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Expert

Eamonn Carey MD at Techstars. Early stage investor.

United Kingdom

MD at Techstars London. Investor in 40+ companies across the US, Europe, Africa and Asia. I run a dealflow email that goes out to 600+ investors around the world.

Worked with hundreds of companies on product, go-to-market, investment and more.

$2/min

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18

Calls

11

Reviews

Eamonn donates to SpecialEffect ($436.78)

Business Development

Startups

Strategy

Content Creation

International Expansion

Marketing Strategy

Strategic Planning

Investments

Growth Strategies

Member since December 2012

Areas of Expertise

Reviews 11
Answers 3

Business Development

Startups

Strategy

Content Creation

International Expansion

Marketing Strategy

Strategic Planning

Investments

Growth Strategies

Clarity

Eamonn Carey

United Kingdom

MD at Techstars London. Investor in 40+ companies across the US, Europe, Africa and Asia. I run a dealflow email that goes out to 600+ investors around the world.

Worked with hundreds of companies on product, go-to-market, investment and more.

$2.00/min

Eamonn donates to SpecialEffect ($436.78)

18

18 Calls

11

11 Reviews

31 minutes
Avg. call

Business Development Startups Strategy Content Creation International Expansion Marketing Strategy Strategic Planning Investments Growth Strategies

Call me to talk about

Marketing and PR

I frequently give talks at massive conferences around Europe and the Middle East on new trends in marketing and advertising. I also teach at General Assembly and advise startups on marketing strategies.

Raising Capital

I'm an MD at Techstars, and have worked on deals worth over $1bn over the years. I also run a dealflow email that goes out to hundres of investors around the world.

International Expansion

I've worked on startups and projects in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the US.

Sales and Business Development

I've sold into massive brands (Diageo, Colgate, Adidas) and agencies (Ogilvy, Carat, MEC etc) around the world. I've worked with massive partners, publishers and others on their digital and mobile strategies since 2005.

Answers 3
Reviews 11

Answers

Eamonn Carey answered

What are some common reasons why new startups fail to acquire customers?

The sad fact is that lots of startups don't know how to acquire customers. You'd also be surprised at how many assume they don't need to 'acquire' users - they subscribe to the field of dreams way of thinking - 'build it and they will come.'

I've lost count of the number of amazing products I've found that are incredibly useful and yet have a tiny userbase. In too many cases, it's because they haven't done any media or user outreach. In many cases, they have an overcomplicated onboarding process. In a lot of cases, they don't have simple social hooks baked in to encourage people to invite their friends.

Why does this happen - in many cases, companies don't have a strong marketing person on board early on. Those are the people who will drive that initial stage of customer acquisition. They're the ones that will be going out, tweeting, connecting with journalists, bloggers, potential partners and anyone who might be interested to get them to write about the service, suggest it to their friends or just try it out themselves.

A lot of the time, people aim for moonshots instead of doing simple, effective things to launch a product. I've met a lot of companies who have pinned everything on a massive partnership with a global brand or outlet without ever looking at something smaller or local as a test case.

You'd be amazed how easy it is to get media coverage in papers, radio, TV and on blogs with just some simple approaches. You'd be surprised how easy it is to find potential users and partners on social media and other channels with some simple searches. It should be easy to get to several hundred or several thousand users with these simple approaches.

To scale from there - simple things like a really easy onboarding process, social hooks (invite your friends, rewards for getting other people on board etc) and a level of activity that encourages repeat visits is massively important. To give you an example - the reason that you need to follow about 8/10 people when you sign up for a Twitter account now is that they lost lots of people after they signed up, didn't follow anyone and then logged back in to find an empty screen. Once you follow people who tweet regularly, you'll have fresh, interesting content when you go back. Having that freshness or activity is really important - social proof and little bits of feedback matter to people.

I'm happy to talk through some more specific examples of where people have gone wrong and how you can do simple things to help acquire users if you're interested. Feel free to get in touch.

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Early-stage Startups

Customer Acquisition

Eamonn Carey answered

Would radio ads be an appropriate media channel for a car repair shop in a city of 40k people?

The short answer is yes if there is a local station that caters for your catchment area. Thing about the way that you do these radio ads though. If you look at the available data, most reported car breakdowns happen between 8am and 9am on Monday mornings (based on 70,000 reported breakdowns in the UK) while most car accidents happen between 3pm and 9pm on weekdays (with a peak between 6pm and 9pm - this is based on US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data).

Can you target shows and slots that happen just before or around those times? So breakfast show slots between 7am and 8am on Monday mornings and some drivetime evening slots on weekdays? That might be an effective way to reach a likely audience - along with some spread of ad spend across other times of the day or in relevant programs (think about the majority of your customers - what sort of shows would they listen to and target some of those).

