• When I attended the Social Currency CrunchUp, there was a panel of businesses (all local except one (Levi’s)) whose members mentioned some tid-bits on how social media was working for them.

Here are my notes from the panel:

Curtis Kimball, The Creme Brulee Man

• Sells Creme Brulle, primarily in San Francisco and changes his location (a cart) regularly
• His customer Acquisition focuses on Twitter
  • Has 14,100 followers) because it’s so easy…a majority of my customers come from Twitter or from friends who are on Twitter.
  • Doesn’t have a fixed address because he doesn’t have a permit (“Permitting situation in San Francisco is a nightmare.”)

  

Dr. Robert Vaksman, Dentist

• “Nineteen percent of our traffic comes from Facebook Page (>100 fans)…and some of them are coming in to the office.”
• Uses Twitter and YouTube too

Dan Yoo, Stone Korean Kitchen (Restaurant owner with 50+ seats)

• Groupon has filled his restaurant more than 50 times ($35 worth of food for $15)
• Had to pay Groupon 50% ($7.50) of what customer paid
• One thing he’d like to know is how many of his Groupon customers came from the 94110 zip code (so that he can remarket them).

Oren Jacob, Ready, Set, Bag! (Movie maker)

• Used Groupon to sell tickets to his documentary…for free he has the market reach that a large movie maker has — “It levels the playing field.”
• Groupon helped him do 2 things:

1. Drum up publicity (because people saw the film promoted on Groupon)
2. Sold tickets to the actual movie

Note: He’d like to see more demographic information on these customers that Groupon generated for hm

Megan O’Connor, Levi’s

• Focuses on Facebook — 520,000 Fans who can “like” Levis and particular promotions
• Tracking: “We can track some sales (from offers) (on Facebook).”

Note: The panel was moderated by Erick Schonfeld and David Hornik.

There was a great interview of Jack Ma on Charlie Rose — Ma is the Founder and Chairman of the leading Chinese Internet company Alibaba.

Ma is clearly an evolved thinker. Here are some highlights:

An Internet CEO Does Not Need To Be Technical

• Jack Ma doesn’t know how to code
• He says he uses the Web primarily to send and receive email and browse the Web

The Core Competency of Alibaba is Culture

• Grew from 18 to 20,000 people. We believe the customer is #1, employee #2 and shareholders #3
• Average age of employees is 26
• “It’s the customer that pays us the money.”
• “It’s the employee who drives the innovation.”
• Shareholders come and go (I’m paraphrasing).

What Types of Customers Does Alibaba Target?

• Focus is small and medium-sized businesses.

“I’ve seen people make a fortune catching shrimps (small customers) but never make a fortune catching sharks and whales (big customers).”

• Has 2 Million Small & Medium Sized Businesses In The U.S. Already

What Ideas Excite Jack Ma

“To be a great company, think about what social problem you can solve.”
“Anything happening in the USA will happen in China (cloud computing, mobile).”

Should US Businesses Be Excited About China Market?

• USA should be optimistic about China market…1.3 billion people…huge demand.
• This should continue for another 20 oe 30 years at least

How Big Can Alibaba Get?

“We should surpass Microsoft and Walmart (in size)”

“I would regret if we can’t be bigger than Walmart”…because Taobao and Alibaba goes after both businesses and consumers (while Walmart sold only to consumers).

On What Do Do With Wealth Creation

“I’ve never thought the money I have belongs to me…it belongs to society.”

“You have a couple of million you’re a rich guy” (I think he’s saying that you don’t need any more than that for yourself)

“You have $20 to 30 million  it’s capital” (presumably for a business)

“You have $100 million, it’s a social responsibility.” (i.e. you should give it back)

He certainly speaks like a true leader.

If you’re considering a new job, salary is of course important…but don’t forget about equity (especially in Internet/Silicon Valley-oriented companies).

Here are the simple questions to ask related to stock (I’m gonna keep this simple and limit discussion to stock options):

• Can stock options be part of my compensation program?

If the answer is “yes,” than you move on to these basic questions:

• How many stock options will be offered to this position?
• What are the total number of shares currently outstanding? (this allows you to calculate the % of the company you could own)
• What are the total number of shares that the company is authorized to issue? (this tells you what % of the company you’d own if they issued new new shares)
• What is the current exercise price of the stock options? (this will usually be a low price unless it’s a publicly-traded company (in which case you have little to worry about because you will only be exercising the right to buy the stock if you’re going to sell it for a price that is known to the public (and which will be higher than the amount you’re paying).
• How do the stock options vest? (this is the period of time through which they vest and at what rate (often, the shares vest over 4 years but with a one-year cliff (meaning that if you leave in less than 12 months, you would have zero stock vested but if you stay 2 years than you would have half of the shares vested).
• What is the current valuation of the company?

Let’s say that the answer is that they can offer you 20,000 stock options for a strike price of $.01 each (i.e $200 total cost if you every exercised the options).

And let’s say that there are 1 million shares outstanding but another 1 million are authorized to issued (i.e. there are 2 million shares that may be outstanding one day).

Then, your 20,000 stock options would account for 2% of the currently outstanding shares or 1% of the shares that could be outstanding one day.

If the current valuation of the company (remember, you asked for this too) is $5 million, then you’re stock are worth at the low end 1% of the $5 million or $50,000 minus the $200 you’d have to pay to exercise the options (and, of course, minus whatever the capital gains taxes are at that time).

