First of all, I think it’s necessary to say sorry to the readers who e-mailed me about my lack of blogging for the past few weeks bar the Causerific intro blog. I had spent a lot of my time trying to finish up work on the project that my blogging suffered. Now that it’s done (for the most part, still in beta), I will certainly be more active with my blogging.

I was listening in on a chat between a journalist and two investors some months back at TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC, the premise of the chat was: how to find a gem in a pile of start-ups that spring up every day. Every single day, a typical tech blog like Mashable receives up to 50 pitches from Entrepreneurs or PR people looking to get mentioned, Journalists and investors aren’t spared either. During the chat, one of the investors lamented the rate at which his inbox filled up everyday and how majority of the people sending him messages have only built a website but NOT  a start-up.

There’s a popular misconception amongst most young entrepreneurs nowadays. The huge success seen by Facebook, Box.net, Youtube etc… has got young college grads thinking about driving Ferraris and working 4hrs a week from the beach. I enjoyed a webinar I watched where Gary Vaynerchuk briefly explained the differenece between “Unemployement” and “Entrepreneurship”. Unemployment can lead to Entrepreneurship but never confuse that with the belief that you are a “Entrepreneur” all of a sudden since you can’t find a job or you were fired.

Back to the previous discussion. There truly is a difference between building a website and building a start-up. A website is fully functional, it is a great idea and people would love it just like a start-up, but unlike a start-up, you and your roommate are the only ones using it. While I am not an investor, I think it’s completely understandable that most VCs and Angels will rather invest in an idea that several people like and already use than a mere website. I am a believer in the “get users first, then chase press and investment second” school of thought. Not only does it give you more credibility, but it raises both your value as an Entrepreneur and the value of your start-up. Most young Entrepreneurs that send me emails asking if I knew any Investors that could be of help barely have 5 users besides them and the fake profiles they’ve created. Get yourself some early adopters, I tell them. Look for people who love your idea as much as you do and get them to use your service. Push them to spread the word to their friends and co-workers, before you know it, you have several hundred people giving you feedback on how you can improve your service. In the next blog post I will talk about how to find these early adopters and how to market to them.

For young Entrepreneurs building start-ups, it’s important to note that most VCs, Angels, Journalists aren’t automatically sold on your “awesome idea”. They take a liking to you as a person and how well the “awesome idea” has caught on with the group of people you have built your start-up for. You most likely don’t have the $$$$$ to spend on ads and big marketing campaigns and so the only way you can go about building a user base is researching your niche, find out the people who are enthusiasts about the service you are offering, bring them to your site and get them to help spread the word. Soon enough you will be ready to have a tech blog cover you. In the mean time, work hard in the trenches and stop being unreal with your thinking that you can code a website, design it and start asking VCs for 100k the next day or asking WSJ to write a piece on you. If it were that easy, there will be 50 new Facebooks everyday.

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This is a guest article by Rick Mathieson, Author of The On-Demand Brand: 10 Rules for Digital Marketing Success
in an Anytime, Everywhere World.

#1: Don’t Ask How, Ask Why
Just because social networking is hot, that doesn’t mean its right for
every new business. Don’t just ask yourself what your social
networking strategy should be. Ask why it should be, and why your
target customers should care. Seattle-based Jones Soda couldn’t afford
pricey TV commercials to launch its brand of beverages. So it used
social media to connect with consumers in very personal ways. Fans can
upload photos that can be printed on Jones bottles. Today, it has over
1 million submissions and has used upward of 4,500 of the photos for
bottles — which consumers can collect and trade on the Jones Soda
website. As founder Peter van Stolk recently told BusinessWeek: “We
allowed the labels to be discovered, and that gave consumers a sense
of ownership. With big soda brands, the Britney Spears model of paying
a lot of money to some hot artist to sponsor your beverage is so done.
The wonderful thing about our competitors is for all the money they
have, they should be thinking more originally but they don’t. If they
ever do, I’m dead.”

#2: Keep It Events Based
Certain consultants (and business book authors) can have success using
social media to share their stream-of-consciousness about things
happening in their fields of expertise. But for most small businesses,
a much more strategic approach is in order. Think of social media as
digital direct mail — the ability to deliver a limited-time, social
network-only offer. Countless small pizza shops, for instance, offer
weekly specials on social networks to get people into their stores.
One shop, called Golden Knights pizza, has discovered 40% of its
business can come from these efforts, according to Clickz. In fact,
according to a recent Rice University study, Facebook fans of one
Houston-based café chain visited 20% more often, and spent 33% more,
than non-fans.

