Jenny Huang has 20 years of experience as a strategic marketing consultant, a brand marketer and communicator in the hardware, software, mobile app, and telecommunications industries, serving startups and progressive companies. She has worked with Fortune 500 companies such as Intel, Intuit and British Telecom, where she launched and managed regional co-branded programs with PC OEM partners, their retailers and resellers; invigorated new user acquisition to drive growth, and established regional brand presence.
On today’s show we talk about:
How do you see marketing and promotion for companies changing with technology?
If a company wanted to be interviewed for an article or get exposure, what are some of the best ways to go about doing it?
The process for creating and implementing a social media calendar.
With marketing and PR, what really excites you for 2021?
Connect with Jenny
Website jennyhuangmarketing.com
Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennychuang/
Email jenny@jennyhuangmarketing.com
CONNECT WITH SHAWN
- Shawn Flynn’s LinkedIn Account
- Silicon Valley LinkedIn Group Account
- Shawn Flynn’s Facebook Account
- Email Shawn@thesiliconvalleypodcast.com
Shawn Flynn 0:00
You’re listening to the Silicon Valley podcast. On today’s show, we have Jenny Huang. She has 20 years of experience as a strategic marketing consultant, a brand marketer and communicator in the hardware, software, mobile app and telecommunication industries, serving startups and progressive companies. She has worked with fortune 500 companies such as Intel, Intuit, and British Telecom. Or she launched and managed regional co-branded programs with PC OEM partners and their retailers and resellers invigorated new user acquisition to drive growth and establish regional brand presence. On today’s show, we talk about how do you see marketing and promotion for companies changing with technology and the process for creating and implementing a social media calendar and with marketing and PR, what you should be really excited for in 2021. And also, Jenny is offering a special gift for our listeners that write a review on iTunes and share. Stay tuned to the end of the episode to hear the gift. all right now let’s start the show. Enjoy.
Announcer 1:04
Welcome to the Silicon Valley podcast with your host Shawn Flynn, who interviews famous entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and leaders in tech, learn their secrets and see tomorrow’s world today.
Shawn Flynn 1:21
Jenny, thank you for taking the time to be on the Silicon Valley podcast. Now. For people at home that may not know this, Jenny wrote an amazing article about the show that has been featured both online and the print version of a local newspaper here in Silicon Valley has gotten a lot of attention. And I just have to thank her for bringing so many listeners and eyes and that to this show now. Jenny has worked with a huge range of startups here in Silicon Valley in all different areas of her careers. absolutely fascinating. But Jenny, could you tell our audience at home a bit about your career up into this point?
Jenny Huang 1:54
Hey, thanks, Shawn. I am excited to be here. Really, thank you for that amazing introduction. It was great working with you. You know, I have an interesting journey. I would say that I started in technology marketing, I was working in the corporate world in the corporate world actually gave me a lot of experience that I was able to take it to my own journey. I think my journey in the last 15 years has been working on my own being my own boss, working with a lot of amazing startups, that really taught me a lot of lessons, as well as really helping me enrich my experience understanding the entrepreneur community. Having walked there in their shoes, I could feel those struggles, I could feel their triumphs and when they get funded, or when they’ve actually launched, I was tremendously excited. It felt like giving a birthright. I don’t know why I just love launching company. Because there is something in it, that you spend so much energy on the end result, if it’s great, you just feel like wow, you just gave birth to something.
Shawn Flynn 2:55
So, when you’re helping these companies launch, what’s your kind of role in that process? Are you doing sales? Are you doing developing? What focus is for these companies?
Jenny Huang 3:07
Yeah, for a little bit early stage startup that come to work with me, they’re usually at a stage of conceptualizing their product. Some of them don’t even have a product in the marketplace. So, I work a lot with more around the lean Canvas.
Shawn Flynn 3:21
Could you go into more detail for us what the lean Canvas is?
