What makes a partnership between early-stage startups and established media outlets actually work? What does it take and, most of all, what are the ingredients to the secret sauce?
We joined forces with Facebook Deutschland to create a Whitepaper on successful media innovation fueled by media-tech startups. At the NMA we created a unique formula for media houses and startups to collaborate. It is called Easy Testing. In this sheltered environment, both the media outlet and the involved startup can improve the product together. It is a win-win situation: Media organizations receive innovative input, cost-effective and easy to implement products diminishing their pain points whereas startups get to test and polish their product with strategic partners that potentially become clients in the end. We are happy to share our experience of five years of Easy Testing with you.
Jesper Doub, Director News Partnership Facebook:
“Open-minded and interested media companies wanted contact startups but this was often hard to find. The NMA has turned into one of the few international players facilitating the cooperation between the established players seeking new inspiration and enthusiastic new entrepreneurs at scale. [...] We are very happy to support this work as a contribution to successful change within media companies.”
The good, the bad and the ugly
In the Whitepaper we share the good, the bad and the ugly of five years of Easy Testing. We enable and empower the readers to learn from success stories as well as from mistakes. We subsumed struggles to 12 factors of failure and provide easy to implement checklists for successful Easy Testing for all stakeholders – startups and corporates.
We highlighted our top three learnings for you:
Good communication is the key to everything
We call it Pre-Easy Testing: startups take part in NMA events like internal First Look - investors and startups (e-)meet for the first time, Open House - startups get invited to pitch at the media houses, Road Show - startups visit many media houses in different cities, Dealflow Session as well as public Media Match, Virtual Media Match, innopitch and OMR Master Class to pitch their product. If they nail it and a company gets interested, they agree on doing a workshop on the product together. If this is successful the Easy Testing project can be launched.
Here, the feedback circles and communication have to follow stringent timing and strict patterns. One has to bear in mind that startups and corporates work at different speeds. The priorities and the ownerships have to be clear as well as the expectations from both ends.
Product or prototype?
The startup needs to pinpoint if it can deliver a product or just a prototype. Most corporations prefer to spend their limited resources on polishing the product with the startup instead of taking on the lengthy process of working on the prototype. In our experience, corporates with their own innovation units - also known as Labs - are more willing to do more experimental testing. But of course the ideal way is to have a product ready.
In the opinion of Managing Partner Nico Lumma both sides profit from Easy Testing.
Quick networking is key
As a startup you got everything but time. There is always a crucial runway and budget planning to meet, spendings and resources can shift due to unprecedented events. Therefore, it is so important to receive quick introductions to relevant key players with whom projects can be implemented.
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To sum it all up: you have to focus on clear roles, communication, set timelines and good networking to move things forward. But most of all, as a startup you always have to sell painkillers instead of vitamins.
Get your Whitepaper now!
We hope our sneak peek got you curious if you would like to dig deeper into Easy Testing download our Whitepater HERE.
Stay tuned for our Live-Lunch Series encompassing a Q&A with Easy Testing couples of corporate and startup. SIGN UP now for the upcoming editions HERE. The sessions scheduled:VRM & Contentflow - November 5th - 1.30-2.00 CET
pd next im Verbund der Mediengruppe Pressedruck & Tebeox - November 10th 1.00-1.30 CET
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