web 2.0 Archives - Page 10 of 19

Perishable goods & websites

Posted on February 17, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

Our websites are no different to perishable goods at a supermarket. It’s not surprising given how well trained we are to check everything is up to date. From milk to computer hardware we want the latest version available.

So when someone finds your website via Google and the last blog entry is from last year, or the Copyright legal date is 2008, it’s a bit like the milk which got lost at the back of the fridge. We won’t touch it, there’s no limit of options and it is safer to elsewhere.

The good news for web entrepreneurs is this: It’s easy to keep things current. A simple blog entry once a week. A twitter feed in your side bar. Anything which shows your people you’re still in the game. That you have a pulse.

ABC 7.30 report – Virtual Offices

Posted on February 5, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

I was fortunate enough to feature in a story on the ABC 7.30 report this week. The topic was on virtual offices and digital offshoring. My business rentoid got a nice little plug which is a bonus on a non-commercial channel. The opportunity arose from this newspaper article I was in on the topic in the Sydney Morning Herald. Which goes to show media exposure also has a compounding effect for your startup as well.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZtW8-lE80E]

Although the story and offshoring in general has it’s detractors (unions love the status quo, unless it involves profit increases they want a share in). I’m very proud of the fact that I’ve worked with talented people in developing markets.

My team get paid more than they’d get locally.
I’ve helped team members get more work, and mentored them in building their own businesses.
I like investing in developing markets because improves living standards.

It’s our job as entrepreneurs to create positive situations with tech innovations, and there’s no doubt in my mind having an overseas team does this, while building a business with beneficiaries locally (employees, revenue, community) as well.

Overcoming fear

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

This is the fourth of my crowd sourced blog entry ideas as suggested by Lani Pauli. Lani wanted to get my thoughts on the following: How to overcome the fear to take the leap and do your own thing.

I’ve written about this a few times. And I’ll start by pointing out previous entries on De-gearing, Quit your job and The number 1 reason being an employee sucks. But to make things contemporaneous here’s my thoughts on the topic today, off the top of my head.

Two important words come to mind when I think about the fear of pursuing entrepreneurial endeavors.

Having & Doing.

And as far as I can tell these two words are what we worry about when it comes to finance. We want to do cool stuff (like build a startup and pursue dreams), but in the short term it can have a big impact on our lifestyle and consumption patterns – the having part.

But most people don’t realize this important fact until after they have made the leap:

“The having is in the doing”

In my view we often replace our dreams and goals with consumption. And society promotes this ideal. We use money and steady income as a means of consumption based happiness. When in reality, we’d be much happier if we just did what we wanted to and had greater fulfillment in the hours of our days.

We have to make a decision on what’s more important to us; having lots of stuff and security, or doing cool things. I believe the latter creates a more enjoyable existence, and often leads to a virtuous circle where you realize how little we really need.

The real bonus is this: it’s easier to be successful when you are really into what you spend your time on. And when success comes to entrepreneurs we get the best of both worlds.

Startup blog says: Dream chase now!

Borderless Venture Capital

Posted on January 25, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

This is the third of my crowd sourced blog entry ideas as suggested by Aida_Lee. Aida wanted to get my thoughts on the following: In today’s cheap, quick and global market, what do you see as the blueprint for a border-less venture capital to work?

There is no doubt Venture Capital has been a bit of closed shop historically. And although we’ve seen some opening up of business funding in the USA with vehicles such as the techcrunch 50 and Paul Graham’s Y Combinator, other markets such as Australia are lagging behind quite significantly. My views are the opinion of someone who has raised venture and angel funding before for new ventures.

In my view a thing things need to happen for the traditional structure of Venture Capital to change:

A startup community must evolve in a tight geographic region – this often facilitates events such as those mentioned above in Silicon Valley.
Disruptive technology must become available which breaks down traditional access barriers to outsiders.

Number 1 has happened in only a few locations, namely S Valley, but number 2 has happened all over the world and this is where I see the major changes. The thing that new internet technology has done is brought entrepreneurial communities together. Now we can find each other without having to live near each other. But the funny thing about raising funds for what is considered risky investments, is that it isn’t nearly as much about the idea or revenue potential. It’s about the ability to the team raising to sell themselves. And all real selling requires lots of face time. It’s hard to do this on line, or across borders. So I think that large capital raising wont change a great deal in the future. But, I do see an important capital raising revolution coming:

Crowd funding.

It’s been done already in a few markets, and some entrepreneurs and start ups have already used this technique to raise money for their venture. The idea has been well documented, but a true revolution, such as social networking has yet to happen. The main thing holding it back has been government regulation from the likes of the SEC and ASIC in Australia. What I think the next iteration will be, is a web based business which takes micro payments / investments (a little bit like Kiva) from a large number of punters (for lack of a better word) to fund the new business. Method of which would be like an on-line float for startups. The investors who then would become digital evangelists for the new company. There would be a synchronized ‘investment beta’

The key service of such a site would be to overcome the legal vagaries for all participants and be able to take investments in multiple currencies from multiple markets. There is no doubt this would leverage the quickly building on line entrepreneurial communities. It would also have an important impact the venture capital industry structure the same way digital freelancing websites like elance have respectively.

