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Velocity 101 Presentation
This past weekend, I gave a talk to the University of Waterloo Velocity class about my learnings about what makes an amazing company. The slides from my presentation are below…
What Makes a Company Amazing? Velocity 101 Presentation, September 2009
View more presentations from Ali Asaria.
The most controversial part of my presentation was when I said that great companies don’t market. I was purposely trying to stir things up by saying that, but it really did seem to anger people more than I had expected. My statement was based on the fact that so many of great companies that I’ve met brag about how they do no marketing. This can’t really be true, though, can it? What’s your opinion?
September 21st, 2009 at 3:07 pm
all good points ali. those core principles are incredibly similar to Amazon’s. I think your “dont market” argument applies more to the retail sector than a company selling a product. That said, well.ca does purchase google ad words for product key words. Isn’t that “marketing”?
September 21st, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Of course you need to market. The successful startups are bragging at how little marketing they are doing. That means that they, by luck or by skill, choose a way to market that was efficient for their purposes.
I’m guessing that google adwords worked for you because canadians had few other options in your niche.
September 21st, 2009 at 7:26 pm
yeah i guess the point i was trying to make was that great products, to a certain degree “market themselves”.
currently, almost all of well.ca’s growth and traffic comes from people finding our site from ways we don’t control like word of mouth.
October 3rd, 2009 at 8:27 am
It has been my experience that the best marketing is putting your marketing dollars into creating a “WOW” experience. By building a customer experience that exceeds there expectations, they go out and spread the word to their friends.
So few companies offer a great experience that they are remarkable. They get the free word of mouth.
Keep up the good work Ali.
Stuart
December 30th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
cool site — like the “Geek” story and will read the preso to which I am commenting…um…shortly