My friend, Ben Yoskovitz, runs a company called StandOut Jobs. Ben is an amazingly nice guy who really doesn’t need or want anything from me. As you know, this makes him my absolutely favorite kind of guy. (If you want something from me, you better have four legs and a ginger-colored tail.)

I caught Ben’s blog, today, and he published a new white paper on strategic recruiting initiatives. I have an influx of new readers — many of whom have just made the jump to HR — and Ben’s blog is a good resource for you to learn more about recruiting. I also think he presents recruiting in such a great way — you may want to incorporate this white paper into conversations with some of your clients. Check it out.

More importantly, I am here to expand your HR network. Ben is on LinkedIn and Twitter, and he is just about the nicest guy in the universe and he will accept your connection requests.

Go forth and be social!

Editor’s Note: our readers are familiar now with contributor Ben Yoskovitz’s work. (His company, Standout Jobs was just named one of Canada’s hottest startups. Congratulations, Ben!) This week, on his Instigator Blog, Ben offers a great treatise on how founders can leverage data collecting to make more money for their startups.

The pervading approach to launching a startup is to do it quickly, iterate constantly and make as much noise as possible throughout the process. It’s not a bad way of doing things, and given the lower cost of startup operations, and the nature of consumer web startups in particular, and it’s completely doable. But be careful if you’re not a data hog.

Getting your startup launched as quickly as possible is fine – but you should also spend a good chunk of time preparing to collect data. [Why? Because data is something you can leverage to make money, Ben explains below. ] This means building the necessary infrastructure into your system to collect, review and analyze the data generated by users, right from the start.

What Data Should You Collect?

Anything and everything. Collect as much as you possibly can, even if you’re not sure of its value upfront. Data has a sneaky way of revealing things over time – things you might not have thought of immediately. Data has a way of helping you figure out what questions to ask, because it exposes trends, and allows you to look at things with different perspectives.

Ask Basic Questions to Start

Start by asking yourself some basic questions on how you expect your application (or hope your application) will be used. There are some fairly common questions and data points that will be of value regardless of what type of application you’re building (be it B2B, B2C, etc.) For example:

* how often do people log in?

* how long do they use the system?

* what features are people using?

* when are people using the system?

* where are the users located geographically?

If you’re out of the gate with a business model and charging customers, there are a whole bunch of additional questions you can ask:

* how many people are paying?

* what are they paying for?

* what payment plan are they using (if you offer monthly, yearly, etc.)?

* how much are they spending?

Questions Beget Questions

As you start to ask questions and answer them with the data you’re collecting, it will lead to more questions. Getting into an analytical mindset of evaluating trends through data will help you uncover all sorts of interesting things. Here’s a good example from Standout Jobs…

We currently distribute job postings to a variety of job boards and job aggregators, including SimplyHired and Indeed. We also sponsor jobs on both SimplyHired and Indeed (through a pay per click model) to see how well those jobs perform in terms of generating clickthroughs and applications. And we want to compare the two of them.

A few simple questions we ask include:

* how many clickthroughs are generated from these job aggregator sites?

* how many applications are generated?

* how much is it costing us per click and per application?

What’s interesting is that we notice a higher clickthrough and application rate for new jobs that get submitted through our feeds into SimplyHired and Indeed. That makes sense, of course, because people are always looking for the freshest jobs. So that leads to the next question, “How many clickthroughs and applications do we receive for jobs over time?”

This is interesting because it can affect how we spend money on sponsoring jobs. If we see that a job receives almost no applications after it’s been in an aggregator for 2 weeks, why bother paying for it show up anymore? So that leads us to think about optimizing our spending based on the age of jobs…

That leads to a whole bunch of other questions, all of which are answered through the data we collect.

Why Data = Money

1. The data itself can be valuable. People will pay for data if it helps them answer questions they need resolved. It’s really as simple as that. And entire businesses have been built on collecting data and reselling it, or selling the knowledge gained from the data.

2. The data can optimize your business. You can use the knowledge gained from data to become more efficient and innovate, which will save you money. And saving money means making money.

3. The data can lead to new business opportunities. Simply understanding what parts of your product people use can help you find ways of staying focused and making more money from it.

