Startups

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  Fast Company

• BlueBeat’s Hank Risan: That’s Not the Beatles, It’s a ‘Virtual Cover Band’

  Tyler Gray

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:30 pm

  If you thought that was AC/DC, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and The Beatles you streamed for free or downloaded this week for $.25 from BlueBeat.com, it’s an understandable error. The site’s owner Hank Risan tells FastCompany his catalog of music doesn’t include tracks by the original artists, who, of course, own the publishing rights to their music (many have long resisted posting their music for sale online). His tunes aren’t technically Beatles tracks at all but, rather, "psycho-acoustic simulations" of Beatles songs performed and broadcast on BlueBeat and made available for download.

• Mon Dieu! Apple Store Coming the Louvre

  Cliff Kuang

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:30 pm

  There's a price for everything, even in the Louvre: Tomorrow, Apple will be opening up their very first Parisian Apple Store, and it'll sit in the concourse right below I.M. Pei's glass pyramid. According to Bloomberg, this'll be Apple's 277th store, worldwide. It's set to be slightly smaller than the one on Oxford Circus in London. But it's not tiny: The bilevel store will employ 150 people. You can expect the place to be mobbed. The Louvre concourse is one of the most heavily trafficked places in Paris. It links all of the wings of the Louvre, and visitors to the museum have to pass by…

• Winners Announced in the 2009 World Architecture Festival

  Cliff Kuang

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

• Streaming Video? Forget Myka or Roku and Get Windows 7

  Chris Dannen

  6 Nov 2009 | 2:45 pm

  We already know Netflix users are begging for easier ways to get streaming video to their TVs--Xbox, PS3, Roku, and Blu-ray players apparently aren't simple enough solutions. Instead, more and more people watch TV and film on their computers while fuming because they can't easily get all that content--Hulu, Netflix, Amazon--in one place. The Myka ION aims to bridge that gap as the first gizmo to stream both Hulu and Boxee to big screens (in addition to running full-fledged PC apps, which let you add other streaming services). But it's not cheap. At $379 (more if you add on a wireless card and…

• Lamp Powered by Phone Lines Is a Sneaky Way to Get Around Energy Costs

  Ariel Schwartz

  6 Nov 2009 | 2:30 pm

  Is hooking up electronics to a phone jack unethical? Maybe, but the RJ11 lamp can at least save some cash. The lamp, which features 8 LED bulbs, gets power from your phone socket instead of the grid or a USB port. It's a sneaky way to skirt around power meters, but it does siphon cash from the local telco. Still, the RJ11 does bring a new use to increasingly-abandoned landline jacks. And while the lamp may be incredibly ugly, the $4.69 product is a worthwhile science experiment at the very least. Before trying to hook up all your electronics to the phone line, think twice: the voltage that…

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  VentureBeat

• Windows 7 sells 234% more copies than Vista

  Anthony Ha

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:58 pm

  It looks like all the positive buzz round Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system paid off in sales. Windows 7 sold 234 percent more copies during its first few days on the market than Vista did during the same period of its release, according to research by the NPD Group. NPD’s data covers the week of Oct. 18 to 24. Windows 7 only launched on the 22nd, but these numbers also include pre-sales from the days before. While the reviews weren’t universally positive, Windows 7 was seen as a huge improvement on Vista, the operating system so hated that it became a punchline of…

• Announcing DiscoveryBeat: an event on how to get your apps noticed in an age of noise

  Dean Takahashi

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:39 pm

  VentureBeat is throwing a new mini-conference and networking event, DiscoveryBeat. DiscoveryBeat addresses one of the biggest conundrums for Silicon Valley’s most dynamic startups and developers: How to get your social game or mobile application noticed in an age of noise? It will be held in the afternoon of Dec. 8 at the Automattic Lounge on Pier 38 in San Francisco, a hip location with an ocean view. We’ll discuss the “secret recipe” for getting discovered in an age when getting discovered can mean huge viral growth and the difference between profound success or…

• ClickFuel provides internet tools to small businesses

  Cody Barbierri

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:34 pm

  As a web generation, when we’re looking for a dentist, plumber, or other small business, our first instinct is to go online when we need these services. Sure, there’s Yellow Pages that can find a name, number and address, but as consumers we are used to more and these small businesses usually lack a formal online presence. However, there are several companies that have emerged with the tools to help. ClickFuel, a Boston startup that designs, manages and tracks marketing campaigns, has recently launched a set of Internet marketing tools designed to help small businesses to promote…

• MSN changes the butterfly

  Paul Boutin

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:33 pm

  MSN’s new home page, which you can see at preview.msn.com, is the first one that doesn’t look like it was designed by Microsoft. The new page has the same cheery look and feel as the Bing search box that perches at its top, waiting to grab your next search away from Google. The MSN butterfly logo has been redesigned to match the new look. It’s pretty, but I doubt many users will notice the change. It still pushes the NBC peacock button in my brain, and I’m sure I’m far from alone. The big surprise is the new design of the “verticals” as they’re…

• Smart Meter maker Landis+Gyr lands $100M for epic rollout

  Camille Ricketts

  6 Nov 2009 | 2:48 pm

  Last week’s announcement of $3.4 billion in stimulus funds for utilities was big news for smart meter makers. Almost every recipient of the money said they would be using it to add millions of advanced meters to their coverage areas. Now major meter maker Landis+Gyr has proved that the government grants will stimulate private investing in the sector, raising a new $100 million from its current backers. The Swiss company says it will use the funds for a fast and dramatic deployment of smart meters, and not just in the U.S. — it will look at rolling out its hardware in Asia,…

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  Inc.com

• The Truth about Cyber Monday; Tour the Gawker Offices

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:02 am

  Tour a Start-up's Office: The Gawker edition. Gawker Media, the parent company behind blogs like Valleywag and io9, has been experiencing a growth spurt of 40 percent year-over-year. Now Silicon Alley Insider takes us inside CEO Nick Denton's "steampunk" headquarters in downtown New York as part of its new tour a startup photo feature. What should you expect from inside the belly of the blogging beast?: A couch straight out of the Matrix, a roof deck for courting advertisers, the requisite glass-walled conference room, and a "comfortingly familiar" library-like atmosphere to soothe recent…

• Robots in Medicine

  5 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

  According to the Telegraph, researchers have designed the world's smallest motor, allowing a robot submarine the width of two human hairs to potentially enter a stroke victim's bloodstream and travel to sensitive parts of the body like the brain. A spokesperson from the Institute of Physics says this device could "save lives by reaching parts of the body, like a stroke-damaged cranial artery, that (other instruments) have previously been unable to reach ." If robots are able to enter patient's bodies, what else could they potentially treat years from now? My good buddy, Jim Tulenko, has been…

• Biz Lessons from the Poker Table; Google's New Idea

  5 Nov 2009 | 3:19 am

  Yanks win, but few spoils for Bronx businesses. Congratulations to the New York Yankees, for winning (yet another) World Series championship. But while the team celebrates, owners of the struggling small businesses whose shops flank the new $1.5 billion House that Steinbrenner Built, are feeling more like the defeated Phillies. As the New York Times reported earlier this week, despite the Bronx Bombers' winning season, sales at local businesses were down significantly from previous years. New traffic patterns around the stadium are one reason for the drop, but some vendors blame the team's…

• Advertisement:

  5 Nov 2009 | 3:19 am

• The Bill In Congress To Censor Fraud Sites

  4 Nov 2009 | 11:00 pm

  It sounds like a well-intentioned bill. The U.S. House of Representatives has a piece of legislation making its way through (it passed the Financial Services Committee this week) that would make Internet Service Providers subject to fines for not blocking fraudulent web sites. Specifically, they are targeting bogus financial scams. Well, who wouldn't want those kinds of sites blocked (besides the criminals committing actual scams)? Once again, Washington looks like it is still living in the time of Washington. Here's why this is a bad idea: - When sites are blocked, it is inevitable that some…

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  Startup Nation

• StartupNation - Franchise Myths

  26 Oct 2009 | 12:00 am

  Rick Bowman of Imprint In Time talks with StartupNation's Rich Sloan about common myths people buy into when considering becoming a franchise owner.

• StartupNation - Using Seduction in Business Situations

  11 Oct 2009 | 12:00 am

  Hear Manhattan-based seduction coach, Arden Leigh, share her high-sizzle insights about how “seduction” has a place in business situations.

• StartupNation - Avoid These 5 Classic Triggers of an IRS Audit

  31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm

  Learn about 5 common ingredients in your tax filling that put you on the radar at the IRS.

• StartupNation - Success Strategies from the Masters (Part Three)

  4 Sep 2009 | 12:00 am

  Tune in to hear success strategies from StartupNation's own Rich Sloan and from best-selling author, Cynthia Shapiro.

• StartupNation - Success Strategies from the Masters (Part Two)

  31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm

  Kendra Todd, winner of The Apprentice, joins Rich Sloan to share her wisdom on how to become more successful than you’ve ever been before – even in these tough times.

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  Entrepreneur

• Cash Shy? Try Bootstrapping

  4 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

  Try these tips for building a successful business with little capital.

• The Irony of the Safe Bet

  4 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

  Michael Kahan became a successful entrepreneur after walking away from a 10-year career on Wall Street.

• Offers in Compromise

  3 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

  If you're in dire straights, there may be help for you yet.

• Save Money by Renegotiating Your Lease

  2 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

  Carefully consider the economic benefits to reach a win-win agreement.

• 10 Reasons to Upgrade to Windows 7

  2 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

  A host of significant upgrades makes Microsoft's newest operating system well worth the wait for any small business.

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  TechCrunch

• YouTube Is Falling Apart Again

  Erick Schonfeld

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:37 pm

  The ads are destroying YouTube. At least this one is. It is a video ad for sustainable energy company from Spain called Acciona. Yeah, I had never heard of them either. The video starts with this Euro-dude in a suit starting to blow up and crack apart like he’s made from plaster. Halfway through, the actual video player crack in half, and all of the surrounding parts of the site shake and fall away, while an annoying voiceover is saying something about rebirth. I don’t know, maybe it makes more sense in Spanish. The visual effect is interesting, but feels like a gimmick since…

• Marissa Mayer Chosen As A Glamour Magazine Woman Of The Year

  Leena Rao

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:30 pm

  Google’s Vice President of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer was recently profiled in a Vogue Magazine article that offered a in-depth glimpse into the exec’s lifestyle, loves, career and fashion preferences. Now, Mayer has been named as one of Glamour Magazine’s 2009 Women of the Year. Joining Mayer on the list are a variety of female powerhouses and icons including Maya Angelou, First Lady Michelle Obama, Susan Rice, Euna Lee and Laura Ling. Mayer has been frequently profiled in business and technology publications over the years, but it’s also nice to…

• The Just Because We Love You TwitterPeek Giveaway #Crunch

  Michael Arrington

  6 Nov 2009 | 6:53 pm

  If you’re a Twitter freak and think that a dedicated Twitter device is just the thing for you, read on. This week we saw the launch of the TwitterPeek, a cute little device built by Peek that will do just about anything you want it to do, as long as all you want it to do is access Twitter. It won’t surf the web. It won’t make phone calls. It won’t support third party apps. But it most certainly does run Twitter. You can get it in black. Or, if you want to show a little flair, you can get in in cyan. For some crazy reason I wanted one. A friend bought me one that I will…

• Gowalla Hops Onto Android Via The Mobile Web

  MG Siegler

  6 Nov 2009 | 6:09 pm

  Up until now, if you wanted to use the location-based service Gowalla on the go, you had to have an iPhone. Today, that expands to Android. But rather than building an app, Gowalla has extended support to Android using the mobile web. This works because Android’s browser is closely tied to the device and is able to access location information, which is vital for Gowalla. The goal is to extend this mobile web support to BlackBerry and a few other location-aware devices in the next week or so, co-founder Josh Williams tells us. As a small team, Gowalla, like its rival Foursquare,…

• textPlus 2.0 Hits The App Store For Free Texting

  Daniel Brusilovsky

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:26 pm

  textPlus, a text messaging app that’s powered by GOGII, has just hit the App Store. textPlus lets any iPhone or iPod Touch send free text messages to any cell number by using in-app advertising to cover its costs. There is no limit on how many text messages you can send per month, it’s just a matter of getting WiFi, 3G or an Edge connection. GOGII was one of the first companies that was funded by iFund, the partnership between venture capital firm KPCB and Apple, which was announced at the Apple SDK roadmap event. With version 2.0 of textPlus, GOGII is announcing the availability…

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  Hacker News

• The Unemployment Rate for People Like You

  Comments

• The Nutt Sack Affair

  Comments

• Kiwi - A little javascript framework I wrote that saved me a lot of time

  Comments

• RCA student radically improves the UK plug

  Comments

• Running a freemium web app? Here's a big reason we're growing.

  Comments

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  SmartBrief on Entrepreneurs

• Your spot at the high-stakes table

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm

  Eric Ries writes of parallels he has noticed between running a business and playing poker.  -More- 

• The 19 "smartest bloggers" for entrepreneurs

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm

  About 1.5 million blogs are launched each week, so how can an entrepreneur find the ones that really matter?  -More- 

• Father-son team profits off botanical blend

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm

  After a diving accident left 98% of his body paralyzed, Francesco Clark found that he had also stopped sweating, leaving his  -More- 

• The stuffing that dreams are made of

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm

  Maxine Clark, founder of Build-a-Bear Workshop, says she was ready to strike out on her own after almost two decades working  -More- 

• How to find a committed (financial) relationship online

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm

  Social-media sites can act as virtual matchmakers for entrepreneurs and investors, but there are some rules for finding your  -More- 

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  How to Change the World

• The 19 bloggers Inc. thinks you should read

  GuyKawasaki

  6 Nov 2009 | 6:20 pm

  Inc. named 19 bloggers that you should read. We’ve aggregated them all in one place: Inc19.alltop.

• How to Get Found

  GuyKawasaki

  4 Nov 2009 | 3:29 pm

  The reality is that people and technology is getting better and better a blocking out unwanted interruptions—aka, “marketing.” Brian Halligan is the CEO of HubSpot, and he explains in my post on the American Express Open Forum “how to get found.” It’s all about creating great stuff and letting Google et al do what they do: find great stuff.

• How I tweet

  GuyKawasaki

  2 Nov 2009 | 8:47 am

  By popular demand (and some complaints), I’ve done a FAQ with myself about how I tweet. Hope this helps you use Twitter for your business too. I explain how I use ghostwriters and why I repeat my tweets among other “unusual” practices.

• Current Twitter Demo Script

  GuyKawasaki

  28 Oct 2009 | 2:26 am

  This is the set of links that I used to demo Twitter by going down through this list to show why Twitter is such a valuable marketing tool. Introduction Home page Profile page Monitor Search Guy Kawasaki or Alltop Starbucks VIA introduction Search for “Prius” or “Civic” Sell Dell Outlet Kogi BBQ Support Comcast Cares Engage JetBlue Virgin America Fandango Prospect Camaro Camaro near Palo Alto Advanced searches Surfing or skateboarding (shows how to eliminate extraneous results such as “surfing the web” How I Tweet - Find Alltop MyAlltop helped me find this.

• How to Avoid Twitter Cluelessness

  GuyKawasaki

  26 Oct 2009 | 4:24 pm

  Over at the American Express Open Forum blog, I explain how to not look clueless on Twitter. The first five ways are: Don’t tell other people how to tweet. Don’t tell the world that you unfollowed someone. Don’t ask people why they unfollowed you. Don’t constantly tweet mundane updates and babble. Don’t use a small picture for an avatar. To read all ten and why they impugn your intelligence, click here.

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  VatorNews.tv

• Get ready for lots of small IPOs

  6 Nov 2009 | 12:38 pm

  Sarbox relief and Open Table's mini offering may set the model for post-crash public launchOn Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a small-business exemption to the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting rules, permanently waiving the audit requirements for all companies with market caps under $75 million.  Venture capitalists and entrepreneurs have long bemoaned the newly repealed requirements, which were intended to prevent Enron-style scandals in big companies, but have also contributed to the IPO drought among small ones. The exemption, somewhat surprisingly urged by White House…

• Google Maps goes to Mexico

  6 Nov 2009 | 11:55 am

  In a few days, Mexico will be the first Latin American country to enjoy Street ViewGoogle announced Friday afternoon that Mexico now has its own version of Google Maps, available at maps.google.com.mx. Besides being able to take advantage of the most basic use of Google Maps (as a navigational tool), Mexicans will also be able to enjoy an incredibly convenient feature that has been offered in the U.S. for some time now, called the Local Business Center. Now, once a large enough quantity of businesses have incorporated their geographical location and business information into the data center,…

• Brizzly Twitter client already supports Lists

  6 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

  Third-party Web-based Twitter client seamlessly merges Lists with its own Groups featureThough Twitter officially launched Lists only a week ago, third-party developers are already hard at work implementing the new feature into their applications. Seesmic, a desktop client that supports both Facebook and multiple Twitter accounts, was the first, adding support earlier this week.Thursday night, Web-based Twitter client Brizzly took second place by announcing that Lists would work with Groups without a hitch. Groups, which, like Lists, allows one to sort other users into categories of any size…

• Twitter rolling out its own retweet button

  5 Nov 2009 | 5:51 pm

  Microblogging site continues to add new features to serviceLast week Twitter rolled out its new "Lists" feature to try and get its declining users more engaged.  Today the micro-blogging service announced it's launching its own official Retweet button to a small percentage of accounts. Retweeting is common practice already.  You see it on blogs and news sites across the Web.  Basically, a user reads an article and if a retweet button is available, they can click it and have an automatic tweet set up on their Twitter update.  Several third party startups like Tweetmeme and…

• IBM introduces cloud platform for developers

  5 Nov 2009 | 12:45 pm

  New solutions for testing software in the cloud offers developers more flexible optionsIBM on Thursday announced a group of solutions for developers to develop, test, and deliver applications in private and public cloud environments.IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud is a new and free public cloud for software development designed to speed up and enhance development and delivery of software. The platform is specifically targeted at larger enterprises who see hundreds of development projects yearly. With compute and storage as a service environments, IBM hopes to create a…

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  Small Business Labs

• Intuit Trends - Social Data on Small Businesses

  Steve

  5 Nov 2009 | 1:00 am

  "Social data" is the buzzword that describes sharing aggregate or summarized data collected from or contributed by large numbers of users.  A good example of social data is Intuit Trends, an early alpha product available on Intuit Labs.  Trends uses aggregated company financial data collected from the online version of the accounting package Quickbooks.  The application lets small business owners, managers and their advisers explore industry financial trends, share observations, and compare their performance with their peers and/or competitors.

• The Growth of Small Business Analytics

  Steve

  4 Nov 2009 | 1:06 am

  There were two very interesting blog posts related to the use of analytics by small businesses over the last week.  Both caught my eye as interesting examples of the trend towards analytical software and automation. The first comes from Tim Berry's blog via MyVenturepad.  Tim writes about the Huffington Post using A/B testing to pick article headlines.  Online A/B testing is a process where different people are randomly shown different versions of a web page, or in this case different article headlines.  After testing with a number of people, the…

• When Do Megatrends Matter?

  Steve

  3 Nov 2009 | 8:45 am

  An interesting part of the trends business is trend identification is easy.  The hard part is figuring out when a trend will have broad impact and matter to businesses.  iMedia Connection's article 5 Marketing Megatrends You Can't Ignore looks at megatrends that marketers should care about.  The author defines megatrends as: "What's a megatrend, you ask? It's something big. I'm talking really big. Think of a giant unstoppable tsunami of change transforming society as we know it. Think global warming scale -- then apply it to mass human…

• Traditional Business Media Cuts; New Media Grows

  Steve

  2 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

  Good article in the NY Times about traditional media business publications reducing staff and coverage.  The usual reasons - lack of advertising, readers fleeing print publications for online, etc. - are given for the decline.  The article goes on to talk about readers being less interested in business news.  This simply isn't true.  If you add in business coverage coming from new media companies like TechCrunch and others, you find that overall business related media coverage and readership has increased over the last decade. What is true is there much less…

• Is Facebook Taking Over the Web?

  Steve

  30 Oct 2009 | 2:00 am

  With Twitter getting so much attention these days, Facebook almost seems to have drifted into the background.  But the more you look at data on web traffic, the more you realize how big a force Facebook has become.  The chart below is from Mary Meeker's presentation at the Web 2.0 conference a few weeks ago.  It clearly illustrates Facebook's rapid rise to key web player status.   Marketing Charts has another angle on the growth of Facebook.  Their chart (below and sourced from Nielsen) shows the top 10 U.S. Web brands by unique visitors and time…

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  Ben Parr

• I Was on CNN (Here’s a Video)

  Ben Parr

  11 Oct 2009 | 5:48 pm

  Embedded video from CNN Video While this video is a few weeks old, It would be silly for me not to post this awesome video of me on CNN (via phone) on September 26th. The segment actually aired twice that day. I was up at 4:00 AM on a Saturday morning to do it with CNN’s Josh Levs. As a reminder, you can see more of my media appearances and speeches/talks on my Media page. Tell me how you think I did in the comments (don’t hold back).

• There’s Only One Metric of Success in Business: PROFIT

  Ben Parr

  2 Sep 2009 | 10:37 am

  Watch the first two minutes of this speech I gave at Northwestern (I’ve tagged the part of the video where I talk about it), and you’ll see how I picked the title of this article: Jason Fried of 37Signals has once again brought down the reality check hammer, about something I keep harping about: profit. Here’s some business 101: Revenue – Cost = Profit. It’s not Venture Capital + Growth = Profit, or Pageviews + Buzz = Profit. Yet in web entrepreneurship, this simple equation doesn’t always click. So Jason Fried wrote about it after an NYT article…

• Is Scoble Right About a $5 Billion Twitter Valuation? I’d Bet Money on It

  Ben Parr

  30 Aug 2009 | 10:27 pm

  I can’t help myself. I need to say something about a post by well-known early adopter Robert Scoble on Twitter being worth $5 Billion. First, let me summarize Scoble’s post. Really simply, it boils down to this: businesses. Twitter has seduced thousands of businesses to use it as their promotional tool, even over Facebook, and Twitter isn’t losing those companies anytime soon. With thousands of potential paying businesses, Twitter could generate significant revenue to justify a $5 billion valuation. No go pro argument comes without a con, though, and my favorite counter…

• Top 7 Reasons to Donate to the Summer of Social Good

  Ben Parr

  26 Aug 2009 | 12:36 pm

  This summer, Mashable (where I am editor) has been part of a major charity drive: The Summer of Social Good. It’s been a huge initiative on our part to use the power of social media and social networks to do some good for the world. The money raised will go to four charities: - Livestrong - Oxfam America - The Humane Society - World Wildlife Foundation So far, the Summer of Social Good has raised over $30,000,

• NEW: Ben Parr’s Posterous Experiment

  Ben Parr

  22 Aug 2009 | 5:25 pm

  If you’ve been following my Twitter account, you might have noticed some new Post.ly links, pictures of cute animals, and even a photostream of the Congressional Roundtable I attended yesterday. That’s because I have set up a new, complementary blog to BenParr.com, powered by Posterous, a YCombinator-funded company. The purpose of the Posterous blog is primarily to share photos and the little gems that I find on the web. It’s a more lighthearted blog – thus why I am going to consistently post pictures of cute animals to lighten your day. But when I am on the go, I will…

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  DEMO Conference Blog

• Join Us: December DEMO Innovation Meet-Ups in San Francisco, Seattle, NYC and Austin

  DEMO Staff

  30 Oct 2009 | 1:32 pm

  The DEMO Innovation tour where Matt Marshall, DEMO Executive Producer and the DEMO team travel around the globe to connect with the DEMO community in search of  the best innovation to showcase at DEMOspring 2010 is making it's way across the U.S. in December. Read more

• DEMO’s visits to London and Boston show California is great place to launch

  DEMO Staff

  30 Oct 2009 | 1:28 pm

  Matt Marshall, DEMO Executive Producer I’ve been on the road lately, in a continued effort to find and meet with the best companies around to launch new products at the DEMO conference, and have been developing some cool ideas for DEMO’s next conference in March. I’ll share more about those ideas in future posts. Read more

• DEMO rocked! Now the party starts again

  DEMO Staff

  13 Oct 2009 | 7:25 am

  From: Matt Marshall, Executive Producer, DEMO Conferences and Editor-in-Chief, VentureBeat It’s been two weeks since the end of DEMO. I’m awestruck by the experience, both by all of the incredibly talented people that convened there in San Diego, and by the traction 70 entrepreneurs were able to get during those short few days. Thank you to all of the people who came and make it such a terrific event. Read more

• DEMO 2010 starts now

  DEMO Staff

  7 Oct 2009 | 2:58 pm

  We're fresh off DEMOfall 09 where two weeks ago, 70 companies launched products and announced innovative business plans. If you haven't taken a look, check out the class of DEMOfall 09 at www.demo.com.   Read more

• DEMOfall 09 starts today.. Watch live coverage

  DEMO Staff

  22 Sep 2009 | 6:41 am

  Didn't make it to San Diego for DEMOfall 09? Watch it live on www.demo.com home page starting Tuesday, 9/22 at 8:30am. PT,  thx BitGravity! Read more

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  Bootstrapping a Startup - Business Exchange

• 20 of the Best Resources to Get Your Startup Off the Ground

  Business Exchange

  et’s face it: as an entrepreneur, the odds are stacked against you. Most businesses fail after the first few years, and even if you do manage to survive, that doesn’t mean your business will redefine an industry, become profitable, or change the world. Getting off on the right foot is essential to navigating a startup from its infancy to profitability.

• Social Media for Business Development

  Business Exchange

  Have you ever thought about what information the web retains and keeps about you, your favorite subject or the person you just shook hands with at a recent social event? This conversation is not about topics today, but the “topics of every day” that...

• Small Business, Social Media Not Mixing

  Business Exchange

  Few U.S. small businesses have adopted social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter for business uses, according to research released Thursday. Three-quarters of small businesses say they have not found sites such as...

• Optimizing Your Business With Social Media

  Business Exchange

  Optimizing your internet business with Social Media will boost out your business. Social Media is one of the powerful tools in defining your business practices toward improving your site’s performance in the cyberspace.

• How to Start Your Own Business Without Wasting Time and Money, Part I

  Business Exchange

  How to Start Your Own Business Without Wasting Time and Money, Part I March 4, 2009 Starting your own business can be daunting. Here is some practical advice to get started.

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  Sophia Perl of Wisdom

• Women making dough with their clothes…on!

  Sophia

  3 Nov 2009 | 8:26 am

  I read a couple of articles talking about how women are making money in this tough economy.  Now now now, don’t get ahead of yourself and assume you know what.  Women are selling their clothes to other women.  The way it works is that a woman will invite her friends over to check out her clothes which are usually on display in a room in the “seller’s” home.  Some “sellers’ hang up their clothes on racks like stores do and provide bags to take home your goodies.  You must remember that your purchases are final sales, no returns.  So why would a woman…

• Mr. Photographer, you could have made money at this event

  Sophia

  31 Oct 2009 | 8:44 pm

  Real quick, I’m back blogging.  I just took a break. Tis the season for Halloween photo ops.  I attended an event where a local photography gave attendees a free 5×7 picture.  I stood in the long line like everyone else and took a picture.  Then I waited in another line to get the printed picture.  I put my name and email address on a sheet and the photo number that was printed.  Then I received my pic with no copyright printing on the back.  The photographer did put out some fliers out about scheduling a Santa photo session, but not a lot of hard selling or upselling of…

• A business based on anonymous confessions

  Sophia

  15 Apr 2009 | 5:31 pm

  I’m sure most of you have heard about PostSecret in which people send in postcards with your confession.  I came across another website called TruuConfessions.com targeted towards women.  I thought it was interesting actually in that women definitely do love their gossip.  When I read the About Us section which I always do on new startup websites, the founder talked about anonymous confessions as being therapeutic.  OK, I can maybe buy that.  Now, when someone posts a confession, she can categorize the confession into a category and then others can comment or say “me…

• Try out a VC pitch feedback event

  Sophia

  9 Apr 2009 | 9:45 pm

  I have a friend who decided to attend a VC pitch roundtable event for the first time.  He asked if I knew anything about that event and to be honest I did not know anyone who had attended such of an event.   BUT, I said, look it’s $60 or so, just try it once, worse case you get to network with some VCs.  So he went. Before the event, you get the bios of the VCs so that you get an idea of what each VC’s expertise is in, possibly even cater your pitch based on this.  If you want to sign up, you can pitch for 90 seconds to a panel of 5 or so VC judges otherwise you can be a…

• Make a friend who’s attending MBA school, get free work

  Sophia

  7 Apr 2009 | 5:20 pm

  I’ve done a posting before about free work from 5-6 MBA students.  I wanted to comment on another way to get your business some free work from MBA students.  If you have a friend who is currently attending MBA school, ask him/her to do a school project on your business.  This could be a competitive analysis, pricing strategy, marketing strategy, etc, etc.  All you have to do is convince your friend that your business is interesting enough to use as a case study.  If you don’t have a friend in MBA school yet, you should start making such friends or better yet convince  your…

• 
  Venture Hacks

• Best of the startup blogs

  Nivi

  4 Nov 2009 | 8:31 am

  We read the startup blogs so you don’t have to. Jason Cohen explains how to hire employee #1 (practical, tested advice). Fred Wilson explains how to make an email intro without making yourself look bad (this is how I do it). Bill Gurley explains why Google will pay mobile device companies to use their OS. Fred Destin explains why, much of the time, he doesn’t know why he passes on investments (finally someone admits it — I look for reasons to say yes, not reasons to say no). Chris Dixon explains why he’s reassured when Sequoia invests in a Y Combinator company. Fake Steve…

• Lean startups aren’t Cheap Startups

  Mr. Guest

  3 Nov 2009 | 8:03 am

  This post is by Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur with eight startups under his belt, including two large craters (Rocket Science and Ardent), one dot.com bubble home run (E.piphany), and several base hits. Steve is also the creator of customer development and this is one of his best posts on the topic. If you like it, check out his blog and tweets @sgblank.– Nivi At an entrepreneur’s panel last week, questions from the audience made me realize that the phrase “Lean Startup” was being confused with “Cheap Startup.” For those of you who have been following the discussion, a…

• Customer development by the book

  Nivi

  2 Nov 2009 | 8:00 am

  Ash Maurya’s new blog documents his journey through customer development. This is the most by-the-book application of customer development that I have ever seen. I am following this blog very closely; it’s thoughtful and well written. Some highlights: Is AdWords the right MVP for your product? “For Timothy Ferris, his MVP for testing new products that don’t yet exist (micro-testing) comprises of a landing page, signup page, and Google Adwords to drive traffic. However, this approach presupposes that: You can create a good landing page You can write good adwords copy…

• Our first online workshop: How to pitch investors

  Nivi

  30 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am

  We’re teaching our first ever online workshop on “How to pitch investors” about eduFire — a platform for live video teaching online. Sign up here. I’ve taken classes on eduFire and it works really well; here are some recordings of their classes. (Update: This class is full so I’ve opened up a second class. Sign up here.) (Another update: The second class is also full. E-mail me to get on the waiting list for the next class. And if you want to buy a recording of the class, e-mail me or contact me on eduFire. We obviously won’t be able to work on your pitch…

• Notes from Startup School 2009

  Nivi

  29 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am

  Mark Bao has posted his notes from this year’s Startup School. Here are my favorite parts (everything below is cut-and-pasted directly from his notes — read the full collection): Mark Pincus, CEO, Zynga: My Startup Experience what really matters is that YOU CONTROL YOUR BOARD. Mark Zuckerberg claps. How? (1) Create a board that reflects the ownership of the company. (2) Make a new board seat for a new CEO, (3) Do a term sheet tune-up. Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO, Facebook: Q&A with Jessica Livingston he says he never pitched Facebook a lot. Just got introduced to people…

• 
  Tony Wright dot com

• On Auto-Tweets, Facebook Games, and Other Potential Pollution

  Tony Wright

  26 Oct 2009 | 8:43 am

  I love games. While I did wear a letterman jacket through most of high school, I surreptitiously played Dungeons and Dragons every week with my brother’s gaming group. I’ve played a wide variety of games on every computer I’ve ever owned. I like board games like Settlers of Catan, and (god help me) I even futzed around with Magic: The Gathering. Like a lot of software folks, I have a secret wish to punt everything, run into the hills, and make GAMES. So it’s exciting to see this gaming renaissance. Casual games, social games– whatever you want to call them–…

• Software and Making Money (Presentation Slides Included)

  Tony Wright

  14 Aug 2009 | 3:01 pm

  (note: this is modified from a talk I gave at Seattle Tech Startups on Wednesday) The more I think about it, the more I’m impressed with software businesses that are great businesses (not just great software). There’s a class of entrepreneur that is product focused (like the folks at Twitter), there is a class of entrepreneur that is business focused (the white-toothed stereotypical biz guy), and there is a class of entrepreneur who is PR focused (I won’t name names, but we all know of startups that seem to thrive simply because of the attention they draw). I think good…

• Should you move your startup to the Valley? Depends on where you are (Data included!)

