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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The launch pad for young, rock-star entrepreneurs (theglobeandmail.com)
• Help is close at hand for eager Gen-Y entrepreneurs (theglobeandmail.com)

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Difference Between Outsourcing & Offshore It Services (slideshare.net)
• To Outsource or Not to Outsource Software (startupprofessionals.com)

For many Entrepreneurs, it’s inevitable, that day when you stand before someone that could very much change your life in an instant. Pitching investors could be rough, torrid but could also be very fulfilling. In my case, I am certainly keeping an eye out potential investors since I am gradually closing in on the “closed beta” launch of my startup. In my case, I will need a good number of servers, need to bring in two or three people to join the team and as such will be seeking Angel Investment. I will be inviting beta testers in December and in January, making it public. The goal is to have as many brands, individuals etc… connecting with fans/customers via video with real time features. This will obviously require manpower and Investor funds.

Over the past 3 weeks, I have been preparing myself for the inevitable, and thought I should share what I have decided to be the key elements to preparing an Investor pitch. It will be my second time pitching investors and so I sort of have an idea of the kind of questions to look out for, the way they want to be approached and what they want the pitch to contain.

First let’s understand two things, these days you could either get an investor to give you money in exchange for Equity (a percent of you dear company) or convertible debt (borrow money to be paid back -most times with interest- and can be converted into equity under the right terms). It’s up to you as an Entrepreneur to determine which route is best for you. Personally I wouldn’t take $1million in convertible debt, that’s way too much debt on you in only your first few months of being live. I have decided that for my startup, I will be giving away some equity in exchange for the funding I will be getting.

I paid close attention to TechCrunch 5o some weeks back and saw a lot of Entrepreneurs talk about their startups. They were pretty much mass pitching, to not only the investors in the room, but investors following on TV, twitter, livestreams and so forth, so it was essential to be on their game. I particularly liked RedBeacon’s pitch and if you are looking to pitch an investor someday, you should watch events like these. You learn the key elements of a pitch, what should be in and what shouldn’t be. Here are a few ideas for you. Before going in to pitch an investor,

1.) Make sure you can explain you startup’s service in a sentence or two. Ofcourse there’s more to your startup than you can convey in 2 sentences but believe it or not, you need a punchline or should I say punch-sentence, that concisely describes you. It’s attractive to investors, and even to other Entrepreneurs.

2.) Make sure you are pitching the right person. Take for example, say I am an investor and I am all about tech, web 2.0 and real time data stuff. Say my last 4 investments have been in Twitter, Gaucho, Loopt, MeetUp. Won’t it be ridiculous of you to come up to me with a pitch about a new bio company you are looking to build? I think it just makes you the Entrepreneur look lazy, ill prepared and lacking focus…all traits of people Investors never want to do business with. So study the Investor, find out what they like to invest in, does your company fit well in his/her portfolio?

3.) Make sure you have a demo handy. It’s not enough to walk up to an Investor with just a biz plan and executive summary. Take a leaf out of Aaron Patzer’s book, carry you written pitch handy as well as your laptop to do a demo for every Investor you run into. Investors are easier to convince when you show them images and how things work than just a theory.

4.) Go prepared! There are those few questions that EVERY investor asks. Before you go in, make sure you’ve come up with a good answer for each. You don’t want to be stumbling on words or staring at the ceiling when they ask you a question, it shows lack of confidence and poor preparation. Maybe you need to watch sharktank a bit more to understand the workings of Investors if you are new to it, but they always want to know about the founders, the team behind the company, how do you intend to market the product? who is your competition? how will you keep your competition beneath you? how will you be making money? etc etc…

Finally, remember that investors are in business to make money too, so they will only invest in what they believe will benefit them. Does your company have a strategy that lets you and your financial backer make some profit in the end? This tremendously improves your chances, especially if you are already making money with that strategy. I will keep you up to date as things move along at Videfy. In the meantime I want to give special mention the the Gen Y startup of the week: CauseShare, a social fundraising platform built by Michael Kiser and Dave Adams. Thumbs up guys! keep it up.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Best Startup Funding is Initial Sales (myventurepad.com)
• Entrepreneur Corner Roundup: Surefire ways to get rejected by an angel investor and clearing up lean startup myths (venturebeat.com)

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

This brilliant post was written by Donna Fenn, I highly encourage you to pick up her book Upstarts!

