Tools of the Trade

By Will | June 26, 2007

You have an idea, you have done your research, and you think you have a winner. Now it is time to do the other part. You know, the part where you do some work and create your vision in reality. When starting a new online business, it always helps to use online tools to get up and going fast. You need to have all the right paperwork to make yourself a legal entity. You need to brainstorm, hire contractors, create designs, and get the website launched or updated.

Below are some resources for online entrepreneurs to help you get up and going fast. From legal, to design, and development - these websites can shave weeks off your schedule and save you thousands of dollars. (I concentrated on Internet-based businesses for this post.)

10. FindLaw 

Findlaw.com has a special section for small business. It is located at http://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/.
There are tips on everything from naming your businesses to business plans. They will also tell you the differences between a S-Corp and a LLC, if you need a refresher on the finer points of incorporating a small company.

9. BizBuySell    

If you want to get going fast, you can buy an existing, operating online business at BizBuySell. Also, if you are ready to sell out of your small business, you can sell a small business here, too.

8. GotVMail 

Get that big-company phone number for a small company price. They provide a 1–800 number and answering service.

7. LogoYes       
A good looking logo can separate the serious business from the people that are just playing business. Customers pick up on professionalism. You need a great logo. Design and create your own logo online. LogoYes has on online interactive design studio to let you play around with designs until it is just right.  If you are so inclined, this tool can help you build that perfect logo for your next enterprise. If you don’t want to do it yourself with LogoYes, and you are not artistically inclined, then see number 5.

6. Basecamp 

Collaboration is crucial. Basecamp is a cost effective way to manage a dispersed group of entrepreneurs. Bootcamp facilitates project management online.

5. eLance 
When you need some code written or any other jobs done for your startup, you can post the job to eLance. Freelancers will bid you your job. You can then select the best person for the price and get some work done.

4. Highrise 

Keep track of who you talked to and what you said with this online CRM system. Organize your sales calls, or your contact with contractors. You can also do things like review each other’s notes, see follow-ups, and set reminders to contact clients later.

3. A Good Web Host            
I recommend HostMySite, but there are many good hosts out there. The host and plan you need depends on what you need to build. If you think you will need a little more horsepower than a shared plan can provide, but don’t want to pay the price for a dedicated server quite yet, you can check out the newer VPS (Virtual Private Server) plans that give you some of the benefits of a dedicated server without the price of a dedicated server.

2. A Domain Name       
There are many good sites to register your domain name. I recommend GoDaddy or Network Solutions. These companies both have control-panels that let you manage multiple domains. This gets useful when you end up managing several domain names.

1. Legal Zoom

LegalZoom lets you set up your corporation online for a relatively low cost. They can also file trademarks for you. This site can save you a bundle of money and time when you need to get the legal paperwork done.

 

Topics: Resources | No Comments »

Genwi.com - Phoenix, AZ

By Dan | June 22, 2007

Genwi is a Phoenix, Arizona based social network service that makes information available by aggregating people’s RSS feeds. The service invites visitors to search, share and stay connected with friends, acquaintances and others.

Joining Genwi is free and once a registered member, users can

• Create their independent profile page where they can upload either their own or other favorite content in the form of RSS Feeds. The feed content can include blogs, videos, audio as well as photos and users can promote their media by displaying their website url’s etc in their profiles. The profile page content is made live in a matter of a few hours, making it available for searching, browsing, and subscribing!

• Share and discuss interesting links and useful content with friends by simply clicking on SHARE IT! The website keeps a track of the most shared information and such content gets the highest rank!

The website has a simple and uncluttered layout, making it easy to find your way through the different sections. The main sections on www.genwi.com include Videos, Blogs, Podcasts, New, Feeds, People, and My Page. To see the latest feeds added by other users, you can study the section “Latest Feeds” under different categories.

Gewni is one of two Web 2.0 startups in Phoenix, and is self-funded by three local entrepreneurs. The company is in the midst of a major upgrade, so look for more coverage information once that is complete.

Topics: Startups, SouthWest | No Comments »

So You Want to Be An Entrepreneur

By Adam | June 20, 2007

I think most people tend to have a misconceived belief that starting a business is a glamorous pursuit. You can call the shots, do what you want with your time, answer only to yourself, create your own corporate culture, make loads of money, yadda, yadda, yadda. Because it is unpopular to go against this notion, especially in startup circles, most of the information people are fed is backed by this kind of idealism.

Serial internet entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, who has been involved in numerous startups including Netscape, has put together a brilliant post that paints a two-sided portrait of entrepreneurship. It is a breath of fresh, propaganda free air and a must read if you are an internet entrepreneur (would-be or otherwise).