  Tony Wright

  12 Jun 2009 | 11:03 am

  I admit that I am a bit of a contrarian. For a long time, the contention that “if you’re doing a startup, you HAVE to be in Silicon Valley” didn’t sit well with me. Sure, talent is important– but for many startups you need only a few talented folks to prove that you’ve got something and companies like WordPress have proven that you can build a great team (literally) anywhere and everywhere (they are virtual and across the world). Sure, energy is important– but the biggest source of energy isn’t your peers– it’s the people who are…

• Just How Important is the Valley? Let’s Look at some Data.

  Tony Wright

  17 Apr 2009 | 10:17 am

  [Edit: Added the raw data in a table at the end] Some of the smartest startup brains I’ve ever met have said that if you want to be in the startup game, you MUST be in the Valley. There are plenty of justifications out there for it, and many/most of them make a fair bit of sense. Recently, Paul Graham posted another great essay on the topic, and said: The second idea is that startups are a type of business that flourishes in certain places that specialize in it—that Silicon Valley specializes in startups in the same way Los Angeles specializes in movies, or New York in finance. [1]…

• Google is a friend to the news business (but it’s got to evolve)

  Tony Wright

  12 Apr 2009 | 9:14 am

  People are upset about the news industry dying/changing, and with good reason. There’s a lot of great history and romance in journalism, and it’ll be a shame to see them go. There’s a great summary of the issue by Nick Carr and some good thoughts (with a linkbait title) by Scott Karp. Karp says: Those who argue that Google is a friend to content owners because it sends them traffic overlook the basic law of supply and demand. The value of “traffic” is entirely relative. The more content there is on the web, the less value that content has — because of the surfeit of ad…

• 
  The Businessmakers Radio Show

• Surfing on the Google Wave

  The Businessmakers Radio Show - Katie Laird|Esther Steinfeld

  4 Nov 2009 | 1:00 am

  Google is hot—and it’s EVERYWHERE! Katie and Esther dissect Google Wave. It might well be the Next Big Thing! Have you logged on to CompleteWaveGuide.com yet? Could we call it a document collaboration tool or is it just email? (“It’s tons and tons of rich media.”)

• Baby Geniuses, Mallrats, and Guerilla Marketing

  The Businessmakers Radio Show - Katie Laird|Esther Steinfeld

  4 Nov 2009 | 1:00 am

  Katie Laird and Esther Steinfeld dissect the week’s business news. Disney recalls its Baby Einstein brain-builder videos. Guerilla marketing franchiser AArrow Advertising gives sign spinning a boost. Microsoft goes retail. Favorite links for the week are LifeHacker.com, a rad site that gives life tips (hacks) for everything; and eCorner.Stanford.edu, Stanford University’s entrepreneurship corner. (“It has all these podcasts from the brightest minds in the business. I was enthralled.”)

• Shop.org: We Should All Learn From Each Other

  The Businessmakers Radio Show - Esther Steinfeld

  4 Nov 2009 | 1:00 am

  Esther interviews the executive director of Shop.org, a division of the National Retail Federation. Silverman gives us reason to be optimistic. While retail may not be immune from weakness in our cyclical economy, it is certainly resilient. It’s the little things that reduce or improve sales; Silverman gives tips on improving the customer experience, interpreting data, and building relationships with consumers. (“Online retail is the bright spot in today’s economy.”)

• Business Survival Tip - Minimum Wage Regulations

  The Businessmakers Radio Show - Carl Kleimann

  4 Nov 2009 | 1:00 am

  Did you know the Minimum Wage can be different in cities across the nation? Did you know there are exemptions for some of the requirements? Carl Kleimann has the 411 on Minimum Wage.

• The BusinessMakers Overtime - Week of November 4, 2009

  The Businessmakers Radio Show -

  4 Nov 2009 | 1:00 am

  Ever wonder if sitting your child down in front of the TV can really increase their IQ? Well the FTC does not think so and Disney pays the price. Microsoft takes a hint from Apple on being a mall rat. Plus a marketing company gets creative with holding signs. Esther has a real cool conversation with the executive director of Shop.org, Scott Silverman. And then Katie and Esther get caught up in the Google Wave, sure hope they know how to swim through all the rich media content available inside the Wave.

• 
  Up and Running

• WSJ on Why You Need a Business Plan

  Tim Berry

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:43 am

  Browsing and searching last night, I discovered “Why You Need a Business Plan” by Colleen Debaise on the Wall Street Journal’s website. This is a good, strong post and a good reminder. Her five reasons: Identify your company’s strengths and weaknesses. Figure out how much money you’ll need. Get clear direction, which can help eliminate stress. Summarize for lenders, investors or partners. Evaluate the market for your product or service and size up the competition. My personal favorite is No. 3, particularly the phrase “help eliminate stress.”…

• The Gift of Not Getting Funded

  Tim Berry

  5 Nov 2009 | 6:49 am

  There was a good reminder placed on The Funded yesterday. It’s a note from an entrepreneur entitled The Gift of Not Getting Funded (Early). I really like this quote: What our lack of funding made us do is go back to basics. We know we had the seed of a good idea but struggled to come up with a sustainable model. Along with lots of hard work we talked with potential customers and came up with a solid way to generate revenue. Our potential customers are now signing letters of support saying they like our product and find it beneficial for their business and are willing to be contacted by…

• Understanding the Healthy Company Money Trap

  Tim Berry

  4 Nov 2009 | 6:38 am

  This may surprise you. From an investor’s point of view, self-sufficiency in a startup or emerging company isn’t always a good thing. In many cases, it’s an investor’s nightmare. Here’s a hypothetical example. Suppose you just invested $250,000 in Acme LLC, a promising startup. Let’s say you got 25 percent ownership for your money. Years go by, and Acme grows in sales, profits and cash flow. In fact, it’s so good that it becomes cash-flow independent, meaning it’s generating enough cash, month by month, to pay salaries and fund growth. As a…

• You Will Make Mistakes. Deal With It

  Tim Berry

  3 Nov 2009 | 6:48 am

  I’m not a baseball fan, and I don’t particularly like sports metaphors. But there’s a lot of baseball in prime time these days, and one of the fundamentals of baseball that applies beautifully to entrepreneurship is about making mistakes. In baseball, pitchers don’t always throw strikes (good pitches). They get up to three bad pitches per batter. And batters don’t always hit the ball. Players who get successful hits more then 30 percent of their times at bat are really good. In the major leagues, fewer than 10 have ever gotten 40 percent for a season. And the…

• 5 Things Missing From Most Entrepreneur Pitches

  Tim Berry

  2 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

  I found this list in a very good post from Charlie O’Donnell on his blog This is going to be BIG. I don’t know him, and I didn’t know his site, but on digging I discover he has done time with Union Square Ventures, teaches entrepreneurship and practices what he preaches with a couple of startups that he runs. But what really matters is that this is a very good list. It matches my dealings with startups and investors, on both sides of the table. 1) Strong sense of the key milestones–Entrepreneurs often ask what metrics they need to get to in order to get an…

• 
  The Startup Lawyer

• Startup Weekend Dallas: 1 Day Left For 20% Off

  Ryan Roberts

  29 Oct 2009 | 8:25 am

  Before you get ready to go trick-or-treating, just wanted to give you a courtesy reminder that the 20% early-bird discount available to those wanting to attend Startup Weekend Dallas expires tomorrow night. Register with the code “swearlybird” before 6pm on October 30th to receive this discount. Here’s what a typical Startup Weekend looks like: 6pm Friday: Everyone gets together; figures out who else is there; what would be interesting to build. 7pm: Pitches start (if you have an idea for a product you pitch it to the group). 8pm: Teams start breaking off (generally about…

• 5 Common Founder Mistakes

  Ryan Roberts

  23 Oct 2009 | 7:53 pm

  This is a re-post of an article that I wrote about common founder mistakes for StartupLucky.com and Killerstartups.com (not sure if it went out yet). 1. Spending Too Much Time Keeping Your “Unique” Idea Top Secret. Some founders attempt to have everyone within 25 feet of them sign an NDA. Instead of spending time drafting and then obtaining signatures on a NDA, a founder should use that time to implement the unique idea. It’s highly likely the idea isn’t unique, and a founder could turn off some good investors/partners/mentors by asking for a NDA signature. 2. Not Vesting Founders’…

• Startup Weekend Dallas Discount Code

  Ryan Roberts

  21 Oct 2009 | 8:55 am

  There’s a 20% early-bird discount available to those wanting to attend Startup Weekend Dallas. Register with the code “swearlybird” before 6pm on October 30th to receive this discount. Buy tickets here, or find out more about the weekend event.

• Is Your Startup’s Name Available in Delaware?

  Ryan Roberts

  13 Oct 2009 | 9:37 am

  Delaware has a pretty sweet Name Availability Search Tool via their Division of Corporations. If your desired entity name isn’t available to reserve, then that name isn’t available for a new corporate entity filing in Delaware. If your startup name is available, you can reserve the name online for $75. Finding out whether you can reserve your desired corporate name in Delaware isn’t as exciting as landing a 5-letter domain with a domain registrar, but at least you don’t have to pay to search like other states.

• Startup Weekend Dallas

  Ryan Roberts

  12 Oct 2009 | 6:27 am

  Startup Weekend is coming to Dallas the weekend of November 20-22 at the Big in Japan offices at the INFOMART. I’m one of the local organizers, so I’ll keep you updated as we get closer to the event. If you are interested in sponsoring the event, ping me. What is Startup Weekend? Startup Weekend is a 54 hour startup event that provides the networking, resources, and incentives for individuals and teams to go from idea to launch. Get connected with local developers, innovators and entrepreneurs. Build Community. Start Companies. No Talk. All Action. Who should come to Startup…

• 
  Forbes

• The Perils Of Outsourcing

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:44 pm

  One entrepreneur's tale of woe--and the valuable lessons learned.

• Are You An Empire Builder?

  5 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

  The answer involves a lot more than having a sound growth strategy.

• Toppers Pizza Wants A Big Slice Of A Small Pie

  5 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

  Soused college kids are a great growth market--if you can handle the late nights.

• Your Online Growth Serum

  5 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

  Is YouTube a one-off hit maker or a strategic marketing tool?

• Extreme Growth Gambles

  5 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

  Aggressive strategies--some wise, some worrisome--for dealing with stubbornly flat demand.

• 
  Startup Professionals Musings

• How to be the Role Model You Always Admired

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:50 am

  In the beginning all businesses are just people playing out an idea. It’s never the other way around – there is no idea so big that it doesn’t need people to make it succeed. Investors know this, hence the saying “Bet on the jockey, not the horse.” A great jockey is a great role model.Like it or not, everyone looks to the entrepreneur as the jockey role model in a new business. Typically this energizes new startup founders, but some struggle trying to live up to their own, as well as everyone else’s expectations. In reality, nobody really expects anyone to be superhuman, but it…

• Your Elevator Pitch Can Lift You to the Top

  5 Nov 2009 | 5:54 am

  An "elevator pitch" is a concise, well-practiced description of your startup and your plan, delivered with conviction and enthusiasm, that your mother should be able to understand in the time it would take to ride up an elevator. Everybody knows about these, but few people seem to deliver a good one.A good elevator pitch is not just for an elevator discussion. Use it in every networking situation and business conference introduction. The elevator pitch should be the first few paragraphs of your business plan, your executive summary, your investor presentation, and the first page of your web…

• Search Engine Marketing for Beginners

  4 Nov 2009 | 5:56 am

  Probably every one of you who has a business and a website have been approached through email or personal contact, and asked to spend money on Search Engine Marketing (SEM). For most, it sounds like a magical process or a scam, with the experts spewing so many acronyms.Search engine marketing is simply buying advertising for your business from Google or another search engine company. Their computers then cleverly merge your ads with search results only when users search words imply an interest in your products. If you sell widgets, and a user is searching for widgets, your ad will appear on…

• Size the Competition From all Angles

  3 Nov 2009 | 5:47 am

  One of the key sections of any business plan is the analysis of the competition. I especially love the ones that start and end by saying “We don’t have any competitors.” Investors take that to mean either 1) there is no market for your product, or 2) you don’t understand the concept of business and competition. Either way you lose.Way back in 1979, Michael E. Porter proposed a Five Forces framework for analyzing the competitive environment which I think still makes a lot of sense today. Every startup should size his product or service in the context of these forces: Intensity of…

• Building an Entrepreneurial Culture

  2 Nov 2009 | 5:42 am

  I just returned from an Entrepreneurship Conference in Anchorage, Alaska, organized by my friend Allan R. Johnston, to improve collaboration and initiate more activities there. I had assumed that Alaska would be a haven for entrepreneurs, due to the history of independence and environmental adversity. Yet, I didn’t see as much of that entrepreneurial culture as I expected.A couple of years ago, I helped set up a software business in Vietnam, where it was evident that everyone was an entrepreneur, from little kids on the street shining shoes, to new businesses for the world market springing…

• 
  Presentation Zen

• Using Kuler to create color themes

  Garr

  1 Nov 2009 | 5:21 am

  Although scores of good books on color theory have been written — many even for non-designers — most working professionals just do not have the time to delve deeply into a study of the complexities of using color. The good news is that there are online resources that can help you create harmonious color themes without requiring advance knowledge in color theory. There are a few really good online resources such as ColorSchemer and Colourlovers, but my personal favorite is Kuler. Kuler is a web-based color tool from Adobe that has thousands of community-generated color themes from which…

• Presentación Zen: Por fin! La versión en español ya está disponible

  Garr

  28 Oct 2009 | 10:04 pm

  I'm happy to announce that the Presentation Zen book is finally available in Spanish. The book follows the same design and layout as the original English version. Spanish was the most requested translation so we're delighted that it is finally on sale. I'm not sure exactly where you can get the book in your area, but here is info on the Pearson Educación website. Above: A photo of the front and back covers.The Presentation Zen DVD on Amazon and elsewhere also includes Spanish (and Japanese and English) subtitles. Thanks to everyone at Pearson for their hard work and to everyone across the…

• The art of control without controlling, doing without doing

  Garr

  26 Oct 2009 | 3:01 am

  As a leader — in business, education, or design — how much control do you need? How much can you give up? Is control even the right word? Is it possible to lead without leading? Here is a great TED talk that will get you thinking that has applications for leaders of all types. Former conductor Itay Talgam today runs workshops to help people develop a musician's sense of collaboration, and a conductor's sense of leadership. In this excellent talk at TED Oxford, Itay touches on the art of creating perfect harmony without saying a word by showing the unique styles of six great 20th-century…

• Tokonoma and the art of the focal point

  Garr

  20 Oct 2009 | 7:14 am

  Every good design needs a focal point. This goes for the design of interior living spaces as well. In many Western homes, the mantel place in the living room is often a focal point from which other interior design elements are added in a more or less symmetrical fashion. In traditional Japanese homes or modern homes containing a washitsu (Japanese-style room) it is the Tokonoma (床の間) that serves as the subtle focal point for the interior. The tokonoma (lit: floor/bed + space) is a raised alcove in which Japanese art such as a hanging scroll (Kakemono) or a flower arrangement is…

• Sumi-e, color, and the art of less

  Garr

  5 Oct 2009 | 11:00 pm

  A fundamental design and life lesson from the Zen arts is to never use more when less will do. This goes for the use of color as well. The problem with most slide presentations is not that visuals contain too few colors, it's that they contain too many. A common practice is to use several different vivid hues (colors) in presentation slides when even a single hue in various shades or tints would have been more effective. The ancient art of Japanese brush painting called Sumi-e (墨絵) provides a powerful lesson concerning the use of color, communication, and restraints. Sumi-e was brought to…

• 
  Great Demo!

• Manager “Chaperone” for Demo Prep Calls

  Peter E. Cohan

  6 Nov 2009 | 7:39 am

  Here’s a terrific implementation tactic, suggested by a Great Demo! Workshop manager: Join pre-demo discussions (via phone, for example) between sales people and their presales counterparts as a “chaperone”. The idea is to both facilitate the conversation between the sales and presales participants, and to guide the discussion as necessary or appropriate.Additionally, this approach can help identify those sales people who need more “encouragement” to gather discovery and qualification information that might be needed before a delivering a demo. Similarly, this tactic helps to train…

• Public Great Demo! Workshop – San Francisco Bay Area – November 19

  Peter E. Cohan

  5 Nov 2009 | 9:05 am

  [Warning: Shameless self-promotion alert!]In conjunction with the 280 Group, we are offering an Open (public) 1-Day Great Demo! Workshop in San Jose, California on November 19th.You can find more information including an overview, agenda, location and pricing at the 280 Group website. Registration for the event is available here.This is a terrific opportunity for individuals or small groups.[And this should be the last posting for this event on this blog...]

• “Not Yet…”

  Peter E. Cohan

  4 Nov 2009 | 2:16 pm

  Very often, presales managers are asked to qualify sales opportunities before assigning a presales resource for a demo. This often takes the form of reviewing the information entered into a CRM system by a sales person or submitted by that sales person on an internal form. There are typically only two answers:“Yes” – you have provided enough information/the opportunity is sufficiently qualified (or senior management has decreed that it is…!) and yes, we’ll schedule a presales resource for your demo.“No” – the opportunity is insufficiently documented; no demo resource for you.

• Using the Bicycle Story to Get Customers to Talk

  Peter E. Cohan

  3 Nov 2009 | 7:15 am

  A recent Great Demo! Workshop participant noted that we can use the “bicycle story” (follows in a moment, be patient…) to encourage customers/prospects to talk about their needs and interests - rather than to show them a long stream of stuff they are not interested in. Here’s the story:“You are riding a bicycle rather fast. You skid on some gravel and fall, scraping your legs and arms. You are bleeding moderately and you hurt, but your bike seems to be ok. Someone sees you fall and comes to offer help. He offers you water – but you aren’t thirsty, you’re bleeding. He offers…

• 28 Oct 2009 | 4:36 pm

  Peter E. Cohan

  28 Oct 2009 | 4:36 pm

  It looks like Netbriefings has released a new or improved version of their web collaboration tool (http://www.netbriefings.com/solutions/econfpro.shtml). I haven’t yet seen it in action, but the collateral sounds good…!Does anyone have experience using it for Remote Demos?From their website:Netbriefings Conference Pro Feature ListFlash-based Meeting Viewer - Participants only need a web browser and Flash to attend a meeting.Cross-platform solution - Host or attend a meeting from a PC, Mac, or Linux computer.Screen sharing - Show your entire desktop or a window on your desktop to all…

• 
  Patricia Handschiegel

• The New Power Girls: Influencers - Is The Company Your Company Keeps Hurting Or Helping Your Brand?

  Patricia Handschiegel

  29 Oct 2009 | 7:04 pm

  It's a chilly fall night at Hollywood's Roosevelt hotel as the 140 conference parties (three total!) go full swing poolside under the stars. Guests mingle and chit-chat as out of town revelers see familiar faces and catch up. Cabanas line the perimeter as wait staff deliver trays of cocktails. At a private suite to the side of the hotel's signature pool, some of the most influential people on the city's technology and business scene are gathered. A group of women, all friends, are perched on the outside chaise, laughing and talking business. The array of fashionable shoes proves it's not just…

• The New Power Girls: National Business Women's Week, Being Counted, And What Defines A Woman Entrepreneur

  Patricia Handschiegel

  21 Oct 2009 | 3:37 pm

  Entrepreneur Nell Melrino is the kind of woman a woman wants to be. She had a successful company when she realized the importance of exposing young girls to opportunities in business and positive role models and invented "Take Our Daughters to Work Day" in 1992. When she did she took on the suits with a suit, leveraging a now famous research study to convince corporations across the country to support the effort. That study said that by 2009, women would make up an enormous part of our workforce. Today, they do. Half of U.S. workers are female in America. She didn't stop there. She then…

• The New Power Girls: Best Business Investments Shared!

  Patricia Handschiegel

  7 Oct 2009 | 1:48 pm

  It's a typical fall afternoon in Los Angeles as women entrepreneurs embark on Pali House for an afternoon of "co-working," a trend that brings founders, freelancers and other workers in a group setting - like a virtual office. One by one, women entrepreneurs take over the back corner of the room and get settled in. Apples illuminate the landscape as each opens their laptop and begins tackling the afternoon's work. An array of fashionable shoes and handbags peek out from around the center table - Chanel, Chloe, Louis Vuitton, Gap, Heather Hawkins. Blackberry and iPhone litter the table along…

• The New Power Girls: Diane Von Furstenberg, AMEX And Women Entrepreneurs Share What Small Business Needs, Plus Introducing NPGDaily.com

  Patricia Handschiegel

  29 Sep 2009 | 11:51 am

  If last week wasn't enough to prove that there are incredible women everywhere in business today I don't know what else will. My first email Monday was from the female business development VP of a major company updating me on their interest in an acquisition of a project. Next, I had a call with the powerhouse behind some of American Express' most incredible programs -- Nancy Smith, AMEX's Vice President, Global Media, Content and Community. Nancy has won awards for her work. Incredible. It followed by a chat with Shazi Visram, founder of Happy Baby and one of three finalists in the NBC/AMEX…

• New Power Girls: 20 Women Founders To Watch, Part II

  Patricia Handschiegel

  24 Sep 2009 | 8:56 am

  The scene at the AMEX Phillip Lim event during New York Fashion Week is chic and stylish as guests arrive and rub elbows with media, bloggers and others in attendance. Minds behind some of the top fashion sites on the web mingle and mix in. Backstage, jewelry designer, blogger and Power Girl Wendy Brandes is introduced to the designer himself, who shares a passion for connecting with customers at the event and the store, as well as a few tips for aspiring entrepreneurs. "Be realistic, be realistic," Lim says as models hurry by and other guests wait in the wings to meet him. "You're coming…

• 
  NFIB Young Entrepreneur Foundation

• The World is Flat #4: How Generation Y is Going Global

  kathykormanfrey

  21 Oct 2009 | 11:10 am

  Thomas Friedman’s bookThe World Is Flat showed us how our businesses are becoming global.  The top 10 factors leading to globalization Friedman’s book, as well as an entrepreneur “going global” profile were included in our first post of this series. This final post continues our look at “going global.” Bill Clinton calls this evolving trend “interdependence” and cited several recent examples during his talk at the 2009 World Business Forum.  Find highlights of his speech here. But, is Generation Y grasping these concepts? Leading business strategist Gary…

• The World Is Flat #3: How KFC Went Global

  kathykormanfrey

  1 Oct 2009 | 12:50 pm

  Large corporations are often overlooked in the discussion of entrepreneurship. Yet, they are forced to innovate daily to keep growing and providing value to shareholders. Globalization is one such growth strategy, and one of the most successful “going global” stories is about a brand with which we are all familiar: KFC. This is the story of an American fried chicken restaurant chain dominating the Chinese restaurant industry on its home turf.  Furthermore, China has thousands of years of culinary tradition and sophistication. How did this happen, you may ask? Warren Liu speaks at…

• The Student Intern’s Guide to Making Money on the Side

  kathykormanfrey

  15 Sep 2009 | 7:09 pm

  We interrupt our series on How Entrepreneurs Are Going Global to bring you a guest blogger: Wharton student Eric Morris. Eric shares tips with our readers on holding down a paying job while doing an unpaid internship. More than ever, students are shying away from the usual extracurricular activities of high school life for more unique opportunities in their local communities.  There are two main reasons for this evolution.  First, those hard-to-come-by opportunities in the summer are easier to land when fewer students are applying for them in the school year.  Second, employers understand…

• The World is Flat #2: How HM Risk Group Went Global

  kathykormanfrey

  4 Sep 2009 | 11:20 am

  How does one “go global?” Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is Flat showed us how our businesses are becoming global.  The top 10 factors leading to globalization Friedman’s book, as well as an entrepreneur “going global” profile were included in our first post of this series. This second post continues our Q&A with entrepreneurs who have made the jump and ”gone global.” Today we feature Ashley Hunter of HM Risk Group. Q: Explain how you “went global” with your business? Discuss major steps and the benefit to you and your customers. I actually just decided that I…

• The World is Flat #1: How Sole Bicycles Went Global

  kathykormanfrey

  20 Aug 2009 | 6:34 am

  Photo credit www.PatMurris.blogspot.com How does one “go global?” Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is Flat showed us how our businesses are becoming global.  Here are the top 10 factors leading to globalization according to the WikiSummary of Friedman’s book: List of Ten Forces 1.  Collapse of Berlin Wall–11/89: The event not only symbolized the end of the Cold war, it allowed people from other side of the wall to join the economic mainstream. (11/09/1989) 2. Netscape: Netscape and the Web broadened the audience for the Internet from its roots as a communications medium used…

• 
  Young Entrepreneur

• What is your favorite WordPress Theme and why? – Entrepreneur Poll Update

  Adam

  5 Nov 2009 | 9:05 pm

  Time for a Young Entrepreneur poll update! Last week we asked you, “What is your favorite WordPress Theme and why?” To be in with a chance of winning our $25 Amazon Gift Voucher offer, please simply enter our poll and this voucher could be on it’s way to you! WordPress is dominating the blogging scene more than ever and there are some great themes out there, including ones from sites like StudioPress.com and WooThemes.com. So, what are the best WordPress Theme and why? Demonstrate your expert knowledge and share your advice in this months Young Entrepreneur Poll! If you would like to…

• 8 Pitfalls to Avoid When Using Social Media for Marketing

  bizguy

  4 Nov 2009 | 9:05 pm

  Social media is in the process of rewriting many marketing textbooks and is being hastily added to the curriculum of many business-oriented schools of education, complete no doubt with many footnotes, asterisks, disclaimers and question marks. A business must be involved with social media, but the question is to what extent. Further, what level of risk is acceptable when entering such virgin territory? It would seem that there is a lot more to gain than there is to lose when you consider whether to entertain a social media campaign, so long as you exercise a modicum of common sense. A lot of…

• Interview with Jake Nickell

  Adam

  3 Nov 2009 | 9:05 pm

  For this week’s interview I was lucky enough to catch up with Jake Nickell. Jake is the founder of Threadless, a t-shirt design community where users submit designs, community votes, and staff choose between the most popular design Adam: You had an extremely successful partnership with Jeffrey Kalmikoff, how did you meet? Jake: We met about 2 years after I started Threadless. Jeffrey ordered a poster and it arrived damaged. In our communications with him to get him a new one, he invited us over for dinner. We went and met a lot of local designers. We started working with Jeffrey as a…

• Profile on Vera Wang

  bizguy

  2 Nov 2009 | 9:05 pm

  “Don’t be afraid to take time to learn. It’s good to work for other people. I worked for others for 20 years. They paid me to learn” – Vera Wang. Vera Wang fully understands that life is all about a long journey through experience. She often talks about life’s rich learning curve and is clearly a product of the experience gained. Her belief that “success isn’t about the end result, it’s about what you learned along the way,” fits nicely with her assertion that previous employers paid her as she learned her life skills. Wang may be very inward…

• How to Find the Right Financial Planner for You and Your Business

  bizguy

  1 Nov 2009 | 9:02 pm

  Financial planning seems to be more important than ever these days. Few would have imagined the catastrophic changes that we are seeing all around us, the “too big to fail” failures and the highly publicized fraud cases. Many people and businesses have suffered lasting damage and understand that their definition of security has changed almost overnight. Against this backdrop, the selection of a financial planner takes on additional urgency and must be approached with some care, if we are to avoid some of the pitfalls and past performance horrors that are all too fresh in our minds. Many…

• 
  David Silverman

• Did I Get Your Email?

  David Silverman

  2 Nov 2009 | 1:11 pm

  There are two of me. There's the me who gets up, changes my son's diaper and puts on my 17-year-old shoes that I know need to be replaced at some point but can't seem to get around to replacing. And then there's the me who lives in Los Angeles and gets my email. And I get his. We're both named David Silverman and we both work for the same company. Despite attempts to dispel confusion on the internal email system — I am David S. Silverman and he is David R. Silverman — things still go wrong because people type "David Silverman" into Outlook and press send, blithely relying on…

• How Successful CEOs Respond to Failure

  David Silverman

  21 Oct 2009 | 11:29 am

  Failure. We don't like to talk about it. But we all worry about it. We worry about it in the present: Why am I not doing better in my career? Do my coworkers think I'm messing up? Is my boss unhappy with me? We worry about it in the past: Why didn't I speak up at that meeting? Is it my fault I got laid off last year? What if I hadn't left that job ten years ago? And we worry about it in the future: What if I don't get the project done on time? Will I end up without a bonus? Am I going to get fired? I've recently been talking to CEOs as part of a project I'm working on documenting how people…

• When Clarity is Not the Same as Brevity

  David Silverman

  6 Oct 2009 | 12:55 pm

  Often my suggested revision to an email or document makes it longer than the original. Invariably, I am leapt upon by the brevity police. I imagine them at their keyboards, hunched liked winged monkeys, ready to pounce on any sign of verbosity. "It's too long!" they immediately screech. While it's true that shorter is often better, the soul of good communication is clarity. Cutting content may toss out the bathwater of wordiness, but it may also eject useful information into the electronic abyss. There's an example of this on my (and probably your) desk. The telephone. I am completely…

• What Your Suit Says About You

  David Silverman

  24 Sep 2009 | 6:52 am

  There is no surer sign that I've crossed the invisible line into curmudgeon than this: I wear a suit to work every day and want everyone else to also. It's the second half of that statement that's clearly crotchety, but I ask you to hear me out. Twenty years ago I started my first job at IBM. I wore grey slacks with plenty of pleats (it was the late 80s), a button down shirt, and a tie — my favorite was a red woven "sock" tie, may it rest in peace. On occasion, I would add to the mix either my father's 1940s three-piece grey suit or paisley suspenders causing me to appear to be a very…

• Did Your Email Get Lost in Translation?

