc, we utilized paid search marketing as well as affiliate marketing, but during my tenure they did not provide substantial growth opportunities. In retail, we relied on big box partners like Best Buy, CompUSA, and Walmart. Best Buy was our top partner. With VARS, we mostly focused on North America, with partners like Software Spectrum and Tiger Direct. International was a compilation of direct, retail and VARS, depending on the country.
Rob Weber: Fast forward four years to today, if you were still running a consumer software company like Jasc Software, what would you expect to change in terms of software distribution?
Kris Tufto: Retail would be only a fraction of what we were seeing back then. We would rely much heavier on direct marketing, like paid search and affiliate marketing. I would also use W3i’s distribution channel.
Rob Weber: In the consumer application world, there is a lot of buzz around social apps and mobile apps. What do you think about using these new platforms in a consumer application business today?
Kris Tufto: At Jasc, we were very Windows centric. We would look to new platforms like Google Operating System. The problem in using alternative operating systems is the development resources they require. When you have a very big legacy code base, it is a tough decision to port to a new Operating System.
Rob Weber: What were the unique challenges you faced in growing Jasc in Minnesota?
Kris Tufto: The Midwestern culture is not a high tech culture. It is not fast moving, it is more engineering oriented and methodical-- where you take the time to get everything right. In high tech, you need to create a culture where you expect to get only 80% right. At Jasc, I threw out “Minnesota nice”.
Rob Weber: How did you compete while at Jasc with your Paint Shop Pro application while facing a David versus Goliath competitor in Adobe and their Photoshop application?
Kris Tufto: We looked at Adobe Photoshop as the sun. In order to beat them we always focused on edge markets and motored around them.
Rob Weber: Kris, I think the world’s consumers and designers who use photo and graphic editing software owe you and your team at Jasc a big thank you. Why? You guys came around and lowered the price point significantly in the product category of photo/graphic editing applications. Jasc was in many ways as good as Photoshop, and in some ways better at a much lower price point. Before Jasc, there was no substitute $100 product, there was only Photoshop at over $400.
Kris Tufto: You are right, Rob. Adobe didn’t think Jasc was a real threat until they released Adobe Photoshop Elements as a competitive response in 2001 to 2002 timeframe. This validated our model, and caused us to work even harder.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Minnebar 2009 Sets the Tone for Minnesota Start-ups
On November 21st over 600 developers and entrepreneurs got together to discuss what’s important to Minnesota tech start-ups. The halls that Best Buy legendary founder, Dick Schulze, built made for a great location for the next wave of Minnesota entrepreneurs to begin spreading their wings.
Several Minnesota start-up thought leaders were on hand including Graeme Thickens of Minnov8.com, Robert Stephens, founder of GeekSquad, Justin Porter of the University of Minnesota Venture Center, and John Roberts attorney at start-up friendly New Counsel. There were many young Minnesota entrepreneurs on hand including Mynul Khan founder of FieldNation, and Adam Sellke of Evolve (recent semifinalist at MN Cup 2009). I was surprised that there were several Minnesota entrepreneurs who had multiple successful companies with exits.
Minnebar cofounder Ben Edwards led a very interactive roundtable discussion for web app builders. Ben’s leadership was clearly on display as a large group of primarily independent developers came forward with their questions on how to market the technology they built. It was very interesting to hear a group of developers discuss marketing issues. As an Internet company founder, I know you need to wear a lot of hats from my first hand experience.
The most heated discussion of the day was “Bootstrapping your Tech Start-up” led by Kevin Spreng of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi. Kevin provided tips for bootstrapping entrepreneurs such as hire contractors rather than employees, go without an office, and focus on execution. Near the end of his session, Kevin stated that marketing agencies were a black hole because marketing agencies spend a lot of money, and he advised start-ups to handle their own marketing. Curt Prins, Executive Director at District 202 and marketing guru, responded with his disagreement and said not all marketers needed a large budget to accomplish results for start-up entrepreneurs. A rather lively debate ensued (see tweets under #minnebar). Nice work Kevin and Curt in driving a stimulating discussion on the topic of bootstrapping.
Justin Grammens led a packed session on how to develop Android applications. Justin explained how, unlike iPhone apps, Android apps require no certification or approval. He also created a simple “Mobile Twin Cities” app during the session. I was amazed at how simple creating a basic Android application can be.
Dan Frankowski and Max Harper from Blue Shift Labs led a discussion on coding with Google’s App Engine that intrigued a number of developers. The crowd was very engaged. The scripting seemed pretty straight forward.
Mike Bollinger provided an introduction to HTML5. The tweets that followed said that HTML5 looked “amazing” and that users should stop using Internet Explorer 6 to increase the adoption rate.
Ryan Weber and I provided a summary of the top trends and winners in the application industry. Ryan forecasted that the integration of social and location-based mobile technology would be one of the most significant drivers of growth and change in the mobile app space.
