•
Last week Yelp announced, and ReadWriteWeb covered , a number of changes the company had announced to its way of doing business. It was responding to complaints, and a class-action lawsuit, that alleged it had spiked bad reviews in exchange for fistfuls of Krugerrands from the businesses its users reviewed. Conversely, it was alleged, if a business owner did not want to pay, its negative reviews would be visible. One element that was not much covered was Yelp's concurrent announcement that it had assembled a Small Business Advisory Council. Sponsor "(I)n an effort to more formally integrate feedback from the business community, we've created a Small Business Advisory Council whose members will provide Yelp management with guidance and perspective regarding the concerns of small business owners," Yelp's CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman wrote on the Yelp blog . It seems to have taken a lawsuit and its attendant bad publicity to get the company to reverse its policies on promoting or withholding certain types of reviews and on making filtered posts visible. Perhaps the company has decided having a number of involved small business types busting their chops a little every day would be preferable to one goliath and unpredictably-timed crotch shot that does great damage to their credibility. Matt McGee of the Small Business Search Marketing blog quoted a letter sent out to small business owners with Yelp accounts. The Yelp Small Business Advisory Council "will be composed of 10 members representing diverse geographies and industries. The group will serve for an annual term. In addition to regular correspondence with Yelp's executive team, the council will be relied upon to provide valuable input on changes to Yelp." They are apparently still soliciting members for the council . Bottom photo by Marcelo Discuss
See the original post here:
Yelp Assembles Small Business Advisory Board
Tags:
advisory,
alleged-it-had,
Business,
businesses,
council,
credibility,
crowdsourcing,
making-filtered,
marketing,
small-business,
stoppelman
•
There is a reason why lawyers go through year of school and tests to get to the jobs that they get paid so much to do - law is a complicated beast that takes a special breed to understand all the ins and outs of it. When entrepreneurs and venture capitalists meet at the bartering table to talk over the terms of their agreement, there is often too much or too little negotiation that goes on, so here's some advice I came across that can help startup founders find the "sweet spot" for negotiations. Sponsor Matt Bartus , a Silicon Valley-based lawyer who mainly aids startups and VCs, wrote last week on his blog A View from the Valley warning entrepreneurs new to the negotiating table to not damage their relationship with their investors by over-negotiating . According to Bartus, a surplus of startup and legal advice from blogs has clogged the minds of new entrepreneurs who think they need to nit pick over every detail of a term sheet. "They sometimes feel the need to optimize every individual provision in the term sheet according to the guidelines found online," writes Bartus. "For example, a founder recently expressed his shock to me that a VC wanted an 8% non-cumulative dividend preference on the preferred stock given the historical lows of current interest rates. He didn't realize that dividends in fast growing companies are almost never paid, thus making this provision essentially irrelevant and just a relic of past practice." Bartus says that while over-negotiating and creating needless tension is a common misstep, it is just as bad to not push back enough and to accept the terms of the agreement without any discussion. When you roll over and take what they give you, you show them that you don't stand up for yourself, damaging both your credibility and the possibility of future investments. To avoid this, he provides a few suggestions for topics that are worth debating with VCs that won't necessarily damage your relationship. Of the dozens of issues that could arise between VCs and entrepreneurs, Bartus provides a list of six important issues that could be discussed during negotiations, of which three he suggests actually focusing on. These include valuation and dilution, liquidation preference, board of directors and voting provisions, founder vesting, antidilution protection, and finally, exclusivity. By knowing these important issues, you can boost your credibility with the VCs and you ensure that you can get the best results from the term sheets for you, the founder. This is exactly why hiring a lawyer with startup experience is key to doing things right. Yes, the job of the lawyer is to explain to terms to the entrepreneur so they know what they are signing up for, but mostly, that lawyer is there to take the burden of legal worries off their back. As with any position within your startup, lawyers should be chosen on merit, not based on their reputation to the founders. He recalls an issue he had when representing a VC who was dealing with a lawyer who was the father of the founder with no startup experience and who slowed the whole process down, damaging the relationship between the two parties. Just remember the real important part of a VC/entrepreneur relationship: building and growing a great product. Hire a great lawyer with startup experience and let them do the grunt legal work so as to not divert your energy and focus from your ideas and your business. For more legal resources geared at startups, check out our list compiled earlier this year . Discuss
Link:
Avoid Legal Tussles When Negotiating With VCs
Tags:
agreement,
credibility,
cumulative dividend,
current interest rates,
ideas,
jobs,
lawyer,
Legal,
Matt Bartus,
Silicon Valley,
startup,
term,
terms,
VCs,
venture capitalists
•
Quick - you have 140 characters to say something witty, include a link and disclose the fact that the company you're tweeting about happened to give you a free sample of the product so you could give it a whirl. What do you do? The Word of Mouth Marketing Association says you should use #samp, one of three new hashtags it has adopted specifically for this purpose, which tells everyone you received a sample of what you're tweeting about. Sponsor The WOMMA released a set of guidelines this month in response to last months Federal Trade Commission adoption of a guide on endorsements and testimonials in advertising. According to WOMMA's Social Media Marketing Disclosure Guide (.pdf), the FTC requires a disclosure of all "material connections". It defines these connections as any connection that could "affect the credibility consumers give to that blogger's statements." The three hashtags that WOMMA is proposing are #spon for sponsored tweets, #paid for paid tweets and #samp for when the blogger received a sample. Depending on how you approach this, you can either use it as an AdBlock opportunity and make sure none of these sorts of tweets get through to you, you can go out and seek them, or you just be aware of what you're clicking on and why it was suggested. We're not sure we'd necessarily recommend filtering out these tweets, though. A quick search for #spon on Twitter revealed some great links. Remember, these are not necessarily just terrible ads, like you might be force fed on some website, they're just tweets where the tweeter is disclosing the full background. As more and more people are getting paid to tweet , we hope these tags will make that more clear. With companies like McDonalds, Michelin, Dell and Porter Novelli using WOMMA guidelines, we're willing to bet you're about to start seeing these tags more and more. Discuss
Excerpt from:
#Spon, #Paid and #Samp: New Tags for Shilling on Twitter
Tags:
advertising,
consumers-give,
credibility,
federal-trade,
media,
mouth-marketing,
porter novelli,
Social Media,
spon-on-twitter,
three-hashtags