  David Silverman

  15 Sep 2009 | 1:26 pm

  I've written before about how the "cold call" email can leave the recipient feeling, well, cold. Below is a guest post from Nadia Nassif on the topic from the international perspective. I work predominantly with international folks grappling with English. Often their well-meaning intentions are buried by grammatical errors and a lack of awareness of the context of culture — either understanding mine or expecting I will know theirs. But sometimes the problem is that the writer comes across as insincere and impersonal. Here's an example that was sent to me recently: From: Sridar Patel…

• 
  Grade A Entrepreneurs

• Alain Calefas: How his entrepreneurial quest for adventure led him to create Serenity Valley next to Silicon Valley

  admin

  4 Nov 2009 | 4:46 pm

  Alain Calefas, Serenity Valleyfounder, with Michel Serres at DBF, a networking organization for French entrepreneurs, on November 2, 2009. That day, Alain Calefas was interviewed by Jean-Louis Gassée (who co-founded DBF in 1994). Alain Calefas graduated from the French Ecole Polytechnique, arguably one of the most elitist schools in Europe. To get in, you have to excel academically – period. But when you combine intellectual acumen and a desire to live life to the hilt, you have Alain Calefas. His first passion was Marine Engineering, so from Paris, he went to Berkeley – and fell so much…

• Zoomorama on the newly identified Leonardo da Vinci

  admin

  26 Oct 2009 | 10:07 pm

  About two weeks ago, everybody was talking about the amazing discovery that a painting catalogued as German, early 19th century, by Christie’s in 1998 and offered for $19,000 was an unknown Leonardo da Vinci worth a fortune. How can the experts be now so sure? “Start with instinct, then try a multispectral scanner (from Lumiere Technology), said Timothy Clifford in Time Online. Read this great story as well as the report by Lumiere Technology. And also look at the painting – with Zoomorama (a product that l quite often use on this blog). The truth of the matter is that over a…

• Behind the Cloud, by Marc Benioff

  marylened

  17 Oct 2009 | 8:22 am

  When famous CEOs tell their stories, you are never quite sure if they their goal is self-aggrandizement or an authentic desire to recount something that will be of real interest to others. Marc Benioff has lots of reasons to be very proud of accomplishments, but his book Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry will be an inspiration to many. salesforce (with a lowercase as was the mania at the turn of the century) is, of course, a major industry success, but also the symbol of a timely, intelligent…

• Social Media: The Revenge of the Internet

  admin

  9 Oct 2009 | 10:55 am

  Earlier this week, I had the privilege of delivering an introductory speech for a great product, ObjectiveMarketer, in front of remarkable executives and CIOs from the European Institutions hosted by Cisco Systems. It’s always a challenge to speak to an extraordinarily knowledgeable audience that is well versed in both technologies and trends, but it is also a rewarding experience. Below is a summary of my presentation. I focused on the fact that social media are the very essence of the Internet, and in many ways, its revenge. The expression “Social Media” was coined by…

• Guest-speaking in Bob Lowry’s class at UMass Amherst: Entrepreneurs are storytellers

  admin

  2 Oct 2009 | 6:46 pm

  It is simply a great pleasure to step into a class of some eighty highly motivated students: when I asked who planned to start a company one day, at least half of them raised their hands! The name of the course for which I was a guest speaker is “Leadership and Networking,” taught by Bob Lowry. One of the books that they are currently discussing in the course is the 1936 bestseller by Dale Carnegie (no relation with Andrew Carnegie): How to Win Friends & Influence People. Although it was published more than seventy years ago, this book remains a must read – and given that…

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  Silicontap.com

• Mozilla Updates Firefox

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:41 pm

  Mozilla has released an update to the open source Internet browser Firefox, the group said Thursday. According to Mozilla, version 3.5.5 of the browser fixes several stability issues, including a crash in the GIF decoder for the browser, as well as bugs related to font handling.

• Metabolex Nabs $8.6M More

  6 Nov 2009 | 2:03 pm

  Hayward-babsed Metabolex, a developer of biopharmaceuticals for the treatment of metabolic diseases, said this week that it has raised $8.6M in additoinal financing. The inside round came from Alta Partners, Venrock, Versant Ventures, Bay City Capital, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Novo Ventures, Pictet, Next Chapter Holdings, Charter Ventures, Merlin Biomed, and Birchmere Ventures. Metabolex said it will use the funding to continue development of its four, clinical-stage candidates.

• Applied Materials Buys Solar Technology Firm

  6 Nov 2009 | 1:58 pm

  Santa Clara-based Applied Materials said Friday that it has acquired substantially all of the assets, including intellectual property, of New Mexico-based Advent Solar, a developer of crystalline silicon (c-Si) photovoltaic cells. Financial terms of the buy were not disclosed. Advent Solar was founded in 2002, and develops technology used for producing c-Si cells and modules. Applied said the acquisition would complement its portfolio of solar PV technologies.

• Thing Labs Gets $2.0M

  6 Nov 2009 | 12:57 pm

  San Francisco-based Thing Labs, a developer of web-based software for creating and sharing content, has upped its funding to $2.0M in a funding round which includes Polaris Venture Partners, according to a regulatory filing from the firm today. The funding is part of a $2.2M fundraise, according to the filing. Thing Labs is headed by Jason Shellen. According to Thing Labs, it has also received funding from Jeff Clavier, and Michael Jones.

• eBay, Skype Lawsuit Settled

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:26 am

  San Jose-based eBay said this morning that the investor group led by Silver Lake, which was looking to acquire Skype, has reached a settlement with Joltid Limited and Joost N.V., the firms that own the rights to Skype's peer-to-peer technology. According to eBay, the settlement ends all litigation by the firms, and gives Skype ownership of all software previously licensed from Joltid. As part of the deal, Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis will become investors in Skype, and receive a 14 percent stake in the firm.... (more)

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  Austin Startup

• Video Interview with Socialware Founders

  admin

  6 Nov 2009 | 11:01 am

  I originally posted this interview on the Collaboratory, but I wanted to also share it with AustinStartup readers. I had a chance to sit down with the founders of Socialware for an interview. I edited our talk down to under 5 minutes. Socialware is an alliance partner of ours, and is  creating a new category of software named “Social Middleware.” We discuss what need they fill in the market, as well as the business cases for enabling and managing the public social media networks in the enterprise.

• Austin Startup Welcomes Carla Thompson to the Team

  Carla Thompson

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:32 am

  One of our primary missions here at Austin Startup is to showcase the vibrant tech community and culture here in town, and in the process fulfill our motto of convincing tech entrepreneurs and influencers to “Ditch the Valley, Run for the Hills.” With that in mind, we are proud to welcome new Austinite Carla Thompson of the

• Digby Acquires Movaya Wireless

  Bryan Menell

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:00 am

  Digby, the leading provider of mobile commerce solutions for retailers, today announced the acquisition of Movaya Wireless, Inc., a Seattle, Washington-based mobile software company focused on building digital goods storefront applications for the iPhone, Android and mobile web platforms. Additionally, Movaya Chengdu Technology, Ltd., Movaya’s Asian operations center, will form the basis for Digby Chengdu Technology, Ltd. Digby Chengdu will serve as Digby’s hub for the rapidly expanding mobile commerce market in Asia. Movaya co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Stanley Wang, has…

• NetStreams Acquired by ClearOne

  Bryan Menell

  4 Nov 2009 | 11:30 am

  Austin-based NetStreams has been acquired by publicly traded company ClearOne, according to the following press release. NetStreams had raised over $27M from investors, including Austin Ventures. NetStreams is the global leader in digital media networks based on Internet Protocol (IP) technology that is used in a wide variety of applications, including digital signage, corporate video distribution, network operations centers and government facilities, and large venues in such industries as hospitality, entertainment and casinos. NetStreams’ digital streaming media and control systems…

• Q&A Wednesday :: VirTex

  Amit Kooner

  4 Nov 2009 | 7:00 am

  Today’s Q&A Wednesday is with Brad Heath, President of VirTex Assembly Services Q: Give us the elevator pitch for you company? VirTex specializes in electronic manufacturing services that help our customers minimize cost, inventory levels and lead time, while increasing their supply chain flexibility.  By combining our facilities in Texas and Mexico with our other global partners, we can reduce the lead times, logistics costs and communication headaches normally associated with global sourcing. Q: How did the company get started? Who had the idea? Was there an “A Ha!”…

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  Yes to Me

• Starseeds: Blueprinters 2 Blueprint Technicians

  akemi

  1 Nov 2009 | 7:07 pm

  Blueprint Technicians form a subcategory within the Blueprinters group. All Blueprinters share a lot of characteristics, so before we get to the specific characteristics of Blueprint Technicians, please read the first post on Blueprinters if you haven’t done so already.  (Photo credit) After Blueprint Originators worked on the general concept of the Earth experiment and Blueprint Designers worked on the aesthetic aspect of the blueprints, Blueprint Technicians worked on the technical side of blueprints. This includes (but probably not limited to) the energetic grid system on Earth, the…

• Online Gratitude Journal October 2009 Edition #34

  akemi

  30 Oct 2009 | 1:51 pm

  Happy Halloween! I have the feeling Halloween is big in this small town. Maybe I will take my camera out. Hope you are having fun and enjoying the fall colors, too. (Photo credit) October in Review I spent a lot of time thinking and writing about foods this month. I do believe physical health is important in spiritual growth. We are spiritual being incarnated in the flesh. The content is of course important, but the package is part of the deal, too. So if you haven’t, please check this out. And this.  And let’s treat our bodies with gratitude! My eBook “Lightworker’s Guide to…

• Demystifying Starseeds, Walk-Ins, And Lightworkers

  akemi

  27 Oct 2009 | 2:10 pm

  I’ve received some questions about starseeds, walk-ins, and lightworkers in general. So let me explain my understanding about these concepts.  (Photo credit) Starseeds Souls can be categorized into two groups depending on their history: souls that started right from this planet Earth and souls that have been to other star system(s) prior to coming to Earth. I call each Earth souls and starseed souls. This is a soul level issue. Being starseed does NOT mean an alien came down and impregnated your mother. On the physical level, you are the product of your biological parents. On the soul…

• Dogma, Anti-Dogma, And Choosing Your Path In Diet And Spirituality

  akemi

  22 Oct 2009 | 3:15 pm

  Don’t be like a religious fundamentalist with your diet. Always consult your current body, not the dogma. — my recent tweet I’ve devoted three posts exploring the best way to eat for our physical and spiritual health: Meat Eaters vs Vegetarians In Spirituality Eat For Your Health And Spirituality Detox Your Body And Mind In this post, I want to sum up the discussion. We are still talking about foods, but the point is our relationship with foods, or the way we choose to eat. And the way we choose to live in general, including our spiritual journey. (Photo credit) The objective of…

• Review: Ancient Secret Of The Fountain Of Youth By Peter Kelder

  akemi

  20 Oct 2009 | 12:43 pm

  I’m so impressed with this little book that I feel obligated to introduce it to you. It’s a small book of a 100 pages or so, no frills. The simplicity and its longevity (the current version was first published in 1985. It says the book was first published in the 1930s) show there is something remarkable about the book. I’m often disappointed with books that come with so many frills. Quite often, the latter half of the book is a rehash of the first half so I can just scan through quickly once I read 50 to 60% of the book. It leaves me wondering why the author had to do this — if…

• 
  The StartUp Blog at PartnerUp

• 10 Free Web Tools for Entrepreneurs

  Megan Dorn

  6 Nov 2009 | 2:42 pm

  Dimdim: Dimdim is a Web conferencing application that lets anyone deliver synchronized live presentations, whiteboards and Web pages and share their voice and video over the Internet—no download required. ADrive: ADrive offers 50 GB of free online storage and backup for all file types. The 50 GB of space is currently the most you can get as far as free offerings. Most others offer just 1-5 GB for free. Blogger: Blogger is a free blog publishing tool from Google that allows you to easily share news, tips and other relevant content with your audience. Craigslist: Craigslist is an online…

• Low-Cost Ways to Show Employees Gratitude

  Megan Dorn

  5 Nov 2009 | 11:25 am

  Showing appreciation for a job well done is important to the productivity of your employees and in turn the growth of your company. Here are some low-cost ways to show your employees that you’re grateful for the work that they do. Free food. Bring in pizza for lunch or muffins and juice for breakfast. Travelling trophy. Create a fun trophy that can be passed around from employee to employee. Charity work. Let an employee or the whole team take a day off to do work for the cause of their choice. Discounts. Give employees discounts on the products or services you provide. Movie days. If the…

• What You Want Doesn’t Always Matter

  Megan Dorn

  4 Nov 2009 | 2:59 pm

  When I was in college, the big question was, “what do I want to do?” It’s a question that all young adults have at least thought about. The answer for me was writing. The answer for others could be anything from teaching kindergarten to serving in the military to being a personal trainer. For young entrepreneurs, maybe the answer doesn’t matter. Maybe “What do I want to do?” is the wrong question. I read an excellent post this morning on The Entrepreneurial Mind that talks about the question that entrepreneurship students SHOULD be asking themselves. “What goods or services are…

• Free Shipping Day Gives End-of-Season Holiday Sales Boost

  Megan Dorn

  3 Nov 2009 | 11:07 am

  Now that it’s November, most retailers have only one thing on their minds—the holiday shopping season. While it doesn’t officially kick off for consumers until the day after Thanksgiving (or if you’re my mom about two months ago), the implementation of holiday sales strategies for many retailers are already underway. One thing that online retailers should look in to this year is the second annual Free Shipping Day, which will take place on Dec. 17. Online shopping typically declines around Dec. 12 because consumers fear that their packages may not arrive before Christmas Eve. This…

• Small Business Tip of the Week: Business Dinners

  Megan Dorn

  2 Nov 2009 | 12:20 pm

  Taking clients out for business dinners can be a great way for you to interact with them on a more personal level. We live in a busy society however, so you must be respectful of other people’s free time. Find out what kind of schedule your client has. Does he need to be at home with his kids on week nights? Does she prefer to spend her weekends at her house on the lake? Sometimes just by showing that you’re being cognoscente of your clients’ busy schedules and home lives, you can go a long way in gaining trust and deepening relationships.

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  ZDNET Entrepreneurship Resources

• IndustryPlayer 6.6 build 660 (Windows)

  27 Oct 2009 | 12:00 am

  IndustryPlayer is a business simulation game which realistically reproduces all aspects of a corporation's business, including it's relationships with the workforce, suppliers, competitors, consumers, banks, insurers, and the government. The simulation is based on real world economic models and genuine industry data. Players take the role of an entrepreneur and...

• Tivoli Foundations: Designed and priced for your growing business

  15 Oct 2009 | 12:00 am

  You're invited to a very special Virtual Event for IBM Tivoli Foundations. During these difficult economic times, mid-size companies have unique challenges and may struggle to find equally powerful yet affordable solutions, designed and priced specifically for them. Look no further! ...

• Photos: Start-ups step up at DemoFall

  22 Sep 2009 | 3:10 pm

  Twice a year at Demo events, well-funded entrepreneurs face off with venture capitalists and the press. Here's the scene. by CNET News.com

• CABSG (Speed Dialer for Singapore cabs) (Mobile)

  19 Sep 2009 | 12:00 am

  Save the nightmare in remember what number to call when you are in Singapore.Comfort / CityCab / SMRT / Premier / Trans Cab / SMART Cab / Prime Taxi / Yellow TopFor more freeware, visit http://www.bak2u.comTop 10 Best Life Hacking Award - SpringWise.comNew services help consumers, keep track of their...

• Andreessen joins HP's board

  17 Sep 2009 | 1:24 pm

  HP said Thursday that Marc Andreessen will join its board of directors. Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz and co-founder and chairman of Ning, will join HP's board immediately. The total board members will move from 10 to 11. Andreessen knows HP well since the...

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  BUZZ in theHUB: Genotrope's Startup Watch

• Eric Ries Talk @ MIT November 19th

  TS

  30 Oct 2009 | 9:53 am

  We are all set for a great event coming on the 19th. Thanks to our sponsors, we are pleased to be able to present this talk free to all attendees.  By underwriting this event, these sponsors have demonstrated their commitment to the web startup community in the Boston/Cambridge area. Without their help this event would not be possible. We have some good news. The people that signed up on the overflow list, now have a reserved seat at the event. All ticket holders will receive a confirmation email prior to the event. Also, there are 12 slots remaining.  If you aren’t able to reserve…

• You don’t need a CTO, you need a lead developer

  TS

  26 Oct 2009 | 12:48 pm

  A quick review of the startup market here reveals a good number of nascent web startups seeking a technical founder CTO. Socialtality Revenue Architects Kill Your Cube Dating Site Startup Recently a first time founder of a Boston startup came to us seeking a CTO for their web app. There was no great technical problem to solve, no dream team and no technical IP to create a barrier to entry. In short, nothing that would interest an experienced CTO. It was certainly a great opportunity for the right person, but that right person was a veteran developer with a track record of shipping reliable…

• Serendeputy

  TS

  23 Oct 2009 | 12:19 pm

  Genotrope Record:  Serendeputy Funding Status: Bootstrapped Founders Backgrounds: Boston.com, Abuzz Investors: founders Industry: Consumer web, New Offering Description: Serendeputy is your personal news assistant, a little robot who learns what you like and pulls together a page of news articles tailored to your specific interests.

• CheapToday

  TS

  23 Oct 2009 | 12:13 pm

  Genotrope Record:  CheapToday Funding Status:  private Founders Backgrounds:  Myperfectgig, Cheap Flights Investors: Private Industry: Consumer Web, ecommerce Offering Description:  CheapToday is a buyer’s guide and commentary site. Our deal experts hand-pick only the hottest daily deals on the internet and display them on CheapToday. CheapToday uses the most powerful computers and the biggest brains, fueled by gallons of coffee—all to bring you the best of the net at the lowest prices available.

• thredUP

  TS

  16 Oct 2009 | 12:55 pm

  Genotrope Record: thredUP currently hiring Funding Status:  Seed Founders Backgrounds: Microsoft, Foley Hoag, Investors: ? Industry: Consumer Web Offering Description: We did some real thinking and figured out this whole idea of more efficient exchange makes a lot of sense for two reasons. First, most people bore easily, clothes included; second, buying stylish new clothes on a regular basis is expensive. So we thought it would be cool if you could exchange the clothes that you were bored of (old to you) for new ones (new to you). Thats really it: out with old to you, in with new…

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  Escape From Cubicle Nation

• 10 ways to stimulate the economy with your brain

  Pamela

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:58 am

  I don’t know about you, but I get mighty tired of reading newspaper articles and blog rants about the effectiveness/ineffectiveness of stimulus money on our economy. What makes me frustrated is that we waste hours a day fighting with each other about things outside of our control, instead of using our own brains to do something about our local economy. So here is my list of 10 things you can do, right now, to stimulate a small corner of your local economy without spending a dime: Mentor a new business owner.  If you know how to build an effective website or display goods more…

• Spreading the addiction of the TED conference one city at a time

  Pamela

  30 Oct 2009 | 2:24 pm

  There are few things that get me fired up late at night like watching TED videos. For the uninitiated, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and is a conference that takes place once a year. The videos from TED are shared free on their website, and the talks are enough to get you standing up with your fist in the air, clutching your heart with tears streaming down your cheeks, or doubling over with laughter. TED is undertaking a new initiative which is to encourage local communities to sponsor their own events, called “TEDx.” We are hosting ours here in Phoenix,…

• Last chance to attend live Escape from Cubicle Nation workshop in 2009

  Pamela

  28 Oct 2009 | 4:20 pm

  The fabulous and enthusiastic crew from last week’s Escape from Cubicle Nation Workshop in London. Photo by the handsome and talented TMSRuge. I communicate on Twitter so frequently that I just realized some blog readers may not know that my last live Escape from Cubicle Nation workshop will take place on Wednesday, November 4 at the Hotel Belamar in Southern California.  I will be joined by the fabulous and talented Colleen Wainwright, otherwise known as Communicatrix, who is an amazing resource for branding and social media. This will be my last workshop of the year, and the last…

• Response to Chris Brogan about Overnight Success

  Pamela

  25 Oct 2009 | 4:05 pm

  Sitting in the Dallas airport after having spent the weekend speaking and participating in Milana Leshinsky’s Coaching Millions Super Summit, I watched Chris Brogan’s 3-part video series on Overnight Success and felt my heart melt. I related to so much of what he talked about, since I have spent so much time this summer on the road, promoting my book. Getting out in front of people is critical, spreading the message of hope and connection through entrepreneurship is imperative, and creating a powerful business model that serves people well and provides well for my family is a…

• The beauty of dirty laundry

  Pamela

  19 Oct 2009 | 2:38 pm

  At the management conference I attended in Pärnu, Estonia last week, we had a speaker from Denmark, Morten Lund,  a long-time entrepreneur who had, among other things, made good money investing in Skype. As he launched into his presentation, he said: “I have founded over 88 startups. And at the moment, I am bankrupt.” Due to a failed investment in a newspaper business in his native Denmark, he had lost a lot of money. But, he said, he actually was feeling quite good. He was spending lots of time with his four kids, whom he obviously adored. And he remained passionate about…

• 
  Life Beyond Code

• Event: Thought Leadership 2.0

  Rajesh Setty

  3 Nov 2009 | 11:10 am

  If you are in the bay area on November 18, I would love to see you at this event where I will be speaking about how to build thought leadership without breaking your back. A quick summary Thought Leadership 2.0 Building thought leadership without breaking your back Everyone knows the benefit of being established as a thought leader. For starters, there is an immediate trustworthiness associated with thought leaders that will increase your influence as you are perceived as someone who “knows” and who “cares.” In the old world, tools to build thought leadership included…

• Apples and Oranges: The pitch for pre-paid gas option

  Rajesh Setty

  22 Oct 2009 | 11:36 pm

  Yesterday I was at the Hertz counter in Los Angeles and there were about half a dozen people in front of me in the line. I was surprised (actually shocked) to see four of the six people in front of me choose the pre-paid gas option. For those of you who don’t know what is pre-paid gas option, you pay for the entire tank of gas and you can return the car with an empty tank. A quick side note: I know there are some nit-pickers who might be reading it. You can’t return a car with an EMPTY gas tank (you will need to get it towed, literally) so that is not the point of the blog post.

• Mini Saga #41 – Loan

  Rajesh Setty

  19 Oct 2009 | 1:10 am

  Photo Courtesy: Melissa Maples on Flickr Sometimes we take things literally. Enjoy the story: Loan Rick stopped someone in the lobby and said – “I am from the office next door. Can you please lend me $1000?” The person flatly refused stating that he doesn’t know Rick well. With a confused look, Rick said – “That’s odd. My coworkers won’t lend me saying they know me too well.” Note: 1. A mini saga is a story told in exactly 50 words. Not 49 or 51 but exactly 50. 2. You can download a photographic manifesto of Mini Sagas at ChangeThis. Here…

• Recharging while sweating…

  Rajesh Setty

  13 Oct 2009 | 1:10 am

  Some background first… The day before I went for a long hike (long is relative BTW) I told my friend Arun that I was planning to go on a hike the next day. Arun asked me – “So where are you going?” And I proudly mentioned that it was “Rancho San Antonio,” he just laughed and said – “It is not a hike, it’s a walk.” Of course, he would said that being an avid hiker. For me, being on the hiking trails for the first time, it was definitely a HIKE. Why share the background? Simply because I know there will be some other avid hikers out…

• Mini Saga #40 – Dream

  Rajesh Setty

  12 Oct 2009 | 1:10 am

  Photo Courtesy: Bobasonic on Flickr Sometimes dreams can be unbelievable Enjoy the story: Dream Rick handed the keys to his Ferrari to the Valet guy and the phone rang. Actually it was the phone in his office. It was all a dream! Rick smiled and got up and walked towards his Mercedes. Just then, he heard a voice – “Wake up, you will miss the train.” Note: 1. A mini saga is a story told in exactly 50 words. Not 49 or 51 but exactly 50. 2. You can download a photographic manifesto of Mini Sagas at ChangeThis. Here is the link – Mini Sagas: Bite-sized Wisdom for Life and…

• 
  Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog

• Every Second Counts: How Website Performance Impacts Shopper Behavior

  Linda Bustos

  5 Nov 2009 | 3:03 am

  An under-performing site has serious consequences to revenue – online and across channels. Today’s shoppers have high expectations when it comes to buying online. Websites which take too long to load can result in negative brand perception, diminished goodwill and a significant loss in overall sales. In our recent webinar Every Second Counts: How Website Performance Impacts Shopper Behavior, we explored the findings of a new study by Forrester Research on behalf of Akamai which has identified two seconds as the new threshold for acceptable web page response times. The Impact Of Poor…

• Displaying Search Results: Grid View or List View?

  Linda Bustos

  4 Nov 2009 | 3:05 am

  One of the testing ideas covered in the webinar Best Ecommerce Tests — Case Studies & Practical Advice to Raise Conversions Before the Holidays is grid view vs. list view in search results. We know from eye-tracking and search engine behavior studies that, when presented with a list of search results, people often click the first result – paying attention to the top 3 or so. Rarely do folks click to the next page (past the 10th result). Online stores may present search results in list view or grid view (grid view is more common on category result pages). Some e-stores offer both…

• The Importance of Site Performance

  Linda Bustos

  2 Nov 2009 | 3:42 am

  Site Performance: The Need for Speed In a 2006 study on site abandonment (.pdf) conducted by Jupiter Research on behalf of Akamai, 28% of online shoppers claimed they would not wait longer than 4 seconds for a page to load before leaving a site. This equated to 33% of broadband customers and 19% of dialup. Though broadband customers had higher expectations for page load speed, even 45% of dialup users were unwilling to wait more than 6 seconds for a page to load. Online power shoppers who spend more than $1500 online are more likely to demand fast loading pages (55% vs. 40% of shoppers who…

• November Webinar Correction and Update

  Linda Bustos

  2 Nov 2009 | 1:06 am

  My apologies to all our Get Elastic readers, I got a little mixed up about our upcoming webinar this week on site performance Every Second Counts: How Website Performance Impacts Shopper Behavior with Margaret Rivera of Akamai. I had the date correct as November 4, but posted this morning that the webinar would happen tomorrow (Tuesday) when it will in fact happen on Wednesday, 9am PST / 12pm EST. The second correction is regarding the free copy of the research, which has not been confirmed. So make it up to you I’m going to post one heckuva detailed webinar recap on GetElastic.com,…

• Bloggers Digest: October 2009

  Linda Bustos

  30 Oct 2009 | 4:06 am

  If you’re new here, welcome to Get Elastic. Bloggers Digest is our monthly ritual that highlight posts from other blogs that are of value and interest to online retailers and Internet marketers. Miss this month’s webinars? Catch the on-demand replays: Ecommerce best practices for the Telco industry Best Ecommerce Tests — Case Studies & Practical Advice to Raise Conversions Before the Holidays If you’ve just discovered Get Elastic in the last year, check out our Halloween fun posts the Ghoulgle (see the comments for funny captions) and Online Retailers Dressed Up For the…

• 
  Tim Berry: Planning, Startups, Stories

• The Best Startup Funding is Initial Sales

  Tim Berry

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:06 am

  We all forget too easily: the best startup funding is sales. Sure, angel investment, friends and family, SBA loans, all of those options are necessary for most startups. But sales is better. If you can, find the early customers. Give them a deal, make them important, work with them to optimize their needs; but make a sale. Even if you need to go out and find investment — and I speak now as an actual angel investor — there’s almost nothing as convincing as actual sales. People are spending money. It makes a new business proposal far more credible. True, not all businesses can…

• One Problem with Entrepreurship Education

  Tim Berry

  5 Nov 2009 | 5:57 am

  I’m not saying this is the only problem. And, by the way, I’m in favor of entrepreneurship education, when it’s done well. I think it helps … but that’s another post. It’s a simple story. It’s a real problem with business education concerning entrepreneurship in top institutions. It happens way too often. Not that it’s the only problem with entrepreneurship education, but it’s harder to spot. Take an imaginary person named Leslie who’s interested in entrepreneurship and wants to study it and then teach it, as a career. Here’s…

• The Joy of User Revolts

  Tim Berry

  4 Nov 2009 | 5:47 am

  It’s not that surprising, really; and we’ve seen it before with Facebook. When Twitter released a new feature, and it’s users didn’t like it, they had to change it back. The Wired Magazine online story is Mob Rule! How Users Took Over Twitter. I found it interesting reading. For the same kind of thing in Facebook, here’s a link to a Google search for “Facebook user revolt.” The user revolt is a high-class problem. It’s the trappings of success. It means 1) you have users; 2) they care about what you’re doing with the site they use; and 3) there’s a forum or medium they can…

• Why Worry About Spelling? Who Cares!

  Tim Berry

  3 Nov 2009 | 6:05 am

  I’ve complained before, on this blog, about some common misspellings that get to me like fingernails on a chalkboard. Yesterday Megan tipped me off to 11 Gorgeously Ironic Misspellings In Protest Signs on 11Points.com, by Sam Greenspan. Misspelling is bad, yes, but it’s got to be worse, or at the very least more ironic, when people butcher the language while complaining about language.  The post includes pictures showing the following exact quotes taken from protest signs defending the English language: Get a brain, morans Respect Are Country, Speak English This is America and our only…

• Why I’ll Never Retire

  Tim Berry

  2 Nov 2009 | 5:55 am

  Ugh, baby boomers, retirement, selling the business … ouch. Strikes me like “lions, tigers, and bears,” in the Wizard of Oz. Scary. I’m 61. It was my choice to change my job more than two years ago, so that now instead of managing my company with 45 employees I’m writing, speaking, blogging, and teaching. And I thank God that I had that choice. The company’s better off with a new management team, and I’m better off with a new job. But I worry about the rest of us. Retirement scares the hell out of me. One of my closest friends retired two years ago. Now he’s bored out of his…

• 
  Signal vs. Noise

• VIDEO: Ken Burn’s documentary on Frank Lloyd Wright s

  Matt

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:10 am

  Ken Burn’s documentary on Frank Lloyd Wright shows Wright did the actual drawings for the famous Falling Water house in less than three hours! [via TSY] Related:Picasso, Paula Scher, and the lifetime behind every second [SvN]

• INSIGHT: Designs take a leap forward when you kill

  Ryan

  5 Nov 2009 | 12:20 pm

  Designs take a leap forward when you kill the things you didn’t know you were holding on to.

• Haystack: Two Week Anniversary + Latest Updates

  Jason F.

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:43 am

  Haystack is off to a great start. We launched two weeks ago on October 21st, and so far over over 2,500 web designers have been listed. Lots are finding clients as well. That’s exciting. We’ve been hard at work improving Haystack. Here are some of the improvements we’ve made since launch: Call to action footer At the bottom of each company page, we’ve added a call to action after their portfolio shots. This way it’s easier to scroll through someone’s work and then get in touch with them. It says “Like what you see? Contact via email or web.”…

• New Car Camo

  Jason F.

  5 Nov 2009 | 7:01 am

  Car companies go to great lengths to hide new models from from the public (or car paparazzi) during road testing. They’ve gotta drive the cars, but they don’t want to give away their designs too early. Car camouflage used to be handled with wraps, fake bodies, or fake pieces attached to the actual body. Like: But lately I’ve noticed more companies using swirly decals or geometric stickers to mask the shape. Check these out: I would assume once cars get deeper into the testing phase, and aerodynamics, wind noise, and overall ride quality need to be fined tuned, the bulky camp…

• VIDEO: Jay Shafer of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company

  37signals

  4 Nov 2009 | 4:06 pm

  Jay Shafer of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company designs and builds small houses ranging from 65 to 837 square feet. He’s spent the last 10 years living in his tiny houses. In this video he gives a tour of a 96 square foot house.