Topics: Startups | No Comments »

How To Compete With The Valley: Step 1 - Stop The Brain Drain

By Rob | June 15, 2007

From the Wall Street Journal comes this great article about Pennsylvania’s efforts to stop their brain drain. It is something that any city should do to have a vibrant startup economy. Keeping the smart well educated people that grow up or attend college in an area is easier than attracting well educated people later in their lives.

…many students take their diplomas and run, leaving Pennsylvania with the third-oldest population in the nation as measured by the number of people 65 and older. The result: The state is struggling to attract the type of cutting-edge companies that would make it a major participant in the “knowledge-based” economy — one driven by highly skilled workers and industries like technology, science and health care.

The state is on a mission to change that. Three years ago, Pennsylvania developed a program called Keystone Innovation Zones, or KIZ, designed to do two things: keep the best and brightest college students from leaving and foster the creation of science and technology companies. KIZ has awarded $6 million in grants for research faculty to Pennsylvania colleges, offers $25 million in tax credits annually to new companies and encourages hundreds of firms to extend paid internships to students in the belief that collegians who have worked in the state are more likely to stay.

Will Rogers once said “If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.” To compete with Valley talent, the first thing to do is stop losing the talent you have locally.

Topics: Ideas | 1 Comment »

Will High Profile Internet Entrepreneurs Venture Outside The Valley?

By Adam | June 11, 2007

Rob recently covered Mahalo, the new brainchild of infamous Valley entrepreneur Jason Calacanis. While the startup has garnered a lot of attention for their interesting approach to search, another notable aspect of the company is its home base of Santa Monica. In a recent interview with Wired News, Calacanis expressed his reasoning for launching Mahalo in Santa Monica:

Wired News: You’re based in Santa Monica, far away from Silicon Valley. Should tech startups stay away from Silicon Valley and the Bay Area?

Jason Calacanis: I think the Bay Area is great if you need to get a profile going. However, if you have a profile already, you can draw talent to your operation. For me it’s so much easier running the company in Santa Monica, where I’m not battling with 1,000+ Web 2.0 startups for every PHP developer within 100 miles of Union Square.

Interesting. Though Mahalo is still relatively close to the Valley, the fact that an internet all-star like Calacanis is noticing the value of setting up shop outside of the California tech heartland could be a prelude to the future geographic strategy of other startups. Does this mean that high profile internet entrepreneurs will begin venturing from the valley?

Topics: Strategy | No Comments »

Feedtwister - Argentina

By Rob | June 7, 2007

More and more web users are either subscribing to third party feeds or generating their own feeds to update their website with fresh content regularly. Feedtwister.com is a newly launched website that aims at offering greater flexibility to feed users by customizing the way information is displayed using feeds on a website. The FeedTwister tool allows you to “Mix your favorite feeds and show their latest posts on your website.”

Users can create as many lists of feeds as they may want, adding up to 50 feeds per list. All feed formats are supported and users can choose the output charset encoding as well as assign an image to each feed. Posts can be ordered by date or title and can the number of posts displayed can be limited or post per source maximum can be set. To include the results on a website, the tool will provide a code either as a php include or JavaScript widget.

The founders of Feedtwister also run a blog network. This is their first foray into a web application.

Outside the Valley Score
Location: Argentina = 3
Founders: Some experience = 1.5
Technology:Nothing proprietary = 2
Funding: Personal project for now - no funding. = 3

Total Score – 9.5 Feedtwister may never even have heard of the valley.

Topics: Startups, International | 1 Comment »

Spotscout - Boston, MA

By Rob | June 6, 2007

The web is flooded with useful resources and SpotScout is one of them, dedicated towards offering innovative solutions to daily life problems with an aim to make life easier for everyone. One of the biggest problems we face today is the difficulty in finding parking space and SpotScout. That’s the pain that Spotscout is trying to solve.

SpotScout is an innovative internet-based market for parking information catering to Garages & Parking Lots, Private Residential Spots and On-Street Spots. Currently, SpotScout is testing the waters with Boston, New York, and San Francisco and has plans to launch nationwide in the near future.

Here’s how it works – SpotScout works on the following concepts –

• Parking space seekers should be able to access timely and correct information about actual space availability before they reach their destination.
• People who are leaving and vacating a parking spot can inform others that a space will be available.

Hence, you can be a SpotCaster as well as a SpotScout -

SpotScout – As a SpotScout, you can seek information on parking availability which can be accessed from any web-enabled cell phone, blackberry, PDA, or computer.

SpotCaster – As a SpotCaster, you can be an individual or an institution and use this web based network to broadcast information about parking availability.