#3: Keep It Social — And Keep ‘Em Coming Back
Youth-oriented discount travel company STA uses social media to enable
customers to meet other people who love to travel, and who may be part
of the vacation packages they purchase. Users can read about other
people’s adventures through their own words, tips, pictures and
videos. And they can ask experts about travel related issues. Best of
all, every month, the company offers travel prizes to Australia,
Japan, Europe and other destinations. And Twitter and RSS feeds will
even send STA subscribers the cheapest flights so they can stop
spending hours online searching for the best deals.

#4: Don’t Just Pitch, Sell
The price of developing apps for Facebook is coming down, and with
ingenuity, can even be revenue builders. Pizza Hut recently launched a
Facebook app that enables customers to place orders without leaving
their profile pages. There’s no reason a small company, say a local
sandwich shop couldn’t do the same. Los Angeles startup ice cream
truck company Coolhaus takes a different approach. In addition to
differentiating itself with ice cream sandwiches designed using
architectural principles — with names like “The Mies Vanilla Rohe”
and “The Frank Lloyd Light” — “we roam the entire radius of LA and
update our location on Twitter,” co-founder Natasha Case tells Young
Hollywood. The idea: To entice people out of offices and onto the
street for an “ice cream social” that racks up serious sales.

#5: Don’t Just Talk, Listen
Social networks are also an excellent way to solicit feedback from
your customers. Perhaps you’ve heard of Dell’s “Twelpforce” (or
Twitter help force), a team that fields questions, offers and
suggestions and sends Twitter-specific promos to followers.  There’s
no reason why your startup can’t use social media in the same way,
answering any questions your customers have about the products they’ve
bought from you. Of course, as sophisticated as that may sound to
monitor and respond to social networking chatter, it should be noted
that it’s far more useful to have highly-trained, highly-effective
customer service in the first place. If you want to get cutting edge,
start there.

Author Bio
Rick Mathieson, author of The On-Demand Brand: 10 Rules for Digital
Marketing Success in an Anytime, Everywhere World, is an award-winning
writer and leading voice on marketing in the digital age. His insights
have been featured in ADWEEK, Advertising Age, Wired, Broadcasting &
Cable, and on MSNBC, CBS Radio and NPR, while his next-generation
business models have earned recognition from USA Today and Dow Jones
Interactive. His first book, Branding Unbound (AMACOM 2005) was widely
praised in the business press. A regularly featured speaker at
industry events, Mathieson also serves as vice president and creative
director for Creative: Advertising & Interactive Media, one of Silicon
Valley’s most prominent advertising agencies. He lives in San
Francisco, California.

Of dreams, not nightmares

” you might as well dream big, since it’s a dream. It doesn’t cost you any more to own a Lamborghini in the dream than it costs to own a Bicycle” – Unknown.

There once lived two boys in a small township. Boy A, growing up, had always been told how much money the the local cheese sellers made and how great it would be if someone from the family made that much money. As expected, the young boy set his sights on that goal and whenever he went to bed, he had dreams of being the top cheese seller in the town. Several blocks away form Boy A’s home was Boy B. Boy B never felt comfortable in this town, he always thought people were too cautious and the standard of living could be better. He started visiting other towns, reading books and learning about things other people did. He found that there were several other things he could do to make him be who he truly wanted to be. He started dreaming of making money and having people work for him, doing things people really wanted to see! Truth is, people always work toward their goal and you get what you work for…most of the time. Fast forward 40-something years, Boy A is the top cheese seller in Blackheath, England and Boy B is Founder/Chairman of the Virgin Group with an estimated net worth of £2.6 Billion.

When you dream, you open yourself to a whole new world of possibilities. You find that it is possible to imagine things and attempt to live them out. This ability to not only dream, but dream big is a common trait of the most successful Entrepreneurs of our time. When Mark Zuckerberg sat down with some of the board members of Facebook and told them he saw their numbers doubling in 6 months time to over 300million users and refused to back down on his decision to change the Homepage and not carry banner ads, things got heated. Some employees who were starting to see a decline in the rate of pageviews and signups at the time even started to panic, resign and take other positions. Today, the evidence is there for all to see, Zuckerberg did make the right decision.

There’s so much talk in Silicon Valley about the importance of Lean startups and why Investors are looking to invest only in Entrepreneurs who know how to make the most out of a little change. The gospel has spread like wildfire and Entrepreneurs have started cutting back on their goals and asking for less money in a bid to look like they can be “lean”. If you have built a prototype and you’ve shown without a doubt that there is a market for your product, it IS time to take over that market and scale up accordingly. Don’t target the west coast only and ask for 1/4 of the money you need because you want to appear lean, knowing fully well that scaling up and reaching out to the entire country will yield the best rewards. When you work on your startup, how about put it all on the line, dream of the best your company can do and go for that.

