#204 The Interplay of Content, Product, and Market in Startups with Cigdem Oztabak

0:00:02 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased to have with me Cigdem. She's joining me from Florida in the US. The way I like to do it, the best one to introduce someone is yourself. So, Cigdem, thank you for being with me on the show. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do? 

0:00:21 - Cigdem
Sure, thanks for having me, mehmet. I'm Cigdem Cigdem Oztabak, an entrepreneur and journalist with a focus on technology, fintech and product marketing, and I'm also like actively contributes as a startup mentor and judge in New York Hub incubation startup for early state startups incubation, and I ran my venture, perixco. And I'm an extraordinary ability marketing talent all one visa holder in the US, burnham, with master degree educated in Turkey, and I use my background in journalism as a member of the International Federation of Journalists to report on technology trends. Yeah, it's, I think it's more or less. 

0:01:16 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's good. Thank you for being here on the show today, Cigdem. Now, the way you know, because you mentioned your background and you know your journey, and we will focus our topic for today about you know startups, as I'm doing usually, so let's start with you know how to align and this is something very important, I believe the content, the product and market for startups, and this is from the experience from the other startup that you have worked with. 

0:01:50 - Cigdem
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And yeah, aligning content, product and like market is akin to fitting the pieces of like puzzle together, and it begins with a deep understanding of the target audience in the beginning and their preferences, like pain points and what they value in a product right, and this understanding should inform the design and the future of products. Parallel is crucial to conduct market research to understand the competitive landscape, potential opportunities and also like trends, and the content is then tailored to articulate the products where you proposition effectively and position it optimally in the market context. And I can say I work with startups to help them like synthesize these all components into a cohesive like strategy. 

0:02:59 - Mehmet
That's great to hear, and this is will lead me to the second question now. Part of the things that startups need to do sometime is, you know, of course, marketing strategies and PR strategies, and I was discussing on another episode with another marketing expert that some of the startup founders they find that, you know, they don't know much about marketing or maybe they don't give enough. You know attention to the marketing and just you know again from your experience because you work with technology startups and you have, you know, based on my research that I did, like you have also, like, some banking background. So how do you tailor the marketing and PR strategies to fit specific industries? So for you say, okay, these guys are in FinTech, so this is how they should do. These guys are, let's say, in health tech, this is what they should do. So how you can tailor these strategies and industries? 

0:04:02 - Cigdem
Yeah, it's really good question because it's really important. 

like each industry has its unique like characteristics, like language and audience expectations, and I agree between a particular in US, a lot of like startup founders coming from like technical backgrounds right and like I'm still learning, like how we can tell our stories, like as a founder, is our products, as our technology, our team, like how we can define our strategies or our products and those like tailoring marketing and PR strategies to fit specific industries is the most. For example, like in the technology sector, it's crucial to communicate innovation, expertise and like forward thinking in mindset. In contrast, banking and FinTech FinTech requires like conveying, like stability, security and like trust, worthiness and like easy process at the same time. 

0:05:17 - Mehmet
So it's important to tailor the message based on Okay, what do you think about? Let me ask it this way what do you think about? Also the importance of not exaggerating the lingos over there. So just to make it also simple to the customer or the user. 

0:05:33 - Cigdem
Yeah, it's. It's crucial to like speak with customers, like with their language and the secret lines in like extensive industry research and familiarizing oneself with industry trends and craft Crafting messages that resonate with the specific audience. And if you have a like is a, for example, one more. One more is a like really like it's famous FinTech in US and focusing like is young population Basically and their language, their FinTech, but their language is like it's that resonate with the specific young audience, like PayPal. Paypal is the like. It's the like focusing like professionals and maybe like over the 45 years old as well, and like small businesses and mostly like more serious language like it's like they're using like stability security. 

It's like that. Yeah, that's why I'm talking about. The secret lies in extensive industry research and familiarizing oneself with industry trends and crafting messages that resonate with the like specific audience. And it's important to define in the beginning, like who is your specific audience? Try to be specific as you can. 

