Create a file in your email folder. Title it ‘encouragement’
For the occasions when you get inspired, thanked or congratulated. Keep it. File it. Refer to it.
Delete the insults.
Category: startups
Brick walls
We were told that our business was a great idea. A super concept.
So we went for it.
Then we started work on the blue prints, and they looked great. Everyone said it was a sure thing.
So we built it.
Then once it was built everyone was in awe of how we took it from concept to reality. They told us we we’re sitting on a gold mine of potential, they starting asking us what life would be like when we made millions, if we’d still be their friends!
So we marketed it.
Then all new and potential customers loved it and told us how they’d buy it and tell everyone. sell it for us and keep coming back for more.
Then we realized there was a lot of brick walls between enthusiasm and reality. A lot of brick walls between a great idea, and that great idea becoming a great business.
There was a lot of brick walls. Walls which were hard to climb. Walls that almost ‘consumed us’ to the point of forgetting the easy, early days of enthusiasm.
These walls are put here to test us. They are asking us if we really want it. They are in fact our best friend. They make climbing over hard, and keep the pretenders out. Those who don’t really want it (maybe competitors?)
We ought thank the walls.
Webpreneurs
Dear Webpreneurs,
Click this. Study this. Understand this. Change this.
Thanks to Chris at rawstylus for the heads up!
How to kill a brand – 101
It seems that the National Heart Foundation just can’t help themselves. They’ve put the next nail in the coffin of the brand that was the once respected National Heart Foundation Tick.
A logo which once upon a time meant the food it appeared on was healthy.
If the Mcdonalds disaster wasn’t enough last year. Then surely they’re getting very close to the tipping point now.
By endorsing a certain pizza chain’s pizza, they are saying:
“Oh well, people eat junk food, so we thought we’d recommend the best of a bad lot”
Brands are never about ‘content’ they are about ‘context’. So what if this particlar pizza has less salt and fat? The association with fast food wont change the opinion of pizza, just marginalise the heart tick. Our world view on pizza is already formed.
You can read more about it here.
“If you can’t beat them, join them” ?
Startup blog says: such a mentality is a sure way for you and your brand to be absorbed into nothingness.
Decision time
Writer and pop culture specialist Thomas Hine reports the following: When consumers enter a supermarket they are exposed to 30,000 products in the average 1,800 seconds they spend walking the store.
Translation – any product only has 0.6 seconds to make an impression.
Imagine how little time we have before a web browser clicks away…so we’ve got to keep it clean.
The façade matters – a lot.
Perspective – internet boom 2.0 ?
There’s been a lot of talk lately about an ensuing second internet boom. With the billion dollar sales of many web 2.0 companies it’s easy to see why:
$15.1 billion
$2.6 billion
$100 million
$6 billion
$3.1 billion
$1.7 billion
$60 million
Among others…
To give a little perspective the Nasdaq composite index peaked in the year 2000 at 5132 points. Yesterday it closed at 2320, just under 8 years later.
If you invested $10,000 at the peak, today it would be worth $4521. Still a very bearish 55% capital loss.
Sure we’d have to question some of the valuations, but the market hasn’t started to value ‘ideas’ at over a billion – yet.
Start up lesson – your company is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it.
China beach
And you thought your market was crowded !
