Michael Ashley

When I started my first company, FastPencil, in 2007, there weren't a lot of tools to get up and running quickly. But I knew it would be critical to leverage technology if I wanted to stay lean and get to first customer fast! So we immediately setup Google Apps for email and document collaboration. We also used Skype and a few other online services. Today, there are a lot more services available for startups, and they're better than ever. Here's my basic startup toolkit: Nimble Social CRM Every company needs a CRM and most go straight to Salesforce, but I met John Ferrara from Nimble at a Social Selling conference and I'm blown away at what he has been able to do with social CRM. Some of you may remember John from the company Goldmine. Goldmine was one of the first popular CRM applications available. It helped you stay organized and connected to your contacts. Nimble does all this and more... for today's social selling environment. I started using Nimble as...

The pivot One of the hardest things to do as a founder of a startup is to admit when your idea isn't working... your idea about the business, your idea about the product, your idea about the problem! That's exactly where I found myself a few weeks ago. It was time to admit Radi8 was chasing a problem that wasn't very painful. But it's not always the fastest who wins the race... sometimes it's the one who turns around first when they realize they are heading in the wrong direction. That being said, one of the most exciting things about reaching this phase in your startup is the freedom and excitement of changing direction. After a year of trudging along in one direction you gain a lot of very valuable experience and insight. Some of the most valuable things you develop are relationships with your potential customers. And if you've been paying attention, you should have learned what some of the real, and painful, problems they face look like. With that inform...

Lately there has been a lot of discussion about standing for the flag and the national anthem. Some feel it's disrespectful to sit in protest, some feel sitting in protest is the ultimate symbol of freedom. To me it's a statement of commitment. What are you committed to? It's pretty easy to look back on a long, fulfilling life and see what you were committed to. Maybe you're reflecting on your life, and you realize how strongly you were committed to helping the poor, or how fiercely committed you were to your family. Maybe you were committed to making as much money as you could. Maybe you were committed to donating all of that money to non-profit organizations before you die. Regardless of your commitment, it's much easier to see what was important to you in retrospect. But what do you do when you're a young kid, just out of high school or college? Is it really important to be committed to anything right now? It's hard enough making a commitment to meet...

It's easy to share about brands you love. The question is why aren't you sharing about your own company? I have never heard someone say it's because they hate their company. When I talk with B2B sales reps about social selling and how they are using social media today, I basically get two different answers: "I'm afraid to share something wrong or something that will make me look stupid." or "I want to share, but I don't have any content." Both of these issues are very real and a major hurdle for B2B sales reps today. I think Radi8 has come up with a really cool solution for both of these issues. If you're interested in being part of our next Radi8 Cohort, let me know . We will be kicking off our next pilot program at the end of April.

If you want to disrupt something meaningful, disrupt the damned enterprise sales cycle! Seriously, I have been living through the hell of enterprise sales for the last 5 years and there's one thing I just don't understand. Why does it take a year to get enterprise software approved and deployed? Maybe a year didn't really mean anything to an enterprise 30 years ago, but today a startup can put you out of business in a year... an economy can collapse in a year... a nation can dissolve into chaos in a year! We don't have time to wait around for you to get all your signatures. We don't have time for you to get your budgets in order. We don't have time to get IT approval. The world is moving too fast. Someone needs to make it faster and easier to get game-changing software into the enterprise. Is that someone going to be me? I sure am going to try and I hope you'll help me. Here's my plan: 1. Scale down the size of the solutions - One of the larges...

I’ve been working on a theory lately and it is manifesting itself as a startup company. This is usually how it goes for me… theory, test, discard. But sometimes the theory sticks around for a while. Read my article about Radi8 and the theory of content radiation.

Smart companies know that a stellar customer experience can be the way to turn someone from a customer into a brand advocate. This doesn’t mean however that you can get away with a subpar product. If your user experience (UX) is getting an “F,” it doesn’t matter how nice your support team is on the phone, you're going to have problems. Make UX an integral part of your customer experience (CX) if you want to build a deeper relationship with your customers. It’s time to get out the ax... Read the rest of my blog on insights.wired.com

If you are wondering why your competition is speeding past you while your product is more sophisticated and feature-rich, you might stop looking at your engineers and start chatting with your customers. Sometimes a shift in your customer experience can turn your product into the flavor-of-the-month.I was visiting with a friend who owns a landscape design company and we were talking about online review websites like Yelp. He has a five star rating on Yelp and does everything he can to maintain… Read the rest of my blog on insights.wired.com

Your customers are complaining that your product isn’t as cool as the competition. You feel the heat of your sales force breathing down your neck because they don’t like making excuses to customers about how it works, and your customer support team spends twice as much time apologizing than they do solving actual problems. Essentially, in your rush to engineer a great product and solve some very important problems, you’ve let your appearance get sloppy. It’s Not Your Product, It’s the Experience Read the rest of my article on Wired...