0:07:13 - Mehmet
That's 100 percent correct. We repeated this on the show a couple of times now. It's not only about the idea, it's also about to find your ideal customer, their personas, and based on this you can tailor your messaging better. I would say I think, as you said, market research would shed a lot of light on that. Now working because you are a judge, also in the incubators, so you work with a lot of these startups, so usually what challenges have you encountered in aligning content, product market and how you overcome them? 

0:07:55 - Cigdem
Yeah, I like to use this term like content product market fit, because if you need your product market fit, also you need content product market fit, because you are using words if you want to talk about your product to your audiences. The challenges aligning content product market is often rooted in maintaining consistency. Startups evolve, so their products and market positioning, which could lead to inconsistencies in the message if not carefully managed. And this can be over time by creating a flexible and dynamic strategy that is regularly, I can say, like revisited and revised, based on performance metrics and feedback and change in the business environment. And it's crucial, like it's that challenge, because you need to choose your messaging and your brand messaging, your product messaging when you will start to talk about your products, because you have to be consistency on this. You can change like it's today I'm going to say that, tomorrow I'm going to talking about this and you need like really, really good strategy on that. 

The content strategy is crucial and because you need, like every stage on your product journey, the contents If you are going to some events and if you have a speech, if you are just brand messaging, create awareness like advertising messaging, advertising wordings, and you need content. Content is not just SEO and full strategy and also marketing and advertising. Like depends on, like how you are like talking about your product, like consistency. If you can't succeed like this consistency and yeah, it's really hard and it will be a challenge for you- so this is very good point. 

0:10:20 - Mehmet
So how to make this focus into communication, because it's all about the communication and the language that they use. So what if you can tell us the key components of successful communication for an early-stage startup? 

0:10:34 - Cigdem
Yeah, I can talk about a little bit on this area because also, I'm working on basically like hardworking on a book project recently and I'm trying to define like communication strategies, like tips and tricks for early-stage startup founders. And an early-stage startup needs a communication strategy that effectively like builds brand awareness and credibility in the beginning. The founder and startup nowadays in founders and startups like really like it's together, it's like super symbiotic relationship. The key components of such a strategy include a clear and like compelling brand message. Consistency in communication across all touchpoints. Like is that you need to talk about your product, your process, your team, yourself, your founder journey. Like every stage is too important to communicate with your specific audience. 

Yeah, consistency in communication across all touchpoints. A true understanding of target audiences' needs and preferences. And choosing the most effective channels to reach the audience. Like where is your audience? That's I know it's like sounds too cliche, but it's crucial. Don't make like is yeah, I'm gonna be on Twitter. I'm gonna be on like LinkedIn. I'm gonna also like in Instagram is. Don't do that like. Focus on like it's one channel to reach your audience. 

0:12:25 - Mehmet
And I think you would agree with me also that they need to build their kind of thought leadership over there so they can get the trust of their audience right. 

0:12:34 - Cigdem
Exactly, yeah, exactly, it's too important. 

0:12:38 - Mehmet
So now they are busy by nature, these founders, right. So, especially if they are still starting as a small team, so maybe it's a CEO and CTO or sometime. The other day I interviewed someone who's the CEO and CTO at the same time. So how much time they need to put on this and, like you mentioned some of the strategies, but what like other activities they should be doing to have this thought leadership? So when I see, for example, mr X or Mr Y, I'll say, okay, these guys, they always speak about this, they are up to something right. So how much time they have to take for these activities in your opinion? 

0:13:27 - Cigdem
Yeah, I think it's like significant time. They need to take time and sit and it's like daily or I don't know it's weekly and plan. It's needs really like make a plan, and they need to do that, especially like when you're in early stage and you should do that. Maybe if you can pass the seed and like it's this over the seed round, and maybe you can hire like advocates, like developer advocates, like brand advocates and they're like talking about consistency, like as a product, for example, like let me give a good example and open AI. Open AI has a like developer relationship managers, like they are hiring developer advocates for the product and these people are talking about consistency consistently. Like it's what is the development recent on open AI and to chat, gpt or what is their era and they are talking about and they have a huge audience in, for example, on Twitter. 