Individual SpotCasters can either own (or lease) a private space, or plan to depart from a public space at a specific time. Institutional SpotCasters (garage/parking lots) own and professionally manage a number of parking spaces.

Check out all the news coverage of SpotScout to learn more.

Topics: Startups, East Coast | No Comments »

Mahalo

By Rob | June 4, 2007

Life without the Internet & Search Engines is unthinkable in today’s day and age. Where else can information hungry web surfers find quick access to info on everything imaginable?

Mahalo is one of the latest entrants in the arena of Search Engines and is unique enough that, despite being California based, I think it is worth covering here. What sets apart Mahalo from the likes of Google and MSN etc is the not just the fact that Mahalo is the a human edited & human powered search engine, but that Jason Calacanis is one of the founders.

This Santa Monica based search engine functions with a team of people – guides who search, filter and hand pick search results. Since the job here is being done by humans as compared to automated web spiders, one would think that the results may be more customized and tailor made to the needs of the web surfer. However, it also means that the process of compiling such valuable search result pages for users is slower. Currently, Mahalo has compiled only about 4,000 search engine result pages making the possibility of not finding the information you are searching for quite high at the current stage of its progress.

In the event that you do not find what you were looking for, the search engine asks you to request for the same by entering your email id and selecting the “Notify Me” option. However, we do not think that hurried web surfers really have the time, patience or the interest in waiting for information when they can find a plethora of search results on Google.

I think Google’s results suck, but I’m not sure if Mahalo is the answer.

Topics: Startups | No Comments »

The Entrepreneur in the Next Cube

By Rob | June 1, 2007

In the valley, it’s much easier to get funding for something that is just an idea. For the rest of us, we often have to start ventures on the side while we hold down “day jobs.” That is why, no matter where you work, you may have an entrepreneur in the next cube.

Once upon a time, Jennifer Sloane used to come home after a hard day at her Winter Park law practice and relax.

Then she became an entrepreneur.

Now, after a typical workday, Sloane finds herself in front of her home computer, either working on her startup company or catching up on legal work that got put off because of her business.

“I think I have the stamina to keep it up,” said Sloane, who invented and sells Privacy Strips, small adhesive tabs that close gaps between the buttons in women’s blouses. She added with a laugh: “It will be that way till I pay off my law loan.”

Like Sloane, many entrepreneurs are moonlighters who start a business in the off hours from a paying job.

Nearly one in three self-employed entrepreneurs — 32 percent — holds down a second job, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.

The problem with this approach is focus. Your mind drifts at your day job to think about all the things that you could be doing to move your startup forward. By the time you get to work on your startup, you are frazzled and tired. But the benefit is that you can pay your bills until your startup has time to germinate, grow, and generate some income. The article contains an excellent piece of advice from Jerry Ross of the Orlando SBA office.

“I usually tell them, ‘Don’t quit your job until it costs you money to go there,’ ” he said. “It’s all about income. If it [the business] is not making profit, it’s a hobby.”

And hobbies don’t pay the bills. So stock up on the coffee, the red bull, whatever it is you need to make the day job and side startup work together. The stress and workload are tough, but if it was easy, everybody would do it.

Topics: Founders, Strategy | No Comments »

United Cats & Dogs – Social Networking For Pets (or Pet Owners)

By Adam | May 31, 2007

About 6 years ago (or so) clothing lines for pets – including jackets, hats, “booties”, and costumes – began hitting the mainstream. I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but I broke out in hysterical laughter when I first starting seeing people prancing their pets around in such outfits.

So when I initially heard about recently launched United Cats & United Dogs, two Facebook-like sites for pets, I had that same “are you kidding me?” moment. However, the more I started thinking about it, the more I began to see the brilliance of the idea. You see people are often more enamored by their pets that they are about themselves. We all know the type. Doggie day care, designer pet food, $50 toys, etc, etc. For this growing demographic of adoring pet owners, a dog or cat is truly an extension of who they are. So why not build a social networking site for them to display their pets?

United Cats & Dogs is doing exactly that. Packed with all the Web 2.0 functionality of ‘human’ social networks, the two sites are a perfect outlet for pet owners looking to share their furry friends with the world. Included with both websites are features like photo sharing, comments, popularity ratings, and diaries – making it a pet-hybrid of MySpace, Facebook and Hot-or-Not.

Given the dominant role of bigger players in the ‘human’ world, this niche focus on pets is sure to open up an entirely new segment of the social networking revolution. Though we don’t have enough information to rate United Cats & Dogs, it’s safe to say that this self-funded Estonia (yes, Estonia) based startup is pretty far ‘Outside the Valley’.

Topics: Startups, International | 2 Comments »

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