Marorka: A Startup Profile

Marorka (Photo credit: Finnur)

It is not fair to do a Startup Profile on Marorka as it is technically not a startup because the company has sailed the rough waters of the Valley of Death and it is well on the way of becoming one of the stars of the Icelandic startup story. The company was formed in 2002 so it has been a 10 year journey... However, there is a story behind the story, it took the company a while to break into the Shipping industry I am told. It is only in the last 3 years  that the company has really taken off and I believe the reason is because of their focus on the software side of the data that they gather from the ships and opening access to that data through the internet. In their own words "Marorka offers onboard and onshore Fuel Management and Energy Management solutions equipped with real time monitoring and decision support, an essential part of operational optimization. With Marorka’s energy management solutions for voyage tracking, inventory recording, reporting and data analysis, your business will be well on its way to maximized efficiency." 
I was rather surprised to hear that Ship builders do not provide the necessary information to optimize energy usage in the vehicles, it actually makes sense, no car manufacturer tells you how best to drive your car i.e when to step on the gas and when to step on the brakes. It is quite interesting that the founders of this company saw the opportunity and built a business. What was very interesting for me to understand was the sheer volume of time series data that they capture transport to a central server process it and make it available on a portal for the Fleet or Ship manager on shore to see. There are a number of challenges one has to factor, connectivity to the Internet is not continuous and the amount of data that can be transmitted is limited so I see algorithms that were used in the early days of the internet data transfer protocol should serve them well. I don't know their software architecture but it should be an interesting problem to solve or improve on.

Related articles

• Futureship and Marorka: A Partnership to Increase Shipping Efficiency (gcaptain.com)
• Cleantech Startup Incubator Begins Fostering New Crop of Companies (treehugger.com)

Social Media is Not Done! It is just getting started

There is a lot of discussion that Social Media is done, what with Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and your Mom wanting to start a social media company. I don't think so, I think like everything else there are leaders and followers. Here is a Techcrunch article titled "Beyond Facebook: Rise of Interest-Based Social Networks" Where the main idea is that there are interest groups forming around specific areas that define the new depth in social networking. I see this possibility with many things. In my view, this is the play of the Long Tail on social media networks. There is going to be a long tail whether we like it or not, will these special interest social networks be as valuable? Not so much but they will derive value for the network that it is defined by and for new members to find them and become part of it. We have already seen this form in Photo Sharing (Instagram.com) Fitness (RunKeeper.com) Finance (StockTwists.com), Gaming (GameHub.com), etc It used to be called User Groups but then again the idea of sharing rich media has made each of these networks more value and the ability to bring the value propositions from the main stream into special interest has also made the margins more valuble. We are starting to understand how all these connection really drive value to traditional businesses as well as new businesses. We can actually measure and validate all our business hypothesis without having to spend tons of money in building things. I have written about this learning before as Validated Learning, Business as a Hypothesis, it is probably the most fascinating time to be an entrepreneur and start a new business because you have so much data to learn from. We never had that! thats why I believe we are not done yet! we are just getting started. Just think about how long it would have taken a new Media company like Techcruch to get started?

Related articles

• Navigating Social Networks for Your Business (infographic) (chuniq.com)
• 6 Social Media Networks to Watch in 2012 [Infographics] - Jeff Bullas (serve4impact.com)
• Avoid Overloading Social Media Networks with Useless Noise (blogs.constantcontact.com)
• Social media users need to wise up (afrosocialmedia.wordpress.com)

Marketing on a Shoe String

As Entrepreneurs we are always faced with constraints related to marketing and selling our products and services, that is natural and true for every company. Very few companies have a unlimited budget to spend on marketing. I have had my pet peeves with the Marketing departments while I was working for a bank. The problem I had was, I never knew whether the money we spent was worth it. This is no longer a problem, today technology exists to precisely build-measure-learn from your marketing efforts. I saw this post in The Next Web with the title "10 Marketing Hacks For Entrepreneurs", I think it is applicable to any businesses and I don't know why they have the title as a Hack? I wish established companies would run their businesses like a startup especially in the marketing and sales organizations because they never give you the metrics related to the spending they do. Here is the list if you have not gone to the article to read it:

1. Google Adwords
2. ReTargeting
3. Facebook Ads
4. Twitter mentions
5. Gist
6. Craigslist
7. Billboard space through ADstruc
8. Facebook Insights
9. WordStream
10. Social Media - Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Quora etc

I would add your company blog is a great way to market your product or service or what you do. Marketing is a promise you keep with your customers. If you don't tell them what you are doing they usually don't know. All the above tools does not replace simple truth about marketing, as Seth Godin's post on Marketing says: 

The simple first rule of branding and marketing anything (even yourself)

Not a secret, often overlooked:
"Keep your promises."
If you say you'll show up every day at 8 am, do so. Every day.
If you say your service is excellent, make it so.
If circumstances or priorities change, well then, invest to change them back. Or tell the truth, and mean it.
If traffic might be bad, plan for it.
Is there actually unusually heavy call volume? Really?
Want a bigger brand? Make bigger promises. And keep them

Related articles

• How journalists can make the most of LinkedIn (thenextweb.com)
• Connect to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and G+ (feld.com)
• Focus on the User: The real winners and losers of Don't Be Evil (arhg.net)
• Social Media Marketing: Facebook + Twitter Aren't Enough (seomoz.org)