“…at Inter Milan  we are a blood team not a skin team. When we play, we leave it all on the pitch. You don’t see skin on there, you see blood. As long as we win, it doesn’t matter.” – Jose Mourinho (Manager of Inter Milan FC after beating Barcelona in the semi finals of the 2010 UEFA champions league)

Innovation comes in handy

Innovation is something you either have or you don’t. Some people will make good Entrepreneurs and some wouldn’t. Simple. The ability to envision something most people don’t even know they need and then make it really happen is what makes a true Entrepreneur. For the life of me I didn’t know why anyone would care about Twitter when I first heard the idea. Evan Williams (@ev), co-founder of Twitter was addressing a room full of Entrepreneurs, geeks and a handful of investors a few years back right after releasing the product to the public. He said “we had this idea of letting people express themselves and share what they are doing with friends in 140 characters or less.” At this time, Facebook was still rather bare and didn’t have the “status” feature it has now, but still a good number of people found the idea totally unnecessary and didn’t see the point behind it. They believed that bit of social interaction where you can tell you friends what you are doing was already available on Facebook, so why tweet?

The founders of Twitter obviously had several other ideas in mind as to what Twitter can be used for. They saw beyond the typical 140 character blab and anticipated celebrities building a following and keeping these “eager fans” updated. They saw Businesses taking advantage of the opportunity to share and showcase their products. They were innovative. The rest is history.

Take a risk

“…he’s gonna have a hard time explaining to Hayley and Laney, these food stamps and this weak sh*t, coz he never risked sh*t. He hoped and he wished it, but it didn’t fall in his lap, so he ain’t even here” – Eminem

Two months ago in donwtown NYC, I overheard some fresh-faced, college students talking about how “awesome” they thought the site textsfromlastnight was. Apparently, one of them had sent in a text he got from his ex-girlfriend two nights prior and luckily it made its way to the site’s homepage. The conversation slowly drifted into a discussion about their own little project they had been working on for a few months. One of them mentioned how it would be absolutely impossible to take on Foursquare, which happened to be their major competitor. He gave several reasons in his attempt to convince his partner to give up on this project and look in a different direction. He said “I am certainly not willing to put all that 10 grand seed money into something that will just fail dude, let’s find something else to do. If someone chooses to invest in us though, then sure, as long as we are not wasting our own money.”. But for the very beautiful girl I was entertaining on the day, I would have turned around, bounce my head around in disgust and told them to “grow some balls”…well maybe not, but you get my point.

If every one starts thinking this way and running away at the first sign of competition, the world we know now will be much different. There’s no way guys like that will make it 2yrs at the helm of any company, if they are even lucky enough to start one. Willingness to take risks has to be a driving force for Entrepreneurs. You have to be prepared to fail in order to succeed. We don’t need to start talking about posthumous stories of Thomas Edison and his lightbulbs, but it is common place, if someone like Ron Conway doesn’t take the risks he takes in investment, he won’t be the man he is today.

So Tolu, what are you saying? Dream big, think deep and lose the fear. What is failure anyway? if it isn’t merely 2 blocks down the road from victory…or so they say.

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Outsourcing is something I do quite abit. I have been an advocate for well over 3 years now and have enjoyed it for the most part. It’s cheap, easy and time efficient. My favorite thing about Outsourcing is the fact that I could have a heap of work to get done before work time the next morning and if I don’t get through it all, I know I can have an assistant somewhere in a different timezone finish it up for me. Take for example the one time we were handling web development, design and branding for a new website and client. I had just started out with Gen Y startup and the section of it that handled website dev/design, so I felt the need to “show the S on my chest”. I didn’t care whatever it took back then and so I hired a team from countries around the world.

The new client had a bad experience with a previous supplier and was out of time, basically needed a turnover in less than 40hrs. I blindly took up the challenge and set out on a journey that I was 100% sure I wouldn’t finish, but the pride and need to make a point made me take it on anyway. I worked endlessly on the project but after a while it was evident I was running low on manpower and strength, that’s when I sent an email to my ever ready asst. in Lahore, Pakistan. It was 2a.m. in Baltimore USA but for him, it was the middle of workday. Suffice to say, somehow the project was done and delivered and the client is still with me till today.