They just like an influencer, but I don't want to say influencer because, as a word, influencer like it's a little bit dirty and yeah, they're just advocate, like it's they can talk about and they have a technical background. Also, they can like as a good reading skills and like it's communication skills as well, and early stage startup funders and like if, if I don't know if they can do like hire someone for this or not. Like you should do by yourself. Sit and take your time and significant time to tell about yourself, your career, your back, because people are people, wants to listen. People like taking attention, like what are you doing on your product and they're getting inspired also, and you should like sit and talk about your product, product developments, like every stage, about your team, like it's about your funding story. Funding stories is like everything it's good to create awareness, like organically 100% with you on that. 

0:16:04 - Mehmet
But just to add something regarding the influencer term. So, matter of fact, you know, because I've been in tech for more than 20 years actually it was not called influencer, but it's exactly what you describe. So in B2B usually some vendors, they got it right and what they started to do, if you think about it, they did these yearly gatherings, like these yearly big events where they used to invite their customers and you know partners to their own conference, right, and then later on this actually started. At that time there was no Twitter and you know these things. So there was like the forums. Maybe it was appearing at the end of beginning of 90, sorry, end of 90s, beginning of 2000. So there were, you know, the forums where people they would be advocating for these technologies and actually something was always there. Now, what I started to see after in the B2C, you know, we start to see the influencers and I agree with you, like when you say influencers, not always you have the best image, not all of them. Of course, we cannot generalize. 

But yeah now I start to see something. Recently I spot a couple of people on LinkedIn. Their title is tech influencer or tech fluensers. 

So it seems that it's something we're going to see a lot. Of course, people might have a lot of questions regarding the authenticity and all this. But yeah, and again, if you think about it and this I'm saying to the audience, by the way like in the tech world, you know, it's kind of having a voice there, like things like you know peer insights of Gartner, I think there's a lot of sites where you know the vendors, you know they put their products there and then people put reviews. So it's kind of the same thing and that's very important in the early stages, because I think you would agree with me, chisela, I'm like you need to get your early adopters big time champions and then you know they will spread, you know, your product across. So this is the way I've seen it. Now, exactly. 

But you know, and this is what will lead me to the question Sometimes founders and unfortunately, it's not because they wanted to do it on purpose- but they do mistakes and they do mistakes in their storytelling and product marketing. So what you have seen and you know how you can spot some light on this issue and how it can be avoided. 

0:18:53 - Cigdem
Yeah, it's a good question because it's founders often and my observation, some founders often make the mistake of focusing too much on their products features and not enough on how it benefits the user, and this can lead to disconnect with the audience. 

Right, and another common mistake and that I am observing is neglecting an unified brand message, leading to inconsistent communication. That I say before and like highlighting before it's it's crucial and also this can be avoided by always keeping the user's perspective central to the storytelling and ensuring consistent, consistent branding across all communication channels and touchpoints. And they avoid like, define also do like like how, how they sell, how will they sell their product and what is the like. It's the like B2B or B2C like. It's how much like, what is your like? It's like the model of the like, income right for the product and, yeah, it's the but the crucial one in like, and this can lead to disconnect with the audience. I'm thinking like, like focusing too much on their products features and not enough on how it benefits the user. You should define to benefits and the conditions like how will users will use your product, how, how will they buy your? 

0:20:49 - Mehmet
100% and you know, again, I mentioned this before, but the way I am trying to do it is, the more I get experts like yourself to talk about it. So I believe in repeating something will, will, will, will, will. You know, get this to the point that everyone should know about it. It should be very obvious but, as you said, and the reason behind it is a little bit psychological, because everyone, even even myself, I could say, hey, like I invented this pen and it's the best that ever, because it has this cover and you know, while I'm not discussing, you know why it's good for the customer. And advice, as you said, they should not focus on the features. They should be focusing on, of course, how it's helping them. 

Is it like reducing cost? Is it like reducing the time to do something? Or maybe it's adding fun to them, like there's nothing wrong that your product is adding. You know it has like not non tangible in terms of money or time, so sometimes it's just as entertainment product. Think about it. And I would add also I think you'd agree with me the customer journey, like tell him or her, like you know, you are here today and this is where you will be if you get my product right and run them into this journey so they would get a better idea. Because I go back to take if I and the best one who did it ever I give always the credit is Steve Jobs, because he was always mentioning in you know, like no one would talk about the Baker Hurts and you know the, how many Ram you have you need to sell. You know your idea about. You know it's like about value, for for him it was something much bigger than that. But again, I advise everyone to watch that video where he was talking about that part. 