The other thing to consider is trying to offer your services as an on-air personality. There is always merit in approaching stations to spend some money as an advertiser but also offer your services as someone who can talk about general car maintenance tips on some of their shows - so in the runup to winter, maybe you could come on and give some tips on how to Winter-proof your car etc. Or you could just have a general car maintenance segment every week or two. Radio stations have a lot of airtime to fill every day - if you can help them fill it with good content and a good personality, it will pay off. I used to be a radio producer and presenter, so I know how useful it is to have a good person on call for on-air slots about just about anything!

There's a lot of PPC marketing that you could also do at a hyper local, targeted level, but it strikes me that in a smaller geographical area, radio would be a great opportunity.

Happy to talk through in more detail if that would help.

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Radio Advertising

Marketing

Eamonn Carey answered

How can I effectively network and find with future clients?

Meetup is a great resource for events, so that's a good start. Have a look on Eventbrite and other sites to see what sort of networking events are happening in the city. See if there are relevant LinkedIn groups that you can join and use those to find interesting people to connect with. You'll also find that a lot of the bigger/more popular groups will have news feeds with useful links to events and more. Find out what big conferences are on and head along to one or two that are particularly relevant. You'll find a bunch on Lanyrd and other sites.

Ask your existing clients for intros - not leads - but just intros to people they know in NYC. Can they help you get coffee with a few people. If they can and you manage to impress those people, there's a good chance that referral will lead to some work.

Cherry pick some of the people you'd like to work with - specifically ones where you think you could add real value. Reach out to them with a two or three sentence email saying hello and seeing if they have five mins for a coffee. It's never a bad thing to meet more people.

Follow people you'd like to work with on Twitter and build a bit of a relationship with them that way. Use that relationship to potentially get a meeting or a coffee with that person. Maybe they can do some relevant intros or help you in some way.

Be useful - if you're going to meet all these people, make sure that you provide them with some reason for meeting you. Maybe you can intro them to someone or help them with some advice or insight. Whatever it is, make sure that you have something to add into the mix.

Good luck!

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Business Development

Reviews

Very helpful and succinct.

Michael Sidon Source: Clarity

Another great call with Eamonn.

Clare Nyhan Source: Clarity

Terrific guy; does review prior and comes with thoughts but also can react quickly to whatever is on your mind. I was impressed at how quickly he got right to the core of my troubles and offered some great ideas right off the bat. Eamonn also he hit on the right issues at the right time in our conversation. He had a calming influence on my scattered startup! Highly, highly recommend a chat with Eamonn if you want practicable and actionable advice for your startup!

Clare Nyhan Source: Clarity

Eamonn and I had a great discussion about ad tech and moments-based advertising. Eamonn's advice was extremely helpful and his passion and knowledge was inspiring.

Ryan Cooper Source: Clarity

Eamonn had already reviewed my idea over the weekend, so we pretty much jumped straight into the thick of it without wasting much time! Eamonn clearly has had a lot of experience in startups and marketing and was able to immediately understand what my business needs were and offer impactful insight and advice. Super helpful - definitely recommended!

YC Ng Source: Clarity

It was a great way to start the day with a call with Eamonn. He really knows his stuff and left me with loads of actionable tips on how to improve our business development. The rest of the office were very impressed with the actions he proposed. Would be great to catch up again to talk even longer :)

Danny Ashton Source: Clarity

Eamonn delivered straight forward, actionable advice and all for charity, awesome.

Ian Stone Source: Clarity

My call with Eamonn was absolutely fantastic. He provided me with a straight up goldmine of information. He has great insight into marketing your services to large brands and agencies. I have no doubt at all that the information I gained from this call will lead to significant and tangible progress for my company. Plus, he was a really cool guy who I could very much relate to. Thanks for your time!

Mark Webster Source: Clarity

A role model. First, he charges 1$/min only and donates to charity, but his advices are worth like 10$/sec. Second, super thoughtful and straight to the point. Third, helpful and sympathetic, he agreed to assist with my project further. Fourth, call him!

Ivaylo Kalburdzhiev Source: Clarity

I didn't think I could get so much info in just 15 minutes! Incredibly helpful saved me literally weeks or even months of trial and error and even still many of the ideas he gave me I probably would have never reached. Highly recommend was really awesome of him to take time out of his busy schedule to help me out.

Joe Nagle Source: Clarity

He was really trying to help me. His advice was practical. I think everyone who sell something to marketing agencies/brand should talk to him.

Source: Clarity

Member since December 2012