The Social Media Atom

We have made no secret about our love of and reliance on social media.  It's a core part of our strategy at bGreen.  We're involved with Twitter, Facebook, Blogging, and YouTube.  We think that these four components really make up the core of social media.  The nucleus, if you will.

We recently engaged in an internal debate on the value of Facebook as a core social media tool.  There are countless articles on why you NEED Facebook for business, but we just weren't sure.  What's the point?  We're attracting followers on Twitter (400+ so far), our blog is having a moderate amount of success (150+ hits on one particular day), and we're set to launch our website shortly, which will really be the main portal for all things bGreen.  So where does Facebook come in?  We're not looking to share pictures of us from Spring Break '98 and we're not looking to reconnect with our nursery school sweethearts.  I think we were really just over-thinking it.

Everyone is on Facebook.  My mom, your mom, my 82 year old grandfather.  Everyone.  Allegedly the user base is over 100 million strong.  Imagine if you get 0.0001% of the people on the service to notice you.  What about 0.01% or 0.1%?  That's a serious amount of people catching a glimpse of what you're doing, and frankly, it's a market you can not overlook.  So, perhaps to our chagrin and despite Facebook's massive shortcomings on the business application side, we'll be there (we're currently putting the page together).

This morning, while thinking about some other social media applications, I got to thinking about where some of the other services will fit into our strategy.  There are applications like Flickr, Tumblr, LinkedIn and even TwitPic to some extent, that offer great services and are gaining in popularity.

Flickr, as most people know, is a photo sharing service.  Perhaps it's most valuable feature is search.  Fred Wilson, of avc.com, when talking about image search says, "When I look for an image, in the past, I would go to Flickr first and Google second. In the future, I'll go to Flickr first and Bing second."  So there is value in using Flickr.  We obviously want to leverage this value and get people seeing the pictures we're posting, but there hosted in variety of other places as well.  They're on our blog, in our Twitter feed via TwitPic, and some will end up on our website.

Tumblr falls somewhere between Twitter and Blogging, and seems to be popular amongst early adopters and those heavily involved with other forms of social media.  I look at it as a place for short bursts of info; a picture, a link, a video, that may otherwise not qualify for a blog post, but requires a more permanent home than a tweet.  Their software and interface are great and their iPhone app is snap.  My verdict is still out on Tumblr, and I'm not sure where (or if) it will fit into our mix.  Perhaps I'm overlooking some of their core services.  If so, please correct me and fill me in.

I can see the value in LinkedIn as well.  It connects professionals with other professionals.  It's like Facebook, but stripped down to resumes and networking.  We think it's important, and we're working on setting up a profile.  However, I hardly see this as part of our core social media strategy.

Perhaps in all these additonal services lies the solution.  We have our nucleus (Twitter, Facebook, the blog, and YouTube) but we also have the orbiting electrons (like Tubmlr, Flickr, LinkedIn, and TwitPic) that make up the rest of the Social Media Atom.  We'll focus on the nucleus, but perhaps it makes sense to complete the atom and bring the electrons into the mix just a bit.

Steps in the Right Direction

This post is nothing more than a brief status update on the newly formed bGreen Group LLC.  We've had a lot going on in the last few weeks, and this seems to be a good forum for updates.

First, in case you missed our previous posts, we are officially an LLC now.  You can read all about that here, and if you want to read about how we were almost not an LLC, you can read about that here.

Today, we took the next step in corporate reality and got our EIN, or tax ID.  This is a relatively simple task, however, as we're learning, nothing goes off without a hitch.  We had one small question related to how we wish to be taxed.  As an LLC, you can opt to be taxed as a Partnership or as a Corporation.  After a quick call to our accountants (which apparently interrupted a golf game), we were informed that we should file to be taxed as a Partnership.  Perhaps when we learn more about the difference, we can do a follow-up post.  But for now, we're just going with what the experts tell us.