Outsourcing also has it’s bad, actually very bad moments as well. It’s never going to be all rosy if you are into outsourcing some work. For people who are new to Outsourcing and don’t know people/teams you can pick as your partner or outsource team, it could be ridiculously daunting. Many take the decision process lightly and that shouldn’t be the case. It’s actually more important than hiring an in-house team because these are people you don’t know, never seen and have no clue whether their background and experience is only true on paper. You don’t know their style of work and have no control over how they do the work either. A close friend learned the hard way a couple of weeks ago when she picked out a team in India and handed them the reigns on a small project she was working on. She had 3weeks to get it done and so while she worked on the design section, she outsourced some of the dev. It’s been 6 weeks and the development is only 50% done. She lost that client and isn’t sure when the work will be done. Not all outsourced projects end up this way, neither are most of the developers looking for outsourced project, so don’t misconstrue the lesson of this post. You just need to make sure you learn to do the right things when you outsource.

To do List.

1.) Go through a trusted source. Merely doing a Google search of the word “outsource” will give you several articles on where to find great employees in other countries around the world. Elance is especially a huge meeting ground for tech work suppliers and people looking to outsource.

2.) Verify the information they give you. A lot of the people looking to take your work on fake their qualifications and experience. You must verify the information they give you and make sure all that work they claim to have done are actually their hand work. E-mail previous clients, call old employers…anything just to make sure you are not dealing with liars. If they lie about their previous work to win yours, you definitely don’t want them any where near yours.

P.S. A lot of suppliers do this, because most employers fail to verify any past experience.

3.) Keep good contact. Always stay in contact with whomever you do hire. Have skype meetings atleast once a week and build a closer relationship. Exchanging emails alone is never enough. Let them know that you mean business! Set up calls about twice a week or more depending the stage of the project or the amount of work required.

4.) Demand to see updates. This one explains itself. Don’t be led to believe you are closer to the finish line than you actually are. Most people fall victim of this.

In summary, Outsourcing can save you a lot of money and time IF done the right way. So do the right things to enjoy the experience.

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I have been doing quite a lot of Marketing and PR work lately both for myself and other brands/startups I am involved with. The more time I spend doing it, the more I discover unusual but very cost effective ways people are starting to get the word out. Many startups that are being run by gen-y’s don’t have the financial muscle to compete with the bigger, established companies and as a result we are always looking for ways to reach out to thousands without breaking bank.

1.) Chatroulette: As strange as it sounds, people are actually starting to use chatroulette as a way of pitching their ideas. Personally, I don’t see how effective this can be considering most people don’t spend more than 3 seconds on air before hitting “Next” if they are not keen on talking to you. On my first visit to the popular website, I left and promised myself never to return…no thanks to the 4 male genitals I saw in the space of 20 seconds. However, it does look like chatroulette is much cleaner and friendly these days. Last week when I went back on, I actually got pitched by this one really hot blonde about a vacation planning website and I must say I did go on the site during the chat. I don’t know how many people “nexted” her or how many stayed on to listen to her pitch, but it does look like something 5 out of 10 will stay to listen on.

2.) CNN iReport: Again, this is something I haven’t tried. If you own a startup whose product/service is something that will excite people or something you reckon people might like hearing about, then creating an iReport page could be a good idea. By having a profile here, you have a chance to leverage a good percentage of the millions of daily visitors on the CNN website. I have actually noticed a lot of companies doing this and gaining traction without having to spend a dime.

4.) Facebook Fan Page: With the amazing growth of Facebook over the past year or two, it’s no longer surprising to see some pages rack up as many as one 1 million fans in only a few weeks. In the past, it’s the popular brands like Dell, Coca-cola who had pages with such massive following. Lately though, random funny pages are even starting to overtake such brands in terms of number of fans. Take this page for example, and this. I have heard of companies starting to work with some of the owners of pages with such large following in a bid to leverage those fans, some are even purchasing the fan pages outright.

In the next few days, I will post a couple more ways I have discovered, but in the mean time, if you have any other ideas or ways to market a startup in cost effective fashion, do share!

Two years ago, I was watching the local news when an interesting and perplexing story took hold of the airwaves.  I looked up from my computer and read the headline on the screen:  “Girl Scout In Hot Water for Using Net to Sell Cookies.”  The news reporter then went on to discuss why this young girl was in such trouble.  As it turns out, the Girl Scouts of America strictly prohibits any sales method of the cookies that does not involve face-to-face interaction, citing the importance of that particular experience in the development of a young lady.  And that’s when it hit me:

What about those organizations that do not have those rules?  What about the organizations that are still relying on door-to-door sales?  Is door-to-door even really that safe anymore? Is door-to-door even scalable?  These questions, along with a hundred others, flooded my mind.  Despite this epiphany, though, I went back to my computer, the news rolled on, and like so many times before, I stored away these thoughts and forgot about them…that is, until about six months ago.

