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Fostering Community & Entrepreneurship With AgileZenAlex GibsonMarketing@agibson22#RallyON2012

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Good businesses generate missions to drive their profits. Great businesses generate profits to drive their missions.

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We started with community engagement as a core value of our organization and our team. A big reason I joined the AgileZen team was the teams desire to get better at engaging our constituents.

As such, we started working with students, entrepreneurs, open-source, and non-profit communities.

This support happened organically. In the case of each of these groups, the impetus on providing support was done so via an outside influence. 3

In the case of supporting students, for example, the Collegiate Social Impact Initiatives club at the University of Colorado reached out to Jean Tabaka at Rally here in Boulder. They were interested in learning more about lean principles and how to apply them to their mission as an organization.4

When Jean met with the students, she saw a great opportunity for AgileZen to get involved and help the organization.

Our software platform fit perfectly with what they were trying to accomplish:- the ability to collaborate as a group- following well-developed lean and kanban principles- delivery over the web for easy on-ramping and deployment

We love getting our product in to the hands of groups one step outside our generally-focused market vertical. In other words, a great majority of our customer base is, obviously, software developers and engineers. Getting AgileZen used more horizontally gives us great feedback about how to build a better product.6

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One of the challenges of the Raleigh office is building a community from scratch around the Rally and AgileZen names.

In Boulder, Rally as an organization is exceptionally well respected and integrated in to the community, including deep ties to the University of Colorado.

I big part of what I do is not only expanding the AgileZen and Rally brand names locally, but deepening relationships within relevant communities.8

Were fortunate in the Triangle to be surrounded by three world-class institutions, UNC, Duke, and North Carolina State.

Courtney, our new design contractor, is a graduate of the NC State design school. We identified her as a potential candidate by reaching out to the University career services center.9

Discounts for do-gooders.

Since the beginning of AgileZen, weve been able to offer discounts for do-gooders.

This is something that we have believed we could do from the very beginning. Even when AgileZen was a poor, unfunded startup, the founders gave free upgraded accounts to those who used the product for good.10

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In the case of the Susan G Komen Foundation and the Boys & Girls Clubs, we were able to give free upgraded access so that their constituents could work with our product to keep building their amazing services.12

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In the Triangle, were surrounded by entrepreneurs as well as students. You have all of these amazing companies and all of them come together to form this fantastic startup community we have in the Triangle.

The Raleigh office itself was formed by Rallys acquisition of 6th Sense Analytics, a Raleigh-based startup. AgileZen as well was a Rally acquisition, and the founders chose the Raleigh office as the landing pad for building the product and the team.

Three members of the AgileZen team joined Rally via these direct acquisitions of their startups. Two others of us left startups to be a part of the team.

Fostering entrepreneurship is obviously something that is close to each of our personal missions. As such, our support of entrepreneurs happened organically.

Along with the alignment of our personal missions, many of our customers are startups and entrepreneurs as well.15

We started hearing from the startup community about their usage of AgileZen.

This is an example of a post written by an entrepreneur who describes his usage of Zen in getting his startup off the ground.

Knowing our customer base and seeing these types of conversations popping up, we realized that we needed to go deeper in to the community.17

We sponsored Startup Madness a bracket-style startup competition pitting teams of college entrepreneurs against one another. Teams competed for $10K in prize money and additional in-kind prizes. We gave free upgraded product licenses to each of the teams, and our own Niki Kohari was one of the MCs of the event.18

We were also fortunate enough to sponsor Startup Weekend in the Triangle. Over 300 participants came together to launch new companies over the course of one weekend one 54 hour period.

This is the perfect type of event to participate in and sponsor as AgileZen. Our entire product is built to help teams collaborate and get things done efficiently and quickly. This is exactly what Startup Weekend is about.19

Sponsoring these events is about more than just writing a check and getting our logo on a few banners and a press guide.20

Being a part of these events is a chance to get involved with the communities we serve. 21

Contractually-Obligated Mention of ROI

Now, because I am a marketer, I am contractually-obligated to mention the ROI of doing all of this.22

influence marketingFocusing on key types of individuals rather than the target market as a whole.

For us, it comes down to Influence Marketing: Focusing on key types of individuals rather than the target market as a whole.

Influencers have a great impact on your potential customer base hence why 23

Influencers have a great impact on your potential customer base hence why Nike puts Lebron in all of its advertising.24

business leaderspoliticiansacademicsjournalistsnetworkerscelebrities

Influencers include:Business leadersPoliticians, like Barack ObamaAcademicsJournalists, like Kara SwisherNetworkersCelebrities, like Lady Gaga

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This is an example of the some of the organic conversations that have occurred due to our community engagement.

This type of interaction and traffic is not something we forced, but a side effect of being involved with these events and the people at them.26

The proverbial holy grail of marketing in the new media era is being a part of the conversation.

You cant be a part of a conversation or a community by throwing money at advertising.

You cant be a part of the community with Google Adwords or display banner ads.

You can only be a part of a conversation and the community by joining in to the conversation.27

Each of these people is an influencer in our market, along with being our target customer base, and we got them talking.28

All of this comes down to two questions:32

Whats the valueof giving back?

Whats the value of giving back?33

Whats the valueof happy employees?

Whats the value of happy employees?

If you build an organization and a team with a heavy focus on community engagement, it galvanizes everyone involved.34