Small business owners are typically an optimistic lot, even in the face of dismal economic conditions. But a recent American Express OPEN Small Business Monitor survey found that GenY entrepreneurs are more optimistic than most. “More than three-quarters (80%) of these entrepreneurs have a significantly more positive outlook on business prospects versus GenX and business owners overall (each 55%), and Baby Boomers (52%),” the survey noted. GenY business owners were most  likely to be hiring and making capital investments, and least likely to have cash flow issues and to be “stressed out” about the economy.

Those findings didn’t surprise me in the least. Last spring, as I was wrapping up my book, Upstarts!: How GenY Entrepreneurs are Rocking the World of Business (McGraw-Hill, 2009), I decided to do a short survey of the 150 young entrepreneurs I had interviewed. Among other things, I wanted to know how they were surviving the recession. Here’s what I found among the respondents: 20% said the recession had actually been good for their companies; 32% said they had felt very little impact; 44% said revenues would be lower in 2009 but that their companies were stable; and only 5% said they had taken a big hit and were barely hanging on.

When I followed up with some of them directly, it became clear that many entrepreneurs in this generation actually welcomed tough economic times. They said that the recession was teaching them the art of laser-like focus, and compelling them to make better decisions, to become more frugal, and to initiate systems and procedures that would help position them for economic recovery. Here are a few recession-trouncing strategies from Upstarts! that you can apply to your own company:

Pursue repeat business. It’s far less expensive to nail down repeat business from your existing customers than it is to land new ones. Now is the time to reap the benefits of those good customer relationships

that you’ve been cultivating over the past few months. At Undercurrent, a Manhattan-based digital marketing firm, co-founders Aaron Dignan and Josh Spear offer their young employees three levels of quarterly perks, depending on how many repeat business deals they manage to rustle up as a team. Three deals might earn everyone a Friday afternoon at the movies; six or nine deals could mean massages for all or a shopping spree at nearby Whole Foods. New rewards are offered every quarter to keep things interesting. The program keeps employees motivated and Undercurrent on the radar screens of important clients.

Focus on your core competency. Robert Weber’s company, W3i in Sartell, MN, markets third party computer applications and has been growing 53% a year. W3i continues to post significant gains this year because, Weber says, he had the foresight to eliminate divisions of the company that were hogging resources without generating significant revenue. He shut down a lead generation business and sold a mobile applications business “we never really figured out how to integrate into our main company.” With a single point of focus — “to be market leader in applications distribution” — Weber says the company is well positioned for growth this year.

Snap up top talent. Layoffs at big companies mean that there’s a surplus of great employees on the market now. Recently, Joel Holland, the CEO of Footage Firm, a Reston, VA company that sells stock video footage, put out the word that he wanted to hire a new head of web development and a top sales person. “I was shocked to get applications from executives who, in a better economic time, never would have taken my call, let alone responded to a job posting,” he says. “I hired a rock star web developer, and I’m in talks with a former hot shot at a major online media company to take the sales lead.” He’s also hired a part-time CFO, and picked up numerous talented freelancers — people

who would have been inaccessible in a better economy.