Jenny Huang 3:24
Like a one-page business plan allows you to look at your idea, and how to formalize that idea, and turn it into a real business. When you create a product, you have a product you love, but you also want to part to sustain and make profits and support your lifestyle and grow it right. That’s kind of where I focus all of my energy would a lot of the early stage stuff starts on.
Shawn Flynn 3:49
Okay, so if I was a company, and I came to you, and maybe I even have sales, how would the lean Canvas help me at that point? Am I already past it? Or let me give me a little bit more detail. Okay, what the components are, how it benefits, when I should be thinking of this.
Jenny Huang 4:06
You know, some companies actually don’t even have a lean canvas to start with, and they have a part in the marketplace. But I think the lean Canvas is a good foundation for a startup who has an idea that you can actually take it out and test the market and trying to find a market fit. And I work with a lot of stuff to define the foundational pieces. What is this product? Who’s this product for? What are the pain points you’re trying to solve? What are the three possible solutions? Because some products could have just one market segments. And some could have three different market segments, but you had to pick which one you want to solve it first, right? I think identify that early. It helps you know, what problem you’re solving for and who you’re solving problems for. Right? And you know that you need to know the pain point in order to really address what people are feeling whether your solutions is the right fit.
Shawn Flynn 4:57
So, when you’re working with these companies, if They say this is the direction we’re going in, this is what we think we’re solving. But you say, actually, that’s not a pain point, a real pain point. Is this over here that you could solve? What’s that conversation? Like? Will they pivot? Or is there just kind of an argument a fight there?
Jenny Huang 5:15
I don’t think we need to go into any confrontational of what he called the protocol. It’s a conversation asking the founder in the startup to maybe they need to go back and take a look at the market segment, do a little bit more deeper research. I think typically, for a lot of young startups, I remember looking at some of the best practices, but even actually working with some is that if you had to take your part out to talk to 2050 customers, and get all the feedback because people have different feedbacks, right, because of different experiences, different backgrounds, and how they want to use it. So, you got to take all that into consideration. If you review those data and your product is still going in the right direction. And they may be used to see to modify something, it might not require a pivot a pivot doesn’t mean that you have to take something and redo it over again, you know, a pivot could be you changing your business model, maybe going from freemium to actually getting a pay a subscription model in place, or maybe just changing the feature a little bit, you know, let’s say, if you have an app, you might not need to have walk in, or just a simple login to get access to it. Instead of asking people a bunch of questions, and they get really tired. So, forget it, I just think this is too tricky to get on. I’m gonna skip this thing.
Shawn Flynn 6:28
That’s interesting. I didn’t even think about the onboarding process. And how much of that could actually play in acquiring a customer or not. When you’re working with one of these startups? How can a company build a brand, I know that you’ve given a lot of advice in that for companies in the market in in the brand area? What type of advice do you have? Or do you give in most situations?