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  OnStartups

• Startups: How To Build A Barrier To Entry With Inbound Marketing

  Dharmesh Shah

  20 Oct 2009 | 1:16 am

  I’ve been doing a fair amount of speaking lately.  It’s partly driven by my recently released book, Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs (which is doing exceptionally well -- more below on this). The topics I usually speak on are startups (surprise) and marketing (surprise, surprise).  And, when I’m really on a roll and feeling adventurous, I talk about startup marketing. First off, a quick confession.  I’m not really a marketer, and I don’t play one on TV.  I’ve never had the word marketing in my job title, ever.  The closest…

• Holy Crap! HubSpot Has Now Raised A Total Of $33 Million

  Dharmesh Shah

  19 Oct 2009 | 2:12 am

  It has been a little over a year since I announced the news that my marketing software startup closed it’s Series B round of funding.  The article, “Insanity? Why A Bootstrap Entrepreneur Raised $17 Million in Venture Funding”, was a candid glimpse into the rationale for raising what seemed like a huge amount of money to me at the time (it seemed huge, because it was — at least to me). Today, we’ve released news that HubSpot has just closed on another $16 million funding round (our Series C) bringing our total capital raised to a whopping $33…

• Answers.OnStartups: Community Q&A For Startup Entrepreneurs

  Dharmesh Shah

  8 Oct 2009 | 3:14 pm

  I’m a big fan of a site called Stack Overflow.  It’s a surprisingly useful Q&A site for posting programming questions, and getting answers from the community.  The site has been immensely successful and is now often the first place I go to find answers to those vexing questions.  One of the things I like most about it is that both the questions and answers get voted on by the community.  As a result, the best stuff surfaces to the top.  You have to really use it to appreciate it. In any case, I’m a big fan of the site.  So, I was thrilled…

• 12 Facts About Entrepreneurs That Will Likely Surprise You

  Dharmesh Shah

  21 Sep 2009 | 2:29 am

  I have a picture in my head of what the average entrepreneur is like.  I’d guess pretty young (think Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.) living the red beans and rice lifestyle and working 80+ hours a week and sleeping under their desk.  On some parts, I’m probably right — but on many, I’m flat-out wrong.  This is demonstrated by a recent report from the Kauffman foundation for entrepreneurship.  The report is titled “The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur”.  It’s based on a survey of 549 company founders across a variety of industries (that’s my first…

• Why Raising Venture Capital Requires Helmets and Shovels [cartoon]

  Dharmesh Shah

  18 Sep 2009 | 5:16 am

  Looking for other startup fanatics?  Request access to the OnStartups LinkedIn Group.  100,000+ members and growing daily.Oh, and by the way, you should follow me on twitter here (that's @dharmesh).

• 
  Growthology

• eBooks now top iPhone app

  Tim Kane

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:23 am

  Surpassing games, according to Jason Akeny: Books represent one out of every five new iPhone and iPod touch applications launched in Apple's App Store in October 2009 according to in-application analytics provider Flurry.

• Peak Unemployment?

  Tim Kane

  6 Nov 2009 | 6:47 am

  The turnaround in employment numbers that we had hoped for has not materialized. Not even close. With today's fresh BLS numbers, the unemployment rate jumped up sharply by 0.4 points -- the kind of spike normally only seen in the darkest months of a recession. When a number of 0.4 points or higher is reported, the odds of that month being designated as recessionary are 88%, implying it is unlikely the NBER will declare the recession over at this point (whenever they get around to making such a declaration). To put this in perspective, the net change in the unemployment rate is 5.3 points…

• The Israel Model

  Dane Stangler

  3 Nov 2009 | 11:48 am

  Lo! What's this? A dispatch from our long lost co-blogger Bob Litan! Bob has evidently read a new book and, um, I can't really tell, but I think he likes it.With the widespread concern about how the U.S. economy is going to generate new jobs and output on a sustained basis after the huge stimulus is withdrawn, the time could not be better to read a new book that tells one country’s remarkable story how it has done it. The country is Israel, and the book is appropriately titled Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle by Dan Senor and Saul Singer. This is such a…

• The Not-So-Simple Role of Energy in the Economy

  Dane Stangler

  3 Nov 2009 | 11:39 am

  Last week Tim wrote about a New York Times story on "biophysical economics," a small but apparently growing group of scholars who seek to make economics more in tune with the laws of thermodynamics and energy use. Several blogs linked to the story, which I take to mean that this line of thinking was somewhat new to the economic blogosphere. Many of the ideas put forward by these thinkers, however, are not new and if you happen to be interested in things like "net energy" and "energy return on investment" (EROI) and the continuing viability of civilization, you…

• Kling meta analysis

  Tim Kane

  30 Oct 2009 | 1:21 pm

  Arnold Kling: I think that perhaps the most important trend of the past thirty years is the increased importance of cognitive skills relative to physical labor. Obviously, this has been going on for more than just the past thirty years, but during the past thirty years we saw an acceleration. This has had a number of consequences: 1. It changed the role of women. Their comparative advantage went from housework to market work. 2. This in turn, as Wolfers and Stevenson have pointed out, changed the nature of marriage. Men and women look for complementarity in consumption rather than in…

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  ArcticStartup

• ArcticEvening Stockholm On November 18th

  Miikka Kukkosuo

  6 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

  Our second ArcticEvening this year in Stockholm will be held on 18th of November 2009. The theme of the evening will be Mobile smartphone solutions and trends – how to strategically build business around the different native application platforms and mobile web. Discussion around delivering content and servics to Android, iPhone, Symbian, and different app stores is stirring up the mobile industry, and there are lots of different views on how to approach the smartphone market. In our evening’s panel discussion, we have representation from three firms: one that provides their…

• Open And Social Internet – What Does It Really Mean (Video)

  Ville Vesterinen

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:10 am

  There’s a big trend currently sweeping though the Nordic and Baltic countries. This is not a new phenomena for those who have been following what has been going on with the Internet, but it seems that the bigger public has been hit in the head with it and now doesn’t really know what to think of it. Internet is becoming more social and most of everybody seem to be lost on what it really means. A symptom of this is the social media consultants of all kinds that supposedly give advice the companies that have been hit to get their head around what the social Internet really means for…

• Verne Global – Iceland’s Green Data Center

  Hendrik Morkel

  6 Nov 2009 | 2:00 am

  From Google over Apple to the Start-up next door, nearly every company today uses web hosting services or has huge server farms at their disposal so that their services can run smoothly. That much of this energy to run these data centers comes from fossil fuels or even nuclear energy is probably known, but ignored. However, “green” web hosting is growing at a rapid pace to become an important category, so its no surprise that more and more data centers and web hosting providers are looking at opportunities to green their services. Verne Global from Iceland is looking to shake up…

• Spotify Pays 30 Cents For 100 Album Playbacks

  Antti Vilpponen

  6 Nov 2009 | 1:01 am

  The Finnish Heavy Metal band Mokoma, has publicly thanked Spotify for their payout model. Their Facebook fan page states that for “every 100 album playbacks we get 30 euro cents from Spotify. Thanks Spotify.” The deals that Spotify has struck with different artists have been kept secret, so it is not known if this is the only payout model. However, if there were 1000 people listening to an album and to my understanding would listen it through, Mokoma would get 3 €. The business model is of course related to the amount of income Spotify is able to generate for the company itself.

• Tero Salonen On How Dazzboard Entered The US Market (Video)

  Ville Vesterinen

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:29 pm

  During our trip to the Silicon Valley we aimed to meet people who have experience from the Northern Europe on one hand, and from the Silicon Valley on the other to get the bottom of the differences between the two places. This is the second post of the series. See also the first post here. I talked to Tero Salonen of Dazzboard (see our earlier story on Dazzboard here) and he told me how he first entered the US market and got the first contact there through Finnpro (the Finnish Export Association) and Plug and Play Tech Center, what resources he used and what are the next steps for Dazzboard…

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  NextBillion.net

• Weekly Round-Up: Financial Services Friday

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:32 pm

  Authored by: Nathan WyethHere are stories that caught my eye this week, an event coming up in San Francisco, and an opportunity for bloggers writing at the intersection of technology and poverty: The Financial Access Initiative out of NYU has concluded in a new report that 2.5 billion people don't have access to a financial institution, including microfinance.  Jonathan Murdoch, FAI's managing director and a professor of economics and policy at NYU, has an illuminating quote: "Until now, the margin of error when considering the world's unbanked was about plus or minus a…

• Base of the Pyramid Career Paths: What Would You Ask?

  5 Nov 2009 | 7:05 am

  Authored by: Francisco Noguera Are you interested in getting involved in social enterprise? In finding a job and build a career around it? Perhaps even starting a venture of your own or join one that is in early stage?  If your answer to any of the above was yes, you'd probably be interested in knowing how you can best prepare yourself for it. What skills are critical to build a career that relates to the BoP, and what are the best ways to hone those? What opportunities are out there to get started? Where will future opportunities come from? Is it likely…

• Product Management Internship

  5 Nov 2009 | 5:14 am

  Organization: Kickstart InternationalLocation: Nairobi, KE KickStart International is an award winning non-profit social enterprise with a mission to help millions of people in developing countries escape from poverty and to "kickstart" sustainable economic growth. KickStart develops simple money-making tools and markets them to poor, entrepreneurial persons who use them to start profitable new businesses, increase their family wealth and boost local economic growth. (www.KickStart.org). The organization is recruiting for a qualified, enthusiastic volunteer to assist us full-time over a…

• Base of the Pyramid Initiative Intern

  5 Nov 2009 | 5:01 am

  Organization: Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis & MalariaLocation: New York City, USJob Description: The Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GBC) is an alliance ofover 200 international companies leading the private sector fight to end these three epidemics.GBC leverages the business sector's unique skills and expertise-including comprehensiveworkplace policies; community programs; core competencies; leadership and advocacy andpublic-private partnerships - in the global drive to eradicate these deadly illnesses. In 2009, GBC began to explore Base…

• CK Prahalad Releases Two New Case Studies

  4 Nov 2009 | 4:30 am

  Authored by: Moses Lee According to Thinkers 50, a biennial ranking of business gurus, C.K. Prahalad is the most influential management thinker in the world. This is the second straight time that Prahalad has topped the list.  "C.K. Prahalad's influence on the business world is immense," said Des Dearlove, co-creator of the ranking, in a statement. "He coined the term 'core competencies' in the 1990s, which set the strategy agenda for a generation of managers. More recently, his work on The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid has shown the role business can play in…

• 
  My New Biz

• Take the SmileTherapy Challenge

  5 Nov 2009 | 2:01 am

  From Will it Change You Blogcredit milena mihaylovaA while back I wrote a post titled The Heart of Life where I mentioned that world news seems to be quite grim these days The question behind that post was what is at our core In other words would people rather hear positive encouraging information or has there been a shift Related poRead More...

• Youve got to be kidding me

  4 Nov 2009 | 2:00 am

  From the blog of Tim ScammellOne of the things about writing a blog is that its almost impossible to determine where the traffic and readers are going to come from Almost impossible but not totally I have learned that you can guarantee a certain amount of hits by throwing in keywords and phrases that will be snapped when someone does a Google search for something An example is quotMichael Jacksonquot that should be good for a couple or quotFarrah FawcettquotRead More...

• Software Pricing Are We Doing It Wrong

  31 Oct 2009 | 2:00 am

  From the Coding Horror BlogOne of the side effects of using the iPhone App store so much is that its started to fundamentally alter my perception of software pricing So many excellent iPhone applications are either free or no more than a few bucks at most Thats below the threshold of impulse purchase and squarely in nobrainer territory for anythRead More...

• Ebooks vs Real Books Whats the verdict

  30 Oct 2009 | 2:00 am

  From Will it Change You Blogcredit ginnerobotLike many other bloggers Im a big fan of reading books Im also fairly involved in the online world so I do a lot of online readingWhile I subscribe to the theory that theres nothing quite like the feel smell taste of a real book Ive also had times wherRead More...

• Interesting Architecture Art Deco

  28 Oct 2009 | 12:30 am

  Seen on Lamespotting Fredericton BlogMany cities have great examples of Art Deco buildings in their downtowns This one was the best that I could find I considered NBPower building but all those air conditioners in the windows ruin the look I have no idea whether its authentic Art Deco or a recreation but it reminds me of an old Read More...

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  Silicon Moon

• Korea's Cyworld Shuts Down US Cyworld

  5 Nov 2009 | 9:01 am

  I received this notice today from Cyworld:"Thank you to all members with Cyworld.Due to Cyworld shuts down US service, US Cyworld will no longer be able to service.We sincerely apologize for shutting down the service with unavoidable reason.Before US cyworld close the service, you will continue to access to US cyworld contents but not purchase items. Also, you will not use your acorns.If you have unused acorns, you will be given a full refund for paid acorns only."Obviously, they already let go of all U.S. staff since it's written in broken English along with poor spacing, but this also could…

• News & Links List

  3 Nov 2009 | 11:55 pm

  "How Far Will Google Wave Go?" Forbes, Dan Woods"Interview with Offerpal Media CEO Anu Shukla on the offer 'scandal'" VentureBeat"Cisco, EMC, and VMware make alliance official" CNET"Lean startups aren’t cheap startups" VentureBeat, Steve Blank"Buffett Takeover Reduces Successor’s Need for ‘Amazing Insight’" Bloomberg"How Capitalism Will Save Us" by Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames"Deathbed Wishes: I Wish I Had Spent More Time Working" InsideWork, David Wooldridge"Big Picture: The CEO as Diplomat: An Interview with Richard Haass" InsideWork

• I Am Korean American, A Barrel Project

  3 Nov 2009 | 10:59 pm

  The guys at Barrel, a brand and web consulting company, are always doing creative projects whether for clients or on the side. Here's a cool little side project they are doing called "I Am Korean American":I AM KOREAN AMERICAN is an on-going web project that aims to collect brief profiles of Korean Americans.Every new profile of a Korean American will be featured on the homepage. A profile will consist of the person’s name, age, location, occupation, and a personal statement that could be a mini bio, a memorable story, a rant, aspirations, or anything else. Our goal is to compile a…

• News & Links List

  2 Nov 2009 | 11:12 pm

  "Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell" TechCrunch"Scamville: Zynga Says 1/3 Of Revenue Comes From Lead Gen And Other Offers" TechCrunch"How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insider’s Confession" TechCrunch, Dennis Yu"Zynga Takes Steps To Remove Scams From Games" TechCrunch"Google Wave Federation: Why it Matters" ReadWriteWeb"Why iStockphoto embraced Google's Gears" CNET"Google Redefines GPS Navigation Landscape: Google Maps Navigation For Android 2.0" TechCrunch"Is the LinkedIn Platform Dead?" GigaomPlatform? Maybe, but they are making a lot of money."The Future of the Social Web"…

• Conflict History

  29 Oct 2009 | 11:43 pm

  This is pretty cool. A Google map integration of almost every world conflict since 3000 B.C.

• 
  Leveraging Ideas

• Please Help the Cause: It’s for the Kids

  Sam

  29 Oct 2009 | 12:38 pm

  Update: We raised the money within 48 hours! Thanks so much to everyone who contributed (9 donations). Awesome. Usually I steer clear of posting personal things on this blog, but I wanted to ask for support in helping a great cause. My youngest sister is part of Teach for America. She’s spent the last year and a half in an extremely impoverished and isolated area of New Mexico, working on a Navajo Indian Reservation as a high school history teacher. She teaches some great kids, but the unfortunate reality is that her students are even more under-resourced than most; reservations are…

• Facebook Movie to be Filmed at Johns Hopkins University

  Sam

  27 Oct 2009 | 10:07 am

  Parts of the Facebook Movie: “The Social Network” by Andrew Sorkin will be filmed on the Hopkins Campus in Baltimore starting in November. Note: I’m very involved at Johns Hopkins University, serving on a number of boards both for the overall University and the Carey Business School. I was in Baltimore for several days last week and I’m very excited that this deal got done and can now be talked about publicly! Also a big congrats to a friend of mine who was very involved in making this happen! This is really exciting stuff. Not only is it exciting because this will be…

• On Pagination, Zip Codes and Zynga

  Sam

  27 Oct 2009 | 9:18 am

  The weather is terrible today here in New York. I think I’ll use it as inspiration to post a few rants (i.e. annoyances) that have been on my mind… Pagination in Flow Applications Tumblr (among others) has adopted a convention for pagination that drives me nuts. You click on a button on the right-hand side to move backward in time (Next)  and you click a left-hand button (Previous) to move forward toward more recent items. I have never understood this. My confusion is that the idea of pagination is essentially derived from books — and with books, right brings you forward…

• How to Get Free Wifi At Starbucks: The Definitive Guide

  Sam

  18 Oct 2009 | 9:37 pm

  I remember reading last summer that Starbucks was offering two free hours of wifi for patrons… In subsequent months, despite having purchased numerous gift cards, owning an iPhone and spending countless hours in Starbucks across the country, I still had not been able to access this mysterious free internet. Well, I finally figured it out! Here’s how get online at Starbucks for free** in under five minutes…assuming a short line :) 1) Get in line and purchase any Starbucks Gift Card (just put some nominal amount of money on the card, such as $5). My preference is the Mini Card.

• Where’s the Enterprise App Store?

  Sam

  9 Oct 2009 | 7:43 am

  First, congratulations to @pistachio on the launch of OneForty! It’s awesome to see such great initial uptake and press; rumors of a Twitter buyout certainly don’t hurt either :) My question: where is the enterprise app store? While I know the social business and enterprise 2.0 space as well as anyone, I still find myself frequently “googling” to find solutions and reviews: should I use MailChimp or Constant Contact? Yammer or SocialCast? SurveyMonkey or Survey.io? What’s better to use as an extranet: Drop.io or Box.net? App stores are brilliant because once they gain traction, they…

• 
  KillerStartups.com - all

• PostRelease.com - Participate In The Conversation

  6 Nov 2009 | 11:57 pm

  In case you are active in the world of advertising you already know that there are many ways to make a product or service better-known. This site gives you information about how to make use of advertiser-sponsored posts in any specific discussion forum. In this way you will reach the people you want in an effective and friendly way.Read moreLearn more about PostRelease.com in Dataopedia.comFind out how much PostRelease.com is worth with Stimator.com

• JobPic.com - A New And More Personalized Marketplace

  6 Nov 2009 | 11:52 pm

  In case you are looking for an alternative way to generate an extra income, Jobpic will be a good option for you to bear in mind. It stands as a new way to make the process of selling and buying a wide variety of services online far more effective. No matter if you want to teach or take dance lessons, if you are a personal trainer looking for clients, or even if you want to find different places where you can get quality photo editing services, this site will let you accomplish your goals.Read moreLearn more about JobPic.com in Dataopedia.comFind out how much JobPic.com is worth with…

• GifSoup.com - Effective Video Transformations

  6 Nov 2009 | 11:50 pm

  When it comes to transforming images and videos into GIFs this is a totally uncomplicated way to do it, with the right seasoning of additional features. GifSoup.com will help you to capture videos in order to convert them into animated GIFs straightforwardly enough.Read moreLearn more about GifSoup.com in Dataopedia.comFind out how much GifSoup.com is worth with Stimator.com

• Noiset.com - All The Music You Want

  6 Nov 2009 | 11:46 pm

  This site can be defined as a music search engine that allows you to make an extensive search for a wide variety of albums. In addition to this, users will have access to biographies and songs in a very simple and efficient way. Noiset.Read moreLearn more about Noiset.com in Dataopedia.comFind out how much Noiset.com is worth with Stimator.com

• GeoImpress.com - Get Images & Data From Anywhere

  6 Nov 2009 | 11:27 pm

  When it comes to searching for applications and solutions that are developed to let you find information on any specific part of the planet, you need to make sure that they work fast and efficiently. Otherwise you will end up wasting time and energy without finding the data or images you need. GeoImpress.Read moreLearn more about GeoImpress.com in Dataopedia.comFind out how much GeoImpress.com is worth with Stimator.com

• 
  Campus Entrepreneurship

• The Power of Phil Knight (Pioneer Campus Entrepreneur)

  David J. Miller

  5 Nov 2009 | 6:39 pm

  Before there was Kevin Plank and Under Armour — Phil Knight was using his learnings, contacts, and education from Oregon and Stanford to launch Nike (originally known as Blue Ribbon Sports). Knight and Nike’s staying power can be witnessed by the recent controversy surrounding Marcus Jordan (son of Michael and Juanita), the University of Central Florida, and Adidas. Basically, Marcus is an 18 year old basketball player at UCF and refuses to wear any shoe other than Air Jordans (produced by Phil Knight’s Nike). UCF has an apparel and shoe contract with Adidas and as long as…

• Whats Wrong w/ Higher Ed in the US? Lots!

  David J. Miller

  3 Nov 2009 | 1:43 pm

  Newmark’s Door has a great blog entry offering a compilation of criticisms of higher education in the U.S. Those quoted included professors, entrepreneurs, and . Those targetted include law schools, humanities, and computer science departments. There is something for everyone in this piece. Here are a few snippets and who they are attributed to. Joel Spolsky (Entrepreneur): Many universities have managed to convince themselves that the more irrelevant the curriculum is to the real world, the more elite they are. It’s the liberal arts way. Leave it to the technical vocational…

• Athletic SAT from Under Armour and IMG

  David J. Miller

  3 Nov 2009 | 10:27 am

  Under Armour and leading talent agency IMG have joined forces and among other things, will begin creating a standard of measurement for high school athletes looking to play in college. As we all know, college athletics is a huge business and many global brands have come out of that part of the campus eco-system. Nike and Gatorade are two examples (as is Under Armour). Both sides of the recruiting equation (athletes and schools) spend countless time, effort and money trying to find the right fit of student-athlete to school/program. Below are some interesting snippets from the article by…

• Can You Be Entrepreneurial w/ a $1 Million Base Pay?

  David J. Miller

  2 Nov 2009 | 12:45 pm

  In recent years we have heard about how entrepreneurial university administrators have become. Creating new models and charting new paths for their august institutions. A new study from the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that 23 Private University Presidents in the US are making at least $1 million a year. Hot Dog, bureaucracy pays! From an article by Mary Beth Marklein in the USA Today, Here are the Chronicle’s findings, based on federal tax forms, of the highest-paid presidents of private non-profit colleges and universities. Compensation includes salaries, fees, bonuses,…

• CU Social Entre Builds Urban Chicken Coops

  David J. Miller

  29 Oct 2009 | 12:50 pm

  A group of Colorado University engineering students has built a better chicken coop that is targeted to the growing number of urban chicken farmers in the U.S.  From the article by Melanie Asmar of the Colorado Daily. But the idea behind University of Colorado senior Jeff Troutman’s coop is decidedly down-to-earth. The architecture student set out to build a chicken-house that could be manufactured easily and inexpensively — and sold at an affordable price to Boulder’s burgeoning set of urban hen-keepers. “I would love to see it become a functional coop in…

• 
  Newly Corporate

• 5 Engagement Ring Buying Tips for the Young Professional

  Brandon Henak

  28 Oct 2009 | 10:36 am

  Yes, it’s true, I have recently taken a major step in my life and asked my girlfriend to marry me.  As part of this process, I went through what most men do: the search for the perfect ring.  Based on my girlfriend’s answer to my proposal (Yes!) and all the positive feedback I have received on the ring post-proposal, I figured I would share what worked for me.  No yes-answer guarantees but, here are my tips on a purchase that can be pretty daunting. 1. Decide whether you want it to be a surprise or you want to go shop with her.  Being old fashioned, I wanted to surprise…

• 10 Lessons from Creating an iPhone Application Start Up (Part 2)

  Brandon Henak

  30 Sep 2009 | 7:18 am

  This is the second of a two part series (click here for part one) from a friend of the Newly Corporate bloggers, Eli Gratz.  iPhone Apps and Start Ups are two of the most fascinating things for young professionals today and Eli has done both during his spare time (see http://www.drinkspecialsapp.com)!  I asked him to share some of his experiences creating the Drink Specials App for the iPhone (available in the app store) and recieved 10 great lessons for young professionals looking to start their own businesses or develop mobile applications! 6. Be flexible on your vision, hold to your…

• 10 Lessons from Creating an iPhone Application Start Up (Part 1)

  Brandon Henak

  28 Sep 2009 | 8:14 am

  This is the first of a two part series from a friend of the Newly Corporate bloggers, Eli Gratz.  iPhone Apps and Start Ups are two of the most fascinating things for young professionals today and Eli has done both during his spare time(see http://www.drinkspecialsapp.com)!  I asked him to share some of his experiences and got 10 great lessons for young professionals looking to start their own businesses or develop mobile applications!  Lessons 5-10 will be posted this Wednesday. A lot of people ask me about my experience as a first time application developer and new business owner. They…

• The Dream Home: PMI = a Starbucks a Day

  Brandon Henak

  3 Sep 2009 | 9:29 am

  With all the young homeowners jumping into the market to get their $8000 in Obama cash (which is just driving up the cost of a house $8K-16K, but that is another matter), I have gotten a number of questions about what the right size for a down payment is and what costs are involved. We have a great analysis of what the tradeoffs are for different downpayment percentages in “The Dream Home (or Condo): Saving for a Down Payment” from our Dream Home series. Many of the questions though, are specifically around PMI or Private Mortgage Insurance.  If you have a loan with less than 20%…

• Friday Amusement: Office Pranks

  Jennifer Robinson

  28 Aug 2009 | 4:01 am

  It’s Friday!  Hells yeah! TGIF. Have you had a long week?  Do you need something to laugh about in your cubicle?  If you’re in a prankster mood, here are some classic office pranks and some things you can do to rile up office zombies. Staple your reports in the wrong corner Swap the regular and decaf coffee – This is EVIL! Play with the auto-correct on your co-workers computer.  Configure the word “and” to change to “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere” Put tape over the mouse optics Cut your fingernails or toe nails Unplug a co-worker’s…

• 
  TheFunded Founder Institute News

• Thinking to Apply? Join an Upcoming Q&A Conference Call

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:55 am

  There are several application deadlines fast approaching. If you have any questions about joining the program, please join one of three open Q&A calls taking place next week. To attend, simply join the call at (605) 715-4900 / PIN #998-602, at one of the following times; Tuesday, Nov 10 at 12pm PT Wednesday, Nov 11 at 9am PT Thursday, Nov 12 at 5pm PT Adeo Ressi, founder of the Institute, will lead the calls and take questions. Many local organizers will be on the calls as well to answer questions specific to your market.

• Founder Institute Enters the Big Apple

  5 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

  Anyone starting a technology company or thinking to become an entrepreneur is invited to join the Founder Institute in New York. The deadline for early admissions is November 15th, with all applications due by November 25th. The New York sessions start on December 3rd. The Winter 2009 New York City Semester will be led by Craig Kanarick, Co-Founder and Former Chairman of Razorfish, Inc, with sessions taking place at New York startup venues, such as Rose Tech Ventures. New York Mentors include: Rufus Griscom, Founder of Nerve Media, Spring Street Networks and Babble Media; Jeffrey Dachis,…

• Special Rewards for New Applicants

  3 Nov 2009 | 4:05 pm

  The Seattle and Washington DC semesters are offering compelling rewards to current and future Founders that apply. In Seattle, complete an application by midnight PST today, Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009, and every single applicant will receive a $125 gift certificate for a massage in the area. Being a Founder can be stressful, and the Institute wants to help ease the tension. Apply here. In Washington DC, complete an application by midnight EST on Saturday, November 7th, 2009, and you will be enrolled to win one brand new Acer NetBook. The Institute wants to help applicants build their startup…

• Monday Evening in Seattle

  31 Oct 2009 | 4:00 pm

  Current and future Founders, as well as Mentors, are all invited to a special informational session about the Founder Institute on Monday evening, November 2nd, at the University of Washington in Seattle. 100 seats have been filled to this free event, and just a dozen tickets remain. A special prize offering will be announced for those that attend.If you are interested in learning more about how the Founder Institute can help to jumpstart your startup, this is a unique opportunity to understand the mechanics and ask questions. Reserve a seat before they are all filled:…

• First Applicants Admitted to San Diego / Orange County

  31 Oct 2009 | 10:00 am

  The Founder Institute has accepted two dozen applicants into the inaugural San Diego / Orange County semester, and another dozen applicants have been placed on the waiting list. Accepted applicants have until Sunday at 5:00 PM PST to complete their enrollment, at which time any unfilled positions in the semester will be offered to the other Founders on a first come, first served basis.The Institute designed the enrollment process to pressure Founders to make a quick decision about entering the program, simulating the day-to-day challenges of running a successful startup. Often times in a new…

• 
  Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing

• Goodbye Microsoft, the next chapter

  DonDodge

  4 Nov 2009 | 10:43 am

  Microsoft announced more layoffs today, and I was one of them. This was a total surprise to me, and management offered no explanation. This is pretty standard procedure, mostly for legal reasons, but none the less left me with a cold feeling...but only for a minute or two. Today I start thinking about the next chapter in my life. It is always exciting to look beyond your normal boundaries and think about new possibilities. Being totally consumed with my job and traveling every week has left no time to think about other opportunities. That changes today. I couldn’t be more excited about the…

• Failure is NOT an option Why this can be a bad strategy

  DonDodge

  4 Nov 2009 | 7:06 am

  An exec at a large European financial company recently told me his former CEO believed “Failure is not an option”. Great, I thought. This means they will do whatever it takes to succeed, try five or ten different approaches until it works, get the whole company focused on the goal, etc. No, he told me. What it means is “Make a mistake and you are fired.” Wow! Another example of the difference between startups and big companies. I have worked most of my career in startups where you are always pushing the envelope, taking big risks, where there are no obvious answers, and you just keep…

• Bing announces search deals with Twitter and Facebook

  DonDodge

  21 Oct 2009 | 12:13 pm

  Microsoft Bing announced a blockbuster deal with Twitter and Facebook that will bring Real Time streams of Tweets and Facebook updates to Bing’s decision engine. The big news is that Bing will apply ranking, relevance, authority sources, spam and porn detection, and eliminates the duplicate entries. Bing will use lots of indicators of authority. Things like how many followers a user has, how often a tweet is ReTweeted, popular hash tags, etc. Real Time search has been around for a while, but no one has been able to apply all these quality filters so that you actually get useful results. You…

• Ev Williams on Twitter at Web2.0 Summit

  DonDodge

  20 Oct 2009 | 5:46 pm

  Ev Williams, CEO of Twitter, was interviewed by John Battelle at Web 2.0 Summit. John focused his early questions on a revenue model for Twitter. Ev was fairly evasive and basically gave a very “Craig Newmark” style answer “We are focusing on the user experience and making Twitter a great service.” He did mention that doing something around advertising that takes advantage of the real time nature of Twitter and the analytics of the real time stream to better target ads probably makes sense. John Battelle asked Ev about Hollywood celebs and professional athletes using Twitter. The NBA…

• Marketing as Competitive Advantage? Barrier to Entry?

  DonDodge

  20 Oct 2009 | 9:53 am

  The tech startup world is all about amazing new technology, innovation, and Intellectual Property (IP), things that create “barriers to entry” for other companies and give you a “sustainable competitive advantage”. Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan, co-founders of HubSpot, have just released a new book Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs. The premise of the book is that Exceptional marketing can be a formidable barrier to entry. This is revolutionary thinking for those of us in the high tech world and venture investors. Of course it shouldn’t be. If we…

• 
  Colorado Startups

• Brad Feld interviewing me at Entrepreneurs Unplugged

  David Cohen

  26 Oct 2009 | 11:20 pm

  A few people have asked, so here’s a link to a video of Brad Feld interviewing me at the Silicon Flatirons Entrepreneurs Unplugged event last week down at the University of Colorado. In the interview, Brad asks about: How I became an entrepreneur My first company - Pinpoint Technologies / ZOLL Data Systems (acquired) My second company - iContact (failed) My third company - earFeeder (acquired) My fourth company - TechStars There’s some fun Q&A at the end about TechStars and more. Enjoy!

• An offer to Funding Universe

  David Cohen

  22 Sep 2009 | 7:13 am

  UPDATE: Funding Universe posted a response to this post and has now waived pitch fees nationally as a result. Funding Universe is expanding their presence in Colorado and they are presenting a CrowdPitch event on September 30th in Denver. It costs $125 to present your company there, and it’s free to attend otherwise. Some of us vomit when we hear that promising entrepreneurs are being charged to pitch to investors in Colorado (or anywhere). I’m hoping people will stop doing it. In my opinion, If investors want to see companies they (or sponsors) should bear the costs instead of…

• BoCo - Who’s in?

  David Cohen

  8 Sep 2009 | 8:38 pm

  Andrew Hyde (TechStars Community Manager, Startup Weekend, VCWear, and main instigator of Ignite Boulder) is putting together a 1-day conference on October 2nd called BoCo. It’s got music, tech, and food. As the web site puts it, “The main goal we have is to create amazing and unique experiences. We are not hosting the conference at a hotel or conference center, instead the entire town plays host, rolling out the welcome mat and showing off what we are so proud of.” It’s an intimate, single track, all day conference with great speakers and music. Let’s face it.