After graduating from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, with concentrations in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, I accepted a position at a boutique marketing strategy consulting firm.  It was here that I met a very important person: my business partner.

Next to my office was a guy by the name of David Adams.  David had graduated from Babson College after a rigorous curriculum of entrepreneurship and strategy consulting.  Full of energy, enthusiasm, and always big dreams, we immediately hit it off.  We’d hang out, grab a beer, listen to music, and probably most importantly, discuss business ideas.  David was one of those classic entrepreneurial inventors.  In addition to all of his early, successful endeavors while at Babson College, David had entrepreneurship in his blood.  His dad: a successful online floral retailer.  His aunt and uncle: the owner of a wildly popular coffee roasting operation that retails coffee in major grocery chains.

One day, David had casually mentioned that he was excited about an idea he had regarding the selling of artisan products from around the globe, with an overall goal of boosting the standards of living in many of the third world countries from which these products would be sourced.  To me, it sounded quite familiar:  the selling of goods online to raise money and benefit good people.  Conjuring up that Girl Scouts story two years ago, I immediately relayed to him the need that schools, organizations, and non-profits had for an online fundraising solution.  Suddenly it clicked for us at the same exact moment: “What about an online fundraising platform for worthy causes and non-profits?”  And thus, our start up, CauseShare.com, was born.

Since that day, CauseShare has evolved into a robust platform that not only allows people to raise money for a good cause through direct donations, but also through the sale of popular products, including chocolates, flowers, and many others.  With complete social media integration, and easy sharing capabilities, CauseShare empowers users to rally the support of their friends across their social networks. As we like to describe it, CauseShare is the first “people-powered fundraising tool.”  And what’s better, it exists completely online.  The reason for this? Well, with the ever-increasing number of people using the internet, and the increased role that the internet has in our day to day activities, the need for fundraising to adapt to this behavioral pattern is real.  But even more importantly, with more than 1.8 million non-profits (not including “worthy causes” as we like to call them here at CauseShare), the need for an affordable (CauseShare is free to use!), yet powerful, online fundraising tool is of the essence.  Few non-profits have the budget to afford the overly priced, overly fancy services that companies like Blackbaud offer.  The ones that cannot afford these services are part of the massive long-tail of non-profits and good causes that need a friend and partner in the constant struggle to raise money.  But yet, the big guys like Blackbaud ignore them.  One look at their product offering for smaller organizations, and you will see that Blackbaud has no interest in spending money on developing effective tools for the little guys.  Is that fair? Do the small non-profits’ causes matter less because they have a smaller budget?  We certainly don’t think so.

CauseShare is 110% committed to the little guys; to the small non-profits, the small causes, the 5k race in a town of 1,000 that benefits breast cancer, and the scholarship foundation set up in a boy’s name who was killed in a tragic car accident.  We aren’t for the big budgets, the fat wallets, or the big wigs.  We are for the everyday person, the head of fundraising for a small-town chapter of the SPCA, and the young girl raising money for her mom’s masectomy.

We fully intend to transform the way people raise money for causes that matter to them, and we are not afraid to say it.  CauseShare is the number one champion for small non-profits and independent causes, and we will never stop striving to provide good people with exceptional tools that help them reach their fundraising goals.  It’s time the little guys are given access to a tool that was custom built entirely for them.  And that tool is CauseShare.com.

And to all of our small friends out there: Consider the playing field leveled.

To learn more about CauseShare, we encourage you to explore the following sites:

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/CauseShare

Twitter:  http://www.twitter.com/CauseShare

Website:  http://www.CauseShare.com

Founders:

David Adams (@dmadams2)

Mike Kiser (@michaelkiser)

Ideas are the center of all the growth we have been able to achieve since making fire and the wheel all the way to iPhones and SUV’s. Someone had an idea to improve their lifestyle or the life of others and then put that idea into motion. More often than not we are seeing young entrepreneurs start to talk to each other, in classes, networking events, dorms and bars about ideas. What starts as chatter is starting to become reality with the way Gen-Y has taken an interest to entrepreneurship.

Our latest endeavor, the Rock Star Business Series, started as a conversation I had on the phone with Matt from Under30CEO. We were chatting about college students and how many of them are not as keen on the whole personal branding, social media thing that we are accustomed to with the outspoken group over at Brazen or 20 Something Bloggers. For how many people are using these new tools to find great opportunities, network and form business relationships, there are that many more that are job board hopping and hoping that something falls in their lap.

This conversation led to a business idea that was put together over 2 weeks. We plopped up a site, leveraged our networks and had sales coming in seconds after the sales page went live. Nice conversation, right?