4. The data can drive product development. You may even discover new products worth building based on the data you’re collecting.

5. The data can drive sales. For example, we track “last login” for customers that haven’t yet published their career web sites. When we see a prospect that’s recently logged in, we get in touch to see how things are going, and very often can convert them on the spot.

6. The data can improve customer support. Fixing bugs is always frustrating when you don’t really know what a user was doing. And as much as you’d like them to tell you, they can’t always do a good job of it. If the data can help you figure out how somebody was doing something when they ran into trouble, you’ll be able to fix it faster. That’ll make your customer happy. Happy customers spend more money.

Ben’s BOTTOM LINE …

Startups need to collect data. Incidentally, VCs love data. They understand the value behind it, and how entire businesses can be discovered, created and evolved off of collecting lots and lots of data.

Data Doesn’t Always Tell You Why

Data can tell you a lot of things, but it doesn’t always answer the question “why?” Answering “why” typically requires more analysis of what’s going on, a deeper understanding of user behaviors, some guesswork and investigation. Don’t be afraid to go to your customers and ask them “why” — often they’ll be happy to tell you. And then you can correlate user answers to what you see in the data, and make the best decisions from there.

Ben Yoskovitz is the founder of Standout Jobs, based in Montreal, Quebec Canada. Earlier Found|READ posts by or about Ben include: Presenting at DEMO: 12 Do’s. 5 Don’ts; DEMO Went Great, Then “All Hell” Broke Loose; and 5 Tips for Maintaining Vision in the Day-to-Day. For even more, visit Ben’s terrific Instigator Blog.

Our weekly roundup of posts you might have missed, but shouldn’t.

1) The 1st and 2nd Gospels of Sequoia Capital. We posted on these last week, following a nod form TechCrunch (thank you). Gospel 1: Elements of Sustainable Companies. Gospel 2: Writing A Business Plan. Sequoia funded Google, Yahoo, Apple and others, so these lists are like success crib sheets from the Burning Bush. Frame them on your wall.

2.) Strategic Tools: Site performance is a moving target, and demands your constant attention. On Mar. 19 we found this compendium of 20 posts on how to use Google Analytics better. We get it via Manoj Jasra.

3) Creativity: You’re working so hard, it’s really difficult to keep the mind inspired. On Mar. 20, Lifehack.org published one of the best lists I’ve read recently on how to nurture your own creativity. 30 Tips to Rejuvenate Your Creativity.

4.) Hiring & Retaining Talent: On Mar. 21 our friend Ben Yoskovitz published How To Use Perks and Rewards in Startups to Get The Best Talent, following the flak over Jason Calacanis’ claim that you should hire workaholics. One of Ben’s readers noted: “the best employees are motivated by a combination of working on something intellectually stimulating, working with smart people, and making money… in that order.” Great! but where paying people is easy, motivating them in HARD. So how to motivate your employees? Ben’s has your tips.

5.) Book of the Week: on Mar. 17 Harvard Working Knowledge wrote about the new Oxford Handbook of Business History. All of business history in one tome? Sounds grand, but consider picking up the handbook for one reason: it offers accounts from all geographies and cultures (Japanese business history, Latin American business history). Euro-centric histories still dominate our academic business literature, but a world view is important to startups too in an era of globaization! “The references in almost every chapter contain multiple citations to literatures not published in English [on] entrepreneurship, corporate governance, technology and innovation, and economic theory and development.” Check it out.

Update: for another lesson on the imperative of customer support, spend a few minutes studying Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s decision this week to close hundreds of stores nationwide for 3 hours in order to retrain Baristas in good customer service. The Wall Street Journal: Starbucks Closes Stores To Retrain Baristas (Photo credit, from WSJ: Kurt Wilberding)

Ben Yoskovitz is a very thoughtful founder, and we republish posts from his Instigator Blog here frequently. (See list at bottom). Yesterday, Ben put up an ode to his customers that is (OK) a tad mushy but, as always, material.

Ben points out an all-too-common shortcoming of cash- and time-strapped startups: a lack of attention on customer support. Maybe we’re overly focused on our code or our funding. Whatever the reasons, this is a weakness Ben argues — and therein lies a potential strategic advantage.