The next step for us is to setup our banking, and we're working on setting up meetings with various bankers in the Boston area.  We're looking at Sovereign, Citizens, Bank of America, and Chase.  If anyone has comments or experience with any of these banks, please let your thoughts in the comments section.

Our website launch is slated for early next week.  We are literally putting on the finishing touches, going over the copy, and trying to figure out what anyone puts in the "terms of service" and "privacy" sections that you see on the bottom of every web page.  We've been to the Apple store countless times to make sure the site looks good on every size monitor, up to 24".  We're really focused on making sure the user experience is enjoyable, easy, and informative.  The more we read about what makes successful sites, products, and companies, the more we realize it's all about user experience.  As recently as last night, we saw two companies, Zappos and Amazon, that provide the pinnacle of user experience, join forces.  From a small business standpoint, we're excited to see what the two can do when their forces are joined.  It also gives little companies, like ours, a hope of one day being acquired for $800+ million dollars.  Yeah, that would be nice.

We've been networking like crazy, trying to meet as many Boston-based people as possible.  We're dead set on making sure that we are a leader online, but also a leader in our local community.  We had a great meeting with Nicole Keane of F. Rock Bags.  Her bags are made locally, are completely customizable, look great, and are a pretty good deal.  We even ordered a couple for ourselves.  We'll post pictures of them when they arrive.  We're really excited about working with great people like Nicole, and if they're based in Boston, that's just an added bonus.  Over the next two weeks, we've got meetings set with bankers, a big-wig in the community service field, a developer, and hopefully one or two other networking meetings.  We saw the great folks at Nexus Boston the other night at the showing of "The Greening of Southie" at the Coolidge Corner Theatre.  Great movie, very educational, funny, and it's always great to see the think Boston accent on the big screen.  If you have an opportunity, be sure to check out this film.

These are exciting and busy times at bGreen, and we'll be looking to blog and tweet more frequently as we get going.  Stay tuned.

bGreen Group LLC

We're pleased to announce that we are an official entity in the eyes of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  At approximately 10:30 am yesterday, July 16, 2009, bGreen Group LLC was formed.  After the disaster that was Wednesday, we're very pleased to say the second try at filing went off with0ut a hitch.  $500 to Massachusetts, $600+ of legal fees, and two months of work, bGreen Group LLC is a reality.  We'll be back with more announcements in the coming weeks.  Stay tuned.

Getting Schooled in Company Filings

Today was supposed to be a day of celebration.  A day that we hoped we'd look at 20 years down the road and think "Man, what a day!  Imagine that's when it all started."  Today was the day that we were finally formally forming our company.  After a couple months of legal work, some back and forth between us, the lawyers, our accountants, and about twenty other people, we had our operating agreement hammered out, a check in hand, and we were headed to the Secretary of State's office to file.

We arrived, docs in hand, ready to file.  However, there was a slight SNAFU.  The name we had hoped to use was kind of, sort of, not really already in use.  However, as our lawyers told us a month ago "a corporate name may not be the same as, or so similar  as to be likely to be mistaken for THE NAME of any other existing corporation or other entity authorized to transact business in the Commonwealth or any reserved name."  You'd think that Massachusetts is filled with educated consumers who are not easily confused.  This is the home of Harvard, MIT, and 100 other schools.  Arguably one of the most educated places in the world.  Well, I'm here to tell you that the Secretary of State's Office does not think this is the case.  Apparently our name was too similar to another company name that operates in an entirely different line of work.  In our opinion, there would be NO confusion or case of mistaken identity.  In fact, a quick Google search of the other company returns nothing.  No website, no business description, no nothing.  The only was to find out what line of work they are in was to search for their state filing docs, and find out that they are in the business of loyalty programs.  This is a far cry from selling green and eco-friendly lifestyle and building products.

Unfortunately, there's no convincing the Secretary of State on this one.  We're flat out of luck.  I could go on and on how one is an "inc" and one is a "llc."  Or one spells their name with a "B - E" and not just a "B."  The businesses don't overlap.  Etc. Etc.  However, there's no sense in dwelling on it.  Fortunately, we have a Plan B, and if the Office didn't close at 4, we'd have already put it in place.  Tomorrow morning we head back to the Sec of State's office to make this thing legit.  Stay tuned.