The key here is that we spoke up. Many times people keep their ideas bottled in, thinking they are not good enough, or people won’t “get it.” They will.

They will because deep down we all want to be part of the conversation. We want to be in the loop and use our own connections or ideas to help out. This is evident in many businesses that are starting at colleges and universities across the world right now. Kids are using strength in numbers to kick start their business and most times do not look at it as a business, but as a project. Something fun to pass the time with friends and make some happy hour cash.

Gen-Y is an extremely collaborative group. We team up for sports, book reports, science fairs and our parents combined with genius marketing developed the “buddy system” for going to the mall or parks. Now that we are evolving and getting into situations where we can use our talents and ideas to make changes in business, we are looking to friends and other like minded Gen-Y’s to start companies with.

But, how do we get the conversation started?

The first step is to be proactive with your idea. You do not need all the answers as to how it will work to start talking about it. You only need a concept and an approach to bring it up. Getting the idea out in the open will allow others to give feedback, direction and to see if its realistic or not.

The way to take your idea to the next level is to know who you want to tell. If you are a marketing guy with a software idea, you need to start chatting with programmers, IT pros and others that can give you feedback and ideas. You can meet these people online, at networking events or in the classroom. When I needed a team of developers for an idea I had, I stalked the Computer Science building for a few hours with fliers and handed them out after every class. I organized a quick meetup at the sandwich shop on campus and got a few people to really weigh in on the idea. It was a great success and helped us solidify our startup concept.

Use online collaborative tools. For the new Rock Star course we have sent surveys to people we think are potential customers to get feedback and ask questions about the material. We have opened up the doors to previous customers and partners to test drive the platform and used things like Google Docs and forums to get people involved and testing out the concepts. There are tons of tools from communication platforms like Yammer to Basecamp to mind mapping software like MindMeister that can get others involved in the process without having to bend over backwards to give their input.

Once you have the conversation started, be sure to capitalize on the excitement and put your words into action. The best time to get active is when there is a spark about the project. Keep the good vibes and motivation going in order to blast off and start testing the idea, the product and the startup. In today’s economy, you can afford to get things to market quickly, test, test so more and then deal with the business end.

So, what’s your idea and how can we get you started? I’d love to help out in the comments.

This guest post was written by Greg Rollet, a Gen-Y Entrepreneur and Internet Marketer. His new course, the Rock Star Business Series, helps Gen-Y build their brand and their business with online tools and resources. You can also follow him on Twitter, @g_ro.

Photo by darek.zon

I read a book some years back while in college. At the time I couldn’t understand why my professor ( Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer, Chemical Engineering) would ask us to read it and write a paper about it. It seemed very strange and unnecessary to say the least. Today, 3 years later, I am glad I read this brilliantly written book called “The World is Flat” by a certain Thomas Friedman. The book focuses on how the world’s work dynamic was changing and how companies were starting to seek/use the best talent from around the world rather than in their home state or country.

If you ever wondered why your HP customer service rep or Jet Blue customer rep (mistakenly) says “hello good morning” when it’s still 7p.m. your time and seems to have a rather exotic accent, it’s because the World is flat! Companies are starting to seek out people who are just as competent, if not more competent, to do the same task at a much cheaper rate. I mean come on, some guy says he’ll charge you $15/hour to be your assistant, while another steps up to the plate and offers to carry out the same services for $7/hour and do it just as well, won’t you be fascinated? even if you will probably never see this person? even if the only way you’ll send out tasks and receive answers is via email or skype?

I remember when I was looking to build a social networking site for my fellow chemical engineers around the country to keep in touch, I walked into a web services company office in Maryland where I was going to school at the time and pitched my idea. I am not a programmer, neither am I a designer who will deliver the results I was interested in. I am decent at best and that doesn’t cut it, so I needed someone else to do it for me. They told me it would cost $6,000. I thought they were taking the mickey out of me, but they weren’t pissing around. That’s how much they wanted. Then I checked out ODesk, having read about it on Techcrunch. To cut the long story short, I found a guy who did a good job for $1000. While the site did well, I had bigger dreams for it. I am working on making it more than just one major. I want a Biology major to sign on in UCLA and open his chat box on the site, find a fellow Biology major at the University of Maryland (who he has added, because they are the same major, or are in the same Sigma Alpha Lambda Frat) and ask him for help with a question he has about chromosomes. That’s what I want for the site. By the way, If you are interested in being a part of the (re)building process of this project, you are welcome to email me : tolu at genystartup dot com and we will see what we can do. Back to my story before I drifted, I basically saved $6k by outsourcing!