• Reference check code words

  David Cohen

  8 Sep 2009 | 7:00 pm

  I remember reading Freakonomics and learning about how in the real estate business “charming” just means small. It’s code used in real estate advertisements so that realtors know that other realtors mean “small.” There are dozens of such codes, and it pays to know them when reading the listing your realtor creates for your house when selling it. There is a similar code for people doing reference checks. I’ve never really seen it documented anywhere, but if you’re doing reference checks it probably pays to know the basic code. If you ask me about…

• Entrepreneurs Foundation Generates $100K for community from first five exits

  David Cohen

  22 Aug 2009 | 10:01 am

  On Friday, I went to the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado (EFCo) celebration party held at Rally Software. Everyone was celebrating the fact that five exits have generated over $100,000 that went back into the community, and that 27 area companies have now joined the foundation. There was fun, food, and networking, and the event featured a presentation from Suzanne DiBianca, the Executive Director of the Salesforce.com Foundation and graduate of CU Boulder. I’m proud that TechStars is a member of EFCo, and that two of our companies were among the first five exits that have generated…

• 
  OnlyOnce

• 5 Nov 2009 | 5:31 am

  Matt

  5 Nov 2009 | 5:31 am

  Book Short:  Chip Off the Old Block   I have to admit, I was more than a little skeptical when Craig Spiezle handed me a copy of The Speed of Trust, by Stephen M. R. Covey, at the OTA summit last week.  The author is the son of THE Stephen Covey, author of the world famous Seven Habits of Highly Effective People as well as The Eighth Habit (book, post).  Would the book have substance and merit or be drafting off the dad's good name?   I dog-ear pages of books as I read them, noting the pages that are most interesting if I ever want to go back and take a quick…

• If this madness all ended tomorrow, I would do…almost nothing

  Matt

  22 Oct 2009 | 4:00 am

  If this madness all ended tomorrow, I would do…almost nothing(This post originally appeared on FindYourNerve on October 21)I don’t know what you call the last 12 months of global macroeconomic meltdown.  I’ve taken to calling it the Great Repression.  In part because it’s somewhere in between a Recession and a Depression, in part because it’s certainly repressed the wants and needs of startups and growth companies the world over.  And it makes for good cocktail party chatter.Someone asked me a question the other day, which started off with “Now that the recession is…

• Why I joined the DMA Board, and what you can expect of me in that role

  Matt

  21 Oct 2009 | 5:46 am

  Why I joined the DMA Board, and what you can expect of me in that role I don't normally think of myself as a rebel. But one outcome of the DMA's recent proxy fight with Board member Gerry Pike is that I've been appointed to the DMA's Board and its Executive Committee and have been labeled "part of the reform movement" in the trade press. While I wasn't actively leading the charge on DMA reform with Gerry, I am very enthusiastic about taking up my new role. I gave Gerry my proxy and support for a number of reasons, and those reasons will form the basis of my agenda as a DMA Board member. As a…

• Wanted: Rock Star Marketer

  Matt

  30 Sep 2009 | 10:18 am

  Wanted: Rock Star Marketer Return Path is hiring a VP Marketing. This is a new position - we haven't had the job filled in a couple years like this, reporting directly to me. The job spec is here. What it's like to work here is pretty well captured here. Why should you pass this on to a friend who is a good fit? Because you will help a friend find the best job he or she ever had! Oh and because we will pay you a nice referral fee if we hire your friend. Why should you apply? That's a longer answer: 1. We are inventive market leaders with a really unique business model, at a good scale, in a…

• Closer to the Front Lines, Part II

  Matt

  29 Sep 2009 | 4:00 am

  Closer to the Front Lines, IILast year, I wrote about our sabbatical policy and how I had spent six weeks filling in for George when he was out.  I just finished up filling in for Jack (our COO/CFO) while he was out on his.  Although for a variety of reasons I wasn't as deeply engaged with Jack's team as I was last year with George's, I did find some great benefits to working more directly with them.In addition to the ones I wrote about last year, another discovery, or rather, reminder, that I got this time around was that the bigger the company gets and the more specialized skill sets…

• 
  Learn to Duck

• A loss for words.

  Micah

  30 Oct 2009 | 12:51 pm

  My grandmother died yesterday. It wasnt sudden, nor was it a surprise. Doesnt mean it was less sad. I had been traveling, most recently speaking at TribeCon in New Orleans, when my mom called to say it wasnt looking good. “What does that mean?” I asked. “It means she is probably going to die.” I felt a bit guilty having fun in New Orleans, which was a LOT of fun (I got yelled at for checking into so many places on FourSquare), but I knew there was nothing I could do. “She is unconscious,” my mom told me. “What does that mean?” I asked. “It…

• The Law of Minicycles

  Micah

  26 Oct 2009 | 1:54 pm

  Over the past few weeks, I have been heads down focusing on getting my new project funded, getting the tech team moving in the right direction, and getting customers. All with an eye towards launch. Its a fun, frustrating and exciting time. Its what makes startups fun. But in the midst of all this hubbub, a simple pattern is emerging. When you look at the lifecycle of a startup, there are really three major parts: The Build Up, The Execution and The Exit. Of course, you can read plenty of articles and books that provide a deeper and more complex view, but I am just not that complex. The Build…

• I Bleed.

  Micah

  19 Oct 2009 | 4:59 pm

  I bleed a lot. Not in a horrible, unhealthy physically or mentally way, but it just seems that I often find new cuts on my arms, feet, legs. Now, I do live with animals, and so I can, for example, attribute the blood on my chest from a misguided attempt by Billie (my dog) to remove my nipple, or as the kids say “play with me.” A second ago, I got up from my desk, and I noticed that the bottom of my foot was cut. Not sure how I cut it, but its cut nonetheless. Why does this matter? I’ll get to that. One of my favorite songs is Please Bleed, by Ben Harper. The equates the…

• Screw Inspiration. Its For Saps.

  Micah

  11 Oct 2009 | 12:34 am

  I have a lot of people I like having as friends. Many of them write or curate blogs. Often they comment on, point to, reblog, etc things that they find inspiring. Usually, the link, video or picture is accompanied with a short post or comment that is along the lines of “Man! So glad I just read that! It totally inspires me to do something cool!” Fuck inspiration. Now, before I jump into it, my friends are not wrong or stupid, and I am certainly not calling them dumb (after all some of them still buy me meals now and again, and who am I to kill that gravy train?). But, I am…

• Being Selfish, And Why Its A Good Thing

  Micah

  23 Sep 2009 | 11:41 pm

  Words have power. We say them and expect their meanings to resonate. Mostly, the words we choose probably connote the meanings we are trying to convey. But, sometimes, words have so many varied meanings, that unless we apply context, their power is lost. Killer. Used as a noun, it means either a person or thing that kills. Or something or someone having a formidable impact, devastating effect, etc. As a adjective, it can mean anything from difficult to superior. (Dictionary.com) Yet, other words tend to hold their meaning regardless of context. Those words, often hateful and mean-spirited,…

• 
  Startup Weekend

• Startup Weekend Loveline Monday Nov 2nd 10am

  Startup Weekend Crew

  30 Oct 2009 | 6:12 pm

  I’m curious to see how this goes!  I’ll be fielding any questions you have about Startup Weekend Monday morning Nov 2nd at 10am until an unknown time.  I’ll be on the phone at this number “702-473-3463 Password 627-262″ Feel free to ask any questions you have about Startup Weekend, Global Entrepreneurship Week, or anything else for that matter!  I’m hoping a lot of you call in!

• Startup Weekend Des Moines – Toy Bin Trader!

  Startup Weekend Crew

  29 Oct 2009 | 7:39 pm

• An insider’s look at Startup Weekend 2009

  Startup Weekend Crew

  28 Oct 2009 | 8:15 pm

  By Voxus An insider’s look at Startup Weekend 2009 Wednesday, Oct 28 2009 | Filed in: business and technology Entrepreneurs are normally interesting people…but what happens when you get 180 of them in the same room at the same time to create new companies from idea to launch in a single weekend? We asked Dwayne Mercredi, co-founder of Seattle-based software development company Attassa to give us a sneak peek inside the process. He was on the winning development team for “Learn That Name,” an iPhone application, at the Startup Weekend recently held in Redmond, WA. 1)…

• Submit your suggestion for SW GEW T-Shirts

  Startup Weekend Crew

  28 Oct 2009 | 3:10 pm

  Hey Everyone! Submit your catch phrase or 1 liner for all of the Global Entreprenuership Week (GEW) events! The Front of the T-Shirt will have the Startup Weekend GEW logo (below), and the back will have a catch phrase on the top with all 10 cities for GEW. This is needed by Thursday, so shoot something funny/creative over now! Submit your suggestion to @startupweekend  or  below! ** Winner get a free shirt of course! *** Thanks!

• Startup Weekend + Couch Surfing = NYC’s Liz Kinnmark

  Startup Weekend Crew

  28 Oct 2009 | 10:02 am

  The world is small!  Lets backup a bit, it’s August and I’m at Gnomedex in Seattle watching Bre Pettis present a killer movie of his maker bot making egg salt and pepper shakers and a figure head of Darth Vader.  Bre lives in NYC and the girls that were making the eggs are Loz and Kegan of Design Glut.  I thought the video was cool and the Maker Bot rocked.  Then Gnomedex ended.  Now it’s mid September, Marc and I bought a jetBlue all you can jet pass and are hitting 10 cities in 30 days. I emailed a few people on Couch Surfing that live in NYC for a place to stay while…

• 
  Startup Houston

• JamsBio.com is Now JamsBio Magazine

  kurtstoll

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:54 am

  I recently received an email from JamsBio announcing that they are changing their name and focus today (Nov. 6th) to JamsBio Magazine.  Here is what it said: JamsBio.com Set To Become JamsBio Magazine All user generated content will be taken off line starting Nov. 6 Given the enormous popularity of JamsBio Magazine, JamsBio.com will shift its focus to the acclaimed editorial site where music fans from around the world cover the intersection of music and life through a variety of compelling features, including music reviews, memories, lists, and commentaries. Starting on Friday, November 6th,…

• My TribeCon Experience

  Marc Nathan

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:30 am

  On October 28th, I had the good fortune to attend the very first TribeCon in New Orleans. TribeCon is conference by and for both online and real life Community Managers: “New technologies have eradicated geographic boundaries allowing our social networks to expand and align, creating powerful communities. Communities inspired by ideas, driven by a common purpose form tribes.” The conference was attached to a three day multi-stage outdoor music festival, called The VooDoo Experience that is similar to Lallapallooza or Austin City Limits festival. Marrying a tech focused conference…

• StartupHouston to Live Blog the TiE Texas Funding Forum on Nov. 11th

  kurtstoll

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  Don’t miss the TiE Texas Funding Forum on November 11th at the Houston Technology Center. I will be live blogging the event and Josh Tabin will be one of the moderators at the event.  The event is open to the public. 20 early stage companies have been chosen to present their companies to the panel. It will be a great way to observe how to pitch – one of the most critical skills a startup can possess. For those of you who are not familiar with the event, here is a description from the HTC Calendar: CALLING ALL PRESENTERS! Do you have a great business idea or a start-up business…

• NutShell Mail is moving to Silicon Valley

  kurtstoll

  2 Nov 2009 | 7:40 am

  I recently learned that NutshellMail has decided to move their offices from Houston to Silicon Valley (see the announcement here). This move should be no surprise to those that have been tracking Nutshell Mail’s progress, seeing as how they were recently selected to join Facebook’s fbFund Rev Incubator Program and now have a great introduction into how business in the Valley works and are now a part of the deal flow. For those of you who are not familiar, NutShellMail is a free, hosted service that transforms any email account into a universal inbox.  It allows you to monitor all…

• StartupHouston is now using CrunchBase for our Startup Directory

  kurtstoll

  28 Oct 2009 | 4:05 pm

  Are you listed in CrunchBase yet? You should be. StartupHouston is now using the database created by TechCrunch to store and track information about different startup companies, service providers, and financial companies. TechCrunch makes this information available through their CrunchBase API and we are using Yahoo Pipes to aggregate this data. From this date forward, when we report on a startup, we will include a reference to them via a CrunchBase widget at the end of the post. We highly recommend adding your startup company to the the TechCrunch CrunchBase database (click here to add your…

• 
  Bootstrapping

• Can Diet Improve My Business?

  heckman

  22 Oct 2009 | 4:15 am

  For many people who run businesses that are located in offices, their bodies don’t seem like vital investments. Sure, if you were a cook or a construction worker, your physical wellbeing might be something you invested in. After all, it’s the only way to make money. But office workers tend to think that they only need their thinking, which doesn’t depend on physical wellbeing, right? Wrong! How you take care of your body is vital to how well you can work; whether you crush rocks or philosophize. One place to really make this happen is with your diet. It might seem odd…can diet improve…

• 10 Ways to Improve Workflow

  heckman

  19 Oct 2009 | 4:44 am

  Whatever your job is, when you sit down to do it, often the task at hand can distract you from the importance of the way you do it. If you’re a small business owner or otherwise, you’ll want to save yourself small bits of time that can otherwise add up to entire days of extra work performed. Here are 10 ways to improve workflow. Think mise en place, or everything in its place. This idea is popular among professional chefs. Basically put, make sure your work space is organized with everything in easy reach and nothing in the way. Your computer desktop is still a desktop. Clean your…

• Submission Doesn’t Always Mean Obedience

  heckman

  15 Oct 2009 | 5:37 am

  How Article submission Can Create Business Stating that the Web has forever changed business is a massive understatement. The amount of customers available to a business like yours has exploded with people from all over the world able to access your products any time of day. However, every business is taking advantage of this new market and crowding has become a significant problem for businesses trying to stand out in search engine listings and against other competitors selling similar products. Though it may seem like spending loads of money on advertising is the only way to really get…

• Marketing Campaigns for Under $100

  heckman

  12 Oct 2009 | 4:21 am

  Today’s businesses suffer from one giant dilemma—they need to reach more customers in an increasingly competitive marketplace and they also have tight budgets that demand results. It doesn’t take much thinking to realize that this is a huge problem for many businesses. In an ideal world, you could just throw unlimited amounts of money into your marketing budget, yet this isn’t possible. When money is abundant, businesses tend to make choices that aren’t as effective or pragmatic. In this way, a tight budget may be beneficial in helping you create a concise marketing plan that…

• What the Hell is Social Networking?

  heckman

  8 Oct 2009 | 3:13 pm

  You’ve heard the constant buzz surrounding this hot topic. Everybody is talking about it, or is a part of it, businesses want to use it, but you are just stuck with the same pressing question—what the hell is social networking? Well first, calm down. If you don’t know what it is, you may feel like you’re missing out on something big that you should be a part of. Yes, it is big. Yes, you should be a part of it. But you don’t have to miss out. This phenomena is simply using the Web to connect with people, many of whom you meet exclusively through the Web by having shared interests or…

• 
  TechStars

• TechStars 2009 Demo Day in Seattle – 11/4/09

  bradfeld

  21 Oct 2009 | 4:16 pm

  We are doing another TechStars 2009 Demo Day, this time in Seattle on 11/4/09. It’s part of a two day TechStars mini-reunion across all three TechStars years – part retreat, part spend time with a bunch of Seattle colleagues, and part party – TechStars style. The agenda for the Investor part of the event on the after of 11/4 follows: 2:30 PM – Investor Panel – You’ll hear from some of the top angel investors and venture capitalists in the country, including me, Greg Gottesman (Madrona), David Cohen (TechStars), Chris Sheehan (CommonAngels of Boston), Andy Sack (Founders Co-Op),…

• TechStars Bloopers

  bradfeld

  19 Oct 2009 | 9:53 am

  If you’ve been watching the TechStars video series “The Founders“, you’ll love the Behind the Scenes (aka “bloopers”) episode that just came out. The Founders | Behind the Scenes from Megan Leigh Sweeney on Vimeo. Watch otherwise chatty people be speechless, learn more about the use of the word “f#*k”, try to figure out which one is Nate and which one is Natty, see Canadians sing and learn what happens when they get nervous, and go on a rocket ship. Great stuff Megan (and TechStars).

• Boston Founders Video- Sensobi, TempMine, LangoLab

  andrewhyde

  9 Oct 2009 | 12:10 pm

  Boston kicked off this year with nine investments and some fantastic energy in the great Boston startup scene.  They just completed investor day and are working hard at raising their rounds. Megan Sweeney came to Boston to film another episode of The Founders (full series here). Hope you enjoy learning about Sensobi, LangoLab and TempMine.

• TechStars 2009 Demo Day in Mountain View – 9/30/09

  bradfeld

  27 Sep 2009 | 8:43 am

  We’ve just wrapped up our third year of doing TechStars and not only do we have some interesting companies coming out of Boulder, we also have a bunch coming out of our new Boston program as well. In all, we had 19 companies go through the program this summer. I expect at least 14 of the 2009 companies will eventually close their seed rounds, which is similar to the ratio we’ve seen in past years. Last year we brought some of the companies with the most progress out to Silicon Valley and it was a big hit. So this year, we’re doing it again and we already have well over 100 investors…

• TechStars Boston – Investor Event coming up

  shawnbroderick

  2 Sep 2009 | 12:45 pm

  TechStars Boston is proud to be hosting our first annual Investor Evening on Thursday September 10th. All nine of the TechStars Boston 2009 companies will be on hand, demoing and pitching their companies. The event will begin at 5:30 PM ET. Details regarding the location are included in your invitations. Food and beverages will be served. This event is not open to the public (sorry!). Demand has been impressive, and the event will be standing room only. We have a hard cap on attendance due to the fire code. If you are not on the RSVP list, you will not be able to get in. Please (please!) do…

• 
  Gawker: Valleywag

• Foreigners Seduce, Reject Twitterati

  Ryan Tate

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:46 pm

  Brooke Hammerling was once beguiled by an accent; Sarah Lacy was charmed by Middle Eastern calls to prayer and Wired locked the doors between print and online. The Twitterati reconsidered that which is foreign. Wonderwall's Alex Blagg was just trying to be social, geeez. Print media is to remain in its room until it feels well enough to stop destroying the company. Wired.com's Brian X. Chen didn't specifically say that, but it's the sort of Si Newhouse conference call we like to imagine. Ubiquitous Silicon Valley flack Brooke Hammerling, recently tweeting from Mexico, got burned by some kind…

• Writers Brawl After Nerds Stop Brawling

  Ryan Tate

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:27 pm

  You'd think tech bloggers would learn from the peacemaking founders of Skype, who just dropped lawsuits holding back the $2.8 billion sale of their former company. Instead the writers are calling one another inaccurate, spineless "toddlers." Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom are dropping suits against eBay, to whom they sold Skype in 2005, and against a consortium of private finance companies trying to buy Skype from eBay. The founders had accused both groups of intellectual property theft. They're dropping those lawsuits in exchange for 14 percent of Skype. But former Wall…

• Cornell Employees' Email Blunder from Hell

  Ryan Tate

  6 Nov 2009 | 2:15 pm

  A tech consultant at Cornell University somehow CCed the entire campus emails to his mistress, a Cornell staffer and fellow married person. The naughty man is in no position to be "SPANKING that FINE ASS of yours" now! Consultant "John" and Cornell Business School employee "Lisa" are both married, Guest of a Guest reports, though now that their pictures and email thread are being seen by the entire world those relationships are severely endangered. Blame John's denial fetish: without all that sexual teasing he so clearly relished, he might not have been "WAY TOO FUCKING HORNY" to think…

• Six Child Media Prodigies You Should Fear

  Ryan Tate

  6 Nov 2009 | 11:23 am

  That 16-year-old TechCrunch writer with 120,000 Twitter followers, who we wrote about yesterday, is part of a burgeoning child punditocracy. Children are operating in virtually every facet media — and doing so successfully. Fear for your job. Here's a rundown of some of the more promising names in child-labor media. Some of the names will probably look familiar to you, since these kids are famous. Far more famous than most media hacks. In other words, they're coming for your job, loudly. The Dating Advice Kid Name: Alec Greven Age: 10 Summary: His dating-advice book How To Talk To Girls…

• Another Google Heir Is Born: Larry Page's Son

  Ryan Tate

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:18 am

  Larry Page is now the co-creator of something other than the most important internet site in the world: A tipster whispers the Google co-founder is the father of a baby boy, as of Thursday. Google co-founder Page and model-PhD wife Lucy Southworth's new startup would appear to be going public right on schedule. It was seven months ago that word of Southworth's pregnancy leaked in a Silicon Valley newspaper. Now the infant has apparently arrived, following in the golden-bootied footsteps of Benji Brin, billionaire baby boy of Page's co-founder Sergey Brin and wife Anne Wojcicki. Page's child…

• 
  E-Consulting - Entrepreneur

• Gamers coming clean on scam ads: Is contrition enough?

  Meghan Keane

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:54 pm

  The social gaming lead-gen controversy sparked by TechCrunch's Michael Arrington came to an end this week when OfferPal, the company he singled out for scamming users and advertsers, replaced its CEO and posted a mea culpa for its past and current practices. Beyond that, Facebook, MySpace and mega gamer Zynga have made moves this week to better regulate gaming offers. Will the move decimate the social gaming industry?Many of the gaming companies posting excellent revenues on social networks encourage consumers to pay cash for in game currency so they advance through the games faster. If…

• Brand tweets sends twitterers searching

  Meghan Keane

  6 Nov 2009 | 12:47 pm

  Twitter's traffic may be flatlining at the moment, but Performics and ROI Research have come out with good news for marketers: Twitter users pay attention to brands on the service. That may seem obvious to anyone who's ever promoted a product on Twitter. But the new study, announced today at Ad:Tech new York by Performics Marketing senior vice president Michael Kahn, also found that almost half of twitterers who have been introduced to a brand on Twitter have subsequently gone on to search for more information about it. If true, that's a big deal.Marketers are all over Twitter, but outside of…

• The Tony Soprano guide to social media

  Chris Lake

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:47 am

  It’s that time of the year: I’m considering watching The Sopranos again from the start. I need a week off, some quality Italian food and no distractions from the goddamned Feds. This urge was the result of a bunch of Tony Soprano quotes that I stumbled upon and – since it’s a Friday - I wondered if any of them could be applied to social media. Turns out that they can… "Let me figure out how to take care of you." Social media is not about sales: it’s about service. The sales that arise from social optimisation are a tangible bonus. Loyalty and satisfaction FTW. “Marriage, or any…

• The five biggest myths about Google

  Patricio Robles

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:00 am

  On the internet, few companies receive more attention than Google. And for good reason: Google touches so many individuals and businesses. From search to its 'side projects', just about everything Google does creates interest. Google's prominence, not surprisingly, has led to the creation of many myths. Here are my top five.If you buy or sell links, Google will punish you. If Google catches you buying or selling links, it might punish you. But the more I see, the more I believe the chances of that happening are slim to none. In my opinion, if you get smacked down by Google for paid links, you…

• How should etailers ask for customer reviews?

  Graham Charlton

  6 Nov 2009 | 2:10 am

  The fact that having user reviews can be an effective sales driver, providing valuable information for customers is well established, but how do retailers attract reviews onto their product pages? I looked at ways etailers can attract reviews a few months ago. One of those ideas was to email customers after purchase and invite them to leave a review of the product(s) they had bought. A recent report from Snow Valley(pdf) takes a closer look at the issue... In September, Snow Valley placed orders on 137 UK e-commerce sites, of which just 54 (39%) provided reviews. Of these 54, just 15 emailed…

• 
  The Freestyle Entrepreneur

• Together Again for the First Time

  Bill Willard

  23 Oct 2009 | 2:37 am

  Issue of the Week Together Again for the First Time We’ve Made It This Far. What’s Next? The Issue: In 2006, the oldest of 78.2 million Baby Boomers, the generation born between 1946 and 1964, turned 60 years old. That, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, works out to 7,918 turning 60 every day or 330 every hour! But if you think you know where I’m going with this, stick around. What I Think: First some background intel: My bride, Sue, and I passed that “Turning 60” milestone a couple of years back, but didn’t think much of it at the time. That was then; this is now. As you know,…

• WHAT ME WORRY?

  John Ingrisano

  20 Oct 2009 | 5:27 am

  There’s a whole lot of worrying going on out there in this squeaky tight economy.  Everybody I talk to is having trouble sleeping at night, playing those “what if” or “oh no” tapes over and over in their heads.   As they say, ’snot worth it.  Worrying just saps your energy and clouds your mind.  What should you do?  Simple:  Work on your “survive and thrive” strategy.  Start mapping out where you want to be at the end of 2010.  Fill your head with dreams, plans, visions of the future.    Most of all, keep working hard, trying to make…

• Need a Loan? If You’re an SBO, Forget It!

  Bill Willard

  15 Oct 2009 | 12:55 pm

  Issue of the Week Need a Loan?  If You’re an SBO, Forget It! The Issue: Wall Street is back doling out the usual six-figure bonuses as if the U.S. economy hadn’t been in the tank for the past two years. But SBOs looking for routine financing are finding they’re still plumb out of luck. What I Think: How solid is our widely heralded economic recovery? It depends on where you are and what you do. Wall Street and Main Street, for example, occupy two very different financial worlds. While one enjoys a robust rebound and seems to be back in business-as-usual, the other continues to…

• Leadership Lessons For SBO Managers

  Bill Willard

  8 Oct 2009 | 10:44 am

  Leadership Lessons For SBO Managers Leadership, Like Class, is Hard to Define, But Easy to Spot! The Issue:  Not all of the SBO stalwarts we write for and about on Freestyle Entrepreneur are lone guns struggling to build their businesses from a spare bedroom. Some of you lurch uncontrollably into conspicuous success, and find yourselves with actual employees! And good for you! But with employees comes a brand new responsibility: Management! What I Think: Managers get results by setting goals and working with and through people to achieve them, But if running a business takes management…

• SCARY TIMES

  John Ingrisano

  6 Oct 2009 | 10:14 am

  I knew the economy was in a bad way when, several weeks ago, I saw a friend’s husband in church.  Not a regular church goer, he was there nonetheless, and he was looking grim.  (I learned later that his business is hanging on by a thread and he is fast running out of options.)    He’s not alone.  A lot of folks are running scared these days, what with the economy in the tank and a government that thinks capitalism is just about as bad as pedophilia … maybe worse.  You can smell the fear in some people, as the morale and culture of whole companies turn surly,…

• 
  Mind Petals

• Traveling Green with Shared Transportation—From White Bikes to ZipCars

  Dale Y the Green Guy

  20 Oct 2009 | 5:23 pm

  It’s 2009 and who hasn’t heard of green transportation ?Although the green movement using transportation can be traced back to the horse and buggy days, and certainly the Amish community travel about as green as can be, it can be reasonably stated that the modern era of the greening of transportation began in the mid 60’s. The beginning of green services. Up until that time, no one paid all that much attention to burning fossil fuels since gasoline was incredibly cheap, but in Amsterdam, a group called Provo tackled the problem of pollution and transportation availability all in…

• Saving the Sea Otter

  Dale Y the Green Guy

  19 Oct 2009 | 10:19 am

  Saving the Sea Otter Hunted to the verge of extinction by the turn of the 20th century, sea otters were considered too far gone to ever recover. They had numbered in the millions before then, but continuous and unmerciful hunting for their fur almost led to their extinction. Which is why saving endangered species is so crucial. At the turn of last century, they were estimated to be only about 1000 or 2000 left in the world with only about 50 of them left on the west coast of California. They entered into federal protection in 1911 and their population was allowed to heal. This has been one of…

• Doing away with paper towels

  Dale Y the Green Guy

  5 Oct 2009 | 11:00 am

  I have an admission to make. I actually have a roll of paper towels in my place. Granted, they are the 100% recycled kind, but I am still guilty of something I do not really believe in. My roll is almost ½ way gone, and truth be told, I believe I purchased them in early 2007. That tells you how little I have used them, and mostly for emergencies. Like the time my buddy brought his dog over, and the pooch left me a little ‘gift’ on my carpeting. I may have used 3 or 4 to clean that up. Or when the neighborhood kid tried to do a grind on the railing, but he face planted on my concrete…

• The End of the Internal Combustion Engine, As We Know it

  Dale Y the Green Guy

  24 Sep 2009 | 8:46 am

  Li-ion Hybrid Battery The internal combustion engine has been with us in a practical form since about the late 1800’s, or thereabouts. After that, almost our entire industrial culture has been built around it in some form or another, most recognizable as a means of transportation for the supply of goods, as a personal way to travel, and as a fundamental element in the waging of war. Without the internal combustion engine, each and every one of us would be living in an Amish paradise. Now, for all of its wonderful advantages, the internal combustion engine has some serious drawbacks that…

• What Spirituality Means to Me

  Nick M

  22 Sep 2009 | 1:44 pm

  Since this is my first article as a contributor to Mind Petals I thought I would start with an attempt to outline a concept around which most of my writing is likely to center – spirituality. What I will give is my opinion and understanding of what spirituality is and how it differs from and also relates to what is commonly covered by the term ‘religion.’ In recent times religion’s role in the lives of many people, especially in the western world, has greatly decreased. People tend to see religions as useless, rigid and outdated systems of rituals, rules and practices. Often it is. It…

• 
  Startup Lucky

• Krisstina Wise founder of Real Estate company, TheGoodLifeTeam , serving local thinking global

  Aronado

  4 Nov 2009 | 11:03 am

  MUCHOS big thanks to our sponsor: TheIncSlingers “Do you have your social media plan in place?” >> Here is a great place to start Great interview with entrepreneur Krisstina Wise, Founder / Broker of TheGoodLifeTeam in Austin, TX.  Krisstina and her team are changing the way real estate is bought and sold. About the GoodLife Team Want to [...]

• Jen Wojcik aka @TheJenATX on start-up YouGuru.net and “Body Snatching”

  Aronado

  2 Nov 2009 | 10:54 am

  MUCHOS thanks to our sponsors: Auctionopia & IncSlinger.  << These guys make it possible for us to interview start-up entrepreneurs around the globe.  thank you thank you, thank you! Had a great interview with Jen Wojcik and discussed her start-up YouGuru, “Body Snatchers”, and a few *other* things. Jen used some phrases we’ve never heard before [...]

• Interview with start-up Tatango CEO Derek Johnson, top 25 under 25 Business Week

  Aronado

  29 Oct 2009 | 10:12 am

  BIG thanks to our sponsors: Auctionopia, “Buy and Sell over Instant Messenger for FREE!” We had a fun chat with Derek Johnson, the CEO of start-up Tatango.  Derek was recently chosen as one of the ” 2009 Finalists: America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs” by Business Week.  Derek has led Tatango through many phases since it’s inception.  In [...]

• Sarah Prevette CEO Sprouter.com a startup connecting you with other innovators to network

  Aronado

  26 Oct 2009 | 11:20 pm

  Awesome interview from Sarah Prevette CEO of Sprouter.com.  Sprouter asks the question “what are you working on?” This site was built to facilitate collaboration between business people, startups, freelancers, investors, and anyone involved in making a business better. Watch the interview and let us know what you think in the comments YO! Sarah gave three (3) [...]

• LightsCameraHelp.Org the non-profit & cause driven film festival in Austin

  Aronado

  26 Oct 2009 | 5:00 pm

  BIG thanks to our sponsors: Auctionopia, “Buy and Sell over Instant Messenger for FREE!” Sarah Vela took a moment to interview David Neff, founder of LightsCameraHelp. Lights. Camera. Help. is an annual film festival dedicated to telling the story of non-profit and cause-driven organizations through the use of film and video. Through this annual event, films and videos [...]

