Here’s a meme from the Cluetrain Manifesto guys. It was written some 9 years ago and still rings true. The predictions herein are still evolving today, and yet some corporations still haven’t got it.
Start ups out there; invest 5 minutes with the ideas below, embrace them and you’ll be well ahead of the game.
[slideshare id=7027&doc=cluetrain-28722&w=425]
English football savant George Best was once asked what happened to all the money he earned as the worlds greatest player. In classic Georgie style he responded:
“I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds and fast cars, the rest I just squandered.”
If we’re in an early phase start up or we’ve just made bank, the principles don’t change. If you can control your spending, you can control your business and your life. It’s easy to justify expenditure at either end of the business spectrum. A start up can convince themselves they’re investing for growth. Likewise, a booming business with big profits can fly first class and hire private yachts to impress clients themselves.
Quite often over spending is due to a real lack of creativity and an inflated ego.
Startup blog advice is this: Cash flow is vital and by being creative we can ultimately conserve cash flow, yet generate similar results.
We finally got ‘crunched’ – with a little spiel for rentoid on Tech Crunch.
In the first instance it’s given us a large membership boost and a very positive response. But it’s also given us our share of negative armchair experts, naysayers in the comments.
We say:
“That’s Ok – revolutionaries like us don’t care what naysayers think.”
But it’s a few thousand more people that know about rentoid.com too.
Actually we do care about what they think as it pertains to ideas to improve the service. We turn their negatives into a positive. But we always ignore an attitude which says something won’t work. It won’t for them – their attitude has already predetermined that!
In fact, some context here: We had many more positive comments and only a few negative. Also, both our membership and listings have been boosted as has our unique visiters today. But I thought I’d make this ‘blatant piece of self promotion’ worthy of a startup blog story by providing some insight!
You can check out the story here.
And add some comments here on the Crunch Base or on the story. We want to hear negative and postive sentiments. We want to improve our offer.
Two people went to work on their startup business.
Joseph got up early started at 8am and worked until midnight, he finished all the tasks on his to do list.
Mary slept in, was tired, got up mid morning flicked through the newspaper, had a few good solid hours in the afternoon and goofed off after 5.30pm. She did not complete all the tasks on her to do list.
Question: Which entrepreneur achieved the most in said day?
A) Joseph
B) Mary
C) Cannot tell.
Answer: C
As entrepreneurs the most crucial mistake we can make is confusing activity with progress. The entrepreneur who achieved most is the one who made the most progress towards their end goal.
We should not confuse time spent with value created.
For those of us not raising Angle or Venture Capital, our business plans should be directly proportional to the size of our business.
No revenue = no plan.
(ok – a small mud map that focuses on the very basic business model which will lead to revenue.)
<$1 million revenue = 1 page.
The law of diminishing returns sets in at around about 10 pages, regardless of the size of the business.
Digital footprints last forever… and our anti-hummer conversation continues…
In reality there are two ways we can define websites. They’re either Fun Parks or Central Business Districts.
Startup blog definitions:
Fun park: A website which is primarily in existence for the entertainment of its users. A place to enjoy, socialize, have fun and waste time.
Central Business District (CBD): A website which has a commercial function from it’s inception and is essentially there to assist people in trade.
Examples of each include:
| Fun parks | CBD’s |
|
Youtube |
Ebay |
|
|
Paypal |
|
Flickr |
Amazon |
|
Hot or not |
Lulu |
Sure, there’s some overlap, but it’s the insights behind the two variants that matter.
Fun parks are ‘fun’. They’re easy to use and addictive in nature. They tend to spread quicker and go viral because there’s less risk. We’re not being asked to spend money, just enjoy the rides. So the fun park fills up quickly, gets popular and the owners monetize them by selling advertising billboards to all the eyeballs in the fun park. Eventually the park becomes overcrowded and people start to leave. They tend to have a rotating user base.
CBD’s are useful. Sometimes fun, but usually more serious and offer ‘value’. The commercial function is built in to the site, hence it doesn’t need to ‘monetize’ itself. People tend to investigate more, take longer to put their name down and join site. But once the do, they often become evanaglists and do the marketing for the site. They build more slowly, maybe take years, but usually end up with a more loyal user base. And rightfully end up more profitable. (profit as defined by yield)
Both are valid, both are evolving. If you’re a start up, it just pays to know which category you fit into.