Jenny Huang 6:50
Well, first, I have to say that building a brand takes time. It’s not something that you can build overnight. There are different types of startups. So, building brand could be different for each startup because of the situation and also the product and the market segments that go into. So, in my mind, to get things simple, it could be three different categories of startups, I would say there are startups who are privately funded, there are those who might be VC Angel funded. And then there are those who may already have a great strong brand, but they’re starting up a new business, for my sake, because my experience in the with the early stage startup, I’ll just focus on the ones that are privately funded, because I think those are the hardest ones, because you got to put in your sweat money to go build a brand, typically building a brand, I think, first you have to, before you went out and go build logos and all these marketing assets or the shiny stuff, I then you had to build a foundational piece first, you got to have a product, you got to have product that you have addressed upon market fit, because I think it needs to have some traction, if you’re funding yourself, you got to be really capital efficient, and making sure that you have six to 12 months of runway, because it may take that long to actually get traction, get customers I think until you have some traction, then you would start looking at Hey, you know, now we will know product looks like what we’re building. And we know the pain points talk about, we might have an opportunity to test the messages when we go take a product out to talk to customers. And that’s when you then I think is to put together your logo, your website, your pitch deck, just the basic thesis, that at least someone they want more information, you can go in and get it, you can actually also use it when you go out and pitch to customers getting more customers or pitching to get additional funding. At that point, I think your brand is still kind of like in the baby stage design like a baby in the baby stage. And as you go out and get more additional customers, I would say before you go to 1000 customers, I think you should focus your brand activities around doing more of word of mouth, working with influencers? who really believe in your product, and have them go out there and be the evangelizer How do I be your sneezers I call them who can sneeze the furthest for you. Also, this build using organic social media, I just think that you don’t have to throw tons of money to build a Social Buzz, I just think you have to make sure you manage your capital efficiently because otherwise you’d be one of money before you can actually go build your brand. Just use those mechanism to get those fundamentals going first, if you can use the influencers help you to the advertising, that’s the best kind of advertising that you’ll get. And at that level, I think now your brand is adding some awareness, some buzz, as you grow, get more traction, we get to 1000 customers. I think that’s when you can put a little bit more fire into this product. Now you can go actually, maybe do a little bit more social media advertising, Google ads, and even ratchet up your speaking opportunities. I think because those media can actually help you scale. They can do much better job in terms of targeting most bang bucks for the money that you put in and I would also say the executive team is also important to helping you build your brand too. There are folks who either come up with their own brand, but I think they should actually elevate their personal brand to help influence the direction of where the company’s going.
Shawn Flynn 10:09
does make sense, I would guess, you know, that thousand customer mark is probably a lot different depending on what the company is if it’s b2b versus b2c, or software. And, actually, because one of the things that comes up here on the podcast quite a bit is getting customer feedback. And that’s actually really interesting, how much feedback you’re promoting, before actually building the logo and website that it sounds like you’re really heavy on asking customers in advance as much as possible. Is that right?
Jenny Huang 10:41
Maybe I’ll backtrack a little bit. I mean, you could build a minimum brand asset, when I call if your company, I think should define what your company’s purpose is, what’s his vision is in the beginning, but I think for a lot of companies, sometimes they’re just still kind of figuring out Okay, yeah, I think that’s right, I think we’re going to wait direction. So for some it takes you know, you don’t have a firm vision then takes a quite a few steps before they get to the right one, I think you can have a minimum set of foundations write a one page or website, a pitch deck and a summary. Those are the basic things that you can just go out because you need a lot of time to go out there and to recruiting your customers and recruiting people to work with you. If you need a team. You might need some of those to go do fundraising.
Shawn Flynn 11:23
You talked about the executive team building their brand and being ambassadors. What are ways that a startup can get noticed online right now with all the massive amount of content out there.
Jenny Huang 11:34
I have worked with a couple early stage startups; we talk about those concepts. And one of the things that we talked about was using viral marketing. You know how Dropbox and I, you seen that Dropbox there early, early stage, they did a video, that was, it was titled, Dropbox explained to us a very unconventional way of creating a video, it was like a two-minute thing used to cut out these paper stuff, and stop motion kind of thing. So it’s like a cartoony, it’s not cartoony, but it’s very interesting, there’s a name for it, but I forgot, I actually watched it not too long ago, is different from video that you would see from a company actually using an outside profesh production, because those are way too professional for me, you have a viral video that could actually draw some attention to it. Put on your website, send it out when you do your pitch letter to every customer that you get in touch with as your foot in the door. Because a lot of times people get so inundated with information. I would just rather have watch it two-minute videos I get Oh, yeah, I got the concept. That’s it, and it was well explained. And it tells exactly why you need to use Dropbox.
Shawn Flynn 12:40
How does one brew this? the video and that how do they build an emotional connection with their customer? I right now, everything I see online, it’s just flashes. It’s there. And it’s done. But I don’t feel that connection. Like I did maybe growing up where you’d see that hamburger, that serial ad or that or? It make you so happy. But no. Is there a way that a startup an early stage company can build emotional connection between their product and the customer?
