Disqus - Latest Comments for kdykes

Re: We have lift-off

Kevin Dykes — Sun, 01 Dec 2013 00:34:32 -0000

Congratulations Robin, fantastic to see this happen - both for you and for the European technology ecosystem. It is time for this and these first articles show you are off to a great start!

Re: Why Business Software is Broken – Our promise to keep things simple

Kevin Dykes — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 05:26:05 -0000

Perfecting simple is shockingly hard. We know from experience by getting it wrong for quite a while before finally getting it right. Now, as you say, the battle is to maintain that perfect balance.

Re: When a User Gets It Wrong Make Sure You Get It Right

Kevin Dykes — Fri, 04 May 2012 12:20:51 -0000

Hey Frank, thanks for the compliment of comparing us to ifttt. They have certainly been a model for us as we've been building WhenAUser. Would love to show you more and hear your interaction designer perspective. Feel free to reach out.

Re: Glue 2012 will be the best Gluecon yet

Kevin Dykes — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:01:12 -0000

Seth, we are thrilled to be part of GlueCon and such an all star cast of participants and companies. And we love seeing WhenAUser on your blog - very cool. We are coming over from Berlin, Germany - we plan to show the kind of exciting technology & real innovation being built here in this growing startup ecosystem.

Re: IA Ventures - From Enterprise to SaaS: the pain and the promise

Kevin Dykes — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 03:28:41 -0000

"Either disrupt oneself or become forcibly disrupted. This is the feature of fast-moving, innovative and highly competitive markets. Good for customers. Good for growth." This is the point that really matters and has been the case in stock photography, retail, music, hollywood and now enterprise software. Model disruption continues to charge forward despite the desire of the legacy companies to keep things the same.

My team and I spent several years taking a cloud management product to market through traditional, long POC & sales cycle committee-buying process. It was a tough road. Today we are a rules engine to make business SaaS work together... and learning from the likes of Yammer, Solar Winds and even MySQL - consumerized experience, bottom-up adoption, engaging an internal community - proving value before reaching up to the committee-buyers. We hope to avoid the painful transition process of Global Bay by going to market this way from the outset.

Re: Dear German VC's: Being Plan B Sucks - Babbling VC

Kevin Dykes — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 02:21:12 -0000

Let me build the company I'm on - we're onto something big. Then I'll launch a fund here. :) I'm here for the long haul as I see this market ready to explode - we've not seen anything yet. There is so much real deep innovative technology about to burst onto the scene - I'm enjoying fostering that here too.

Re: Dear German VC's: Being Plan B Sucks - Babbling VC

Kevin Dykes — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 06:41:42 -0000

You know I agree with your perspective as this has been an active conversation with us for years. However, I can say that I'm impressed with the growth of investors either in or focusing on Berlin via AngelList today. When I first joined over 14 months ago, there were 72 investors listing the Berlin location - today there are 632 listing Berlin in their profile (http://angel.co/berlin). Now certainly not all are German or in Germany, but it is a good sign that the platform is gaining acceptance here. I am one of the top referrers of companies to AngelList in Berlin because I know that power that it can bring for exposure.

Re: Life Gets In The Way – Punting on SXSW

Kevin Dykes — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 01:39:04 -0000

Glad to read in the next post that all is ok at home. I too had a family moment for which I'm glad I did not go to SXSW. As an Austinite now living in Berlin, it was a real struggle to not go back home where all my friends are and geek spring break is in full swing. But, we chose focus on critical path for a new product. And the bonus for this decision... I would have missed seeing my 7 month old crawl for the first time if I'd been out drinking with my buddies in Austin. :) Happy for my choice. Best to you in Boulder Brad!

Re: Letting Go & Losing Control - Babbling VC

Kevin Dykes — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 08:50:23 -0000

I'm in the "hire up" camp as well. Finding & hiring the best & brightest who fit the culture is my biggest focus as a manager, along with making sure we have money in the bank of course. :)

Re: I’m getting sick of the bullshit

Kevin Dykes — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 01:18:46 -0000

Great to read more perspective from respected VC's on toning down all the hype and bs and focusing on the fundamentals of building a great company with a great team. And just at the right time, in advance of SXSW.

Re: Get On The Field Or You Ain't in the Game - Babbling VC

Kevin Dykes — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 08:09:52 -0000

That was December 2008, over 3 years ago when I had just landed in Germany. OCC connections + a bit of focused twitter engagement has led to everything that has happened here for me... co-founding ScaleUp (ok not all good :) which led to meeting my business partners, good friends and a fantastic network.

Couldn't agree with the post more Paul!

Re: Startup Idea: User Retention as a Service

Kevin Dykes — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 07:26:16 -0000

Was just about to mention Pipewise - Good to see you here MIchael. We look forward to using it.

Re: Startup Idea: User Retention as a Service

Kevin Dykes — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 07:23:53 -0000

We're working with Intercom for our beta. It is early but definitely promising.

Re: Scaling The Management Team

Kevin Dykes — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 01:46:12 -0000

Great perspective Jerry. What I found is that as CEO, I followed the great advice to hire up - to surround myself with the smartest people I could find for each role. But, I can also say that as I did this, I began to feel a bit like "what the hell am I doing leading this team of amazingly talented people?" It is one of the strange experiences of being a CEO of a fast growing company.