I usually only post business-type stuff on this blog, but I do have other hobbies and interests. One of my favorites is embarking on Motorcycle Adventures. I have a 2012 BMW F650GS and I like to hop on and disappear. I also have a KTM which I take to the desert to get my fill of rock and sand. One of the best aspects of a moto adventure is when you experience the point of no-return... the moment you realize you must persevere because you can't turn back. It's one of the most amazing feelings. It's scary and exciting, it takes focus and the ability to make clear decisions. That's really what it's all about, the ability to make a decision and not waver in the face of adversity. Well, I have a lot of other things to share about moto adventures, so I created a new web site dedicated completely to the topic: Moto Away [www.motoaway.com]. It's my safe place to share motorcycle adventures with anyone interested in reading. I hope you enjoy it. --Mash

No... but if done correctly, Marketing can be magical. When my kids were young we used to drive around town and take turns making up stories. At first it was pretty simple, a kid walks past a cave and he sees two red eyes. But after a while we started creating more intricate stories. We added tension and suspense. One day my son, who was about six at the time, made up a great story about a lion and a peacock. I was absolutely captured through to the ending... it was magical. A great story is magical. I've been in and around marketing for the better part of 20 years and the one thing I continue to stress is the importance of telling a great story. Yes, you can tell the story about features and benefits. You can tell the story of differentiation. You can tell the story of cost and value... But if you really want to see something magical, tell the story of integrity, prosperity, confidence, tension, suspense and values. Your product or service is much more than a fact-sheet. Your stor...

Check out my piece in UX Magazine on the difference between end-user and Administrator UX when designing for the enterprise: http://uxmag.com/articles/rethinking-enterprise-ux-in-the-age-of-consumerization --Mash

I have been reading through datasheets, websites, product literature and user guides for years. I'm a product guy and I like to pay attention to the details. You can tell a lot about a company by the words they choose, and the way they use them. When a company uses different words, with different capitalization, and different spelling, that's a sign of trouble. On the other hand, when I come across a website where the words are well chosen and consistent, there is an obvious attention to detail and it's easier to build trust and a relationship with that company... and I like that. Take a look at the words you use within your product and within your literature. Make sure you are consistent and the same words are used throughout your entire organization. Here are a few common words used in software today that companies often stumble upon: 1. E-mail, Email, or email - This is a pet peeve, especially going across product UI, datasheets and user guides. It doesn't real...

Happy to see my piece in WIRED this morning: http://www.wired.com/insights/2013/07/you-may-be-working-an-extra-day-a-week-and-loving-it/ --Mash

Well, it's time to announce the big update: FastPencil has been acquired by Courier Corp! It was a great ride, I had a lot of fun, and now I'm moving on to start another business. But in the meantime I've joined Accellion in Palo Alto as their Director, Product Experience, where I get to help design and engineer great solutions for secure mobile productivity. It's a nice shift to be in the enterprise cloud industry as opposed to consumer internet products. I will be writing again and sharing my ideas, so stay tuned... and though I don't have all the details of my new business fleshed-out just yet, I can tell you what it's called and you can start guessing: CORL8. Hopefully we will launch before you connect the dots :) --Mash

It seems the more time you spend dreaming up ideas for companies and products, the less time you have for family and friends... so I'm taking a short break from this blog—and dedicating more time to my loved ones. Believe me, this is a good thing. It's difficult to cut things out of your life, but it's like trimming a fruit tree, or weeding a garden—your efforts are well rewarded. And so it is, I'm signing off for now and will return when time permits... Hopefully, I'll have some great news to share when I do. --Mash

Apple introduced a fixed-layout feature for the iPad and iPhone that makes it possible to reproduce beautiful, full-page illustrated childrens books. For months they kept it secret while testing the new layouts. But now they've given us access to the format and we have started the process of making FastPencil compatible with these new full-bleed childrens books. Today, I'm happy to announce we've updated our system to support the new format on the Apple iPad for iBooks. There are a few extra steps necessary to get our default EPUB file ready for this format, but we can make the changes for you after publishing upon your request. If you have an illustrated childrens book that you would like to distribute through the iPad and the Apple iBookstore follow these steps and we can get your book uploaded in a snap: 1. Export each page in your book as a JPG image, no larger than 1476x1970pixels. Use JPG compression of 85. 2. Make sure your images are in order from first to ...

I've been helping people write books for years and I keep telling them how easy it is. But now that I've done it myself, I have to admit the process gets increasingly more and more difficult with every step. On a scale from 1-100 with 100 being impossibly difficult, this is how I rank every step in the process: Step One: Coming up with a book idea = 1 This step is so easy it's almost laughable. I talk with authors all the time who are afraid someone is going to steal their book idea. But having gone through the entire process, the idea is the easy part. Step Two: Outlining the idea = 20 Once you have the idea it's not that much harder to outline it. Step Three: Writing = 30 Writing is mostly about discipline. If you can force yourself to sit down and hammer on the keys you can get through this phase. Step Four: Editing = 50 It's a lot easier if you can get people to help out. But it also makes it harder. The more people who give you their opinion, the harder it is t...

Matt Cutts does this 30 day challenge and I like reading about his experiences and how it affects him. So this month I've decided to give it a try myself. He asked his readers to give him some ideas and there were some good ones on the list. I actually suggested he write a book, and of course I'd want him to use FastPencil.com but it's not for everyone. Tom Foremski just did it and I think it took him about 3 weeks. Wallace Baine did it and it took him two. But they are journalists with years of old articles and blog posts. It would be more difficult if you started with just an idea. But that would be a good challenge.

I had a chance to speak with the nice folks at KION about FastPencil and how writers are flocking to self-publishing during the economic downturn. Now that authors can choose print-on-demand and ebook distribution on the Kindle and iPad, publishing is actually cost-effective with almost no risk. Today you can sign up with FastPencil.com, import your manuscript or start a new book, click a few buttons and be a published author. Here's the snippet from the news: http://www.kionrightnow.com/global/story.asp?s=12591814