12in6

I’ve been toying with names for my advising services that would capture the value I’m offering to startups…  In a nutshell this value is “helping startups more quickly achieve traction and efficient growth momentum.”  Startup-Marketing.com clearly positions me as a startup marketer, but it’s very generic and says little about what I’m trying to do for startups.

On my drive from Palo Alto to San Francisco today I was pondering how I discovered the need to help startups gain traction/momentum – and the name 12in6 struck me.   Before I explain what the name means, I’ll describe how I came up with it.  My “self – how did I get here?” reflection began by remembering the period when I was planning my next move following LogMeIn.  I was reflecting on 10+ years of startup life and wondering “what was the most important marketing activity we did that led to these two NASDAQ IPO filings?”  I realized that the first 6-12 months were the most critical marketing contributions to the long-term success of each company.  I also realized that what took 12 or more months at Uproar.com took only about six months at LogMeIn.  A solid go to market process was the primary difference.  And finally I realized that this go to market process had a ton of room for improvement.

I had my next move figured out.  I would specialize in helping companies plan and execute their go to market strategy.  My process would improve with each startup experience.  I quickly switched my blog from metricsdrivenmarketing.com to startup-marketing.com and continue to evolve/improve the go to market process with each new startup marketing project.

So today (as I was going through this “self – how did I get here?” exercise) I figured out the name.  It’s 12in6 – reflecting that I’m helping startups achieve 12 months of marketing progress in 6 months.  This is a powerful promise since this period generally has a very high capital burn rate – and getting through it more quickly preserves precious capital.  The name is a great conversation starter (based on the WTF factor).  It is also numbers, which highlights my data driven marketing approach.  Even the logo is a no brainer with a 12 inside the 6.

I’ll continue to post to Startup-Marketing.com since it gets a lot of search traffic, but I’ll eventually transition to the new domain 12in6.com.  Fortunately the move will allow me to switch to a better blogging platform too.