Jenny Huang 13:11
I think that we’re all humans, I think the best way is to really humanize your brand. Right? When I say humanize your brand, I want to tackle on what you said about you know, when you see those commercials about the hamburgers that makes you mouth-watering, I want to say that create something that connects with the human emotions, whether it’s a success story of someone that you helped through your product, tell a story. Storytelling is really powerful. Instead of selling features and widgets and make it really transactional, really reach deep inside, have the users tell the story and how your product helped them right in a way that lift them up, you know, help them be better, or take them to a different place. Not just startups. I think even recently, I saw a couple ads ran by what is that health company? Blue Suede, right? I don’t if you caught it, it was I think they started out last year in October. But I was on TV did a day and was watching it they had two ads, one ad that talks about what is blue. It was a real simple ad they have a theme song I think is on American dream. And they were to say a flash of showing what blue is and what blue is not. You’ll get it. It is simple text with imagery. And it just really pulls out the emotions. And then another one that they did was supporting the frontline workers and just reminding us not to forget about them. Because I think this code had impact so much, sometimes we forget. And then when we’re in the trenches, we just forget things right? And sometimes we have to be reminded again, I think those types of things that really touch on what’s currently impacting us could also be emotional, too.
Shawn Flynn 14:47
And one thing I wanted to add, you interviewed the show for a newspaper article and it’s gotten a lot of attention. How can a startup reach out and get interviewed for articles? How can they get some media Attention for them without paying the big dollars to a PR company?
Jenny Huang 15:05
That’s a good question. for startups. If you want to be interview by a publication, I think first you have to look at your product and what market you’re in, go into a little bit research and see what publications wading topics that are closely related to your product. You should also make sure that your topic is kind of news worthy right? because if you’re a market providing product that is serving a solving immediate needs or a near future needs, it meets a trend, think about kind of the newsworthy angle, right? Is this the right timing for it, and also the right timing for your companies to get that kind of exposure? And, you know, I would say a lot of publications, the way there are group is their local publications, there are publications that reach the regional level. And also, there’s something international, so I think if you want to sort of manage exposure a little bit, you could start with some local regional, go to the big ones as you get better. And when you look at publications, you really study their editorial calendar, you know, they all have one as on their website and kind of see what they focus on. Sometimes they might have topics that fit what do you want to talk about or to be interview for? Sometimes they don’t, if you study, you could say, Well, hey, I see. You got this great audience and these great contents, but I’m seeing there’s something that’s missing. How about we you make a proposal, right, how about we come and share this information. And that’s how I got started with the Los Altos town choir. Two years ago, I was looking at a paper there wasn’t a column on marketing. So I pitched to the editor, and he sent me to someone and then they came back and said, Well, hey, you know, I think they probably looked at my background, say, in addition to marketing, can you also include technology, and also startup because you work with a lot of startups, I said, Sure. Let’s blend all that in is interesting, because it just like you launching your podcast, I need to have an anchor guide to help me launch my first article. So, I work with Oscar Garcia, he was a former CEO of the County Chamber of Commerce. So I was going I wrote an article about social media, you know, when you actually when also when you pitch the papers is either it’s an article that you want them to interview you for, or something that you could write, and you can also pitch to them, you can write an article and also pitch to them.
Shawn Flynn 17:21
So, you’d mentioned calendars for it. So, there’s two questions there. The calendar for the newspaper and also social media calendars for startups. I’ve heard that term quite a bit. Could you talk about maybe what the differences of these calendars are, what the social media calendar is, and go into more detail?