Now, as mentor for startup acceleration in a man what do you believe are the most critical factors for success in entrepreneurship, because I'm sure you have seen a lot of them. 

0:22:51 - Cigdem
Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah, it's like in years and years I can see, and also like my previous experiences, like with my startups, in resilience and in early stage startups is crucial, like the most critical factors for entrepreneur entrepreneurial success are a clear and compelling vision and in the beginning, and you need to like, carry your vision to the team, to the investors, to the customers, like it's always you need to protect, but the ability to adapt a changing like certain standards and resilience in the face of a lot of challenges yeah, yeah, it's, it's crucial. 

And, of course, like it's a true understanding of the target market. And these elements help entrepreneurs like stay focused, make informed decisions and like maintain momentum even in tough times, right? And you will get like a lot of tough times and with your investors, with your team players and like, like with everyone and with products, with technology, with competitors, like, and it's it's crucial Resilience in in the phase of challenges. 

0:24:29 - Mehmet
I love this word, resilience. Thank you for bringing it, because resilience it summarized all the you know, hurdles and the challenges and you need to be strong to you know and you cover it all actually like whether it's the product itself Maybe you're co-founders, or maybe the people you would work with on a today, maybe it's the investors, and this is why I always you know they asked me about my opinion in although, like, I never started, but I studied a lot of startups. 

You know, if you don't need to raise money, don't you don't need you don't need, you know, to be under the stress of the investors because it it really turns, but I work for startups as an employee and I can understand, you know, when, when Founders and you know everyone who works for them how they can be this stress and they would need this resiliency. Now I think another topic which important and I would love to hear you know from you to them About you know, gender equality within the entrepreneurial space, and I think this is something I we never, you know, although, like I had, like, a lot of guests, but you know, I didn't have the chance to ask, so it's good like you are covering it with you today. So how do you approach it and what initiatives are you involved in order to promote it? 

0:25:46 - Cigdem
Yeah, I believe in like creating opportunities for female entrepreneurs for and like fostering an inclusive and supportive environment. And yeah, I'm actively involved in several initiatives they met like promoting female entrepreneurship and like Brightening the again the gender gap in this field. I am sometimes like mentoring, like free to like female entrepreneurs and I'm involved like couple of like initiates is that we are donating like if they need like some educational, like camps and like they need like some carrier advice or if they like facing some challenges, and like we are talking with them. And Neo hop is like it's really like they are taking responsibility on this and we are meeting like with female founders and like Try to like create opportunities for them. 

And yeah, it's, it's gender equality in the entrepreneurial space is an issue close to my heart. I can say and oh, I'm seeing in US, for example, like if you want apply to accelerators in US and they really like support, they are really supporting Female entrepreneurs and they are described like is, if you like, underrepresented, just let us know. And being woman, like it's that kind of thing in US like underrepresented and we need to crash on this, I think. 

0:27:39 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's very good and I agree with you, we need, we need to have these inclusions Across the board here. I can say it slowly but steadily, we started to see some good. I can say we are seeing good number of co-founders here in Dubai and the UE in general, and this is supported by, you know, the ecosystem, the government and everything, which is very good. But, yeah, I wish to see more also as well, because I believe also like this is will add value and you know this is like also something close to my heart because I'm a big believer in, you know, equality in general and inclusion in general and, of course, like gender equality. 

Now, she never go. So you, you, you kind of a journalist, right, so you have your own podcast and you know you write to to and you on the CNN too. So I Think you guys are lucky than even us people in tech, so maybe you see some trends that we don't see. Can you tell us more? Like what? What are you seeing in? Especially? You are close also to, you know, the startup incubators and hops. So what are the major, major trends that you are supporting nowadays? 

0:28:50 - Cigdem
Yeah, and like major of trends. Recently I noticed it like future of work Concept and I'm involved like is a angel investment group of two in from Chicago and we are focusing like future of work and Future of work concepts and like it's them. You know, it's the Unconsistency like a lot of event effective with our lives and like a lot of Right it's the solution is coming in this era. Also, I like I can say like I see significant Trans-emerging, such as the like increasing importance of the data privacy and security, but it's complicated because it's at the same time like the AI and machine learning, like it's really like developing super fast and it's really hard to protect your privacy and your data. And I don't know is let's see, I'm really curious about like its development, about data privacy and security era and the rise of like no question, ai and machine learning as powerful tools for like personalization and automation and Productivity as well, like people are going like really productivity way. 