I’d be interested if there are any sites already doing pure crowd sourcing, and to hear what your thoughts are.

Startup Idea Generation

Posted on January 18, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

This is the second of my crowd sourced blog entry ideas as suggested by Aj Kulatunga. Aj wanted some basic suggestions on how to develop an idea to start a business.

First of all I start by saying, the idea is not nearly as important as people think it is. The problem with a new idea is that we need to go the effort of education people, building a new supply chain and inventing demand. Sometimes ‘selling potatoes’ is a better option. That said, I’ve been asked to give inspiration for idea generation – so here are the Sammartino methods.

The law of the opposite:

Equal and opposite version of existing successful products / markets / services.

Not from here:

Bringing stuff from elsewhere to this market and positioning it as such. Usually imported or licensed version.

The N^th:

The more intense version of something. More power, ingredients, recognition. The Nth degree. For example red Bull is really an Nth version of coca cola. More intense energy hit. Hummer is also an Nth 4 wheel drive / SUV.

Idea Borrowing:

Local versions of overseas success. Quickly adapting successful ideas for overseas markets. Although these days you have to be very quick. That said, it is easier to find them out via websites such as springwise.

The unexpected version:

Eg Extreme Sour Lollies

Selling Potatoes:

Nothing new, existing idea, existing industry, with large existing demand. But must have low barriers to entry. But do it better, try harder, with amazing customer service levels.

Gourmet / Natural version

Has happened a lot in the grocery / supermarket categories. Entrepreneurs have taken advantage in categories like Juice and yogurt.

Extraction method

Take a tiny part of a successful and existing business and just do a micro niche of it. Twitter is this for Facebook. Just taking the status update part.

Danger of trophy Ideas – This link

How to make your business appear smaller

Posted on January 7, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

I was inspired by a recent article from the Australian Anthill about making our business appear bigger than we are. But in the age of authenticity, do we really want that? Sure, appearing big can be a good thing depending on our audience. Certainly, the key point in the article to me was ‘How to appear professional’. But why should professional be inextricably associated with big? Maybe the strategy should be to appear as small as possible. The current market place is not short of large corporates who are starting to understand the importance of personal service again. An example that comes to mind is the Bank of Queensland moving to a franchised branch model – where local ownership is of strategic importance to customers. Especially in such a tarnished industry as banking.

So why would we want to appear smaller than we are? Here’s a couple of thought starters:

Service – it is implicit that service is better when dealing directly with a small group of people rather than a faceless corporation

Trust – Smaller companies are way more dependent on you as a customer. You matter more, so you can trust the fact that they will do all they can to keep you.

Underdog – People love to support the up and comer. The person having a real go. Being small should be embraced and leveraged. Often this might be the only reason people do business with you.

So in the spirit of small = good, here’s the startup blog top 10 list of how to act small. Regardless of our actual revenue:

Have personal contact details of team members on your website. Email, Skype cell phone.
Remove pointless gatekeepers from your office who insulate hierarchy members from real customers
Use real language in all written forms of communication. Use a human voice not corporate PR brochure parlance.
Be honest when you stuff up. Admit it openly and quickly. Don’t make decisions based on repercussions, but on what’s right.
Write terms and conditions (if you must have them) in a language anyone could understand
Never call your audience your target. Business is is not skeet shooting, it is about delighting. You are performing for an audience, who can get up and leave at any time…. or even throw rotten tomatoes.
Give responsibility to individuals not committees. Give them decision authority. It’ll get done quicker and better.
Don’t gag your people. Allow anyone to comment on the company and what’s happening. It’ll be the best research you can ever do to find out what’s really going on in your company. No ships will be sunk.
Have a policy of common sense. Not written manuals no employee will ever read.
Say, “Yes we are only a small company…. and here’s why we are better…”

What they don’t tell you

Posted on January 4, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

It’s easy to get caught up in the brilliant stories of startups going viral to gain awareness, and the simplicity and usability of certain websites turning into large revenue streams. How cool the actual product is, the fact that the founders just built it and the rest just happened. This is the veritable entrepreneurial myth.

Here’s a few things to think about:

How many sales and business development people do you think Google has? Answer = around 5000. And we all thought their non human automated adwords system did it all.

What investment has Twitter made in Public Relations? You think Oprah and Obama just happened upon it? No they were pitched to heavily with a large investment in leading PR firms.

How many Youtube videos were posted by company created accounts? Answer = Hundreds of thousands.

Who seeds the quirky auction items on ebay? Answer = ebay started the game very early on and let the media know.

Everything is not as it seems. Push marketing is alive wand well, just the tactics have changed. It feels very organic and community driven, but the often the community is created by it’s founders and leaders. Nothing wrong with that, it is the job of entrepreneurs to invent said communities. But it makes for better business articles to talk of such things occurring naturally, so the real story is rarely told.

The question for startups is – what tactics can we employ to garner the same momentum?