• 
  Texas Startup Blog

• ShopSavvy Beta Testers Wanted ASAP

  Alexander Muse

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:13 am

  Okay, I convinced the development team to STOP working on ShopSavvy for the iPhone and submit it to the iTunes app store. We demo’d ShopSavvy for the iPhone at the PayPal Innovate Conference and EVERYONE seemed to love it. While we wait for Apple to approve the app we decided we would allow the first 75 people who email me their device ID to play with the app. All we ask in return is a list of a) bugs, b) suggestions, c) ideas, d) criticisms 48 hours after you install it. If you agree just email support@biggu.com with your device ID (it works on both legacy and current iPhones) and the…

• Reminder: Startup Happy Hour Tonight!

  Alexander Muse

  2 Nov 2009 | 8:31 am

  Its that time again.  Just a quick reminder that the Startup Happy Hour is tonight.  Take a minute to RSVP here.  The community building event for entrepreneurs starts at 5PM at the INFOMART’s High Tech Bar.

• Our country club for developers: iPhoneDevTeam

  Alexander Muse

  30 Oct 2009 | 1:33 pm

  TechCrunch has a pretty extensive story on our iPhone development country club concept in a post titled, “Big in Japan Has a Massive Goal.“  The story began this summer when Adam Majewski brought us the idea.  What if we created a development shop 50% owned by the developers who did the work?  Over the course of the summer we worked on the idea until we settled on a country club model: 25 Developers 25 Designers 1% ownership, 1% share of gross revenue for each Members could sell their ’seat’ as long as 25% of the members approved the new member. Members could be…

• My Twitter Dilemma, PLEASE HELP!

  Alexander Muse

  30 Oct 2009 | 8:05 am

  In early October I noticed that the Twitter API was posting updates to my Twitter account.  Someone suggested that I change my password, but on October 12th at 9:15PM my NEW password stopped working.  I tried the password recovery system, but I never received an email from Twitter with my new password.  My theory is that someone had ‘hacked’ or ‘phished’ my Twitter password and then changed the email associated with my account.  When I changed the password they recovered it using the password recovery tool.  When I tried to use the recovery tool THEY received the…

• Holy Cow, Angels Read Blogs!

  Alexander Muse

  21 Oct 2009 | 10:55 am

  The Keiretsu Forum is dropping their ‘pay to pitch’ model for early-stage startups.  The angel group claims this change, announced today, is not in response to Jason Calacanis who threatened a shooting war if Keiretsu and other angel groups did not drop their fees by November 16th.  I have been railing against angel groups who charge entrepreneurs to ‘pay to pitch‘ for years, but my voice didn’t seem to resonate with angels.  Jason’s take no prisoners approach was a lot more effective.  I think entrepreneurs owe Jason a debt of gratitude and at least a…

• 
  BootStrapMe

• Seen that? - Internet marketing made simple-and cheap!

  6 Nov 2009 | 6:18 pm

  Internet marketing made simple-and cheap! at BootStrapMe It doesn't cost a lot to get involved in e-commerce, as any good bootstrapper knows. This weekend I attended a (wince) free Internet marketing seminar at the Zollinger Art Center on the campus of Lehigh University, ...

• Pay Yourself First

  27 Oct 2009 | 8:18 pm

  © kevindooley It's a basic truth for all personal finance: pay yourself first. Get Rich Slowly had one of the best explanations of this practice I've read in a while.One of the oldest rules of personal finance is the simple admonition to pay yourself first. All the money books tell you to do it. All the personal finance blogs say it, too. Even your parents have given you the same advice. But it’s hard. That money could be used someplace else. You could pay the phone bill, ...

• Managing IT on a Bootstrapper's Budget

  23 Oct 2009 | 8:36 pm

  VentureBeat took a good look at managing your business' IT issues on a bootstrapped budget.There are ways to keep overall costs down during a company’s early stages – and this frugality (and a well thought out IP strategy) is something that will impress VCs when you decide to seek funding.If your business deals with IT products, the VentureBeat article gives some good advice on keep legal and patent-related costs down.

• Seen that? - Why the SBA may not be the best bet for entrepreneurs

  23 Oct 2009 | 6:18 pm

  Why the SBA may not be the best bet for entrepreneurs at BootStrapMe A first step for any small business person seeking to create a feasible blueprint for success has traditionally been a visit to the U.S. Small Business Administration. However, some observers ...

• Boosting Productivity and Profits

  14 Oct 2009 | 5:49 pm

  © Adam Jones, Ph.D. Small Business Trends had an interesting post last month on how the American work force is under untilized.In a recent article on MarketingProfs, Gallup research of 300,000 businesses indicated that 75-80% of employees are achieving much less and feeling far less enthusiastic about their work than they could be. If all your employees were “fully engaged,” …. your profits would jump 40%. Eric Brody, Healthy ConversationsAnd as the author points out, every business could use 40% more productivity. Right? Zane Safrit outlines ...

• 
  I Will Teach You To Be Rich

• WTF happened last night? Oh yea, my server got CRUSHED

  Ramit Sethi

  6 Nov 2009 | 12:16 am

  Listen, if you tried to access my webcast last night, you probably didn’t get in, and I am REALLY sorry. I have literally never seen as much traffic as last night — not even when I was on the FRONT PAGE OF YAHOO.COM. At 6:50pm, I logged onto my webcam and finalized everything At 6:55pm, I logged into my blog to add a link to the webcast URL. By this point, my server had slowed to a crawl At 6:56pm, over 1 person/second was trying to access iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog At 7:01pm, we had my webhost on the phone attempting to resolve the issue It took until 7:21pm to completely fix…

• Live webcast tonight: Psychology techniques + live answers to your questions

  Ramit Sethi

  4 Nov 2009 | 11:40 pm

  The webcast is over Tonight (Thursday, 11/5), I’m doing a live webcast to show you 5 psychological techniques to change your financial behavior. You’re learn how to trick yourself to save and earn more using powerful techniques I haven’t mentioned anywhere else. After showing you the new psychological models, I’ll do a Lightning Talk to answer YOUR questions. I’ll also answer questions about the Boot Camp. I want to pack this full of information in 30 minutes, so here’s what I’m covering… 7:00pm – 7:10pm: 5 Psychological Techniques to…

• Announcing the I Will Teach You To Be Rich Boot Camp

  Ramit Sethi

  2 Nov 2009 | 11:20 pm

  Over the last week, you’ve seen examples of people using my strategies to: Negotiate an $8,000 salary increase + 50% more equity Save tens of thousands of dollars Learn more using entrepreneurship Travel around the world, and Automate their money so they don’t worry about day-to-day finances Today I’m announcing the I Will Teach You To Be Rich Boot Camp to take ACTION. The Manifest Destiny Problem: “More is Better” Have you noticed how lots of people always want more and more information, but rarely implement what they already have? A couple years ago, I started…

• Analysis: 7 readers who saved over $100,000

  Ramit Sethi

  2 Nov 2009 | 12:44 pm

  Do you ever wonder how people who read I Will Teach You To Be Rich actually implement the strategies for huge savings and earning increases? Below are 7 stories, straight from readers just like you, who have saved and earned thousands of dollars using I Will Teach You To Be Rich techniques. The stories include details on how they got out of debt, saved more, and earned more so they could travel, buy a house, and live a richer life. Remember — tomorrow I launch the I Will Teach You To Be Rich Boot Camp (early details), where I’ll unveil a 6-week course and curriculum to force you…

• How to trick dumb kids into eating less Halloween candy

  Ramit Sethi

  30 Oct 2009 | 2:19 pm

  How can a mirror cause dramatic behavioral changes in kids? First, I should acknowledge that the kids are not really dumb because of the psychological technique I’m going to describe below, but can’t we all agree that kids are pretty dumb in general? Come on. My parents just told me a story about how, when I was a kid, my Dad once cut a grapefruit for me and sprinkled sugar on it. I screamed and screamed for FIFTEEN MINUTES about how I didn’t want sugar on it. When my dad finally said, “Ok ok” and took the sugar off with a spoon, I still screamed because I…

• 
  Start Up Blog

• Building a web community

  Steve Sammartino

  5 Nov 2009 | 3:49 pm

  I was asked during one of my live twitcam sessions the title of this blog entry, with the number 3 in front of it. What are 3 things needed to build a web community. This is the answer I came up with right on the spot. Participate Share Keep costs low Participate: Use the service, website and community you are building. Be an avid user and of it yourself, even though you own it or built it. I use rentoid more than anyone and love it. You are not part of a community if you are a spectator. You need to be involved in it. Listen, create, help, assist, but not rule over. It’s not a kingdom…

• Notes Page – Make it rad

  Steve Sammartino

  5 Nov 2009 | 2:16 pm

  As you know I’m running my startup school in Melbourne this weekend. we all know that boring stuff really sucks, so why do ‘note’s pages’ have to be boring as well. No reason. But every time I see a great presentation with excellent stimulous, there’s usually a blank page with no stimulous to write on. Not at startup school. Here’s our rad notes page below…. It’s not too late to join us if you’re not doing anything this weekend and are in Melbourne – come along. http://www.startupschool.com.au/    

• Great learning environment

  Steve Sammartino

  3 Nov 2009 | 9:47 pm

  Our environment shapes our behavior. Inspiring places create inspirational events, and with that in mind I’ve booked an Incredible location for Startup School Melbourne. The uber groovy Lindrum Hotel. Where the coffee and ambiance are both inspirational. Click on the image to check out the photos I took while checking it out. At the event we’ll have Barrista style coffee (Lattes, Cappucino, espresso) all day – none of this McDonalds style pot of black muck. As well as great food from the restaurant. Even I’m looking forward to it. It’s also a nice space for a…

• Instructions included

  Steve Sammartino

  3 Nov 2009 | 5:07 am

  I was working on doing some new instructions for rentoid.com – It’s in an area on the website where things a slightly confusing. Then I thought. Why am I doing this? Wouldn’t it be better to re-design the system so it just doesn’t need instructions at all. Like a chair. It doesn’t need instructions. We just know how to sit on it by looking at it. Next time you start investing time in defining how to do something for our audience think about this: “If we need steps to explain how things work, the system is broken.” By definition it’s overly…

• Startup School – 1 seat left

  Steve Sammartino

  1 Nov 2009 | 8:34 pm

  I’m very excited that Startup School Melbourne is this weekend. We still have a single seat left which is currently being warmed by this guy…. But we’d love to replace him with you. And if you need any more convincing then I’m pretty sure I’ll have done the job once you finish reading this blog entry. Firstly – here’s a list of topics we’ll be covering in detail: Idea Generating Creativity in business. Creative thinking Raising Capital Art of Pitching Legal tips, shortcuts and administration Successful outsourcing (digital & production)…

• 
  Springwise

• Cooking wiki can be edited by anyone

  Springwise

  6 Nov 2009 | 1:01 am

  We've seen the Wikipedia model applied to car design, a video dictionary and an online publishing platform. The latest? Foodista, an online cooking encyclopedia whose recipes can be edited by anyone. Launched late last year, Seattle-based Foodista is a collaborative project to build the world's largest, highest-quality cooking encyclopedia. The site says it is the first to organize and cross-link the basic elements of cooking: foods, or the basic ingredients; recipes, or combinations of ingredients; cooking techniques; and kitchen tools. Rather than include hundreds of recipes for the same…

• Personalized plates and placemats for kids

  Springwise

  5 Nov 2009 | 2:44 pm

  There's nothing like a baby to inspire adults to seek new heights of design and personalization. Last week we covered RoomsByYou's customizable fabrics for baby rooms, after which we were happy to spot Alphabet Plates, a line of plates and placemats that can be customized for young kids. With bright, bold designs and BPA-free construction, Alphabet Plates can be personalized to reflect kids' favourite foods, sports, faces or monograms. Those approximating a child's face, for example, allow customization of the 10-inch melamine plate's colour as well as the child's hair, eye colour, skin tone…

• ModCloth asks customers to "be the buyer"

  Springwise

  4 Nov 2009 | 2:38 pm

  A retailer's primary role may be that of curator and tastemaker, but that doesn't mean that the crowds can't pitch in to help. Online indie clothing retailer ModCloth asks its customers to help choose which items to take into production. ModCloth launched its Be the Buyer initiative two weeks ago. The voting process is reminiscent of t-shirt purveyor Threadless. But whereas t-shirts are almost a commodity from a manufacturing point of view, ModCloth sells dresses, shirts, jackets and skirts that are more complicated to produce. Which is where the virtual buyers come in. As ModCloth explains:…

• Puzzle books given a design makeover

  Springwise

  4 Nov 2009 | 2:27 pm

  Puzzle books are big sellers, but generally not much to look at. Aiming to capture that gap in the market is a series of eyecatching, pocket-sized books. The Pocket Posh line includes about two dozen books, which retail for USD 7.99. Each features 100 puzzles: crosswords, hangman, word searches, logic puzzles and various forms of sodoku. Floral and geometric designs grace their covers, and the books have rounded corners and elastic band closures that mimic Moleskine notebooks. Developed by The Puzzle Society and published by Andrews McMeel, Pocket Posh is targeting female puzzlers. Proof once…

• Bottled water brand encourages positive thinking

  Springwise

  4 Nov 2009 | 5:50 am

  From France to Fiji, bottled water brands rely on spring-based provenance to lure customers. A newcomer is focusing on a different kind of message: positivity. A Bottle Of, which claims to be Australia's first Naturally Positive spring water, currently comes in three varieties: wellbeing, love and strength. Launched last December by Heidi Albertiri, a flower stylist who believes in the power of positivity, A Bottle Of hopes to lift people's moods, encouraging them to "Sip it - Say it - Absorb it - Feel it - Think about it - Repeat it - Believe it". Given the size of both the self-help market…

• 
  StartUpArabia

• Berytech Launches 2009 Incubation Awards Of Up To $100K

  Mohamed Marwen Meddah

  31 Oct 2009 | 11:09 pm

  Berytech, the Lebanon based tech startup incubator, has launched a set of new incubation awards of up to $100,000 US Dollars  for the most innovative technology projects. A committee of experts will be selecting the projects based on the following merits: technological and scientific quality, creativity, economic sustainability and growth potential, job creation potential, target market and export potential, as well as the motivation and implication of the candidate(s) and the quality of the team behind the startup. The obtained award should allow entrepreneurs to take their idea from…

• Tiba3a, Enabling A Wider Range Of Arabic Fonts Online

  Mohamed Marwen Meddah

  31 Oct 2009 | 7:02 am

  One of the problems that all web designers face is the limitation of what fonts they can use online, and having to use only the default system fonts that are available with all operating systems. Arabic is yet another language where web developers suffer from the same problem, even more so because of the beauty of the Arabic script which displays the very artistic side of typography, and because designers are limited to just a few very uninteresting Arabic fonts online. Tiba3a is a new project that aims to solve the problem of displaying varied and beautiful Arabic fonts online, in an easy…

• Mobile Monday Morocco, Casablanca, November 3rd 2009

  Mohamed Marwen Meddah

  30 Oct 2009 | 11:03 am

  The 5th edition of Mobile Monday Morocco has been announced and will be taking place this coming “Tuesday”, November 3rd 2009, which would make it more of a Mobile Tuesday, but that doesn’t sound as cool, I guess. The event will be taking place at l’Office des Changes in Casablanca, from 6:30PM to 8:30PM. The program of the event will be as follows: 6:45PM : Presentation of Mobile Monday 7:00PM : 4 presentations, 4 visions of the present and future of mobility: MobileWorks 3D : Search and content accessibility on mobile devices (Christine Maxwell) Online Advertising :…

• Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority To Launch Global Technology Fund

  Mohamed Marwen Meddah

  22 Oct 2009 | 12:31 am

  Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority (DSOA), the region’s largest integrated technology park, is planning to launch a global technology fund middle of next year. “Some of the investments will be from ourselves, some from local and regional investors and also international investors,” said Ray Milhem, the new chief technology officer of technology investment at DSOA. He said, it will largely target companies in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, as well as global companies. The fund’s amount has not been finalised yet. The fund is another means to attract…

• Twofour54 Ibtikar Launches Creative Lab Media Industry Grant Fund For Young Arabs

  Mohamed Marwen Meddah

  18 Oct 2009 | 11:27 pm

  twofour54 ibtikar, the media industry funding and support pillar of twofour54 Abu Dhabi, has launched twofour54 ibtikar: creative lab, a grant funding scheme aimed at engaging with young Arabs and stimulating creativity in order to build a long term sustainable media industry in the Arab world. twofour54 ibtikar: creative lab offers grant funding and business support to talented Arab individuals from the UAE and across the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region, helping great media and entertainment ideas that would benefit from seed funding, development guidance and planning to get off…

• 
  DemoPit

• Startups.com is now live – Q&A site for entrepreneurs

  DemoPit

  4 Nov 2009 | 10:28 pm

  Startups.com is the place where reference information and Q&A content come together to deliver the best answers for entrepreneurs. We know you have business questions that need to be answered right now. That’s why we’ve put together a great team of Hosts composed of successful entrepreneurs, seasoned businesspeople, academics, advisors, and many more willing to give you a hand. Not only that, our community of users will be available to give you their best answer to any question you might have. With all these people ready to answer all your questions, it would be difficult to not find…

• WebSort enables you to conduct remote card sorting online

  DemoPit

  4 Nov 2009 | 10:11 pm

  Card sorting is a simple technique that allows you to get feedback from your users about how information should be organized. Originally, researchers wrote labels on 3 x 5 cards or sticky notes, and asked participants to sort the cards into piles that were similar. Then the participants would label each pile. Using statistics and/or “eyeballing” the results across several participants, researchers were able to create better information structures. With WebSort, card sorting is done online. People can complete your study from anywhere in the world, and you benefit from expert…

• Find music faster and easier using Google Music Search

  DemoPit

  4 Nov 2009 | 10:09 pm

  Google’s new music search feature makes it easy to find music. Just search for an artist, album, song or even a few lyrics to get song previews from its partners. Related posts:iPhone: Identify music anywhere (radio, TV, film) with ShazamWebMynd makes search easier, smarter and beautifulHands-on look at the 7digital MP3 music store for BlackBerry Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

• Build, send and receive interactive messages with SendFlow

  DemoPit

  4 Nov 2009 | 9:31 pm

  SendFlow is a web-based platform that lets you create, broadcast and manage interactive SMS text and Voice messages. With SendFlow you can broadcast two-way messages that respond to caller inputs in real-time using land lines, mobile phones and internet transports like G-Talk. You don’t need programming skills or detailed knowledge of communications technology to get started.If you can manage a spreadsheet, you can build and broadcast messages that interact with callers, capture data and create revenue. Key SendFlow features: Design, build and broadcast interactive messages Supports SMS…

• Open source collaboration platform for the enterprise and the web from MindTouch

  DemoPit

  1 Nov 2009 | 9:38 pm

  MindTouch transforms businesses with a new class of enterprise software that cuts costs, increases revenue, and provides greater transparency across the organization. MindTouch provides wiki-like ease of use with a sophisticated web services framework for rapid application development, creating flexible workflows and rapid integration. MindTouch creates a vibrant real-time information fabric by federating content from across enterprise silos, such as CRM, ERP, file servers, email, databases, web services and more. Related posts:On-demand enterprise collaboration suite from CubeTreeEasy to use…

• 
  Home Office Warrior

• Social Media, What’s in it for You?

  Tina Hilton

  29 Oct 2009 | 6:35 am

  I was reading a wonderful post by Danny Brown this morning which had several great points concerning social media  but the one that inpired me to think, and thus write this post was what he said about measuring your return on investment (ROI) from social media. It made me think about just what social media has done for my business. Then I remembered all of those struggling virtual assistants who seem to be so reluctant to use it. I know how difficult it can sometimes be to embrace new technology and new ideas. Especially when you yourself can’t see the point or the wisdom in using that…

• Should Virtual Assistants Shun Twitter?

  Tina Hilton

  15 Oct 2009 | 1:08 pm

  Something special for this week’s post here at Home Office Warrior, I’ve recorded my first video blog post! Please forgive the quality, it seems that if I plan on doing more video posts (and I do!) that I’ll be investing in something other than my built in laptop webcam. The video post is regarding whether virtual assistants need to you use social media, especially twitter, in order to be successful. I give you my thoughts on the subject in the video. There you have it, my feelings on the subject. What are yours? I welcome your comments and opinions. Related posts:Twitter…

• Virtual Assistant Tip: By All Means, Barter

  Tina Hilton

  7 Oct 2009 | 10:11 am

  I’ve found, from my own experience, and from hanging around the virtual assistant forums, that most virtual assistants don’t start their businesses with an advertising budget. In fact, I’m sure that there are plenty of small start up companies out there in the same boat.  In this economy it’s all about bootstrapping.  Especially for micro and small service businesses. Yet, in order to get clients, one must get the word out somehow. There are low-cost alternatives out there that many of us are taking advantage of like blogging and social media. But have you ever…

• Virtual Assistant Interview Series V- It’s ME!

  Tina Hilton

  11 Sep 2009 | 2:45 pm

  So far I’ve been the one asking all the questions. We’ve had some great interviews in the series haven’t we?  I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone that participated in the interviews again. This week, it’s the last post in the interview series and I’ve turned the tables on myself. I decided I’d share my answers to the interview questions with all of you.  And not to stop there, I want you to use the comments section to ask me more.  If there are things that you’d like to know about being a virtual assistant, starting a VA business,…

• Virtual Assistant Interview Series IV

  Tina Hilton

  4 Sep 2009 | 9:37 am

  This weeks interview is with Tara Nelson, Virtual Assistant and certified social media and internet marketing specialist. Let’s find out how a newer virtual assistant is dealing with the challenges of starting and running her new business. Hello Tara, welcome to Home Office Warrior. HOW:   How long have you been a virtual assistant? Tara: I had been successfully telecommuting as a recruiting, editing, and scheduling independent business contractor since 2006, but started thinking about becoming a VA in the spring of 2008. HOW:  So you already had plenty of experience in working…

• 
  The Women Entrepreneurs Blog @ Simon

• The American Dream

  Charla Kucko

  5 Nov 2009 | 1:12 pm

  by Judy Seil Today I sat in a meeting in which three first generation Americans spoke about their ability to start a business in Monroe County, hire employees, invest in buildings and equipment and marvel at how fortunate they were to be in America. What I marveled at was that the words "hard work" is what they attributed their success to. The three owners have diverse businesses, from wholesale to retail to service industries, in which they employ in total over 100 workers. They provide benefits to their employees. They feel fortunate to have attained the American Dream of owning a…

• Tip of the Week: Attend a Conference

  Charla Kucko

  2 Nov 2009 | 6:14 am

  by Elisabeth Hager, MD Preparing to attend a conference takes more than booking a flight and hotel room. Any time you leave the office you spend valuable resources – time, money and attention to name a few, and you should plan to optimize your return on investment. To do so takes advanced planning. Once you have decided that the conference is worth attending based on content, take the next step and research other attendees.   Conferences bring people who you may have been trying to connect with to a central location, allowing one-on-one meetings to be efficient and cost effective.

• The Entreprenurial Challenge: What to call yourself

  Charla Kucko

  27 Oct 2009 | 9:13 am

  Being an entrepreneur isn't for sissies! But, you already knew that, didn't you? The challenges ahead of you, as an entrepreneur, may seem insurmountable at times. Just coming up with the right name can be mind-numbing. One expert will advice you to be 'memorable' by being outrageous- i.e. Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, all companies that chose names that made them stand out but did not tell the reader what they do or who they are. They chose to be provocative and make people think about their purpose. Another expert may tell you to be specific - spell out your talents, your…

• Lead Your Way to Entreprenurial Success

  Charla Kucko

  23 Oct 2009 | 8:25 am

  One of the worries of many new start-ups is how to find new business and/or how to meet the right people to help them in their new endeavors. This is often called "networking" - but there is much more to it than that. When you engage in networking you are most often attending events or meetings, where you will come in contact with other business professionals who can help introduce you to possible clients/customers, or who may, themselves, be interested in your work. This is why it's a good idea to join specific groups such as BNI (Business Networking International) or our…

• Welcome to My Life – An Entrepreneur's Journey in Barbados

  Charla Kucko

  19 Oct 2009 | 8:15 am

  By Marita Greenidge When I first came to Simon, I had a plan, a plan to start a business magazine in Barbados. I was so dedicated to this plan that I wrote an entire blue print for the business and entered it into the Mark Ain Business Model Competition. Thereafter I suffered a horrible defeat as my plan was not one of the top 5  selected as a finalist in the competition (bummer!).  However, as Simon continued to expand my skills set so too did my horizon expand. A business magazine in Barbados no longer seemed like the means by which I would fulfill my passion for assisting with economic…

• 
  entrepreMusings

• Contemplating A Blogging Break

  Aruni

  4 Nov 2009 | 8:07 pm

  I’m seriously considering a very long blogging break while I figure out what I want to be when I grow up.  Or shall I say what I want this blog to be as it grows up.  The posts have been kind of random lately…a bit out of focus like I feel these days. I was having lunch with one of my advisers today who always pumps me up.   He’s almost 70 years old and calls himself a recycled dad because he has grand kids older than his youngest kids.  I like him a lot because he’s used to working with strong, smart, professional women.  In the company he founded some 30 years…

• Happy Halloween

  Aruni

  31 Oct 2009 | 7:04 pm

  I remember Halloween being one of my favorite holiday’s of the year as a kid and even as I got older.  This year my son dressed up as a scary skeleton, my daughter dressed up as a princess, and I dressed up in an Egyptian princess (Queen Nefertiti) costume I’ve had laying around for probably 8 years from a Halloween party we had at the house.  I think I surprised a few people who came to the door. In the last few years, I haven’t been that motivated to put on the costume while their dad took them out around the neighborhood.  So I usually greeted people in my blue jeans…

• About Laughter

  Aruni

  28 Oct 2009 | 3:40 pm

  This post called About Laughter came to me while I was in the shower the other day.  I guess I was thinking about About Sleep, About Writing and About Car Paint when the word “laughter” popped into my head and then a blog post started forming. Laughter is the best medicine is an age old saying and according to: Laughter is the ‘best medicine for your heart on the University of Maryland Medical Center, Laughter is the Best Medicine on HelpGuide.org, and Laughter is the Best Medicine on Science Daily, laughter can help prevent heart attacks, help the terminally ill, create…

• Sandi Aitken – Success To Me

  Aruni

  24 Oct 2009 | 7:46 pm

  I interviewed Sandi Aitken (pdf) for The University of Texas at Austin’s alumni magazine, The Alcalde, for an article that was published in the Sep/Oct 2006 issue.  My writing partner, Pam Losefksy, and I pulled these articles together a while back and you can see them on the Success Profiles page of this blog.  You can see the full article on Sandi by clicking HERE (pdf).  I haven’t connected with Sandi since the interview so I’m not even sure if she’s still at Freescale, but here’s an overview: Sandi was/is a benefits manager for Freescale Semiconductor,…

• About Sleep

  Aruni

  22 Oct 2009 | 7:29 pm

  Now for the third post in the “About” series.  The first was About Writing and the second was About Car Paint.  This one is About Sleep or the lack thereof. Sleep is so important but for entrepreneurs and parents it’s often hard to come by…and not from lack of trying.  I consider my two kids two little ventures and I often say, I’ve now been involved in 4 start-ups, 2 being my kids.  Kids are unique and require special attention and you definitely don’t want to screw them up.  You can’t file bankruptcy on, sell, or shut down your kids!

• 
  FT.com - Entrepreneurship

• Open up the floor to like-minded start-ups

  6 Nov 2009 | 10:06 am

  A bit of give-and-take can bring immense rewards to a growing business, particularly in these difficult times.

• Ask the Experts: Savings and safety in numbers

  6 Nov 2009 | 10:03 am

  Everyone thinks about the revenue generating side of networking, but a lot of people miss the cost saving benefits.

• Lessons litter memory lane

  6 Nov 2009 | 10:01 am

  We all occasionally look back and wonder what might have happened had we done things differently. But there is no point in dwelling on the past.

• Demand at 30,000 feet

  3 Nov 2009 | 3:20 pm

  A German company has built a profitable niche by using an algorithm to sift through the complex data of the airline business. Airconomy says its one-of-a-kind system is capable of providing the most precise picture of how many passengers travel specific routes

• Actors who create drama of business

  3 Nov 2009 | 3:11 pm

  Making sales, hiring new staff, generating a profit are all very well – but what really excites the boardroom is corporate intrigue, writes Luke Johnson

• 
  The Next Web

• Give Me Two Minutes To Tell You Why Cyworld US Failed

  Regina Walton

  7 Nov 2009 | 5:22 am

  I got this email last night around 9:25pm EST. Thank you to all members with Cyworld. Due to Cyworld shuts down US service, US Cyworld will no longer be able to service. We sincerely apologize for shutting down the service with unavoidable reason. Before US cyworld close the service, you will continue to access to US cyworld contents but not purchase items. Also, you will not use your acorns. If you have unused acorns, you will be given a full refund for paid acorns only. Refunds and data backup service is in progress, using the acorn will no longer be able to purchase for miniroom items,…

• Рhishing for multilingual domain names

  Fawzi Rahal

  7 Nov 2009 | 4:44 am

  With all the hype around the soon to be standardized multilingual top level domains and IDNs (internationalized domain names), how good are you in telling the difference between a legitimate domain and a phishing name? Ready? Go! Which one is legit: paypal.com or рayрal.com? Can’t tell the difference? The р in the latter domain name (also in the title, by the way) is a Cyrillic glyph that looks identical to the Latin p. There are tons of glyphs from various scripts that are identical. With the exception of Middle-Eastern and East-Asian scripts and some archaic languages, all modern…

• Is this Twitter’s secret iPhone app?

  Martin Bryant

  7 Nov 2009 | 1:49 am

  One of the notable things about the way Twitter has run its business up to now is that it has never got into the app business. New screenshots suggest that might be changing. Twitter has always left development of everything except the core Twitter website and API up to third parties. It even bought the service’s search technology in from a third party. Now developer Jesse Stay, the man behind Social Too, has spotted what looks like an iPhone app used internally by Twitter. With the new geolocation feature being tested internally and the new version of Seesmic Desktop featuring the…

• Skype Lawsuit Over – Founders Do Well In eBay Settlement

  Alex Wilhelm

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:46 am

  It has finally come to a conclusion: eBay gets to spin-off Skype, the founders are coming back, the P2P technology that runs Skype will be merged into the corporation, and Index Ventures is out of the picture. The deal breaks down as follows: eBay will own 30% of the company, the founders will own 14%, of which they paid $84 million for 4%. The rest of their stake is part of the settlement, and payment for Joltid. Joltid is the underpinnings of Skype that make it tick, and was the root of the latest round of lawsuits. The rest of the equity goes to the investors who are putting up nearly all…

• Apple approves a “Hitler Book” app with Nazi Symbol as its logo. How did no one catch this?