And yeah, in this point is I can, I Can say like I read a book from Other Harari you all Harari like yeah yeah, homo Deus and yeah, highly recommended, you can read about again and you can like reread again in this Field and you can feel like, oh yeah, actually we are in the this era right now and yeah, I think like more or less, like I'm noticing can, I'm seeing significant trans emerging, like that kind of like Peelers. 

0:31:11 - Mehmet
Yeah, actually I agree with you on the book, and there's another book called Abundance by Peter DeMandes and Stephen Kaltkeler, and it's highly advisable because also, they discuss how technology, actually, you know, and even they have the singularity concept and all this, which I agree because with what we start to see with the AI, now we are close to something and really you touch based on it, which is future of work, because in future of work it's not about if we're gonna go to office or not, it's not about this. 

0:31:42 - Cigdem
Exactly. 

0:31:43 - Mehmet
It's about, like, what kind of work we will be doing in the future, which I'm very like positive, I'm very optimistic, I would say, about that one. She said where people can find more about you and your company. 

0:31:57 - Cigdem
I think you're yeah, I can see the link, but if they want to know more, yeah, I'm on LinkedIn and, like you can like directly message me and also using Twitter for my works, for my companies, and like sharing some industry insight. And also you can find me on Twitter with my name. And yeah, perexco it's my venture. I'm trying to help the technology startups, founders and like leaders to their marketing and PR strategies content strategies as well, and we are working with them like on like opinion talk, leadership as well, and like publishing on global like business quality and top tier media some articles about them, or sometimes like they're writing articles and we are helping with them. And yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn for business and Twitter and happy to chat with you if you are reaching out me. 

0:33:12 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's great. Thank you very much. Now I have a very final question I have to ask Is there anything you wished I would ask you and how you would answer it? 

0:33:24 - Cigdem
Excuse me. 

0:33:26 - Mehmet
Is there any question you wished that I had asked you and how you would answer it? 

0:33:31 - Cigdem
Okay, how can I say I love is like. That kind of question is like I can ask for, like it's, yeah, it's, maybe what is your plan when you like it's? Stop the work or what do you want? Contribute, yeah go ahead. 

0:33:52 - Mehmet
You can answer that. 

0:33:54 - Cigdem
Yeah, I decided recently become a like wide live photographer, maybe like after my fifties or sixties, when I like stop to like. It's constantly working in this era. I want to be a wide live photographer and I want to travel to like natural parks and Alaska, galapagos and yeah nice. 

Yeah, it's nice to like put the life purpose by the way in your life and life journey and if you're a founder and if you are an entrepreneur and like us, and it's important to stick on your plan also, you need to be enjoy like life and if you like is nature is the best way to meditation and communicate with other species. It's always mesmerizing me. 

0:34:56 - Mehmet
Yeah, I want to do that 100% that I wish you could do it like full time. I would say that's really good to hear and, you know, one of the things that I always encourage people to find also like something they love and aim for it, which is amazing what you have done. Thank you very much for your time today to them. Like I really enjoyed the conversation and the way I end my episodes. As usual, I asked the audience please let me know your opinion, ask me any question. If you have questions to them, you can actually reach out to her. I can pass it to her also as well. And again, if you have also any feedback on the show in general, I would love to hear it, because I'm always seeking to be in the better place and taking the show to a better place. And if you are interested to be a guest also, don't be shy. Reach out to me. We can discuss it and we can see how we can arrange for it. 

Time zone is not a issue for me. I have people from the West Coast in the US which are minus 12 hours from me, and I have people in New Zealand who are plus, I think, 10 or 11 hours from me. I'm in the middle of the world. So that's good. So don't be shy, you can always reach out and I hope you enjoyed and we'll meet again next episode. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. 

0:36:15 - Cigdem
Thank you. 

Transcribed byhttps://hello.podium.page/?via=mehmet