Jenny Huang 17:39
Okay, so the editorial calendars, actually, for the press, is to guide them so that they can focus what topic they could feature for the whole year. And usually, these are preparing, like six months or even 12 months in advance. If you want to talk to them, you actually really should pitch to them, like six months before they write that focus on that topic. I think the same thing could apply to social media. But I think social media calendar is much more dynamic. It needs to tie it into your company marking style or our marketing strategies, because I don’t think your marketing, of course right now and the pandemic well, online, you know, digital media, social media, as much has more carrying more weight, but in a non-COVID time, bringing back that brand building question that you asked earlier, also build that emotional connection is to make sure that your social media also get calendar that calendar should also encompass some offline activities and enable you to engage with audience offline, I think we miss tradeshows. You know, can I go to trade shows anymore? Can I go to networking, happy hour anymore? So those face times are not there. Take those away and try to replace with social media. The digital touch can be a little bit different, right? I don’t think your social media is social media calendar should be set on monthly basis, because I think, and also weekly basis, depending on how complex of company or powerful that you have, right? I think if you have a small company, you might have your products, and it’s easier to manage. But I think you have multiple, I think laying out a social media calendar would benefit your team because you going to need to assign people to focus on it. And depending on where you’re playing, right, and social media channels, there’s like up to 10 20 different ones. I think the main ones that depending on if you are b2b or b2c company, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Reddit. Some of those things are still really relevant because they have eyeballs right now. They’re really mature channels. So, I think you should have some allocated time to dedicate to what topics you’re going to focus on pick a topic. So, let’s just say like hypothetically that if you want to plan out annual social media calendar, probably should have certain topics that you focus on that’s tied closely to your company’s product roadmap, because you want to focus on the parts that you’re going to bet on for the year. Which one is gonna drive revenue, right? You might have some new releases, or you might have some established products that you still want to keep it there, because there’s still revenue drivers. And from there, just do your little social media calendar for each one of them. And they might be overlapping between products. But I think if you have like a little mini plan, where each product line is on what channel you can focus on, we’ll say four just focus on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and then decide on what topics you’re gonna have. And really kind of stage out your post determining frequencies, how often you post and make sure when you post don’t run, I think, when you do get involved with social media, right? engage, I favor more engagement than like just posting and hoping to have likes versus really engage with your audience. And what your followers
Shawn Flynn 20:52
Can you talk more about that there is between engagement and running?
Jenny Huang 20:56
Well, sometimes I do that a bad. You know, when you have a little, you know, a couple of minutes, oh, gosh, I need to put something up. When you do a post, usually you post I have a little ritual, some people are online all the time, but I have to work, right. So, I have to focus, let’s say my morning, 10 minutes of my time to focus on just doing posting, I think one of the rules of thumbs that I hear is you do five posts, you share five people’s posts, and then you engage with five. As you work through that process. Eventually you will reach you know, a certain number of people that you want to get engage with. And those people could become actually, your loyal followers and audience, I think it’s good to have a cohort of people who support you engage you with you. It’s a really healthy way of not just posting on one away, when people give your comments, you don’t even provide feedback. Unless like in 72 hours, I think it’s too late for social media, it’s you know, I think within 24 to 28 hours is acceptable, just to make sure that you people respond to you and you reciprocate.
Shawn Flynn 22:02
How do you see social media changing with new technology? And how well just technology in general progressing? What do you see trends? What do you see, in the marketing industry?
Jenny Huang 22:14
technology is ever changing, I think there’s a lot of technology that’s already happened, that really changed the way we do marketing. And I just remember the first time I used a chatbot, go to someone’s website, you can’t even find a phone number. And I think there is a chat box there, I think that technology has also improved, is actually helping businesses to be smarter, to service our customer better, to help us actually without the customer. And the funnel, the people who are adopters, and the people who are more interested, though it helps the business to be more efficient, their technology and social media, I think Facebook pixels that you can start on your landing page, to allow an advertiser to go back and retarget the audience actually stopped by to look that information. So, I think it allows the marketer or the advertiser to actually make better use efficient use of our investment, and allows to be more personalized and more targeted, where we spend our money. And whether that is actually going to help us to conversion. And I think over time, it allows us to know have better leads in the funnel, and that we can actually convert them, you have a higher probability of converting them, because you’re getting better leads because you’re messaging the personalization is actually getting the right people into your funnel.