If you or other smart folks believe that the value of the company is going to increase (let’s say to $100 million within 4 years), then your 20,000 stock options (which should account for 1%+ of the biz) would be worth around $1 million.

That’s the basics of how stock option compensation works.

Good luck!

Have you ever wanted to meet someone, even though you don’t know them? Perhaps you read about them in a book or just heard that they were an awesome person.

Here are some approaches I use to get to know a “desired connection” better.

5 Tips On How To Get To Know Someone You’ve Never Met

1) Look up the desired connection on LinkedIn for your common connections…it’s not that simple: read on!

Firs off, look them up on LinkedIn to see what connections you have in common.

If the desired connection is a 2nd degree connection (i.e. a connection of mine is a 1st degree connection to them), then look closely at those 2nd degree connections and determine if you have such a fantastic relationship with any of the 2nd degree connections that you’d be willing to ask them to introduce you to them.

If the answer is “yes,” then great…ask your connection for an intro (but read tip #5 first!).

If the answer is “no,” then instead focus on trying to add value to those 2nd degree connections and don’t bother asking for the introduction yet (reason: if you ask a favor of someone, you want them to feel like it’s worth their while!).

If the desired connection is a 3rd degree connection or more distant, then I recommend you work harder at expanding your LinkedIn connections (see my business networking section of articles (including LinkedIn tips!)).

You should constantly work towards being just a connection away from meeting anyone.

2) Look up the desired connection’s LinkedIn page to see if they list any “Web sites” or their Twitter page

This is simple: if you can find your desired connection’s LinkedIn page, then look at their profile page (a few fields underneath their name) for any links they include next to “Websites” or “Twitter.”

Note: If your desired connection has a common name (and lots of results come up when you search LinkedIn) and you know their city/location ,then here’s a tip:

Go to LinkedIn and use their powerful Advanced Search in which you can type their first name, last name and zip code (with a radius) and you are more likely to find them.

If LinkedIn lists some Websites (blog, Twitter page, etc.), then explore these sites for areas of common interest (note: this doesn’t have to be limited to business; if you are both fly-fisherman, that may be the most powerful link that you could leverage).

3) Search Google for Blogs, Twitter, etc.

Perhaps your desired connection is not on LinkedIn or doesn’t list any personal Web sites.

In that case, do a simple Google search on their name and see if you can find a main Web site that they have (e.g. JohnJones.com).

If that doesn’t work, try searching their name plus a qualifier (“John Jones Blog” or “John Jones Twitter”).

Another neat little trick is to search for their name plus “Google Profile” — Google Profile is something Google has set up for members of Gmail and its other products and allows individuals to put up a profile of themselves (and in some cases people allow anyone to contact them! (this depends on their privacy settings).

4) Search for images: “A picture is worth a thousand words!”

Another tip is to search for images of them on the Web. You could try searching Google for “John Jones Flickr” or “John Jones PicasaWeb” or “John Jones PhotoBucket” or whatever the latest popular photo sharing Web site is.

Google Images is also effective — just  search Google for their name and select “Images” at the top of the Google search.

However you do it, you may find pictures of your desired connection that could lead to their own Web sites or sites of their friends (who have tagged them).

5) Provide massive value to your desired connection

Once you get over the hurdle of getting contact info for this desired connection, I recommend you try to give them massive value in order to increase the attention they will offer you.

Some tips on providing massive value include:

• Send them a candidate for a job that they need to fill
• Send them a comment on a photo they took
• Send them a comment on a blog posting they made
• Acknowledge them on Twitter if they have done something noteworthy (e.g. “I want to congratulate @BillGates on his excellent Ted Conference speech.”)
• Introduce them to someone they’d find interesting
• Invite them to an event you’re putting on

Meeting new people is perhaps the most important way to grow…Godspeed!

I was at the recent CrunchUp and Groupon’s CEO Andrew Mason shared a few interesting factoids about his business with Michael Arrington.

Andrew seemed like a nice guy when we met at the coffee break — he certainly emulates the casual Silicon Valley entrepreneur style with t-shirt, baggy pants and flip-flops.

I think Groupon (and the concept of flash-sales) is going to change the face of commerce — and the company will also have a dramatic impact on the Chicago Internet entrepreneurship scene (as many of Groupon’s early employees cash out and start their own Internet businesses).

Below are my notes from Mason’s talk with Arrington:

Some Groupon Numbers:

• $1 million in revenue per day (this is what Arrington heard and Mason didn’t confirm nor deny it)
• 1,000 employees
• 12 million people receiving an email every day (with 2 million new ones added each month)
• Gross Margin is 50%
• Repeat Rate: “97% of businesses we feature want to be featured again.”
• Breakage Rate is around 10% (e.g. 10% of Groupon users do NOT redeem their coupons).

Groupon Customer Acquisition

The top sources of [free] customers for Groupon:

1. Facebook is the top
2. Twitter is a close second

The bulk of paid customer acquisition for Groupon is Facebook and Google.

Other interesting Groupon Factoids:

• Regarding Groupon clones, he says “the basic idea of Groupon is not something we can have a patent on”
• We have 6-month waiting lists on Groupon for many cities.
• “A lot [of the $135M raised in the last round] was taken off the table…by early founders.”
• An example of one Groupon deal that didn’t work: Slippers with flashlights didn’t work