Day 18 - Coloft

                Today we had our one and only meeting (our first of three in LA) for the day with a business called Coloft which provided a collaborative work space specifically for technology startups in the Santa Monica area.  We met with their co-founder Avesta Rasouli who was an experienced and serial entrepreneur who had a lot of tidbits of wisdom to share with us concerning his experience with both successful and failed startups. 

                One thing that I found interesting that Avesta talked about was his idea of how to market and sell a product or idea.  He said rather than sell the product, sell the “why” of the product.  For instance in the case of his Coloft business, he said rather than telling people that his company had the best chairs and the fastest internet he told people that his place would be filled with likeminded people who could collaborate and help each other with their respective startups.  This strategy reminded me of something that I read in my “Crossing the Chasm” book when the author talked about giving elevator pitches and marketing high-tech products.  Moore (the author) said that a crucial role in marketing a product to the early market is to sell the reason why a consumer or business should buy the product, and that marketing should heavily tie into this reason to purchase.  This confirms what Avesta talked about when he told us to “communicate the why” of the product rather than the product itself.

                Another piece of wisdom that Avesta shared that correlated with my “Crossing the Chasm” book was that relationships with consumers is crucial in establishing an early customer base.  Avesta communicated this idea to us by telling us some of the things he did to get Coloft off the ground in the first couple of months.  He told us stories of how he would let people have meetings or get-togethers in the space for free, or went to conferences and talked with his potential clients, all to build a relationship with them.  According to him, these relationships were important in the continued growth and stability of Coloft.  Moore talked about the same importance of relationships when trying to market and sell to the early adopter or visionary phase of the technology adoption life cycle.  He explains that to this group of buyers, a relationship is key when trying to sell your product and that without healthy relationships the company is likely to go no farther and potentially fail.  Now although these two people (Avesta and Moore) are talking about selling two different products (a workplace for Avesta and high-tech products in Moore’s case), they are both similar and thus applicable to each other in that they are both selling disruptive products, or products that if consumed or used would change the way the consumer goes about their life.  Therefore I see that the lessons learned from both the book and Avesta’s talk are related and that relationships are in fact highly important in marketing and selling a product early on in its life cycle.