Shawn Flynn 23:35
How do you think things are gonna change? Post COVID? with marketing? Is there going to be a change in the industry? Aren’t we going through a change right now? How are you seeing things kind of play out?
Jenny Huang 23:47
Now that technology will always be here? I think the ones who has been accelerated are podcast, I think is going to be even more accelerated, right? Because people once you get familiar with using the medium, you liked it, you know that it benefits you. You got to continue using it right? Because we are creatures of habits, once you used it, you like it? I don’t think it’s gonna drop. I think it’s gonna add more channels to already have. I also think that some of the technologies like voice search, it’s interesting, because that’s already happening before COVID. Right? I think COVID encouraged those behaviors that we need to shop more online, we need to do more search online and some want to type it. some actually want to talk on the phone and just ask for directions or ask or search for information. And I do that with my Google. I have an Android phone, right? You have iPhones so you can ask Sir we right? I have Alexa at home? So, these things are getting smarter. And that means for companies and marketers information on website. I think even the content and our social media needs to be a little bit more conversational, because people are going to be, they’re not going to say have this keyword that stuck my head They’re gonna search for things in phrases that’s already happening. But actually, search things in sentences, I actually have a question with more than seven words. basically, making sure that your content is conversational, that you have some tools so that it’s actually tools out there. help companies identify what are some keywords or mentions that the consumers are talking about in the social media space. And they can actually provide you those data, this information so that he can use it to help you create better messaging or relevant messaging, more personalized messaging.
Shawn Flynn 25:35
And I got to ask, I mean, you’ve worked with so many startups over the years, can you share a few of the stories of some of the companies that you’ve worked with?
Jenny Huang 25:44
Yeah, I wanted to actually talk about to the folks I also interview for the LATC los altos town choir, I work with R as in R supposed to be our community. It’s a company that launched by two tech veterans, they’re entrepreneurs themselves, they actually wanted to bring back a sense of community in the digital age, I think you probably remember, Mr. Rogers, who’s the guy who loves to, you know, hanging out with your neighbors and being really nice and friendly. So, they really want to bring that sense of community belong back into the cities and towns, we get connected with the businesses with the local organizations, with the folks in our community. Just think about you, if you go to the next town, do you know what’s happening? not everything. You might know something, but not all, but to say in the non-COVID time, when you want to know what’s happening, like the events restaurant, you can go to places you can go shop, you can just go to the art community, they have a website, and as Gilo use, they use geolocation technology. So, you can just type in your zip code, or even the name of the city. And then voila, it pulls up all the information about what’s in that city and the retail shop, the restaurants, museums, to go to business services, you need to like, bring a dry clean there and get it directly back the same day. Those are there. I think it’s an interesting thing, because I was talking to the founders, and we compare notes. And we said, well, you know, I use Facebook, I look at Yelp, and Facebook, I just get any data, all the sudden feeds, I like companies, but they are just hype and you have tons of information, nonstop. And then if you miss something, you could go back and find where did it come from? Go to Yelp. You hear all these negative comments and businesses like wow, how do I get around that a lot of businesses get hurt because there are negative comments from customers and our committee was built to make sure that they take away those negative diatribes and making sure that this is a community where people could support each other,
Shawn Flynn 27:49
just thrown in a plug there for everyone that loves this podcast, please write a positive review on I Tunes it would really help us out encourages us to make more content, Jenny, okay, continue with that.