ReBlog: What's most important: features, schedule or vision?

I came across this blog post yesterday from Bijan Sabet, General Partner at Spark Capital in Boston.  Spark has been pretty successful of late with their investment in Twitter.  To read more about Spark & Bijan, check out these links: bijansabet.com, sparkcapital.com.  In the meantime, I wanted to comment on how what we're doing at bGreen falls into what Bijan terms VSCF.

What's most important: features, schedule or vision?

I learned a lot of valuable lessons working with Steve Perlman at WebTV Networks and Moxi Digital.

If you worked or met with Steve you would easily agree with me that his passion is nothing but extraordinary. He is positively obsessed about building amazing products.

I learned other things from Steve as well. One of my favorites is V.S.C.F.

Those letters stand for: Vision. Schedule. Cost. Features. And in that order.

This is how how Steve explained it to me:

1. Vision. Without a doubt, the founder’s vision of the product is the most important thing. Everything flows from that vision. I couldn’t agree more.

2. Schedule. Steve would often say, “Market windows don’t move”. Shipping the product on time is a big deal. If you slip late the market may no longer be there. Schedule trumps cost & features. Especially in a world of software or connected devices you can always add software improvements later (e.g. iTunes App Store is a beautiful example).

3. Cost. Cost is a bit tricky to think about when it comes to consumer internet applications vs consumer electronics like WebTV or iPhone. Cost is important. But you have to get the vision & schedule right. Cost will improve over time if the product is great along with engineering innovation & volume. We subsidized WebTV in the early days. One could argue that was a derivative of freemium.

4. Features. There is no question that features are important but vision, schedule and cost are more important. I think that’s right. Consider Twitter as an example. They shipped early, with less features and with a powerful vision that drives the company’s every move.

I keep VSCF in my mind all the the time.

1.  Vision.  I think we're pretty clear on that.  It's on our "About" page, it's on our pitch sheet, and it's on our minds all the time.  We want bGreen to be THE destination for green and eco-friendly lifestyle and building products.  It's a new market.  Products are being introduced every day.  We think we can be a leader in providing only the best of the best of these products, affordably, in a completely transparent new-agey manner.

2.  Schedule.  Well, this is something we're having a bit of trouble with.  First, we were on schedule.  Then we were slightly behind schedule.  Now I'd say we're about a month behind schedule.  We've been tweeting and blogging, but we really wanted to have our website up and running quicker.  We're pretty nit-picky, and we've been through about 27 different revisions of the site.  Go ahead, ask our web developer, Greenstein Consulting.  I'm not sure they love us right now.  Taking some advice from Bijan, I think we're going to make sure to put the website out real soon, whether it's done or not.  Again, the green market is new and evolving, so that may buy us a bit more time, but we don't want to push it.

3.  Cost.  I have to modify the cost issue a little bit to make it fit our plan, but hear me out.  We don't have an app or electronic product, so the cost issue isn't exactly the same as Bijan mentions above.  Currently, we're providing content for free.  We're blogging (which hopefully you'll find worth reading), tweeting (which is great to keep up on news, insight, and the inner workings of bGreen), and launching a website soon (which will have all sorts of green news, information, and product info).  Our goal on the cost side is to build an audience.  Get people interested in our product and what we have to offer.  Eventually, we'll probably move to the freemium model.  The free will be the conent on the blog, twitter, and website.  The "mium" will be the products we offer for sale.  Lifestlye products at first, then moving into building materials shortly thereafter.  Cost is an issue with green.  The stigma attached is that green is more expensive.  It's a huge problem.  We're going to try and show the consumer that not only is green afforable, but often the products are more durable, will last longer, and they're better for you and the environment.

