The flow of startups to Silicon Valley is a modern gold rush. Why are entrepreneurs making their way to the Bay Area?
Earlier this year I did a series of four stories for The Australian on why startups see Silicon Valley’s Bay Area as the best base for their businesses.
From the interviews there were a number of reasons for that migration and it was a fascinating exploration of what drives the development of today’s tech industry along with how a global industrial hub maintains its position.
The stories feature a diverse bunch of founders and businesses which in themselves are interesting tales.
Since we spoke to him Zendesk have had a successful IPO and is now worth over a billion dollars.
In the latest Decoding the New Economy video interview we catch up with Mikkel and discuss the journey from being a three person startup to a billion dollar listed company.
One of the big challenges facing all organisation is using Big Data to understand their customers better, Emma LoRusso and Digivizer are part of the new wage of businesses and entrepreneurs providing the tools to help managers make better decisions.
Emma LoRusso founder of Sydney based social analytics service Digivizer believes the truth in a company’s data will challenge many managment and marketing beliefs.
In a somewhat poorly recorded interview as part of the Decoding the New Economy YouTube channel, Emma described how analysing social media trends and tying them into an organisation’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform can help improve a business’ marketing and customer satisfaction.
The Truth is in the data
“A lot of marketing in the past has not been data driven,” says Emma. “There’s still this gap between people saying ‘this is what we think’, ‘this is what we’ve always done’ and ‘this is what they’ve found’ – we’ll come behind that and say ‘let’s let the data tell the truth.'”
That data is powerful due to the context Emma believes Digivizer adds, “because we can map people to the social web based on their profiles – who are they, what they talk about, who they are engaged with and what’s important to them.”
“We let data become the truth and we push back on the hypothesis that might have been unsubstantiated previously in the organisation,” Emma says.
Fighting the average
For some organisations, this truth can be challenging. “The ones who resist it are those with a fixed position who have built a career of playing to the averages,” states Emma. “We get massive returns, say 39 to one, whereas they were getting maybe seven to one or twelve to one.”
“Again, data can be the truth in this story.”
One advantage of real time social media monitoring is marketers can now track how consumers changing lives unfold are affecting their buying habits and desires as people get married, become single, have children, move houses or just simply change tastes.
Hearing the consumer
A key part of modern marketing is letting customers know their voices have been heard, as modern consumers know they have a voice and expect companies to acknowledge what they’re saying.
Emma sees a lot of lip service has been paid in companies to the ‘single customer view’ where businesses need to know their customers better.
“I actually think it’s customers that are driving that,” says Emma. “Their expectation is ‘I’ve interacted with you a lot of times, you’re asking me to engage with you digitally and now I expect you to serve me better.'”
“Now if you plug that data into organisations you can start to offer more meaningful – the right message at the right time.”
Emma believes that makes customers happier as they now feel they’ve been heard and understood. “That’s the beauty in the data,” she says.
One of the big challenges facing all organisation is using Big Data to understand their customers better, Emma LoRusso and Digivizer are part of the new wage of businesses and entrepreneurs providing the tools to help managers make better decisions.
While there’s some risks with paying close attention to customers’ online behaviour – as we saw with the famous Target pregnant girl mailout – the benefits for businesses listening to their clients is obvious. It’s another example of how the slow to adapt businesses will be crushed in the changing economy.