Jenny Huang 28:01
The other company that I work with is actually a woman led AI based company. It’s called what the product is called Alysia A L Y S I A. But as part of a company called wave AI, innovative Maya, who’s the founder and Maya is fantastic. She is an artificial computer intelligence expert, as well as an opera singer the reason the product is great, because it was her own struggle that she been trained to do singing, but she couldn’t really put a song together. So that was her own pain point. So, she basically turned to a research project that eventually kind of commercialized the whole concept. So, Alysia, that consumer product was born so that it actually enabled all kinds of music lovers to be able to use the app and create a version of music, and that they use AI algorithms that help you generate the top line melodies and the lyrics and vocals. It’s really fun, I use it. I also use other folks and I thought their apps is the easiest, because sometimes is some apps, the way they build is not very intuitive. I think there’s some spend some really quick work. I think it’s really an interesting part to us, especially during this time because music things is to help us off though to anxiety is just being a pandemic.
Shawn Flynn 29:24
So, you’re working with all these companies, you’ve written about it a ton of companies as well. What excites you for 2021?
Jenny Huang 29:32
Okay, 2021 I think a lot of has to do with how this COVID-19 progress, I have some of my personal plans, I want to expand some of my speaking engagements. So, I’m really excited for some of the training classes that I’m going to be putting together. I have some materials on lean canvas and personal branding, which I’m going to brush up a little bit. I really push it out and try to make it like an evergreen series, as I think those are topics that people are in need all the time it, there’s no season behind those topics. I’m also excited about a lot of the features that companies are pushing out. And in a sense that they’re trying to add to the digital touch. Remember, we talked about the digital touch, we’re all humans, you know, we have our five senses, right? So, what’s missing now, as you can see, we can hear, but the touching part, the feeling part the is missing. So, there is an app called cup house, I’m excited about. And then you probably have read about it as being funded by some big tech investors. But it’s in beta mode, it is what is called as audio social network. They have virtual rooms that can go into and you can have conversation with people. Right now, the app is in beta mode, it’s like they only invite celebrities and influencers. So that’s good, right? They kind of doing it right, make it by invitations very special. And they already had like 100-million-dollar evaluation behind it. That’s cool. But on the other hand, I just think a lot of the social media companies are doing some great stuff, right there are enhancing their product by enabling having more virtual room meetings at the Facebook Messenger. A lot of the apps like I’m not endorsing Facebook, or Instagram, anybody, but they’re just making the user experience more friendly. The ads, you can actually shop within the app. So, you don’t have to have a third party app to go ecommerce app to plug into your ad or in your, on your website to do that. So, if you advertise, you could actually you have a shopping site, you could actually buy within the app. So, I think there’s a lot of technology out there that’s making the user experience more integrated, helping advertiser be more efficient in the way how we target, personalize the customer experience. I think those are exciting things.
Shawn Flynn 31:53
It seems that we keep going back a little bit to the user experience in the user interface. How important is that for a startup or a company to focus on that at the beginning, while they’re getting all the customer feedback?
Jenny Huang 32:06
I think getting user experience is important, especially if you have a website, or an app, but even you have a hardware product might be different things that you’re looking at. But I think people need to be able to take away that having it be intuitive and easy to use. Well think of Apple either way, how they create their products, right? I’m not an apple fan. I’m Android, just think of I actually used the map before I was converted to Microsoft using the desktop. But I love the product, right? It was really user friendly. It’s like a one button touch. And even the things that I constantly put in there is intuitive. So, a lot of big companies who have money, they have actually brought in customers and do user experience like research right? Before they launch products. For a startup, you probably don’t have that kind of money. But I think you can still gather a small group people who are willing to give you feedback in exchange for bottle of deo Do you can give him a party says for free, or something right. But I think feedback is important. And the feedback loop should be really ongoing is not like as I do a lot of the software companies because you know, software companies have a lot of releases from each time before a new release, you have customer feedback. So you always constantly have this feedback loop. So, you can constantly just improve your product over time. You might not meet all the user needs, but at least you hit the minimum and things that are as quick a difference between you and the next guy.