Of course it’s just good business to offer quality customer support. The fact that so few startups do so only compounds the value to you if you can:

Luckily for you, very few companies (especially startups!) provide anything remotely resembling quality customer support and so you can immediately use it as a differentiator…

What is more, tying in to our post yesterday on the perils of pursuing product perfection, Ben points out that providing good support can compensate for the inevitable glitches, bugs and necessary tweaks that you — and your users — will be dealing with post-launch.

Invariably your product will be rough around the edges, bugs will emerge and there will be a shortage of features. On top of that, you’re the new kid on the block, so customers may look at you with a bit of concern (especially in a B2B market.) “How long will they last?” “Can they really provide the level of product quality and service we need?” To assuage those concerns, and balance against the shortcomings of an early product, use great customer support.

So this is how, Ben concludes, what must of us think of as a “cost-center” actually becomes a value-creator.

Read all of Ben’s post, I Love Customers , and for more of his writings, see also:
* DEMO Went Great, Then “All Hell” Broke Loose.
* Presenting at DEMO: 12 Do’s. 5 Don’ts.
* Are you a leader?

* This is Your Brain. TiYB when fundraising…
* How-To Create the Perfect Company Blog

Image credit: CartoonChurch.

This weeks pics for helpful posts to read over your weekend. If you had a bad week, or just got turned down for funding, do yourself a favor and skip to #5 right away. Then work backwards…

1) Operations: 5 Lessons Learned From Gordon Ramsay (the infamous chef from Kitchen Nightmares) brought to our attention by Micah, at Learn to Duck. Micah writes: “Ramsay’s rules for running a successful restaurant are really not all that different than getting a startup off the ground.”

2) Leadership and Hiring: More in the restaurant motif, a short video interview of celebrity chef and entrepreneur Charlie Trotter, from Crain’s Chicago. A hyperactive Charlie talks about how you can never get complacent with your success (recall our Lombardi post on the same) and his tricks for spotting future leaders in 10-minute job interviews. (See also Passion Spotting.)

3) Mentorship : Rules for Great Advisory Boards, from Marc McCloud, a serial software entrepreneur, on his blog Startup CFO. (Also read F|R contributor Ben Yoskovitz’s take on the subject: The Importance of Advisory Boards for Startup CEOs.)

4) Strategy: A reminder of why failure is nothing to be afraid of, and why you should embrace sooner rather than later, from Mitchell Ashley: Fail Early and Often.

And saving the best for last….

5) Funding & “PC”-VC-Fashion : we found this hilarious post courtesy of VentureHacks, whose authors have shared their tricks for getting the better of nasty term sheets with us in the past. (See: Vesting Hacks: Part I, Vesting Hacks: Part II, Vesting Hacks: Part 3, and Vesting Hacks 4.) I just can’t decide which T-shirt to order as the F|R holiday gift next year!:

Or

There are many more to choose from, so take a break and spend some time this Sunday on my new favorite home page: VCWear.

Editor’s Note: Founder Aruni Gunasegaram has written about the virtues of ignoring “the experts” , things no one tells you about VCs, and her preparations for “shaking the can” for her current startup, BabbleSoft, in My Funding Toolkit. On her blog today, Aruni shares some insights from her funding experience. We offer the highlights.

Several readers asked me to write my experience raising funds from angels and VCs for my first entrepreneurial endeavor. We raised about $15 million of which $3.5 million was from angels or what I would call boutique VC firms (i.e. a group of angels under one investment roof). Keep in mind that was all before the bubble burst back in 2001. Here are some of my observations based on my experience and from stories I’ve heard from other entrepreneurs.

Angels

They tend to invest their own money and reputation in earlier stage companies …
The really good ones (yes, there are bad ones) have built their own businesses from the ground up…

They tend to get their ‘hands dirty.’ Our lead angel investor for my first company wasMarc Seriff founding CTO of America Online… Marc actually manned a career fair booth that we had at The University of Texas at Austin [and] participated in the interviews [of our] developers! … Since Marc was our lead for our first round, he even assured our vendors that he would make sure (i.e. personally guarantee) they got paid if for some reason we couldn’t close the round!

