A retreat into the future
The FutureForward executive retreat that took place on Wednesday had a weird atmosphere.
Part of the reason was the economy. One participant, a particularly avuncular one, was suffering from loss fatigue and animatedly celebrated the DJIA’s 440-point plunge that day.
Another reason was the celebration of exciting new companies with fascinating technologies (for example, a flying car), and yet another reason was the stentorian doggedness that most attendees display in pursuing their business ideas no matter what happens in the economy. Most everyone was expecting things to get both worse and better.
During all this I was happy. I was happy with my business activities and enjoyed taking a break for a day to listen to pundits’ outlooks, see new technologies, and mix it up with old friends from the Boston area.
The event was really interesting. Here are a couple of notes from the day:
- The expression share shift was used at least three times from different people during the panel on technology futures, reflecting a healthy competitive environment.
- By 2012 the industry will build out cloud computing, which will represent a moderate 9% of the overall mix of goods and services but generate 25% growth in its wake. By 2013, however, cloud-related growth will increase to 30-33%.
- Internet browsing via Google increased by a factor of four after the introduction of the iPhone.
- The bandwidth of YouTube in 2007 exceeded the bandwidth requirements of the whole Internet in 2002.
I served as moderator of the customer acquisition panel, so I took sparse notes, but Paul Gaffney, COO, Desktone; George Grey, CEO, SnapMyLife; Brian Halligan, CEO, HubSpot; Nabeel Hyatt, CEO, Conduit Lab; and Bill Lucchini, Vice President & General Manager, Platform as a Service Group, Intuit, provided some outstanding insights. The panelists were especially helpful on:
- the cost of customer acquisition and effectiveness of various tools—especially blogs, SEO, and video;
- the importance of measurement, especially the lifetime value of customers;
- the effectiveness of the freemium model (on balance, very effective);
- the net positive contributions of ad networks;
- recommendations of negative commissions for telesales (i.e., pay the commission to get the customer and take away compensation for their unhappiness or loss); and
- a concentration on committed customers, and cohort analysis of anyone who comes to your website.
During the retreat a tweet came from Guy Kawasaki reporting that 40% of Twitter users he surveyed would be willing to pay $5.00 per month, while 60% would not. The proposal of a monthly usage fee for Twitter was viewed positively during the day and fully accepted by the end of the day. Either it’s a good idea, or communications help make it self-fulfilling, or we are lemmings, or some combination of these three.
Weird vibes aside, the retreat was time well spent.
Tags: Technology