Shawn Flynn 33:34
Jenny. Is there anything that we missed today that you think our audience would benefit from it?
Jenny Huang 33:40
Okay, Shawn, you know, I want to go back and talk about touch a little bit on personal branding. And also, one at the point that’s outside of this, though, I have to ask one, right? In my mind, for startup before you even start your company. I think the guys who are the visionaries, have an idea before you even have that edge is to really focus on building your personal brand. The reason I say that is because I have seen so many startups struggle, doing fundraising and trying to put money out to build awareness. At the same time, also need to spend money to invest in developing the product, because that’s very costly. I think I would rather that you do it before your product development is to kind of get ready for that right? and personal branding just means that I think we all have to be in social media, what is social media, or going out there doing some speaking, or even writing an article? Share those knowledge. By sharing knowledge people will look up to you and you’re automatically sort of become this authority. Having authority gives you the credibility that runway, when you eventually go out and pitch your product. I think it makes it easier because then people would have heard of his name even though is they know you personally, but they trust you. I think trust is like the biggest thing to me for a startup to build. I don’t think we’re all very trusting people these days, right? Because I think consumers don’t even trust advertising. They trust referrals as well, this reuse size popped up. But if you have a strong brand, a strong presence, it makes things so much easier if you go out to recruit customers, their first early adopters, because every time I hear people say, Well, how do I trust this brand? How do I know it’s safe? And if you have a strong brand, you can actually recruit good people to work on your team. these things are very important. I think some VCs don’t even want to fund a company, unless you have two people in your company, a CEO and a CTO, you cannot be everything. We don’t have experts on a whole spectrum of expertise. You got to have the right team on board. I think that’s very important. A team that complements each other and your skills. You can be confrontational disagree, but you need to work together as a team. And then I think having a strong brand will help you to fundraising. As much as a lot of companies want to put in the own money. At some point it’s going to run out unless you have another income stream coming from somewhere. I think some of those do. Some folks do. The least you have some runway. But I think having a strong band really help you in those three areas, getting first customers, recruit great team, and have some money to go build your product and get some awareness going. slowly build your brand. The other thing I want to say is just working through with a lot of startups, I think you need to prepare before you get on to your entrepreneur journey. I think it’s exciting to launch a company to launch a product, you have to be mentally ready. And when I say that mentally ready is the mental aspect and the physical aspect because fundraising launching a business could be very exhausting, you know, at times, is not always hunky dory, right. There will be ups and there will be downs. And you will be tested through the valleys right, the ups and downs. I think if you are mentally strong prepare for it. You can overcome those. And you can help your team overcome those and you’ll be coming out stronger.
Shawn Flynn 37:09
That’s great advice. If anyone wants to find out more about you get in touch with you. What’s the best way to go about doing it?
Jenny Huang 37:17
Well, they can visit my website is www. JennyHuangmarketing.com. Or they can just email me Jenny@JennyHuangmarketing.com.
Shawn Flynn 37:32
Great. And for everyone at home. Jenny’s actually offered our listeners an amazing gift for anyone that writes review takes a screenshot and emails it to me my information or send it to me on Twitter or any of the social medias. And that is a 30-minute free consultation for your startup your company. So once again, if anyone writes a review on iTunes, takes a screenshot and sends it to me. My email Shawn@TheSiliconValleyPodcast.com you will get a 30-minute free consultation from Jenny. All right.
Jenny Huang 38:07
All right,
Shawn Flynn 38:08
Jenny. Thank you again for your time today on the Silicon Valley podcast. And we look forward to having you on the show again in the future.
Jenny Huang 38:16
Thanks Shawn it’s been fun.
Announcer 38:20
Thank you for listening to the Silicon Valley podcast. To access our resources, visit us at the Silicon Valley podcast.com and follow our host on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn at Shawn Flynn SV. This show is for entertainment purposes only and is licensed by the investors Podcast Network. Before making any decisions, consult a professional.