Re: Dead Millionaires are Unhappy Millionaires - Babbling VC

Kevin Dykes — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 07:40:06 -0000

hmm - I see this blog post after our lunch last week - where I believe you may have said I looked pale, hollow-eyed & needed some sun. :) Agree with all & making the changes so I can outlive this intense grueling growth stage!!

Re: How to explain technology

Kevin Dykes — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:11:16 -0000

This is damn cool!

Re: How I Loved, And Lost, an Aardvark

Kevin Dykes — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 02:43:52 -0000

I feel/felt the same about Aardvark - loved it as a user, told everyone I knew how cool it was & how many quality response I got. I made several attempts to connect with them for clients about technology or API integration. But, this was very early last year & none ever made it out the other end of the pipe.

I was surprised to see them exit so soon too - hope that it spells a future for Vark & not their demise.

Re: Last day in Buenos Aires

Kevin Dykes — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 06:29:10 -0000

The empanadas & argentine stew look amazing - that's worth the trip alone!

Re: Crushing the Myth of B2B Social Media

Kevin Dykes — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:16:55 -0000

Absolutely agree with your perspective about strategy - the process & analysis is the same regardless. In tactics, I work mostly with B2B clients and we tend focus more deeply on educational/expertise "content marketing" as the "how" - the rest are channels or "Impact points" as Amber's article calls them.

I 100% agree that use of the social web can be much more transformative for B2B! Nice post

Re: List of Companies Providing Social CRM Offerings

Kevin Dykes — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 04:49:38 -0000

Jeremiah -

We are early users of Buzzstream since it was in beta & really think it is the best offering on the market. I've done extensive research again recently before deciding on Buzzstream as it will support a core part of our/our client's business. The combination of monitoring, team workflow & support of cultivating relationships with key Influencers but without stepping on the toes of other core applications is brilliant.

Highly recommend adding it to the the list!

Kevin Dykes
@vibe media,inc.

Re: Tr.im Can't/Won't Sell, Goes Open Source, Blames Everyone

Kevin Dykes — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:11:10 -0000

I've had this discussion several times on Twitter in the past few days... I get it that they are upset their business didn't make it - it sucks. But, they are so focused on blaming bit.ly (calling them a monopoly - the "walled garden"- give me a break!) Bit.ly competed & won because they had the relationship, better biz dev activities, better product or just better luck. It hurts but suck it up and move on. The most recent post just carries it further - expanding their view of "the world is against us" paranoia... You are looking like fools to everyone in the industry!

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/08/twitters-harsh-and-cold-honesty-tells.html

Kevin Dykes — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 06:40:38 -0000

Obviously the adoption of the Twitter API has been one of the most successful stories of innovation around a web services program - which has increased this trend by web app companies of all types. This is a very positive trend in general, but to me the Twitter story here does provide a good case for defining business model of a web services program earlier in the process - before 1000's of companies have built entire new businesses around something where there can be little expectation of premium support since no money is passing to the ultimate "utility" Twitter.

Re: What’s next: an eHarmony for Travel?

Kevin Dykes — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:04:22 -0000

Mark - Great article - extremely well researched. I also applaud that you put a heavy emphasis on the API partner program as part of the foundation. In my opinion, it should be part of the early strategic development plan for all SaaS co's. In fact, for this idea, I see that as a go-to-market strategy prior to or instead of developing a destination site due to heavy costs of doing so.

A note to Reuven of Tripbase.com... yes, it would seem your app is definitely very close to Mark's article thesis. Nice job on your service. Your partner program seems to be providing a great value-proposition, but also seems to be friction laden & would require a heavy traditional outbound sales approach for success. A couple of thoughts... (disclaimer: I'm a bit of an strategy geek & I realize you may have some of this in place)

Open a tiered API as a means of filling your business development pipeline. Use a solution like http://www.3scale.net to manage the tiered versions of the API and to manage monetization of the premium versions. Not suggesting you change your partner revenue model exactly - only widen & lower the barrier to entry to work with your solution.

First tier would be limited-use, perhaps non-commercial for dev. uses only, limited function/result set, result set would push to your travel site or with usage/time limits. Regardless, this tier 1 freely-available API will foster developer interest & allow them to work with your solution and create innovative uses that perhaps your team has not yet thought of. This engaged group becomes your target for the business dev team - inbound marketing at very little cost.

Higher tiers or premium uses could be monetized via metered use, flat monthly fees, per call or some combination. This can ultimately model your current revenue model of the partner program - just with lower friction in the partner development process.

Lastly, integrate a write component to the API and allow the network effect of your API partners to aggregate an ever growing set of inbound (of-course curated) data - allowing all partners to benefit from each other. See BazaarVoice and how they've done this with their aggregated product reviews solution.

Re: In+Our+Inbox%3A+Hundreds+Of+Confidential+Twitter%26nbsp%3BDocuments

Kevin Dykes — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:35:09 -0000

Surely you're screwing with us just to see your readers reaction. I can't believe you would stoop so low as to publish any of that information, if this is real.

Re: The+Infamous+2009+LimeWire+Pizza%26nbsp%3BFiasco

Kevin Dykes — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:21:33 -0000

Damn @arrington - your response to this idiot is the funniest damn thing I've read in a while! Happy 4th man - from an American living in Germany.