The past few weeks I’ve been working out of the Rose Tech Ventures Incubator and every Friday features a speaker during lunch. This past Friday co-founder Rick Web from The Barbarian Group came to to speak about the relationship between start-ups and digital marketing. His slides are available online

The talk was fast paced and informative. Rick gave a brief overview of the client work they focus on including several high profile clients – Apple and Fox. The discussion eventually evolved and turned towards how in the past they have worked with successful start-ups in various phases. Of the several successful start-ups mentioned, Brooklyn based Hello Health stuck out because I’d met the founder at SXSW this past year.

To illustrate the typical relationships with start-ups Rick had compiled an interesting line graph that depicted when start-ups generally hire a digital agency. The take away, the beginning stages when start-ups had a little bit of money and then the end stage where business is booming. There exists this middle lull which Rick made several speculations why start-ups chose not to contact a marketing specialist in that stage. Common thoughts are the start-ups are in sprint mode and not marketing focused, which arguably a company should never ignore their marketing.

To me what mattered most was the marketing for equity offer. Rick’s firm is approached by start-ups that want a full range of services from development to marketing. However, for those tech-entrepreneurs that boot-strap their start-up and build their own software (conceivably the hard part) and just need marketing help for launch The Barbarian Group is willing to do that portion for equity. Not a bad offer in the scheme of things. This concept is not new though in that I heard a similar offer from Duff & Partners at the AIGA Smart Models event last year. But if you are software / business focused like I am which I could spend my time formulating a marketing strategy however I should focus on running the company. And a little bit of equity share or risk share isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Arguably, it motivates the agency to help you succeed if they want to get their return on investment.

Ultimately I was impressed by the presentation and the energy Rick gave. The Barbarian Group definitely has a young and energetic energy about them that makes them very appealing once I get my software written.