  Zee

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:29 am

  Apple has approved an eBook Application of a book written by Hilter including Nazi symbols as the application icon. The book titled Mein Kampf (Mi Lucha in Spanish) is a book written by Adolf Hitler, combining elements of his autobiography with an exposition of ideas of the political ideology of National Socialism. The most shocking feature of the application is unquestionably its logo, the Swastika, in plain site in the apps directory. This comes not days after Apple banned an app for mentioning the word iPhone. How did no one catch this? Update: Ralf, one of our team, comments below stating…

• 
  Entrepreneur Success Blog

• Mining The Thought Stream - TweekDeck Rules

  jared

  6 Nov 2009 | 12:13 pm

  Ok maybe I am late to the game but for the last month and a half I have been using TweekDeck. If you follow me on twitter you will notice that I am not a big tweeter, I am however turning into a big consumer of tweets. Twitter has really turned into a major news source. It is not only where I go to find out in real-time what is going on around me (like what was that loud boom in my neighborhood), it is also becoming one of my primary news sources for my industry, my company and myself. If you can think of something and say it within 140 characters, you can enter your thought into the thought…

• How CEOs Could Use Twitter

  jared

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:18 am

  This guest article was written by Adrienne Carlson, who regularly writes on the topic of executive mba programs . Adrienne welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: adrienne.carlson1@gmail.com —————————————————————— They are one in a million too now, even though they may be the CEOs of some of the richest and most successful companies in the world - Richard Branson of the Virgin Group, Kevin Rose of Digg.Com, Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems…

• What Kind of Boss Are you?

  jared

  29 Oct 2009 | 9:42 pm

  Great memo from Bill Taylor to young leaders. He breaks down 5 questions that you should ask yourself: 1. Why should great people want to work with you? 2. Do you know a great person when you see one? 3. Can you find great people who aren’t looking for you? 4. Are you great at teaching great people how your team or company works and wins? 5. Are you as tough on yourself as you are on your people? http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/taylor/2008/05/memo_to_a_young_leader_what_ki.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a38:g26:r17:c0.000116:b28574983:z6

• Follow me on twitter

  jared

  1 Oct 2009 | 1:55 pm

  I know I know, everyone’s tweeting these days. Trust me I have had an account for a long time I just have not promoted it one bit. I do tweet from time to time with interesting stories and situations. So if you are interested, please follow me http://www.twitter.com/jaredreitzin

• Interview this Weekend: Jeremy’s Desktop

  jared

  22 Sep 2009 | 10:02 pm

  Busy this weekend? If you have some time, tune in Saturday September 26, 2009 at 2pm PST to hear me talk with Jeremy Anticouni about mobileStorm Go and learn ways to optimize the performance of your e-mail and sms marketing campaigns. Simply log on to www.technewsla.com and register for my guest appearance on Jeremy’s Desktop. Jeremy’s Desktop is the online edition of Tech News, powered by Make It Work, which airs on KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO every Saturday 1pm – 2pm Pacific. It is hosted by Jeremy Anticouni, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Make It Work, Inc., and renowned radio…

• 
  Startup Africa

• Upcoming events in Johannesburg

  Ismail Dhorat

  6 Nov 2009 | 1:59 am

  GeekMeat Chow – 10 November 2009 So at the last barcamp jozi, we conceptualized a regular geek get together for all things geeky, the first Geek Meat (Gerrit?) will be held on the 10 November. Come have a bite and listen to some interesting talks. We are planning 3 talks for the evening. One on deep IT technology, another on Web 2.x/Soft Skills and another suprise geeky fun talk. Date: 10 November 2009 Time: 19:00 Venue: Picola Pizza Restaurant (Cnr 4th & 8st, Linden Square Shopping Centre, Linden) GPS Coordinates: X: 27°59`35“ Y:-26°8`27“ Cost: Pay for your meal Tel…

• The last few days in Finland

  admin

  1 Nov 2009 | 1:51 am

  On Thursday i arranged a bunch of private meeting, Some of the companies were: http://www.prewise.com http://www.greyarealabs.com/ https://www.scred.com/ On Friday morning we all headed to the Helsinki Living Lab which also has the Arabia factory. They are known for their design with the brand Ittala. Mika told me about Barcamp Helsinki, so decided to head there on saturday and hang with a few Finn geeks. Interestingly, i found some of the same challenges faced in South Africa for startups are faced in Finland, just like in South Africa, failure is not an option and if you have failed it is…

• Day 3 Finland – Nokia & Design Factory

  Ismail Dhorat

  29 Oct 2009 | 3:27 am

  Yesterday on our knowledge exchange visit, we visited a small little company that was founded here in Finland called Nokia, the company was founded in 1865 as Finnish rubber works, and they have done many different things from forestry to mining boots. Today they are currently a mobile device manufacturer and Nokia is in the process of another transformation from just manufacturing of devices to providing solutions and services as well. They currently employ over 125,000 people around the world, with an R & D presence in 16 countries. What struck me however is their how they deal with…

• Day 2 in Finland – Tekes & Tieke

  Ismail Dhorat

  29 Oct 2009 | 2:23 am

  The last few days on this trip have been really hectic, with events and meetings the entire day with little time left over to blog.  On Tuesday we visited Tekes a public funding organization for research, development and innovation. Some of the elements for Finnish innovation are: High investment in R & D High Quality Research & Innovation Entrepreneurship Funding of Research One of the programmes run by Tekes is vigo, which is a startup accelerator and provides funding and coaching to startups to fast track their progress. From Tekes, we headed to Tieke is the Finish information…

• GeoProp – SA Property Listing Startup

  Khalil Aleker

  28 Oct 2009 | 2:39 am

  Today a quick touch base with Mike Kroger yet again. SA Internet Entrepreneur based in Pretoria South Africa. We featured his Plak Startup earlier this year. Now he is in property listing… Why GeoProp Mike? “After someone saw Plak they suggested I do the same thing for the property market… Mainly because most real estate web sites have horrible confusing search interfaces.” Is it free? “Yes, Google Ads to cover the cost of providing a free service.” When did you launch and how did it take you? “Well, not long at all, basically a copy of Plak. I…

• 
  Trizle

• How to Measure Productivity if You're Not an Executive

  The Trizle Team

  6 Nov 2009 | 1:46 pm

  Trizle recently wrote a totally incomplete article that sucked if you're not an executive. How do you measure productivity if you're not an executive? In the same manner, do things that matter 5 years from now: reading great books/articles that give you life-long lessons: WIN investing in your portfolio/career/side-business: WIN taking courses to learn X: WIN building long-term relationships with X: WIN getting better at negotiating: WIN building on your business skills: WIN etc., etc., etc. Invest in yourself to build a brighter future -- even if that takes 5 minutes out of your every day.

• The Power of Embracing Dumb

  The Trizle Team

  6 Nov 2009 | 1:18 pm

  You're gunning for perfection. You play everything conservatively. BAM: Your business doesn't grow. Your business doesn't reach more people. You don't find ways to increase bottom lines. How NFL Players Become Better During the NFL preseasons, quality coaches encourage players to play with more risks: Quarterbacks throw more risky passes. Wide receivers go longer. Cornerbacks play closer. They look dumb as they throw more interceptions, drop more balls, and give up more touchdowns -- but they grow much more as football players -- as: The quarterback becomes better at throwing long passes. The…

• How to Enjoy Work More

  The Trizle Team

  6 Nov 2009 | 1:07 pm

  Happiness is relative. I'm happier being a KING in a poor land. I'm sadder being a peasant in a rich land. Become the big fish at your work: Keep improving. You get better. Your status improves. People start to talk about you/your-company among your industry. With the increased status, you become happier. Keep improving.Get a Trizle Point by commenting on this post! Woohoo!

• How to Advertise Your Job Listing

  The Trizle Team

  6 Nov 2009 | 12:54 pm

  Bob does this for his business's job opening: "Let's put our job ad on Craigslist!" "We'll find our next superstar!" "OH YEAH!" He finds good peeps -- but not great peeps. How do you ensure a successful recruiting campaign? Take this mindset: The more people who see your ad, the more candidates you find. The more candidates you find, the more potential superstars you find. Have a job that you need filled? Expose it: List it on your website's homepage. Put in every job board that has potential superstars. Tell every=%#@%#@%#@-one you know. Seek recruiters. Give team members incentives (e.g.,…

• How to Work With People Who Piss You Off

  The Trizle Team

  6 Nov 2009 | 12:33 pm

  Person X pisses you off. You can't work with Person X. What in the %#@%@# do you do? Give them something. Provide them a free gift. Give them a free car wash. Give them a free meal. Give them a compliment. (FREE!) Do something for them. The power of reciprocity: You do someone a favor -- genuinely. That person subconsciously feels more obligated to return the favor. You get a free gift out of the blue during your birthday/holiday/etc; you feel more inclined to return that gift. If someone pisses you off, and you're trying to get them to change their ways, do something for them. If you do it…

• 
  Pop17

• “If the sky is the limit, then how do astronauts over achieve?”

  sarah

  5 Nov 2009 | 1:53 pm

  “If the sky is the limit, then how do astronauts over achieve?” - Tommy Fishback

• The Things Worth Living For

  sarah

  5 Nov 2009 | 1:50 pm

  God’s Love We Deliver is similar to Meals on Wheels because it’s a charity that brings the personal experience or love and compassion to people living with HIV/AIDS, cancer or other illness. If you have a friend or family member suffering to live it’s important to remind them of what they are living for. Remind them of things worth living for. Be it the mother, children, accomplishments, family, relationships, spiritual development, legacy, dignity, learning and or development, they will be reminded of bight side of life. The Fiesta Agents and I volunteered, this summer, at…

• david: “I went to the Tumblr film festival and all I got was…

  sarah

  3 Nov 2009 | 2:54 pm

  david: “I went to the Tumblr film festival and all I got was this badass GPOYW.” — caro

• Adventure Girl Twitter Star

  sarah

  28 Oct 2009 | 3:22 pm

  Stephanie Michaels is @AdventureGirl on twitter. She sets a fine example on how to tweet and give back to the twitter community.

• Teen Twitter Market

  sarah

  27 Oct 2009 | 1:54 pm

  Twitter is emerging as a top social network aimed and marketed for essentially any computer user...

• 
  The Product Guy

• From Zazzing Your Product Design to Business Plan "YES!"

  Jeremy Horn

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:26 am

  Every week I read thousands of blog posts. Here, for your weekend enjoyment, are some highlights from my recent reading, for you. On Starting Up… http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/11/03/are-business-plans-still-necessary/ Are business plans still necessary? The Product Guy says, "YES!"     On Design & Product Experience… http://www.myinkblog.com/2009/11/02/6-ways-to-take-your-webdesign-from-good-to-great/ Great advice on giving your product that extra bit of zazz. On Modular Innovation……

• More Gmail Problems – Slowness

  Jeremy Horn

  3 Nov 2009 | 6:24 pm

  This is part 5 of a short story of personal exploration and development by one new to the daily employment of Gmail, long resisted, long desired, and eventually brought to conversion by an Android. Part 5: To Resist Recently our journey began. From the humble origins of Outlook to the portable synchronicity of the Windows Mobile platform, I did travel, did evolve, as needs, desires, and demands of communication and productivity so evolved and changed. Through the darkness of masked potential so emerged new and exciting opportunities. But, to fully grasp this fortune, these new degrees of…

• From Older Entrepreneurs to the Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Web Design

  Jeremy Horn

  29 Oct 2009 | 9:01 pm

  Every week I read thousands of blog posts. Here, for your weekend enjoyment, are some highlights from my recent reading, for you. On Starting Up… http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/10/swinging-for-the-fences.html Finding success with the other kind of entrepreneur, older and serial.     On Design & Product Experience… http://webdesignledger.com/tips/20-dos-and-donts-of-effective-web-design Effective web design comes about by paying heed to specific do’s and don’ts. A conversation, with examples, exploring many of them. On Modular Innovation……

• jQuery Plugin: It’s CuteTime!

  Jeremy Horn

  26 Oct 2009 | 6:45 am

  Many online social products, and more continue to, avoid a formal timestamp format… 2009-10-10 23:14:17and Thu, October 29, 2004 12:14:19 PM … opting for more user friendly, “warm and fuzzy,” human-readable styles… 9 days ago and 5 years ago. As a result, and also in my quest to always help provide my clients free, cheap and easy to use tools, I have been on the lookout for a jQuery plugin that would provide the ability to easily… convert timestamps to ‘cuter’ language-styled forms (e.g. yesterday, 2 hours ago, last year, in the future!),…

• From Another Facebook Facelift to IBM’s Bridging of Worlds through Modular Innovation

  Jeremy Horn

  23 Oct 2009 | 7:04 am

  Every week I read thousands of blog posts. Here, for your weekend enjoyment, are some highlights from my recent reading, for you. On Starting Up… http://www.undertheradarblog.com/blog/the-series-a-term-sheet-5-terms-founders-should-focus-on/ Series A fundraising and the 5 terms every founder should know.     On Design & Product Experience… http://www.fubiz.net/2009/10/19/facebook-facelift/ Facebook gets another facelift. On Modular Innovation… http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/humans_as_sensors.php IBM’s bridging of online and offline worlds through…

• 
  Ben Casnocha: The Blog

• Religion for Atheists: A Secular Church

  Ben Casnocha

  6 Nov 2009 | 2:58 pm

  Alain de Botton, in an article titled Religion for Atheists, endorses the idea of a secular church: In this new secular religion, there would be feast days, wedding ceremonies, revered figures (secularised saints) and even atheistic churches and temples. The new religion would rely on art and philosophy, but put them to overtly didactic ends: it would use the panoply of techniques known to traditional religions (buildings, great books, seminaries) to try to make us good according to the sanest and most advanced understanding of the word. ...there are certain needs in us that can never be…

• How to Dodge a Difficult Question

  Ben Casnocha

  5 Nov 2009 | 9:38 pm

  Econ blogger Steve Waldman, who recently participated in a meeting with Treasury Department officials, takes note of the technique employed by officials to dodge difficult questions:In response to a several difficult questions, one official enthused that what the interlocutor had brought up was an important concern, something he really cared about, but then quickly went on to assert that, in his judgment, it was unlikely to be the pivotal or most challenging problem. I thought this a very effective trick to sweep an issue aside, a kind of jujitsu by which the official would render very sharp…

• Budgeting Time to Think

  Ben Casnocha

  4 Nov 2009 | 4:27 pm

  During the campaign Michelle Obama was worried that Barack's schedule allowed him "no time to think." You hear the expression a lot. But how many people actually budget thinking time on their calendar? You don't often see: 9:45 - 10:00 AM: Meet John Doe 10:05 - 10:20 AM: Conference call with team 10:20 - 11:00 AM: Meeting with client 11:00 - 11:20 AM: Think 11:20 - 12 noon: Meet with direct reports Even if you had "thinking time" on your calendar, what would you do during that time? Sit in a chair, stare straight ahead, and ponder the world? Because for some that would feel unacceptably…

• Working Out With Nothing but a Floor

  Ben Casnocha

  3 Nov 2009 | 12:40 pm

  When you're on-the-go, finding a gym can be hard and going for a run outside is always fraught with the risk of getting lost.So I now pack two good exercise tools in my suitcase that allow me to do a workout anywhere, anytime:1. Jump rope - A jump rope is light, compact, and use-able anywhere. Because you stay in one place, you can simply take one step outside your hotel building and get after it.2. Ripcords - I discovered these when their CEO, a blog reader, emailed and offered to send me a box. They're awesome. You can do many types of exercises with resistance bands.Another blog reader,…

• Your Customers Lie to You

  Ben Casnocha

  1 Nov 2009 | 2:57 pm

  A McDonald's executive, participating in the always-fascinating IamA series on Reddit, writes:Our customers want mediocre food cheap. Every time we release a higher priced but higher quality product, the people who said they would pay for it... never do. You say you want more fruits, salads, organic, all natural, etc. well then start buying that stuff and stop buying double cheeseburgers. Our best selling stuff is always whatever we can make taste good, at rock bottom prices.We've actually learned not to listen to our customers when it comes to a lot of things. Health nuts won't come into…

• 
  infoChachkie

• Pour And Stir I – In Pursuit Of The Ideal Business Model

  Uncle Saul

  20 Oct 2009 | 1:22 pm

  Note: This is Part I in a four-part series on The Perfect Business Model. Click here for Part II, Part III and Part IV Authentic, hand-crafted Persian rugs always include intentional imperfections. They are said to be, “Perfectly Imperfect, and Precisely Imprecise.” The same is true with many crafts and architecture created in Muslim cultures. I am not a Muslim scholar, but a layman’s interpretation of this tradition of intentional errors is that it arises from the belief that attempting to emulate God’s perfection is sinful.   Fortunately, entrepreneurs need not fear running afoul…

• Sales Kids With Grit – Web 2.0 Paper Routes

  Uncle Saul

  13 Oct 2009 | 11:08 am

  What do Warren Buffet, Martin Luther King, John Wayne, Walt Disney, Harry Truman and Wayne Gretzky all have in common? In addition to all of them reaching the pinnacle of their chosen professions, they also all started their careers performing the same job. All of these extremely successful individuals were paperboys*. At its peak circulation in 1969, the weekly newspaper Grit had a circulation in excess of 1.5 million. Each paper was delivered by a child and all of the money was likewise collected by children and sent to Grit’s main office by snail mail. Despite its inherent…

• Fast Follower III – First Mover Disadvantage

  Uncle Saul

  29 Sep 2009 | 3:49 pm

  This is part III of a three part series. Click here for Part I and Part II John Fitch was first. He spent the majority of his adult life fruitlessly attempting to capitalize on the novelty and uniqueness of his invention. Unable to raise funds from wealthy individuals, he solicited $300 from a hodgepodge of small businessmen, including tavern owners, grocers and physicians. In a matter of months, he developed technology that was superior to that created by the world’s leading scientist over the prior 15-years, despite his lack of a formal education. He debuted his technology in Philadelphia…

• Small Ideas, Big Benefits

  Uncle Saul

  22 Sep 2009 | 5:54 pm

  This is a reposting of a ‘classic’ popular post. When viewed from The Fringe, the world is like a cash booth from a bad 1950’s TV game show. Just like in the game show booth, in the real world, you can count on various exogenous factors to generate some proverbial wind that will swirl the cash around and force you to work a bit for the money. However, in the end, all you really need to do is reach out and grab the cash. When you position yourself on The Fringe, you will quickly see that money making opportunities are all around you. One way to grab some cash and learn valuable…

• Bank Robber or ATM Operator?

  Uncle Saul

  15 Sep 2009 | 10:19 am

  This is a reposting of a ‘classic’ popular post. A Fortune 500 CEO once told me that I was a Bank Robber. Initially, I was offended. However, once he explained what he meant, I was flattered. A Bank Robber is someone who craves the thrill of the chase. They love planning the heist and experiencing the adrenaline rush that goes along with taking down a bank. They relish the role of the underdog, with the odds are stacked against them. Yet they are able to persevere and accomplish something that few people ever achieve. In addition, Bank Robbers love the seemingly unlimited…

• 
  The Eco-Capitalist

• Name Your Own Price!

  23 Oct 2009 | 11:45 am

  We just made what some may consider either a stupid move or a brilliant move, but it's definitely an interesting one -- we've opened a retail store. But that's not the part in question here. We've got solid product offerings that customers clearly want. No, what makes this launch unique is that we've decided to start out by letting people choose what to pay for their purchases. Are we nuts? Why, yes, but that's the beside the point. In other sectors, namely music and restaurants it's shown to be quite a success, drawing a lot of media attention, building good will with fans and customers, and…

• Going Global: Risky or Necessary?

  17 Sep 2009 | 11:46 am

  In an economy like the one we're facing now, the conventional wisdom is to pull back on the reins, focus on your core business, and economize in every way possible. We've never been a company to follow the conventional wisdom, and a historic recession isn't enough for us to lose our fearless ways. TerraCycle is about to go where we've never gone before: the United Kingdom. Starting September 1, we joined together with Kraft UK and Think London, a sustainability focused, private/public-funded service whose sole purpose is to effectively locate foreign businesses and help them establish a U.K.

• Making Sustainability Sustainable

  11 Aug 2009 | 12:11 pm

  When you think of socially responsible, sustainable food companies, which come to mind? Ben & Jerry's? Stonyfield Farm? New Belgium? How about Mars? Mars? You mean the company that makes Milky Way, Starburst, and 3 Musketeers, among others? Not likely top of mind for you. Yet. And I'd wager it just may be in the coming years. Why? Mars recently made two monumental commitments, with action and money to back it up. They encompass both what's in and outside the wrapper. And they could even serve as an example and even a resource to you. Yes, you, the perhaps-already-sustainable-in-many-ways…

• When Does Partnering Make Sense?

  9 Jul 2009 | 11:53 am

  What are you good at as a company? What are you not? Though we at TerraCycle (and I imagine you too) like to think we can do anything we set our minds to, we know what our core competencies are: Branding, materials science and repurposing, and post consumer collection programs. Anything else, we can do it, but there are often others that do it better. And increasingly, we're happy to let them do it. Why expend a lot of energy trying to up our game in those areas, when we can instead focus on maximizing the amount of "waste" we collect, making the most people aware of the options we offer, and…

• Go Big or Go Home?

  10 Jun 2009 | 12:16 pm

  As entrepreneurs, we all know the value and necessity of forming partnerships. Little would get done in the business world without a solid network to help grow our companies. Form an alliance with the right organization and your impact is amplified exponentially. But that begs a tough entrepreneurial question: Should a younger, cutting-edge company join forces with an established, more conventional company? It can be a slippery slope. Will the former company's values be in line with those of the latter? Whose mission and ideals will win out? TerraCycle has recently wrestled with that problem,…

• 
  Fresh Inc.: The Staff Blog

• The Truth about Cyber Monday; Tour the Gawker Offices

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:02 am

  Tour a Start-up's Office: The Gawker edition. Gawker Media, the parent company behind blogs like Valleywag and io9, has been experiencing a growth spurt of 40 percent year-over-year. Now Silicon Alley Insider takes us inside CEO Nick Denton's "steampunk" headquarters in downtown New York as part of its new tour a startup photo feature. What should you expect from inside the belly of the blogging beast?: A couch straight out of the Matrix, a roof deck for courting advertisers, the requisite glass-walled conference room, and a "comfortingly familiar" library-like atmosphere to soothe recent…

• Biz Lessons from the Poker Table; Google's New Idea

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:19 am

  Yanks win, but few spoils for Bronx businesses. Congratulations to the New York Yankees, for winning (yet another) World Series championship. But while the team celebrates, owners of the struggling small businesses whose shops flank the new $1.5 billion House that Steinbrenner Built, are feeling more like the defeated Phillies. As the New York Times reported earlier this week, despite the Bronx Bombers' winning season, sales at local businesses were down significantly from previous years. New traffic patterns around the stadium are one reason for the drop, but some vendors blame the team's…

• The "Other" Entrepreneurship; Inside Intuit

  4 Nov 2009 | 8:50 am

  Private companies still cutting back. A new employment report from ADP estimates that private companies cut another 203,000 jobs in October, Bloomberg reports. The good news? That's down from a decline of 227,000 in September. The bad? "I’m still expecting to see payroll employment decline probably through the end of the year," Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, told Bloomberg, "not turn up until January or February." Google's definition of disruption: the "less than free" business model. Benchmark Capital's Bill Gurley considers himself an aficionado of business disruption.

• Tweets in Your Pocket and the Danger of Multitasking

  3 Nov 2009 | 8:46 am

  Get ready for Twitter, the gadget. One of the reasons for Twitter's breakneck growth has been the company's decision to make its data available to anyone interested in building applications on top of its messaging system. (This approach has worked pretty well for two other companies you may have heard of.) Until now, all of the Twitter upstarts--such as the iPhone app Tweetie and the link-shortener Bit.ly--have focused on making software. But now, one company is trying to turn Twitter into a profitable gadget. Peek, a New York start-up that makes a cell-phone like device for email, just…

• Confessions of a Facebook Spammer; Starting Your Own Category

  2 Nov 2009 | 9:38 am

  How Facebook spam works. Facebook just won a $711 million lawsuit against an email marketer who had operated a spam scam on the social network. But scams are still endemic on the social network, according to a guest post on TechCrunch. "The underlying premise of all the advertising techniques we've discussed so far is that trickery is profitable," writes Dennis Yu, CEO of BlitzLocal. "Fool them into thinking the new friend request is from Facebook, lie to them that the miracle skin creme is actually free, tell them they'll earn points if they just click this button-which then puts their email…

• 
  The Mission Driven Business

• A New Home for Green Companies

  26 Oct 2009 | 11:42 am

  Earlier this month, we opened Maryland's first green business incubator. It is housed in the offices of Bethesda Green, the local sustainability non-profit which I co-chair with County Council member George Leventhal. I would have said it was a ribbon cutting, but instead of wasting synthetic material, we gathered local leaders around a pair of hedge clippers and cut a green vine of an invasive species that had been draped across the entryway. (Click to see the photo.) Here is an excerpt of my comments from the opening: We hear a lot of talk about our nation's environmental challenges, but…

• Don't Judge a Drink by Its Bottle

  6 Oct 2009 | 11:43 am

  We learned an interesting lesson this month about the danger of hiding your light under a bushel. Over the past few years, we had been working hard with bottle suppliers to find ways to decrease the weight of our plastic (Polyethylene terephthalate or PET) bottle. There are obvious environmental benefits for such a package -- such a move could eliminate up to 1 million pounds of PET resin on an annual basis. Another advantage of a lighter bottle is that it takes less fuel to ship (before and after filling). And, of course, we'd save money as well because the price of the bottles is directly…

• A Crash Course in Social Entrepreneurship -- Part 2

  1 May 2009 | 10:08 am

  Earlier this week, I posted some of the most common questions I get from entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs -- a list that was inspired by a lengthy correspondence I had recently with a group of California MBA students. Here is the second half of that list, focused on the dynamics of social entrepreneurship. Why social entrepreneurship? I have always had a personal interest in social causes, and incorporating that passion into my business came naturally -- tea is a beverage that we recognized had a "natural" link to everything we wanted to accomplish -- a healthy product with a strong…

• A Crash Course in Social Entrepreneurship -- Part 1

  28 Apr 2009 | 10:55 am

  Every week, I talk with lots of entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, or students of entrepreneurship. I recently had a lengthy correspondence with a group of California MBA students, which inspired me to pull together some of the more common questions and answers in this two part series. This first set of questions is focused on getting started in the social entrepreneurship world. How did you start? Step one to starting Honest Tea was a series of e-mails with my cofounder, Barry Nalebuff, about six months before we launched. He was a former professor of mine at the Yale School of…

• Promoting from Within

  16 Mar 2009 | 9:49 am

  Despite all the grim unemployment data, we've been on a hiring spree for the past two years -- from 23 full-time employees in 2007, to 52 last year, and 95 today. As our headcount has quadrupled, one strategy we have increasingly relied on is promoting from within -- starting with the interns we hire in the summer. I wish I could say this was an intentional HR strategy, but we aren't that smart. It wasn't until I noticed that approximately 10 percent of our employees are former interns that I came to fully appreciate the benefits of this approach. First, we hire people who are proven to work…

• 
  Start-Up Toolkit

• The Workforce of Crowds

  4 Nov 2009 | 1:11 pm

  In 2004, James Surowiecki wrote The Wisdom of Crowds to describe the way that groups can aggregate information and use it to make decisions more effectively than an individual. The example often cited was that a crowd was able to guess the weight of a slaughtered ox more effectively than individual experts, when the crowd’s guesses were averaged together. However, not all small businesses need an ‘intelligent crowd.’ Sometimes what's needed is the brute force of a large group of people, all working on an uncomplicated, repetitive task that humans can do but computers can’t. Amazon,…

• Entrepreneur vs Flu - What's Plan B?

  28 Oct 2009 | 1:31 pm

  One thing most startups and small businesses don’t have enough of is sick days. It is something that I'm personally very aware of, having had to take a sick day in my business today. When it’s your business, it is tough to “take a day off” when you typically work eight days a week. It especially hurts if taking that day means your business isn’t moving forward. While I don’t want this column to harp on the health care debate in Washington, Terri Lonier, President at WorkingSolo.com, told me she believes “The Entrepreneurial Spirit would be unleashed in the US if we had better…

• Trade Show Advice for Startups

  21 Oct 2009 | 9:19 am

  Today I’m privileged to speak at the NY XPO for Business, which is an expo with classes and seminars for small and mid-sized businesses from all over the NY area. They’re expecting 30,000 people or more. (Notes from my panel on Social Media for Small Businesses with be on my business’ website.) I’m going to be looking out for trade show booths, good and bad, and have posted a few pictures (bad booth, good booth). When you spend thousands of dollars for a booth at a trade show – what are you doing to attract people into the booth? Will your signage have your logo, the name of your…

• Customer Serivce - Do the Right Thing

  14 Oct 2009 | 3:10 pm

  When you read about companies that have great service, such as Zappos, you read about passion, and a desire to put the customer first. I've heard Tony Hsieh says Zappos is a customer service company that happens to sell shoes. If you want to grow like crazy and have your customers love you, you have to do the right thing - set up your company and corporate culture to focus on service from day one. It's not easy. You're out making your products, raising capital, or finding the right supplier or accountant, and sometimes the customer problems seem like, well, problems. That is exactly where a…

• An Incubator Graduate - Postling

  7 Oct 2009 | 1:53 pm

  When I wrote 5 questions for a Start-up Accelerator two weeks ago, I only spoke to the incubator side of the equation. This week, I spoke to Dave Lifson, an entrepreneur whose company went through the program this past summer. Dave was formerly a product manager at Etsy, and his partners Chris Maguire and Hiam Schoppik were 2 of Etsy’s cofounders. So, they had some previous experience in a start-up mode, and had credibility for creating a large site that had traction. Dave told me his primary motivation for joining DreamIt was money. They had raised just a few thousand dollars from friends…

• 
  Young Upstarts

• Monocle’s Guide To Small Business

  Daniel

  6 Nov 2009 | 12:05 am

  Issue 28 of Monocle. I’m a huge fan of business and current affairs magazine Monocle, and its latest issue is a must-have for anybody who’s even remotely thinking about starting their own business. The latest issue of Monocle is all about entrepreneurship and starting a business – it even comes with a supplement called the “The Monocle Small Business Guide 2009/10″ that contains many great interviews with small business owners all over the world, sharing their passions and stories. If you’re thinking of being an entrepreneur, get a copy today.

• Global Entrepreneurship Week 2009 Singapore

  Daniel

  5 Nov 2009 | 6:20 am

  It's Global Entrepreneurship Week again! From the 16th to 22th November, participating countries around the world will be joining together to celebrate the spirit of youth and entrepreneurship during Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW), and partner organizations will be conducting a range of activities ranging from simple speeches to comprehensive competitions designed to inspire and engage the next generation of entrepreneurs. In Singapore, the Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) opening ceremony will happen on the 16th November, 4pm at the HDB Hub Auditorium. The opening ceremony will…

• TEDx MIT Club Singapore: “The Craftsman”

  Daniel

  28 Oct 2009 | 6:51 am

  Jeff Murphy of The Pump Room. Last month I had the opportunity to attend a TEDx event organized by MIT Club Singapore. Entitled “The Craftsman”, the event featured four speakers from different walks of life to share their experience and passion for their individual crafts. I particularly enjoyed the session by Jeff Murphy, a brewer at  one of Singapore’s leading microbreweries The Pump Room, who shared on his quest for a better beer: Other speakers included Yee Tong, the founding partner of School of Thought, Goh Yiping from Human Network Labs, and Adrian Yap, one of the…

• VoteForArt.com – Art on College Tees

  Daniel

  18 Oct 2009 | 7:35 pm

  Jeremy Parker, founder of VoteForArt.com. 24-year old Jeremy Parker has always been interested in the idea of creating something out of nothing. “I’m sure this could be applied to many other jobs as well, but it definitely applies to being an entrepreneur,” says the president and founder of VoteforArt.com, “After producing films, I wanted to get involved and challenge myself by starting company in an industry that I had no prior experience in.” Jeremy had graduated from Boston University in 2007, majoring in film production. During his time in university, his…

• Asia-Pacific Enterprise Challenge

  Daniel

  16 Oct 2009 | 2:45 am

  The Asia-Pacific Enterprise Challenge is part of the upcoming Global Entrepreneurship Week 2009. Part of the Global Entrepreneurship Week Singapore 2009, the inaugural Asia-Pacific Enterprise Challenge (APEE) is inviting young people all over the Asia-Pacific region to suggest innovative and practical solutions to overcome real business case studies posed by local enterprises. There are two case studies posed to participants: (1) revamp local F&B chain Sakae Sushi’s range of merchandise, putting it enroute to its vision in becoming a global brand, or (2) develop a marketing plan for…

• 
  ArabCrunch

• Yahoo!Maktoob’s Launches Workplace and University Friend Finder Alert for its Arabic Social Network “As7ab”

  As7ab which means Friends in Arabic is one of first  Arabic social networks owned now by Yahoo! Maktoob, the social network  was launched around 2 years ago by Maktoob, since then it has been adding features gradually. The new features As7ab has added is alerting users of people who work ...