If you are a new Entrepreneur, you will have a hard time getting people to fund you, you will have a hard time convincing quality potential employees to come on board and make history with you, this is why you must outsource. I have a friend who owns his own small design company. He works out of his mom’s basement in Towson, MD. He makes about $9k every month and has two employees. He has never met any of them. Nirali is his personal asst./secretary/blogger/utility player, she’s based in Bangalore, India and according to him ” she kicks serious butt”. When he needs something done, he emails her the tasks, and when he’s up in the morning the completed tasks are waiting in his inbox…thanks to the big time difference between both countries. While he’s sleeping, it’s day time  for Nirali and she’s hard at work. How effective. His other employee, Jon, is a freelance web designer based in Shanghai, China. Whenever my mate has projects he can’t finish in the time allocated, he calls on Jon and together they complete the task. Both employees asked for $10/hour and do a great job. Sometimes I wonder that he’s taking advantage of them, but he mentioned how he never put a limit on their rate. He said he simply asked them what their rate was and they said $10/hour. The other good thing about outsourcing is you are not limiting your productivity or quality of results. You are not using the “best” talent in your home country of Australia (if you are Aussie) or England if that’s where you are from. You are looking for the best talent around the world and taking advantage of it. Crowdsourcing anyone?!

Starting out as an Entrepreneur could be rough, I experienced this first hand, you might have limited management experience, limited funds etc… Outsourcing is perhaps the way to go. It’s less expensive, less demanding and very productive if done right. Eventually as your company moves along and starts growing, you can start thinking of renting office space, hiring full time employees and expanding. But it’s a long hard journey before you get there, so in the meantime, Outsource!

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Last spring, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that unemployment among 18 to 25-year-olds was a staggering 16.1%. That was grim news for college grads, plenty of whom headed straight to grad school, or promptly moved their belongings into the family basement. If you are among this army of unemployed or underemployed young people, it’s time you considered another option: start your own business.

In the middle of a recession? Absolutely. Lots of great companies were founded in lousy economies: Trader Joe’s, Clif Bar, MTV and Wikipedia are among them. Typically there’s an uptick in startup activity during recessions. Why? Resources are cheaper, there’s an available talent pool, and big companies that are focused on keeping their heads above water often let quality and service go by the wayside. That all spells opportunity for smaller, innovative, and agile players. Besides, what have you got to lose? Probably not much right now. You’re young and you probably don’t have a mortgage and a family to support. And rumor has it that you don’t mind sleeping on futons or eating lots of Ramen. So if you’ve got an idea percolating, here’s how to get started:

1. Choose partners wisely. Of the entrepreneurs I surveyed for my book, Upstarts: How GenY Entrepreneurs Are Rocking the World of Business (McGraw-Hill, 2009), 64% had started companies with partners. There’s a good reason for that. A partner will minimize your financial risk and instantly expand your knowledge base, provided you choose someone with skills complimentary to your own. Do not sign on with “mini-me!” Your partner should hold your feet to the fire, but also be supportive when things get tough. Sound like marriage? It is, but riskier. So lay out the terms of your partnership in writing with an attorney. Be sure to address what happens if one of you wants out. One more thing: note that these points about partners come before we even discuss your idea. Every venture capitalist worth his or her salt will tell you that the team is more important the idea. Even if you never plan to seek outside investors, remember this mantra: it’s the team, stupid!

2. Don’t be a perfectionist. Launch your product or service fast and imperfectly, because the more time you spend planning and tweaking, the more time you give a competitor the chance to sneak up behind you and eat your lunch. And if you launch quickly, customers will typically help you adapt your product according to their own needs. When Sam Altman launched Loopt, a personal GPS-like mobile application, his first version was a flop with young women who demanded better privacy settings. The result: Altman took that customer feedback and used it to create a better version of Loopt — one that customers felt invested in because they helped create it.

3. Tap outside resources. They’re more plentiful than you think. You might start with your alma mater. Miles Lasater and Mark Volchek, the Yale University-based founders of Higher One, a financial services company that focuses on the higher education market, did just that. They sent out a selective mailing to prominent Yale alumni simply seeking out sound advice and ended up getting a chunk of financing as well. Also, don’t be afraid to ask people in your own industry for help; if they’re in non-competitive markets, they may be surprisingly helpful. Brian Adams, the founder of Restoration Cleaners in Houston, assembled a peer group of 12 dry cleaners in different parts of the country to help him learn about the industry, thus shortening his leaning curve.

