The Montana Mogul: RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte (Part 1) | Sramana Mitra
Greg is a serial entrepreneur and author of Bootstrapping Your Business. He was awarded the 2003 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year. His current company, RightNow, was founded in 1998, had an IPO in 2004, and has passed $100 million in revenue. SM: To start, let's talk about your background. GG: I am an engineer. My undergraduate degree is in electrical engineering and my masters degree is in computer science. I attended school at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. SM: Can you give us some background on Brightwork? GG: Brightwork was a company I co-founded to develop network management applications. It was founded in 1986 in a sun room in New Jersey. We developed tools which were focused on the Novell Network solutions, since they were the dominant player back then. Ultimately we sold the company to McAfee for about $10 million , hence the Montana retirement I was referring to earlier. SM: The network market was chaotic at that time. How did you break
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Haha this is amazing: "Since we did not know how to get their attention we decided to buy a 48-foot long billboard across from their corporate headquarters. Novell was headquartered in Provo, Utah, and billboards there didn’t cost too much. I think it cost $200 a month, including lights."
Talk about a low-cost way to score a huge endorsement. They landed a distribution deal 6 weeks after buying the billboard. Sometimes it helps to just blow up every conventional method you're familiar with and look at something entirely different. Artists employ this method all the time by messing with their senses, using different mediums or melding things that aren't typically together.
I do think there's perhaps an over-reliance on modern marketing methods (largely social media), since a lot of traditional advertising options can really help build an online community (as you said, @ZergLurker, if they're used to complement each other). Has anyone tried using billboards/advertising in Newspapers, TV, Radio?
Haha fake it until you make it! What a good idea to build credibility. I'm surprised that strategy caught Novell's attention though - different times I guess, or perhaps it's a location thing. I'm not sure a billboard would work as effectively nowadays.
It does seem a little old school but according to this: https://streetwisejournal.com/are-billboards-still-effective-in-the-digital-world-we-live-in/ billboards "billboards continue to offer a 10% annual growth rate, proving their effectiveness." Plus, it's not a question of "billboards vs social media" - you can direct people to your social media channels and/or website via a QR code - they're complementary, or at least they can be. That being said, they're a lot more expensive than they were when Greg Gianforte leased his.