Respond rapidly to market shifts. The economy is almost certainly having a profound impact on you customers: they may have altered their purchasing habit, or found themselves with entirely different needs. It’s your job to respond to those shifts. Adelaide Lancaster and Amy Abrams, co-founders of Manhattan-based In Good Company Workplaces (IGC), run a membership organization that provides women business owners with shared office space. Previously, their clients were mostly mature, established business owners. But Lancaster notes that the recession has created more “entrepreneurs of necessity” and she’s seeing more opportunity for IGC among startups. So the company, which also offers consulting and educational programs to its members, has “begun to offer more start up oriented programs and an accountability group for folks that were more used to working in a structured environment and need help adjusting to working on their own,” says Lancaster. She and Abrams are also partnering with professional organizations that have traditionally catered to corporate women, but are now filled with people who have lost jobs and are considering starting companies.

Look for hidden sources of revenue. Sometimes your best source of new revenue is right under your nose. That’s what Talia Mashiach, the CEO ofEved Services in Chicago, has discovered. Mashiach’s company partners with hotels to provide their corporate clients with access to all the outside independent vendors they need to organize an event (such as florists, videographers, entertainment, transportation, etc.). Her competitive edge is the proprietary technology she developed to manage those vendors efficiently. The system works so well that Mashiach is now marketing it to other companies. “They’ll use our technology platform and pay us a transaction fee,” she explains. Also included in the package is access to an award-winning corporate university that Mashiach created for her own staff called Eved University. It’s not the revenue model what she had in mind when she first developed the technology, but it’s one that she now expects will spur significant growth for her company.

Author Bio:

Donna Fenn, author of Upstarts!: How GenY Entrepreneurs Are Rocking the World of Business and 8 Ways You CanProfit 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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Start-Up Business Guy Stuck for November’s Rent! (thepoint.com)
• You Can Trounce the Recession (startupprofessionals.com)

These days it seems like startups are springing up everywhere every single day and it’s a bit tiresome really to take it all in. All of a sudden myriads of people want to start companies, they don’t care if they have what it takes or not, they just want to build something successful. Just like me, they are on Techcrunch everyday, they read all these success stories and feel a renewed confidence in their ability to build something better than Facebook. I am no pessimist, but I like being very pragmatic. The truth is that not all of us can do what Zuckerberg has done, but those people who actually have what it takes to cut it need to pay attention, learn from other start-up stories, ask questions and hopefully they will achieve what they have set out for.

One thing I like to do is study failed start-ups, infact I study them as much as I do successful startups. When I read about Mint.com, which is a fantastic company by the way, I also like to read about Thought Inc or playcafe for example. A friend of mine once asked why I was reading about a man investing all his life savings in an idea he has only to see it fail in only a few months. He reckoned that would be too painful for him to read and would put him off ever wanting to build a start-up. Not me. When I read about failed businesses, I actually study. I study how they started, how they sought funds, what equity did they give out? did they even get funded? all these questions and more are what I ask myself while doing this ‘postmortem’.

I am currently working on a startup as well, so you can understand why I would want to know what others have done wrong just so I won’t make those mistakes myself. While many mistakes to one startup might actually be a good move for another, it is up to you to sort through the list and decide which is which with respect to your own startup. Here are some things I have learned:

1.) Find a market for your product first. You would imagine that this is something everyone knows, but it will surprise you how many people fail to do a market survey before ordering the manufacture of 1 million pieces of their new product, or building a software that they like personally with the hope that others will like it. Many times this is born out of the thought that their ideas must be kept secret until the product is released. I disagree with this reasoning. It’s always a good idea to check if people will buy your product, find yourself a customer base, a group of people you can actually market to when it’s time to start selling. What if you invest all this money into the business and find out no one really finds it worthwhile? You’ld have wasted money and valuable time.

2.) If you don’t find the right people, chances are you’ll fail. Simple as that. It takes a skilled sailor to successfully navigate troubled waters and trust me, startups are ‘troubled waters’. I have worked in a few and currently am so I have seen the high tides and low tides. You need the right people on board should in case you encounter unexpected snags. Those times when an investor who promised to invest suddenly pulls out in the last minutes, when you get hacked in the least expected time or when you experience a DoS attack, will you have people to put it right?