4.  Features.  Aside from the website, blog, twitter, and products, we hope to offer a few other things that will make bGreen THE destination for eco-friendly lifestyle & buidling products.  Video is most certainly one of the avenues we'll pursue.  How to's, product demos, the bGreen guys in the wild.  It's all part of our grand plan.  There's more to tell and we're super excited about it, but the time has not yet come to reveal our plans to the world.  Stay tuned.

Partnerships Galore

It's an interesting thing when you first start pitching your business idea around to people.  It seems as though the 80/20 rule applies.  Eighty percent of the people we've met in the last few months are totally excited about bGreen.  They want to know details, they want to know how they can get involved, and the MBAs want to know how strong our business plan is.  Then there's the twenty side of the 80/20 rule.  For whatever reason, they think bGreen is a bad idea.  The economy is in shambles.  Green is too new.  Boston isn't ready for this.  We try and ignore these people as best we can, while wondering if there might be some validity in their thoughts.  Oh, there's also our moms, who are fully in the 80% camp, who are only worried that we have enough to eat and that we're not too stressed (maybe we'll do a full post on the importance of having your family 100% behind you).

For this post, let's focus on a portion of the 80% crowd.  Within this group, there's a smaller group of people we've met who are so excited about bGreen that they want to partner with us.  It gets me thinking.  What could anyone want to do with bGreen.  Technically, we don't even exist yet.  Sure we've got a blog, a website in progress, a twitter feed, and some great ideas, but that's it really.  We don't sell anything.  We've got no sales or distribution platform yet.  We don't have any inventory.  Really, all we have is an idea.  Well, it turns out that it's the idea that sells.  People love a good idea, and if they think it can help their business, they're sure as hell going to try and form a partnership with you.  It makes perfect sense.  In fact, when we think about it a bit more, a partnership is exactly what we'd try to do if the roles were reversed.

Let's take a look at three partnership opportunities that have been presented to us.  First, there's the green store in California that, in our opinion, is one for the few green stores doing it right.  Great location, interesting and innovative products, and actually running the store like a real business, not just a hobby.  During our first meeting with them, they suggested that we find a way to work together.  Them on the West Coast, us on the East.  Second, there's the design business that deals in eco and sustainable design elements (furniture, furnishings, consulting, etc).  Right up our alley.  When we met these guys at a trade show, we mentioned our business and getting something going in Boston, and they jumped at the opportunity to create a dialogue with us when we got back East.  Finally, there's the resource center in Boston with an enormous network of green industry insiders and vendors.  To be honest, while a partnership might benefit them, it's certain that it would be an immediate boost to us.

What do we make of all this?  Honestly, we're not really sure.  The fact that anyone thinks our idea is good enough to partner on really makes your head spin.  It's exciting and it's confusing, but most importantly it gives us some validation of our ideas.  We've been doing some reading lately on what makes a successful partnership, and wanted to share some insight from noted entrepreneur, Guy Kawasaki.  I've seen Guy mention these two keys of partnering in several different posts:

1.  Partner for “Spreadsheet” Reasons. Partnering can accelerate your entry into a new area, open up new distribution channels, speed up product development and reduce your costs.
2.  Cut Win-Win Deals. Both partners have to win. Do not enter into win-lose partnerships.


While Guy's advice may be geared towards larger organizations, seasoned entrepreneurs, and companies that already exist, there are many lessons than can be applied to a small startup like ours. What are the reasons for a partnership?  Are we just excited about the prospect that people think our idea is cool?  Is a partnership just a quicker way for us to get up and running?  Is a partnership actually going to deliver results to our bottom line?  Will both parties benefit from the situation?

As we work to build bGreen into something more than just an idea, we suspect that our opportunities for partnerships will grow, and we'll be forced to answer some of these tough questions.  Some people may genuinely be interested in a deal.  Others may look at it as simply a way to gain an east coast presence.  Hey, someone may even use the idea of a partnership just to have access to our good looks.  Who knows?  The only thing we know for certain right now is that we don't really know if a partnership is in our future. Stay tuned.

p.s. you can check out Guy's full articles on startups here, here, and here.