My favorite discussion was the one facilitated by cofounder of Minnebar, Luke Francl, entitled “Midwestern Startups: What is Possible?”. Luke started by asking for those entrepreneurs that had worked in Silicon Valley to compare their start-up experience there versus their Minnesota start-up experiences. One such entrepreneur answered Luke’s question by saying Silicon Valley start-ups aren’t as afraid to fail as those in Minnesota. Another entrepreneur said the biggest difference was how much deeper the talent pool was in the valley. Finally, someone joked that when he was in Minnesota, whenever someone asked where he worked, he responded with “I work for at a start-up”. When asked the same question while at an iPhone meet-up in Palo Alto, the response was met with laughter. Why? In Silicon Valley, everyone works for a start-up. The discussion next turned to several ideas on how we can make Minnesota a better place to create a tech start-up. Among the ideas identified were creating an incubator fund modeled after Y Combinator, getting the University of Minnesota to raise money to fund local tech start-ups similar to what the University of Wisconsin started a year ago, the creation of a new Techcrunch-like Minnesota focused community site, and taking advantage of Minnesota’s significant number of Fortune 1000 companies to provide a distribution channel for Minnesota-brewed new tech. Michael Gorman of Split Rock Partners, one of the sponsors, closed Luke’s discussion by saying he was looking forward to seeing where we would be in another year. Judging by all of the energy, and the way the Minnesota developer and entrepreneur crowd is starting to support each other, I am confident we will see continued growth in the Minnesota tech start-up community. I am looking forward to Minnebar 2010.
Several Minnesota start-up thought leaders were on hand including Graeme Thickens of Minnov8.com, Robert Stephens, founder of GeekSquad, Justin Porter of the University of Minnesota Venture Center, and John Roberts attorney at start-up friendly New Counsel. There were many young Minnesota entrepreneurs on hand including Mynul Khan founder of FieldNation, and Adam Sellke of Evolve (recent semifinalist at MN Cup 2009). I was surprised that there were several Minnesota entrepreneurs who had multiple successful companies with exits.
Minnebar cofounder Ben Edwards led a very interactive roundtable discussion for web app builders. Ben’s leadership was clearly on display as a large group of primarily independent developers came forward with their questions on how to market the technology they built. It was very interesting to hear a group of developers discuss marketing issues. As an Internet company founder, I know you need to wear a lot of hats from my first hand experience.
The most heated discussion of the day was “Bootstrapping your Tech Start-up” led by Kevin Spreng of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi. Kevin provided tips for bootstrapping entrepreneurs such as hire contractors rather than employees, go without an office, and focus on execution. Near the end of his session, Kevin stated that marketing agencies were a black hole because marketing agencies spend a lot of money, and he advised start-ups to handle their own marketing. Curt Prins, Executive Director at District 202 and marketing guru, responded with his disagreement and said not all marketers needed a large budget to accomplish results for start-up entrepreneurs. A rather lively debate ensued (see tweets under #minnebar). Nice work Kevin and Curt in driving a stimulating discussion on the topic of bootstrapping.
Justin Grammens led a packed session on how to develop Android applications. Justin explained how, unlike iPhone apps, Android apps require no certification or approval. He also created a simple “Mobile Twin Cities” app during the session. I was amazed at how simple creating a basic Android application can be.
Dan Frankowski and Max Harper from Blue Shift Labs led a discussion on coding with Google’s App Engine that intrigued a number of developers. The crowd was very engaged. The scripting seemed pretty straight forward.
Mike Bollinger provided an introduction to HTML5. The tweets that followed said that HTML5 looked “amazing” and that users should stop using Internet Explorer 6 to increase the adoption rate.
Ryan Weber and I provided a summary of the top trends and winners in the application industry. Ryan forecasted that the integration of social and location-based mobile technology would be one of the most significant drivers of growth and change in the mobile app space.
My favorite discussion was the one facilitated by cofounder of Minnebar, Luke Francl, entitled “Midwestern Startups: What is Possible?”. Luke started by asking for those entrepreneurs that had worked in Silicon Valley to compare their start-up experience there versus their Minnesota start-up experiences. One such entrepreneur answered Luke’s question by saying Silicon Valley start-ups aren’t as afraid to fail as those in Minnesota. Another entrepreneur said the biggest difference was how much deeper the talent pool was in the valley. Finally, someone joked that when he was in Minnesota, whenever someone asked where he worked, he responded with “I work for at a start-up”. When asked the same question while at an iPhone meet-up in Palo Alto, the response was met with laughter. Why? In Silicon Valley, everyone works for a start-up. The discussion next turned to several ideas on how we can make Minnesota a better place to create a tech start-up. Among the ideas identified were creating an incubator fund modeled after Y Combinator, getting the University of Minnesota to raise money to fund local tech start-ups similar to what the University of Wisconsin started a year ago, the creation of a new Techcrunch-like Minnesota focused community site, and taking advantage of Minnesota’s significant number of Fortune 1000 companies to provide a distribution channel for Minnesota-brewed new tech. Michael Gorman of Split Rock Partners, one of the sponsors, closed Luke’s discussion by saying he was looking forward to seeing where we would be in another year. Judging by all of the energy, and the way the Minnesota developer and entrepreneur crowd is starting to support each other, I am confident we will see continued growth in the Minnesota tech start-up community. I am looking forward to Minnebar 2010.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Why Browser Add-ons & Net Neutrality Are So Important
John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla, and Mitchell Baker, Chair of Mozilla, co-wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal on October 29, 2009 called "Net Neutrality: Spur to Entrepreneurship".