3.) Having too much money or not having enough. I know these are two ends of the stick and so you might wonder why I have the two. Have you ever had something too sweet? or had it too bitter? both aren’t as good as having the right balance. When you don’t have enough money, it’s obvious to see how failure can spring up there isn’t it? you don’t have enough to pay your team members, no money to advertise or market your product, no money to keep the servers running etc… these are all obvious. How about having too much money. Ever heard of Monitor110? classic case of having too much money. They apparently raised about $20million in their 3 rounds of funding and still didn’t succeed. Just like me you are probably thinking what the heck? if I had all that money, there’s NO WAY I will fail or not succeed with my startup. The truth is that often times when these people have all this money, they forget the little things and instead start splurging on things that are not even necessary. They will probably go advertise on the biggest TV networks, wall street journal, websites with unrealistically large following and forget to come up with a little feedback page or an interaction outlet between them and their customers. I am not saying it’s a bad idea to advertise on Newsweek, if you have the money and your market happens to be readers, then by all means go ahead! Just don’t forget the little things that happen to be terribly important. Sometimes when you have access to so much money, you might even lose focus and forget the origin of the company, how and why you started it in the first place. Everyone’s idea changes and it becomes all about the money. If you have all that money, why not spend it on strengthening relationships with customers, starting contests and giving away free stuff to winners, why not spend on gift-cards for the most active customers you have etc… Advice: keep up the channel of communication with customers, get the money that you need and not much more. These will keep you grounded.

4.) Marketing is just as important as developing. Never neglect the marketing end of the process. Your development and marketing should go hand in hand. When you are bringing in the best coders around, also make sure to bring in kick ass marketers. If you need some leads, I will be glad to point you in the direction of a few people. Merely creating a Google Adwords campaign isn’t marketing, neither is creating a Twitter account to follow people and hope they follow you back. It’s a lot more comprehensive than that. The emergence of social media has made it alot easier to connect with your fans/customers as well as new ones, but advertising is still a major part of Marketing. PlayCafe failed in this department and despite all the money they had in their disposal, they never really got their Marketing right.

5.) Lack of Organization kills startups. Lack of organization kills anything, period! It’s important early on to get the right people doing the right things. Negotiate you equity vs. investment appropriately, have an actual CEO on board when the time comes (if you know you can’t handle it- and most entrepreneurs can’t if we are being real) and most importantly create a business plan and follow it. The business plan that you submit when you are looking for investment should be different from what you are using as a  guide for yourself. The former is more optimistic that it actually should be and the later must be more realistic.

The more you know about start-ups, the better equipped you will be as an entrepreneur. Take time out to study different startups, read their stories to understand what makes them solid, also pay attention to those that have failed or aren’t doing quite well. It will give you a better understanding and appreciation for what Entrepreneurship is really about. That’s the beauty of it.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Your Startup Sucks (centernetworks.com)
• You: The long lost formula for start-up success. No, really (uk.techcrunch.com)

Usually the beginning of an Entrepreneurial journey is the conception of the idea. It is what follows after that determines how successful your business will become however. Every business is unique in its goals and so the ingredients it needs to achieve them might differ, but there are certain things every Entrepreneur must include in his/her to do list before starting the business.

• Research and understand your competition

• Make sure you are a Game Changer

• Put together a sustainable team with quality

• Do surveys and get Feedback

• Find a Mentor

• Find your market and learn how you will penetrate it

Research and Understand your competition: A lot of people rush blindly into a business because they believe they have come up with an idea that will change the world. They believe they are the only ones to do it because they are yet to see anything like it. Big mistake! It is absolutely vital that you take a few weeks to look for people who’ve done something similar, understand how they work, how long they’ve been around, their revenue, their market e.t.c. The truth is that every business/start-up has some competition (side note: if a VC or Angel Investor asks you how you intend to handle your competitors, please never say you have none. It oozes laziness and lackluster research.) Make sure you do your homework to know what you are up against so you can effectively plan to counter and do better than them.