• Arab Knowledge Report 2009: Towards Productive Intercommunication for Knowledge

  HH Sheikh Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairman of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation has launched The Arab Knowledge Report 2009: Towards Productive Intercommunication for Knowledge during the Arab Strategy Forum. The report is the fruit of a collaborative effort between the Mohammed bin Rashid ...

• Tiba3a: Unleashing the Beauty of Arabic on the Web

  No one can deny that Arabic is one of the best looking written languages out there, it’s considered a highly sophisticated art form in addition of it being a communication medium. Yet the amount of Arabic fonts that are available on Windows, Mac, Linux and the Web is very few. This ...

• BeryTech Launches a 100,000 USD Incubation Award

  This is the 3rd funding/grant story covered by AC, BeryTech , an incubator that is based in Lebanon is awarding 100,000 Dollars  for technology projects in 2009. Winners of the projects will be selected by a committee of experts who will select projects based on certain qualities; technological and scientific quality, ...

• Dubai Silicon Oasis to Launch a Global Technology Fund Next Year

  DubAi Silicon Oasis Authority (DSOA) was a dream to turn Dubai into the silicon valley for the Arab region, that dream was shattered when multi national tech companies and other mid and small tech companies, chose the Oasis as a sales and marketing hub for their operations, not as an ...

• 
  Startup Meme

• MySpace Ashamed: The once giant, can’t live up to News Corp’s expectations

  Sardar Mohkim Khan

  6 Nov 2009 | 10:28 am

  Facebook continues to grow but there is something wrong big time with MySpace. Not only is it lagging behind Facebook but the social network is doing so bad with its traffic that it might actually cost News Corp $100 Million. The once leading social network had signed up a $900 Million ad deal with Google back in 2006. The deal covered up the $580 Million cost of MySpace but that will cost News Corp dearly as it fails to maintain a minimum traffic level. Sadly MySpace is the only entity of News Corp which has registered a very negative output compared to others it owns. So what exactly is…

• Facebook…. same old news: It Keeps Growing!

  Sardar Mohkim Khan

  6 Nov 2009 | 10:02 am

  Facebook continues to grow exponentially. Oh please it’s a cliché for sure as the social network grows like a wild creeper without a stop while all other social networks continue to be dwarfed next to it. It now has crossed the 325 million mark and I am sure by the time I finish writing this piece and you end reading this and ReTweeting it, a thousand or so more would have joined it. Why this growth? In my opinion the rapid rise is primarily because it is not bound to be a network for a particular age group, although it started solely for the purpose to connect college students. You…

• ReTweets peek out on Twitter .. Only to a lucky few

  Sardar Mohkim Khan

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:39 am

  Twitter is making its interface more active and bringing the features the third party desktop applications offer to its page. We have seen the filtering  of followers with the List feature and today it tested the retweet with a few users. We have been noticing this for quite some time which is pretty good, given that it earlier relied solely on third party apps/developers to keep an eye if a tweet has already made it to a stream. With this feature, it will show the original tweet plus have the retweets appear under it as roots. Tags: features, Twitter Related posts Twitter getting better…

• Ning Users Jump Past 37 Million, Appathon Competition underway

  Sardar Mohkim Khan

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:21 am

  An achievement being announced by you is always special, especially if you are a newly appointed COO. That is exactly big for Jason Rosenthal, Ning’s new COO who announced the social networking platform reached 37 million users. Big news but that’s not it as it also boasted on having 1.6 million networks created using its platform. The network has definitely grown exponentially with major partnerships on the way with and how effectively each network has an average of two Ning applications installed. The other major announcement was of the launch of the Appathon contest to bring…

• Microsoft boots 800 employees.. Don Dodge included

  Sardar Mohkim Khan

  4 Nov 2009 | 11:13 pm

  Bad day, very bad day at Microsoft as it cut short its staff by 800 or so employees. The worst part: firing Don Dodge, Director of Business Development for Emerging Business Team. Why exactly did that happen or needed to happen? The guy has been one of the most active people at Microsoft attending numerous conferences and events that are startup focused and to be honest it is a huge error laying off such an active person. The guy is definitely not slurring abuses at Microsoft and still honors the company, but in my opinion he simply wasted his time and energy for a company that didn’t…

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  StartupCFO

• Venture Capital for a 5th grader

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:39 am

  It's Friday afternoon, so time for a funny presentation. This one courtesy of the folks at DFJ Gotham Ventures.Venture Capital For A 5th GraderView more presentations from Mark Davis.

• VC returns are everyone's business!

  3 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

  Everyone loves to hate VCs. At the same time, everyone wants to be one. There has been no shortage of stories about the dismal returns in the VC industry. And no shortage of proposed solutions from reducing the industry size to completely changing the model.I read an interesting article on the Wall Street Journal yesterday with some shocking stats:Dow Jones VentureSource looked at the percentage of mergers and acquisitions since 2000 that were valued at $250 million or more and found they accounted for a mere 5.1% of venture-backed companies sold during the period.Think about this from the…

• Which F1 driver are you?

  2 Nov 2009 | 5:03 am

  So F1's 2009 season is officially over. Now begins the long (130 day) wait till next season. To amuse myself this morning I was thinking about F1 drivers and their equivalent startup entrepreneur counterparts. If you don't follow F1, move on, but if you do, which F1 driver are you?Jensen: You got lucky and sold your 1st startup. You know you're not really great and probably couldn't repeat that success. But hey, you're rich now, so all good.Rubins: You're experienced and have still got game. But you do feel a bit out of place when you go to all these startup and demo camps.Nico: You're…

• Perspectives on the Term Sheet

  29 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm

  If you are in Montreal next Thursday, November 05 come join me, Sunny Handa from the law firm Blakes and Matt Harrison from the accounting firm BDO as we talk about term sheets, how to get them as well as the most imporant things to consider from an accounting and legal perspective.The event will be held at BDO's offices starting at 5:30pm. I hear food and alcohol will be involved.You can register here.Hope to see you there!

• StartupCFO Group is hiring

  28 Oct 2009 | 2:38 pm

  StartupCFO Group works with some of Canada's hottest technology startups. We are seeking an accountant to help record all financial transactions and admin needs of our clients.Key responsibilities:Accounting - Payables cycle (purchases – payable – payments). -Receivables cycle (sales – accounts receivable – cash receipts). - Enter payroll. Control and monitor vacation amounts. - Enter other transactions as needed.- Enforce company accounting policies and controls.Reporting - Prepare monthly reportings- Prepare other reports as needed.Other - Year-end: Prepare working papers and…

• 
  Saranyan's Blog

• Imagine!

  Saran

  3 Nov 2009 | 9:09 am

  Imagination should never be controlled. It should have no limits. When imagination breaks loose, new worlds are created. These new worlds have the power to heal, inspire and create joy. For this, you first have to imagine and then desire to make that imagined world real. Do not worry about the  form your ideas might take. It can be a book, poem, object, product, or something completely offbeat. It doesn’t matter what it is, it just matters that you bring it to this world. This will heal you and others around you. Tagged: dreams, imagination

• Is there a net?

  Saran

  1 Nov 2009 | 6:03 pm

  You must’ve heard this numerous times – “Take the leap of faith. A net will appear!” Sometimes, we are plagued by uncertainties in our lives. Questions like – will I get this opportunity, will my project succeed, will I find the right person, will I succeed, will I find happiness…always keep cropping up at several crossroads in our lives. These questions are manifestations of our own fears and insecurities. Every person has some prominent inner need – success, approval of society, fame, money,…  The uncertainties we face and the questions…

• Not my day?

  Saran

  31 Oct 2009 | 6:58 am

  I play table tennis quite regularly at office. I usually play with couple of friends of Chinese origin. They are amazing players. Quite frankly, I used to get kicked in my butt quite often for one year! Then, the game got better, techniques got more sound, my defense improved and gradually, I started winning games more often. Now, on my day, I make them look like rookies, and those days happen quite frequently. Yesterday, some interesting thought came up while I was playing. I was down three games to zero. The games were not going quite my way. There were several narrow misses and there were…

• When to Resist?

  Saran

  29 Oct 2009 | 6:37 am

  When to - Resist a habit – When it leaves a bad aftertaste! Resist a thought – When it spins you in a whirlpool of miseries! Resist a person – When they stop loving! Resist a work – When it does not give you joy! Resist an obligation – When it is an obligation! Resist a feeling – When that feeling creates hate! Resist a goal – When that goal is some way not yours! Resist an activity – When it stops giving you joy! Never resist a smile, time spent with children and loved ones, and change! Flow with life. Tagged: life

• Story and smile

  Saran

  29 Oct 2009 | 5:52 am

  Have you ever told stories to a child? You don’t need to know a lot of stories, you can make it up as you go. Recently, my wife’s nephew was at our home. He is an amazing kid! I was telling stories to him making something up as they went. You should’ve seen his eyes. They were wide with excitement. He was imagining himself in that magical world I created for him. The beauty was that he was expressing his imagination and fine tuning it by asking questions like – was it like this or that…It was an amazing experience for me. I learnt a thing or two about my story…

• 
  47 Hats

• A tale of disappointment, betrayal and ultimate vindication.

  Bob Walsh

  3 Nov 2009 | 5:18 pm

  I was going to hold this for the next MicroISV Digest, but it’s too good to let sit. It’s an engrossing story of how one man on a nearly impossible quest, betrayed by feckless promises made by huge companies, fights through adversity, never giving up, and ultimately succeeds. No, I’m not talking about the latest cookiecutter novel turned out by one of the mega-authors. I’m talking about Ash Maurya’s post today, “From Minimum Viable Product to Landing Pages.” If you’re a microISV you’re going to want to go to this post, print it, and start…

• The MicroISV Digest

  Bob Walsh

  2 Nov 2009 | 7:08 pm

  The MicroISV Digest for the week ending November 2nd, 2009. (If you have an announcement of interest to your fellow microISV, indies or startups, please email me at bob.walsh@47hats.com with the word digest in the subject.) News and Announcements Nick Koranda, MeMo, is looking for feedback on their redesigned web site for their text message reminder service. (via BOS.) Dmitriy Gorbachev, Accio Intellectum LLC, is looking for feedback on their web site and their just-released product, IMAlerts for SharePoint. (via BOS.) Show #43 of The Startup Success Podcast is up. Pat and Bob interview Renn…

• Why microISVs fail to sell.

  Bob Walsh

  27 Oct 2009 | 2:40 am

  [The following is a free sample from my ebook, MicroISV Sites that Sell! - Creating and Marketing your Unique Selling Proposition. You can get the rest of this ebook designed to substantially improve your software/SaaS sales for the introductory cost of $19 USD. Or, during the Bits du Jour Sale October 29th and 30th you can get this ebook for only $10 on those two days.] —– Before we can get to the good stuff, we need to do a bit of garbage collection. We need to take a look at six mistakes microISVs often make. These are mistakes for one simple reason: they turn off sales.

• The MicroISV Digest

  Bob Walsh

  26 Oct 2009 | 7:03 pm

  The MicroISV Digest for the [several weeks] ending October 26th, 2009. (If you have an announcement of interest to your fellow microISV, indies or startups, please email me at bob.walsh@47hats.com with the word digest in the subject.) News and Announcements Apologies are in order. My apologies for not getting the last 3 issues of the Digest out. My new startup, StartupToDo.com, suffered a near-fatal financial blockage requiring an immediate transplant of its payment processor (replacing PayPal and Spreedly.com with Amazon Simple Pay Subscriptions). Happily, the operation was a success, the…

• You don’t sell to an industry, you sell to people.

  Bob Walsh

  22 Oct 2009 | 8:36 am

  Over on answers.onstartups.com today someone posted an interesting question: what happens when you made a product for an industry that doesn’t exist? i mean it sells, it makes revenue but the industry cannot be defined ? is this a bad sign or a good sign ? When you start looking at who is buying or subscribing to your software, you might start asking yourself this same question. Don’t. Because it misses what I think is a key reality of Internet-disrupted economics: What we used to call industries don’t exist anymore. Once upon a time…. Once upon a time (say 1800 to…

• 
  The Common Sense Web... An Entrepreneurs' Blog

• Capital Efficiency and where we are in the innovation cycle

  Chris Treadaway

  21 Oct 2009 | 8:19 am

  Capital efficiency is a hot topic for Web entrepreneurs these days.  I've outlined a lot of the reasons we've gotten here in prior blog posts... it's a combination of a bad economy, a maturing yet healthy & evolving Web business from search to social media, the fallout of Sarbanes-Oxley and the resulting lack of IPO activity, a weak M&A market, and poor venture capital performance over the last decade. Time marches on and despite the broader macroeconomic climate, entrepreneurs continue to innovate.  I think it's an important distinction to keep in mind at all…

• An Alternative Startup Approach

  Chris Treadaway

  8 Oct 2009 | 9:16 am

  A lot of people have commented on how the economy and lack of "exits" changes the game for entrepreneurs seeking funding for early stage idea.  You need one heck of a personal connection or paying customers to even think about getting funded at a decent valuation today.  The bar is higher than ever to justify an early-stage investment, and for the effort you'll get a modern (i.e. low) valuation to boot.Rob Adams (former venture capitalist and now professor at the UT Business School) said at a recent Texchange event here in Austin that it is "easier for a startup to sell…

• Wordplay re: Incubators, Catalysts, Accelerators, Mentorship Programs, et al

  Chris Treadaway

  23 Sep 2009 | 4:24 pm

  Quick rant today on something that's been bugging me for awhile -- snobbery around terms used by different people who support entrepreneurs.  Some things I've heard lately:"We are not an incubator <chuckle>, we're an accelerator!""Incubators stand the test of time.""Our mentor program is different."For the sake of simplicity, I ignore labels/names.  It isn't productive to get into a sophomoric debate over whether or not you "incubate", "accelerate", "catalyze", or "mentor."  And if folks are…

• ModernizeNewspapers.com

  Chris Treadaway

  17 Sep 2009 | 10:46 am

  As we work more and more with local media companies and newspapers, I've decided to break out those posts into a separate blog at http://www.modernizenewspapers.com.  This will allow me to focus on our business on that blog while continuing to write occasionally about startup issues here.Thanks for reading, and please check out the new blog!Chris

• Quick Hits -- September 14, 2009 -- Twitter & Facebook Lite edition

  Chris Treadaway

  14 Sep 2009 | 10:35 am

  We have spent a lot of time in Twitter the last few weeks... a lot.  A few quick observations of things we've noticed: Twitter is down all the time.  I'm not talking about the consumer front-end... I'm talking about the API.  Folks there who work on stability/network operations must be some of the most nervous and downtrodden people you'll ever meet. I'm sure the cause for this is the rampant proliferation of applications built atop Twitter.  It will be interesting to see if Twitter purchases some of these companies or if they make the API more robust to allow for…

• 
  Fort Worth Startup Blog

• Just Listen - Powerful Advice for the Startup Founder/CEO

  Bradley Joyce

  10 Oct 2009 | 11:18 am

  This was an incredible episode of This Week in Startups with special guest Mark Goulston. Definitely worth a watch if your in a leadership/founder position at a startup or hope to be some day!

• Startup Legal Docs From TheFunded.com

  Bradley Joyce

  28 Sep 2009 | 9:42 pm

  TheFunded.com continues to serve the best interests on the entrepreneurial community with a set of founder-friendly legal docs…. have a look: Get a Complete Set of Founder-friendly Legal Docs ———————————————————— TheFunded has produced founder-friendly versions of every legal document necessary to launch a new startup. These documents were carefully written from scratch to keep founders in control of the companies that they create. * Please help by sharing these…

• Startup Happy Hour Today!

  Bradley Joyce

  24 Sep 2009 | 9:28 am

  Fort Worth Startup Happy Hour Thursday September 24, 2009 at 5:30pm T&P Tavern and Grill221 W Lancaster Ave Fort Worth, Texas 76102 Get Directions Please RSVP HERE The SpringStage Fort Worth Startup Happy Hour is all about bringing the local entrepreneurial community together and making valuable connections. Our mission is to build a vibrant startup community here in Fort Worth and foster local entrepreneurship. This event follows in the success of the Dallas Startup Happy Hour that Alex Muse has been putting on for the past few months. Through the event many entrepreneurs/startups have…

• TweetSaver.com releases auto-tagging feature AND free 7 day trials

  Bradley Joyce

  18 Sep 2009 | 7:08 pm

  From the TweetSaver blog: New Feature: Auto-tagged tweets! We’re happy to announce that we’ve implemented a handy new auto-tagging feature that is live now on TweetSaver! As a convenience for our users, we’ve auto-tagged all of your tweets that contain a hashtag. When you log in, you should see the following on the right side of your screen: As you can see, you can easily set the feature to remain on, or turn it off. There is also a convenient link to toggle the hashtags in the view. If you have a lot of hashtags (like me) this will allow you to quickly view only the tags you’ve…

• Next FW Startup Happy Hour planned for 9/24 @ T&P Tavern and Grill

  Bradley Joyce

  18 Sep 2009 | 6:26 pm

  Usually we host this event on the 3rd Monday of every month. However, due to my crazy schedule this next one will be held on Thursday, Sept. 24th AT A NEW LOCATION!!!! Fort Worth Startup Happy Hour Thursday September 24, 2009 at 5:30pm T&P Tavern and Grill 221 W Lancaster Ave Fort Worth, Texas 76102 Get Directions Please RSVP HERE The SpringStage Fort Worth Startup Happy Hour is all about bringing the local entrepreneurial community together and making valuable connections. Our mission is to build a vibrant startup community here in Fort Worth and foster local entrepreneurship. This event…

• 
  charliecrystle.com

• Strategic vs. Linear Acquisitions

  charliecrystle

  29 Oct 2009 | 3:33 pm

  Acquisitions are up from the same time last year, mostly because the economy had everybody holding their collective breath while they figured out how and where the failure of the economic system would kick them and how hard. The exhalation started sometime in Spring and is about to accelerate–it’s a perfect time for companies with cash reserves [...]

• Startup Valuation & Early Stage Deals

  charliecrystle

  20 Oct 2009 | 10:54 am

  I’m going through the exercise of creating a deal document in anticipation of raising investment. In the past, I’ve used the convertible note with kickers for early risk as a way to simplify raising money without having to set a value for the company. The note simply converts into the first VC round, with a [...]

• Pricing Employee Options

  charliecrystle

  18 Oct 2009 | 9:40 am

  A startup I advise on occasion just repriced employee options 50% higher, while pricing preferred shares lower. On the face of it, it seems skewed, but when you really look at it, it’s very skewed. Here’s why. Let’s say employee options are priced at .15 cents, and preferred is at .40 cents.  We’ll say there are [...]

• New Startup: Sizing & Funding It

  charliecrystle

  10 Oct 2009 | 9:31 am

  I’ve been working in stealth mode for the past two and a half months on new software that I hope will really help people. The closed beta starts sometime next week. I’ll announce the software here and hope you’ll give it  a try. A question I’ve been pondering is something familiar to founders: should I raise [...]

• Cool Trip Planner

  charliecrystle

  7 Aug 2009 | 7:57 am

  From Fred over at AVC… http://www.everlater.com/ Posted in Uncategorized

• 
  Starting a Home Business | Home Business Ideas | Work From Home

• Marketing School: Your Check Is In The Mail

  Naomi Dunford

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:52 am

  I wonder, if someone were to go through this blog and count, how many times I’ve said, “after much ado…” There’s really no better phrase, under the circumstances. But it’s Friday, and you want to just finish your day and get on with going out and getting drunk, so I’ll try to keep the ado to a minimum. The story so far Once upon a time, we wrote an e-book called SEO School. Lots of people bought it. (Thank you, lots of people. And if you’re the voyeuristic type and want to know what we mean by “lots of people”, check out the How To Make $12,246 In A Day series. Also…

• Anti-Social Media: The Dark Side of Authenticity

  Naomi Dunford

  5 Nov 2009 | 12:25 am

  A couple of hours ago – it’s 2 am right now — as I was getting ready to close up shop for the night, I went onto Twitter one last time before heading for bath and bed. I tweeted this. For those of you whose bosses don’t let you on Twitter, it read: Getting ready for a hot bath and glass of wine with @chrisbrogan and @julien. Well, their book, anyway. #illtakewhaticanget I went. I had my bath. As I was getting ready to go to bed, I remembered I was waiting on something, so I logged back on. I had a handful of DMs from someone I know who didn’t like what I said. Not a troll.

• 101+1 Small Business Marketing Questions For People Who Don’t Speak Marketing

  Naomi Dunford

  3 Nov 2009 | 3:00 am

  How To Use This List: Pick 25-50 questions. Answer them as honestly and expansively as you can. Follow your intuition. Trust the answers to lead you to make the right decisions. Come back in three months and do it again, with the same or different questions. Do that and you’ll have a better marketing plan than anybody I know. Including me. 1. What do I love to do so much that it doesn’t feel like work? 2. What parts of that activity are my favorite parts? 3. Is there anybody else on earth who might really dig doing the parts I don’t really dig? 4. Why are you different than…

• Social Media and Social Proof: On Twitter Lists, Metrics, Mammals and Marketing

  Naomi Dunford

  2 Nov 2009 | 2:00 am

  First, I’ll give you some background before I get into my screaming, raging rant. Cool? (Oh, and please do not take this explanation as endorsement, OK? Some people have never heard of Twitter and I want them to be able to experience the full force of my rancor just as much as you can.) Twitter is a social media site. The people who choose to be alerted to your updates (tweets) are called followers. For a long time, your worth as a human being was calculated by subtracting the amount of people you follow from the number of people who follow you. This little junior high…

• How to stop being an information product slut and start creating the business you want

  Naomi Dunford

  30 Oct 2009 | 12:40 pm

  This is a guest post from Cath Duncan at The Bottom-line Bookclub Be honest… how many e-books and e-courses have you bought that are languishing un-opened on your computer right now? Search your harddrive and inbox, and you’ll probably be shocked to find e-books and e-courses that you don’t even remember buying or downloading and a membership site or two that you haven’t logged into for months. And for the few information products that you have actually read cover to cover, ask yourself, “How much of it have I actively applied?” Why do we spend our hard-earned,…

• 
  Business of Software Blog

• How to take advantage of your time at Business of Software 2009 - tips from @asmartbear (#bos2009)

  Neil Davidson

  2 Nov 2009 | 11:35 pm

  This is a guest post by Jason Cohen, founder of Smart Bear Software and blogger about startups, marketing, and geekery. Jason gave a Pecha Kecha speach at BoS 2008 and has this advice for 2009 attendees. So you're going to Business of Software 2009! It's going to be awesome. There's a 100% chance you'll get your time and money's worth from the speakers alone, but that's not the only benefit of the conference. In fact, most of the folks I've talked to agree that getting to know the other attendees is half the experience. This conference is unlike any other, and you should take full advantage…

• #codingbythesea – throw four smart people into a house by the seaside and shake

  Neil Davidson

  2 Nov 2009 | 6:55 am

  At Red Gate we like to try new things. The million dollar challenge and the accidental incubator are a couple of examples. Combine this with an occasional but nagging frustration at how long it can take to get stuff done nowadays and a curiosity about how much a small team can achieve if we just leave them alone, we’ve shipped Alex (developer), Dom (designer), Nagashree (tester), Rob (developer), and – oops, I forgot to send a project manager or scrum master - off to a house by the sea for a week. I’m not entirely sure what they’ll be working on, but take smart people, a fast internet…

• Business of Software 2009 program

  Neil Davidson

  21 Oct 2009 | 2:31 am

  I’ve just posted up the BoS 2009 program (thank you @thatdesigner). You can download it here (.pdf). It’s going to be awesome. There are still some places left. You can sign up here.

• Don't just roll the dice - a usefully short guide to software pricing

  Neil Davidson

  20 Oct 2009 | 8:00 am

  In 1938, two young engineers were ready to launch their first product. They'd struggled with what to build. After considering amplifiers, radio equipment, air controllers, harmonicas and even muscle-building electrodes for housewives, they'd finally decided to create an oscilloscope. Not wanting customers to be put off by a version one product, they sensibly called it the Model 200A.The next step? Decide the pricing.They eventually settled on $54.40. Was that because it represented the cost of manufacturing, plus a decent markup? No. These engineers hadn't taken that into account.

• Pecha Kucha finalists for Business of Software 2009

  Neil Davidson

  25 Sep 2009 | 1:52 am

  This year's Pecha Kucha finalists have got their work cut out for them. Twenty slides, twenty seconds each, it’s the haiku of presentations. Here they are: Jurgen Appelo, Chief Information Officer of ISM eCompany on “Managing agility: from complex to simple” JD Brennan, Distinguished Technologist at HP, on "The 6.6 minute design school” Daniel Kuperman, Director of Marketing and Product Management of Quadrant Software, on “5 marketing secrets for software success” Glen Lipka, Director of User Experience and Product Design of Marketo, on “UX design – building products…

• 
  Kentucky Startup Blog

• Comparing entrepreneurial cultures

  Richard Stump

  6 Nov 2009 | 7:39 am

  Below are some excerpts from an article on xconomy about the startup scenes in Boston, Boulder and Seattle.  I highlighted the statements I thought were important to or resembled Kentucky and other areas trying build high-tech ecosystems. Brad Feld of TechStars and Foundry Group gave a brief history of the startup scene in Boulder, CO—useful for any city with entrepreneurial aspirations. “When I showed up in ’95, what I found was on the software side you had a lot of smart engineering talent but you didn’t have much else. A handful of entrepreneurial companies in storage and cable…

• Are celebrity investors/advisors/board members worth it?

  Richard Stump

  3 Nov 2009 | 5:07 pm

  I recently read two posts on this subject, one from Altos Ventures and one from Chris Dixon and I agree with the key theme that celebrity (the term that i would use is “big name” not necessarily famous but known like a politician or well connected person locally) are not worth it: “ In our experience, celebrity investors and board members do little to help entrepreneurs do what they need to get done. They offer little in the way of strategic or practical advice about hiring, firing, product development, closing deals and financing. Even worse, sometimes the advice can be…

• Project Management Training

  Richard Stump

  2 Nov 2009 | 6:45 am

  If anyone is interested in project management training, The Solarity Group & the Bluegrass Business Development Partnership (BBDP) are hosting a two day workshop for 15-20 people on November 16th and 17th. The BBDP will offer a scholarship (50% off) the already discounted registration fee of $1,000. This means that the first respondents to this offer will be able to participate in the two day workshop for only $500. To Register

• Two Companies Awarded Funding

  Richard Stump

  30 Oct 2009 | 11:10 am

  The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority (KEDFA) today awarded two high-tech Kentucky companies, Louisville Bioscience, Inc., and Laboratory and BioDiagnostics, LLC, (LabDx), state funding of up to $250,000 each from the Cabinet for Economic Development’s High-Tech Investment Pool. LabDx is employing technology to permit transferring lab results directly from the company’s new medical laboratory to customers’ electronic medical records systems. Their laboratory and reporting services will be marketed to physicians and medical facilities to help eliminate errors while…

• Louisville’s Potentia Pharmaceuticals inks deal

  Richard Stump

  26 Oct 2009 | 7:31 am

  Potentia Pharmaceuticals signed a deal with Alcon Pharmaceuticals for licensing its drug candidate, POT-4, for use in macular degeneration. Terms of the deal are confidential, but Potentia Pharmaceuticals said it expects to receive hundreds of millions of dollars if the drug for age-related macular degenerationf the drug is approved for widespread use. The deal announced Friday, gives Alcon licensing rights to the drug and an option to buy the Louisville company. Potentia will receive an undisclosed payment now, and is promised a series of payments if it achieves certain milestones…

• 
  teenentrepreneurblog.com

• UK Teen Ed Nash to Auction World’s First People’s Lamborghini

  admin

  5 Nov 2009 | 7:21 pm

  For Immediate Release: Contact: Shonika Proctor (”Teen Biz Coach”) Hear the inspiration behind the LamboFaces story here (it is in first 10 minutes of interview). UK Teen, Ed Nash, has recently launched an online fundraising campaign to raise money to build a hospital in the southern part of Zanzibar. UK Teen Entrepreneur to Auction World’s First ‘People’s Lamborghini’ [...]

• Happy 40th Birthday Sesame Street!

  admin

  5 Nov 2009 | 6:39 pm

  Happy 40th Birthday Sesame Street and Keep Doing Your Own Thing, Young CEO! Three of these kids belong together Three of these kids are kind of the same But one of these kids is doing his (her) own thing Now it’s time to play our game It’s time to play our game. One of these things is not like [...]

• Teen Entrepreneur Ben Lang Announces New Contest

  admin

  28 Oct 2009 | 6:56 pm

  Teen Entrepreneur Ben Lang (@entrepreneurpro) on Twitter has recently announced a new contest on his blog. It is quite easy to enter and the prizes are great (several which are sponsored by the Renegade CEO’s). 1. Enter the contest via his blog. This is actually the direct link to the post. 2.  Win Great Prizes! The groovy [...]

• A National TV Audition and My $10,000/Month Teen Renegade CEO

  admin

  25 Oct 2009 | 9:51 am

  What a fantastic week…it was! We had so many big things happen I don’t even know where to start. So I guess I will start from the beginning of the week. 1. Ed Nash, 18, UK, got his iphone app submitted for approval to Apple. Go Nashy! We also started his official marketing campaign for LamboFaces.com [...]

• Say Hi! I Got My Google Wave Invite…Did You?!

  admin

  19 Oct 2009 | 7:53 am

  Last week I got my Google Wave invite and darn near deleted it….intentionally. I obviously didn’t realize how in demand those invites were….ooops. I read that people were paying as much as $70 on eBay for an invite. Insane. Needless to say, I activated the invite and am currently testing it. The WOW factor wore [...]

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  Startup Daddy Home Business Development

• SD14 | How To Write A Business Plan: The elements of the plan VIDEO PODCAST

  Ian Gordon | StartupDaddy.com

  4 Nov 2009 | 9:48 am

  This episode of Startup Daddy is my first Video Podcast. I made a video that talks about the different kinds of business plans and the elements that a business plan should contain. About a month ago, I posted this video to YouTube.  When I compare my statistics for the number of people who listen to this podcast to the number of people who visit this site, there are a lot more of you who listen than visit.  I have absolutely no problem with this.  I am honored that you choose to listen to me at all. So I made the video into a podcast so that the listener only folks can have a look. The…

• What Do You Think, The World Started When You Were Born?!

  Ian Gordon | StartupDaddy.com

  26 Oct 2009 | 7:31 am

  I’m Lucky.  I’m Old.  At least that’s what my 6 year old told me recently.  I’m 41, so I am lucky enough to have grown up in a world without the internet which helps me appreciate it.  It also helps me factor in how technology is perceived differently among different generations.  I read a blog post recently that got me thinking a lot about this. Most of us view the way technology has forever changed the way we communicate as a big advancement and a good thing.  Many would argue though, that it has promoted isolation and gives a false sense of community where…

• SD13 | Interview With Marc Warnke Author Of ONO: Options Not Obligations

  Ian Gordon | StartupDaddy.com

  21 Oct 2009 | 3:35 am

  In this episode of Startup Daddy I have a conversation with Marc Warnke,  author of ONO: Options Not Obligations.   A few months ago Marc popped up on my radar as he was promoting his book.  What made me stop and take notice was his concept of the Family First Entrepreneur.  This has been the way I approach my business since my daughters were born, I just didn’t have a name for it. We talk about the entrepreneurial mindset, the importance of teaching your children about basic business concepts, and what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur and keep your family your number one…