In the article, John and Mitchell publicly voice their support for the FCC’s recent “net neutrality” proposal. They say that since 1995, open Internet standards have spawned a generation of entrepreneurs who went on to create great companies like Yahoo, Google, Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Salesforce.com, Expedia, Monster, and Netflix. These companies alone represent nearly $300 billion of market capitalization. They say that users have also downloaded more than 1.6 billion Firefox add-ons created by a vibrant ecosystem of developers, from hobbyists to Fortune 100 companies, and that Mozilla has been able to compete on its own merits with the dominant browser, Internet Explorer.
Wow! Talk about validation for the small but growing add-on developer community out there. You have the CEO and Chair of Mozilla talking about how add-ons are a key part of the strategy in their competition head-to-head with Microsoft.
And John and Mitchell are right. Firefox does do a better job handling add-ons than Internet Explorer. It is commonly understood by add-on developers that Firefox is an easier browser to create add-ons for. One other supporting piece of evidence for this position is that the Firefox add-on gallery (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/) is over twice as popular as the Internet Explorer add-on gallery (http://www.ieaddons.com/).
Nice work, Mozilla, on the article and on your add-on strategy.
Here’s to net neutrality continuing into the future so another generation of entrepreneurs can build the next wave of great companies.
In the article, John and Mitchell publicly voice their support for the FCC’s recent “net neutrality” proposal. They say that since 1995, open Internet standards have spawned a generation of entrepreneurs who went on to create great companies like Yahoo, Google, Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Salesforce.com, Expedia, Monster, and Netflix. These companies alone represent nearly $300 billion of market capitalization. They say that users have also downloaded more than 1.6 billion Firefox add-ons created by a vibrant ecosystem of developers, from hobbyists to Fortune 100 companies, and that Mozilla has been able to compete on its own merits with the dominant browser, Internet Explorer.
Wow! Talk about validation for the small but growing add-on developer community out there. You have the CEO and Chair of Mozilla talking about how add-ons are a key part of the strategy in their competition head-to-head with Microsoft.
And John and Mitchell are right. Firefox does do a better job handling add-ons than Internet Explorer. It is commonly understood by add-on developers that Firefox is an easier browser to create add-ons for. One other supporting piece of evidence for this position is that the Firefox add-on gallery (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/) is over twice as popular as the Internet Explorer add-on gallery (http://www.ieaddons.com/).
Nice work, Mozilla, on the article and on your add-on strategy.
Here’s to net neutrality continuing into the future so another generation of entrepreneurs can build the next wave of great companies.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Trouncing the Recession like an Upstart!
The following two paragraphs were taken from an excellent post written by Donna Fenn. I highly recommend you pick up her book Upstarts!
"Small business owners are typically an optimistic lot, even in the face of dismal economic conditions. But a recent American Express OPEN Small Business Monitor survey found that GenY entrepreneurs are more optimistic than most. “More than three-quarters (80%) of these entrepreneurs have a significantly more positive outlook on business prospects versus GenX and business owners overall (each 55%), and Baby Boomers (52%),” the survey noted. GenY business owners were most likely to be hiring and making capital investments, and least likely to have cash flow issues and to be “stressed out” about the economy."
Later on in her post, Donna provides highlights from a discussion we had about my experience as a GenY entrepreneur, and W3i-
"Focus on your core competency. Robert Weber’s company, W3i in Sartell, MN, markets third party computer applications and has been growing 53% a year. W3i continues to post significant gains this year because, Weber says, he had the foresight to eliminate divisions of the company that were hogging resources without generating significant revenue. He shut down a lead generation business and sold a mobile applications business “we never really figured out how to integrate into our main company.” With a single point of focus — “to be market leader in applications distribution” — Weber says the company is well positioned for growth this year."
Read Donna's full post here
"Small business owners are typically an optimistic lot, even in the face of dismal economic conditions. But a recent American Express OPEN Small Business Monitor survey found that GenY entrepreneurs are more optimistic than most. “More than three-quarters (80%) of these entrepreneurs have a significantly more positive outlook on business prospects versus GenX and business owners overall (each 55%), and Baby Boomers (52%),” the survey noted. GenY business owners were most likely to be hiring and making capital investments, and least likely to have cash flow issues and to be “stressed out” about the economy."
Later on in her post, Donna provides highlights from a discussion we had about my experience as a GenY entrepreneur, and W3i-
"Focus on your core competency. Robert Weber’s company, W3i in Sartell, MN, markets third party computer applications and has been growing 53% a year. W3i continues to post significant gains this year because, Weber says, he had the foresight to eliminate divisions of the company that were hogging resources without generating significant revenue. He shut down a lead generation business and sold a mobile applications business “we never really figured out how to integrate into our main company.” With a single point of focus — “to be market leader in applications distribution” — Weber says the company is well positioned for growth this year."
Read Donna's full post here
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