Make sure you are a Game Changer: You don’t have to come up with a completely new idea or business plan in order to be successful but you must know how to set yourself apart from others in the same field. To every line of business in the world today, there are inefficiencies and inadequacies. How about stepping up to the plate and addressing some of these problems? Over time the customers’ needs start to change and you must be aware of these changes if you are a good entrepreneur. No one ever really believed that  young people will be so interested in having a website help them manage their funds, even the investors  that were presented with the business plan asked the same questions several times: “how are you going to convince 20-30 year olds to submit their bank information to you? What makes you think these people are even interested in finance at this young age?” But Aaron Patzer, founder of Mint had seen something. He had noticed that more and more college graduates were interested in learning how to manage their funds so they could pay off loans, start planning 401k e.t.c. He spotted a chance to change the game and he did just that.

Put together a Sustainable team with quality: I have talked about the importance of having a strong team to a start-up. The value is immense and must not be overlooked. For new start-ups, here is a good post I came across that can give you more insight into how to pick a good team.

A good team not only improves the quality of the product or service the business renders, It also increases your chance of getting funded. I have been told by some VCs in the past that many times, they start out reviewing a business plan by looking at the team involved in the business. They want to gain an understanding of what the team members have done before, do they have a successful record? Do they have good recommendations? The truth is that many Investors/VCs are Entrepreneurs themselves, so they know the value of a good team from their past experiences. They take it very seriously and so must you.

Do surveys and get feedback: Another thing people fail to do is to find out what people think of your idea. Will they be willing to use your service or buy your product? You might think the idea is appealing but then again it was your idea, you don’t want to be the only one patronizing your business, do you? So how about  starting a survey, randomly walking to people and asking if they will use your product and getting their feedback. This way, you will know if your start-up has a chance or not, you will know who likes your product and who doesn’t.

In Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek, there was an example of a guy who was interested in starting an online business where he would be selling some rare shirts he had discovered on his trip to France. While in France he thought there might be people in the states who would like the shirt as well, so he decided to do a market/demand test. He took pictures of the shirt and posted it on e-bay for sale. Few minutes before the bid closed, he realized a lot of people had bid for the shirt and what they were willing to pay was substantially more than the cost price. It was then he knew he had a solid business idea. He opened an online store and started doing business. The point of that story is that he took time to find out if people would like the shirt and would pay for it before jumping into business. Everyone gets excited at the chance of starting a business, but always slow down and take time to do some research.

Find a Mentor: I recently wrote an entire post about the importance of a good mentor. The advantages are numerous. Look for someone in your line of business who has been involved with startups in the past. This person will add value both in front and behind the scenes. They will act as guardian angels to show you how to deal with difficult situations based on their experience and will connect you to other people that could be of help: investors, employees, other mentors e.t.c.

Find your market and learn how you will penetrate it: Before you start doing business you must have a marketing strategy. This includes knowing the demographic that would be interested in your product/service and how you will reach them. Good marketing will always bring a business tremendous levels of success and sales, ask Tony Hsieh of Zappos. You can build an in-house Marketing team or outsource it, either way you do it, make sure you have people with quality who can explore every avenue to win fans and customers.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Investor Presentation – 10 Slides is Just Right (startupprofessionals.com)
• 5 Reasons to Start a Business in a Recession (usnews.com)

Many young entrepreneurs are guilty of starting a Marketing campaign only after they have launched their product or their website has gone live. I have come to learn that it is a better idea starting much earlier, even before your prototype launches. Now this is a question that will certainly get varying answers from people but in my opinion, starting a marketing campaign pre-launch gives you more stature and improves your chances of getting funded when you go live. You don’t want to go ask for funds from VCs for your dating website when the only members of the site are you, your co-founders and some buddies from Math class. It’s not a good look!