Angles tend to bring their friends along for the ride. Another of our angel investors, Jack Baum also introduced us to the owners of our very first big paying customer who ended up doing a nationwide rollout with us. I remember framing the check!

He and his partner Steve Winter (late of SAP) brought in two of our three venture investors (from SAP Ventures). Steve even served as our interim-CEO when we parted ways with the first one who had replaced me.

They don’t necessarily have to invest money to be an angel. Richard Benkendorf an advisor, introduced us to our first key customer in the Coca-Cola bottling system that helped us achieve our first $1 million in revenue!

When the dollars need [to] get big for future financing rounds, angel investors usually voluntarily step back …

Some of them may not have sat on a Board or been involved in building their own businesses making some board meetings interesting to say the least…

Venture Capitalists

They tend to invest in later stage companies with some revenue, product completed, and market traction…. after an initial angel round has been done.

The really good ones (yes there are bad VCs – in case you haven’t heard) … come with a big rolodex of contacts and partners to help you cross some of the early hurdles.

Jeff Nolan of SAP Ventures introduced us to departments within SAP who were targeting the same customers that we were. He also gave me a copy of The Monk and The Riddle by KPCB’sRandy Komisar, a great read at a time when I think he sensed I was no longer enjoying the journey.

They tend to be more bankers/financiers than operating people…

They tend to look at a business with a black/white eye on financial numbers [Returns!]…

The good ones will often bring along investment partners in a syndicate. …

They seem to apply a formula …. If something has worked for them with a portfolio company in the past, they’ll apply the same logic to future companies. [Study their portfolio!]

They are investing other people’s money … and if they perform well those people will give them more money to invest. [Motive!]

Who To Choose?

* Personally, I think… it’s definitely better to have people who have built businesses on your side.

* It’s also good to have people who have backed high-growth businesses if you plan to IPO or sell to an established business in the near future.

* … it is more than OK to start a good profitable business that provides value to your local community. [But] if you want to play with venture capitalists, then you need to aim for the ‘household name’ category like Google or Yahoo! …

My biggest lesson: how important it was to be able to communicate with your investors openly and honestly… it will be much easier to weather the inevitable storms…

As Ben Yoskovitz says in his Startup CEO School of Hard Knocks post, you must have fun! When you are no longer enjoying the journey, take a break [to] make sure you are doing what you should be doing. If you find you’re not — don’t be afraid to make changes!!

 I love finding other bloggers who share my Customers Rock! passion.  Today, I have a collection of three great blog posts about customer focus to share with you.

1. Don’t Trash Customer Service: This is an inspiring post by one of the bloggers, Rachel, at Retail Design Diva about her family’s experience at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  Her trash can saga has a happy ending.  I love how she sums it up -

“And I thought customer service was a long forgotten practice. While it may not be the answer to world peace, good customer service isn’t just good for business–it does wonders for humanity.”

This kind of customer service will definitely cause some word-of-mouth about the good things happening in retail.  Thanks for sharing!

2. A Little Customer Care: Another Diva, this time Toby Bloomberg at Diva Marketing Blog, shares with us her open letter to her local airport.  Seems she is much more impressed by the focus on customers at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport.  It gets down to the heart of the matter when Sky Harbor puts it in writing -

‘In fact, the airport has a customer service policy that puts customers first with a vision to create “Americans friendliest airport.” ‘

Being customer-focused doesn’t happen by accident.  It only happens when organizations make a strategic decision to be customer-centric and then back it up with the appropriate measures, incentives, and finally tactics.  Great to see that Sky Harbor Airport gets it!  See you in Phoenix sometime, Toby!

3. 3 Easy Ways to Treat Your Customers Right: Ben Yoskovitz of Instigator Blog shares with us three stellar stories about companies doing right by their customers.  He reminds us how easy it really is -

“It really doesn’t take much to treat customers well.

But you have to recognize the value. And then you have to be willing to take a bit more time, get a bit more creative, push a bit further…”

The companies that actually do this immediately stand out from their competitors.  Size of company doesn’t matter; action and sincerity does.  In the comments (read them, there are some good ones!), I suggested the 4th easy way to treat customers right is to listen to them.  How is your organization doing in this department?