4. Be a proud bootstrapper. It’s wildly difficult to raise capital right now. No worries. Sure, you need some cash, but probably not as much as you think. If you have a good credit rating (and you had better!), apply for a line of credit before you actually need it; draw your vendors into your company vision and negotiate favorable terms with them; ask all partners to tap into their own savings so that everyone has skin in the game. Remember that having limited resources often forces you to make better decisions and to be financially disciplined from the get go. This will serve you well as you grow. My Upstarts! survey revealed that while approximately half of the companies that had received angel or venture funding were in the black, nearly 80% of the self-funded companies were profitable!

©2009 Donna Fenn, author of Upstarts! How GenY Entrepreneurs Are Rocking the World of Business and 8 Ways You Can Profit from Their Success

Author Bio
Donna Fenn, author of Upstarts! How GenY Entrepreneurs Are Rocking the World of Business and 8 Ways You Can Profit from Their Success and Alpha Dogs: How Your Small Business Can Become a Leader of the Pack, is a contributing writer at Inc. magazine. An expert on small business trends and entrepreneurship for more than 20 years, she is also a community leader on Work.com, a featured expert on SBTV.com, and a blogger on Inc.com. She lives in Pelham, NY, with her husband, Guian Heintzen, and is the proud mom of two GenYers.

At this stage of development, my start-up is starting to take shape and things are finally beginning to fall into place. A section of the site will contain videos that cannot be downloaded or embedded and we struggled initially in deciding which of the available methods of doing this we would go with. Earlier this week though we found a way out and are working on that at the moment. I have severally found myself in a position where I have no clue what to do and could use the advice of someone who has experienced what I am going through. This brings me to the issue of Mentors and Start-ups. Many young Entrepreneurs try to avoid having an Advisor or Mentor on board, but I doubt that is such a good idea. The most popular reason why these ‘freshies’ do this is that they don’t like people telling them they are wrong or asking them to ditch one of their ideas because it’s not likely to work. I don’t like hearing that either. I don’t like people telling me my idea is not practical enough and that I should modify it, but I also know that it might be in my best interest to listen.

As far as Start-ups are concerned, a Mentor is someone who has been in the industry for much longer and has been involved in a number of startups himself/herself. The duty of this person is to advice you based on their experience and also help you out courtesy of the connections they have built while gaining that experience. Okay, that’s just a primary overview of what a mentor does. There are many other things a mentor brings to the table that could be invaluable and I will get to that in a minute. When looking to find a good mentor, make sure you look for someone who will add value to you in every way possible. A person who pays for servers and hardware for your start-up doesn’t automatically become a Mentor. There have been several scenarios where investors have become Mentors but it’s paramount that these people have been involved in other start-ups in the past as well. Finding a good mentor is not the easiest thing in the world but it’s not climbing Mt. Everest either.

With the advent of Social Media, it has become much easier to find people that will fill that position very easily. Sites like Twitter and LinkedIn are awesome places to find and link up with experts in your industry. While most Mentor – Founder relationships I have seen have been built and nourished offline, there is a rise in the number of founders meeting potential mentors online. The guys of MentalFloss did a Google search to find Samir Husni who turned out to be their Mentor. Samir had several years of experience with creating and marketing magazines. He knew what people will like to read and what they wouldn’t be so interested in reading, which made him a perfect Mentor in this industry. With his help and constant advice, they have grown Mental Floss into a household name.

I am not vast enough or experienced enough to know all the possible means of compensating Mentors, but I would imagine Cash payments and stock options are the most popular way. It is usually well worth the cost though, these people can help immensely so make sure you spend time researching your options and be careful making your final decision.

Here are a few other positives a good Mentor brings to the table:

• They have an outsiders view, and that combined with experience puts them in a position to see the good and not so good aspects of your start-up. They will then be able to advice you on how you can put yourself in a better position to succeed.

• They can open doors for you. Mentors usually know people who can be of help especially where it matters: Finances. They have connections with Angel Investors, VCs and can even hook you up with potential partners.

• They motivate you to go for more. Many Entrepreneurs are in business for the big bucks and so when you are doing well 2 years in, you might get a buy-out offer. In several cases, young entrepreneurs tend to jump on the offer, but if there’s potential to grow and be worth even more later, the Mentor acts as the ‘calm down’ factor who slows things down and steer you the right way.

• They hold your hands through the rough patches. Every Start-up goes through a trying period where things don’t seem to work out at all. These Mentors have experienced these testing times themselves and can keep you from giving up. They will offer a shoulder to cry on and push you forward, telling you things will get better.

Notice I said these are some positives a good Mentor brings to the table? A bad Mentor can completely destroy your dreams likewise. That’s an entirely different discussion however. So make sure you take time to look for a Mentor that will be right for you.

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