Please leave your favorite story in the comments here, or send me an email.  I am always looking for more positive examples of Customers Rock! attitude.

Earlier today I had the opportunity to spend some time with a couple dozen tech entrepreneurs and hopeful tech entrepreneurs alike for breakfast in downtown Montreal. This was the first time that I really had the opportunity to meet and socialize with other tech entrepreneurs from within the Montreal community. In meeting and speaking with everyone this morning, it seems as if the general consensus is that there is a large community of tech-entrepreneurs in Montreal who, until recently have been very fragmented and have not really interacted much with one another. Things like the tech entrepreneur breakfast and barcamp really enable local entrepreneurs in the tech space to mingle, share ideas and collaborate on new projects. As these types of meetups grow in number and scale, I think that we will start to see more and more innovations spawn from the meetups themselves (groups of people who met in the meetings starting businesses together, strategic alliances between companies, etc.).

Anyway, I really enjoyed meeting everyone this morning and am looking forward to the next breakfast/meetup.

Everyone from this morning, and any one in general, feel free to shoot me over an e-mail at mcohen [at] clixconnect.com if you would like to get in direct contact with myself and/or ClixConnect.

MC

Ben Yoskovitz, a founder of StandoutJobs, which recently closed a $1.5 Million round has an excellent post on whether a startup should raise money from VC’s or not.

Coming after yesterdays broohaha with Guy Kawasaki’s post on starting a website for $12K – its extremely timely.

The question of startups getting VC’s or angels, versus Skunkworks projects on your visa, or as i like to call it Spaghetti Ideas from ‘throwing spaghetti against a wall to see if it sticks.’ Is a perfectly legitimate way to see if a project/product has legs, though common sense should be applied before setting out on the journey.

Closer to home my company is working on a program that helps develop startups. Part of my daily routine is working with small teams of bright energetic engineers/programmers/biz-students to work on projects that may or may not turn out, we have a number of teams on multiple projects. In web 1.0 it sounds like an incubator, but with a bit more than a Web2.0 budget than Ycombinator. We just simply call it our Ventures Program.

I also disagree with Guy about location, we bring the teams to our offices to work with us, they go back to their place of origin eventually but their time here is necessary. While some of the plans developed are our own (internal) ideas, the teams have the opportunity to branch out and if we see merit develop their own opportunities. We don’t develop spaghetti idea’s, people can (and i occasionally do) develop them but not in our program, we want viable stand alone businesses. Not a weekend project that costs us $15K, to me thats just stupid. I don’t know about Guy but my time costs me. I enjoyed the fact that Guy never mentioned that his time was worth anything, but I digress. For a more nuanced view Checkout Rick Segal.

In the end how you develop and or finance your business depends on your circumstances. No one can tell you the best way forward without actually sitting down and working it all out. Ben’s article which sparked this post is a great place to start on the the thought process you should be having when looking to start your next big idea.

The ultimate guide to producitivity meme was started by Ben Yoskovitz. I have now been tagged by Joy Slaughter, my good friend from the VACOC. Be sure to check out her blog here.The question is:

So what’s your secret to being productive?

I believe for me, what helps the most is that I put everything on my calendar, from personal to business.

I schedule my exercise, my blogging, my client work, my breaks, my time to work ON my business, my networking, my personal appointments and my teleseminars. Everything goes on my calendar.

I use a wonderful program called AirSet. It allows me to create as many calendars as I want, then it has different ways to view them, separately or all in one calendar. You can see at a glance everything that’s going on that day or week or month, from my son’s graduation to my client weekly check-in call.

I used to think it was crazy to schedule breaks and exercise and blogging, but I realized that if it’s not on my calendar, it’s either not going to get done or it’s going to be pushed back and pushed back, until I’m not doing it at all.

Joy’s tip was to always have a pad of paper and pencil nearby. Then, anytime she’s struck with ideas when she’s involved in relaxing activities, she doesn’t have to try and remember it until she gets back to her office. That’s a great tip. I find myself doing that – thinking of something I need to do as I’m riding in a car, or working outside. I’ll have to find a place to put some supplies. Thanks, Joy, for that great tip!

OK – I think I’m going to tag Karen Del’Marmol and Suzanne Evans. You’re up, girls!

Well, here are the “rules” of this project from Ben’s Instigator Blog:

1. Write a post on your best productivity tips. Challenge yourself by picking your single best productivity tip (although this isn’t a requirement; you can give us more if you want!)
2. Include links to other people that have written posts, or include their tips in your post with proper attribution.
   

   Note: I’m not asking that you link to everyone in the group writing project meme; pick the ones you want to connect with. You certainly can link to everyone, but it’s not a requirement. I like leaving more decision making power in your hands so this isn’t just a link grab, but you’re thinking about what your audience & community wants to read about.

   A link back to this post is appreciated though, to help spread the word!

3. If you use Technorati Tags then tag your post “ultimate guide to productivity”.
4. Tag others in your post to spread the meme. Tag as many people as you like!
5. If you link back to Instigator Blog and email me at byosko@gmail.com, I’ll make sure to include at least 2 links back to you. But this isn’t a requirement, it just helps me keep track of what’s going on.

Editor’s Note: If you do, consider these four tips from contributor Ben Yoskovitz over at the Instigator Blog. Ben’s full post, The Challenge of Staying Focused in a Startup, was originally published on on April 8.

Startups need to be laser-focused on what they’re trying to do. It’s damn near impossible – especially when having to simultaneously build a product, sell a product, market a product, hire A-talent, raise more money, manage operations and more – but without focus (as Sequoia Capital notes) your startup is in big trouble.

I’ve suffered from “opportunity-itis” on numerous occasions. I still do. It’s so easy to get a bit of product feedback and chase those feature ideas. Or have a good conversation with a potential partner, and then decide to find 10,000 more partners like that. Or see a minor shift in the marketplace, only to revamp your entire business model and 12-month product roadmap (OK, I haven’t done that yet!)

You know you need to focus but at the same time you have to be looking for the right opportunities to make your startup a success. So how do you achieve startup focus? What follows are Ben’s four rules …

1. Be Systematic. Running a startup is a crazy experience. Most of the time you’ll feel like you’re running a 600-mile sprint (because startups are the ultimate combination of sprinting and marathon racing), and doing anything in an orderly fashion is farthest from your mind. But taking a systematic approach is critical.

For example, let’s say you decide that partnering with a certain type of service provider would make sense – they can act as resellers of your product. Attack that idea systematically:

* Research the space

* Put together 2 or 3 offers

* Find a list of 50+ similar service providers

* Pitch them each one of the offers

* Measure the response

* Collect feedback

* Decide if partnering with those service providers make sense

* If yes, find a list of as many as you can, hone the pitch that worked best and go get ‘em!

* If no, drop it and move on.

2. Be Merciless. Opportunities that take too long to materialize are bad opportunities. Startups don’t have the time – especially right out of the gate – to spend long periods of time in negotiations or chasing leads. That’s not to say that every long-term deal is a bad one (raising money for example takes many, many months), but don’t waffle around on things that aren’t making serious progress.

3. Be Organized. It’s almost impossible to succeed unless you’re well organized. That goes beyond stating the obvious. But something that might not be as obvious is making sure you have the infrastructure in place to support what you’re doing. For example, once you get into generating leads and sales, implement a CRM tool. It’ll help. It’ll keep you focused. A project management tool of some kind isn’t a bad idea either; at minimum be merciless and vigilant about priorities so you know what needs to be done first, second and third.

4. Be Analytical. Question everything. Track data on everything. Test everything.

Staying focused in a startup is a true balance between enthusiasm, creativity, new thinking, aggressiveness and being systematic, merciless, organized and analytical. On the one side you have all the “fun stuff” and on the other side you have all the “boring” stuff. Lean too far to one side or the other and you’ll start losing focus very quickly. Finding a balance is key: Being receptive to opportunity without jumping on every single one that comes knocking. And generally I don’t think startups will lean naturally to the “boring side” so implementing some of the stuff I’ve mentioned above will almost immediately create more balance than was there before. And that’s a good thing.