The most popular complaints I hear from people about launching early are:

1.) They don’t want people knowing their ideas and stealing them, and

2.) They don’t have enough time to start a marketing campaign while working on the start-up and working a part-time job to bootstrap their efforts.

While these two points are valid complaints, I have reasonable counter-acts for each…and they suffice for me at least.

1.) When you are working behind the scenes, building your start-up and consider yourself to be in stealth-mode, it is understandable that you don’t want people knowing your idea and going to reproduce it. It’s too early along for competition and that kind of pressure, I get it. But from the time I have spent around other young entrepreneurs, I have come to realize that other people are too busy building their own ideas to throw it all out and do yours. Infact most people will think your idea is garbage when they first hear you pitch it, they will think ‘really? is that his idea? I think mine is much better’. Honestly think about it, how many times have you heard someone else’s idea and thought “wow, this is brilliant, I should do something like this”?  perhaps 5% of the time. Now of that 5%, how many times would you say “okay I am going to try my hands on this project and leave mine for a bit”. I think that drops it down to somewhere close to 0.5% at best. Everything in life is a risk. It is a risk becoming an entrepreneur, It is a risk putting your idea out there early but the rewards could be bountiful. Ask the guys at Viralogy. They started their marketing campaign early, no one stole their idea and they got loads of people sign up in the first week.

2.) I am not sure how you view marketing relative to your start-up, but in my opinion, it is an intrinsic part and not just an “add-on”. You need to pay just as much attention to your marketing as you do development. When people say they don’t have time to market because they are too busy developing, I find it hard to understand. I think their perception is misconstrued. You have to set aside the time to market, make it a part of the schedule. If you cannot afford to bring someone else on board whose sole task is to strategize and execute a marketing campaign, then cut back on the development time to market or simply work a few more hours. If you only have 7 hours/ day to work on your start-up, and you spend all of it on development, you need to re-distribute your time and start marketing atleast 2-3 hours a day. Get on twitter and tweet about it, create a blog where you write about what your start-up will offer once you launch, relate and interact with other bloggers e.t.c. Also make sure you create a splash page or a simple welcome page, say what your start-up is in a sentence or two, ask for their e-mails so you can update them on your progress and contact them when you finally launch. These are some great ways to rack up a customer base early on. Take for example Betterfly who have done a fantastic job marketing even before launching. They are prominent on twitter, have an informational web-page and have a dynamic blog going even before they launch fully. There is no way they won’t hit the ground running once they are fully launched.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Sales Guy Gets Lead Management (thecustomercollective.com)
• You are Crazy not to Measure the ROI of Social Media! (newcommbiz.com)

Many people just know you as the awesome blogger and power woman behind Brazen Careerist, can you let us a little into the world of Miss Trunk?

I like to think that each of us working on the same stuff – figuring out who we are and what we want and how to get it. Those questions get progressively easier, but I’m not sure we ever get off the first one. That’s where I am, too.

Many young bloggers and Entrepreneurs say they draw inspiration from you, for example Monica O’Brien who is one of my favorite bloggers. Is there anyone you draw your own inspiration from?

Oh, I like Monica’s blog. She’s great at writing about gender. And, actually, I think that tons of bloggers are good at something. The trick is to find what you’re good at so you can inspire other people. Sometimes I find that watching someone figure out what they are good at is as inspiring as seeing someone be great.

Bloggers who I like:

Rebecca Thorman at Modite

Holly Hoffman – at WorkLoveLife

Lance, at Honey and Lance

Sam Davidson at Cool People Care

You put yourself out there on your blog posts and in a recent one, you explained why. Do you ever get people who give you bad feedback, send you emails criticizing you e.t.c? If you do, how do you deal with them personally?

I get emails criticizing me every day. I read them all. I like direct feedback, and sometimes, in person, people are hesitant to be direct. So I sort of like that people will just say anything on my blog — they spare no feelings there. Sometimes I think they are off base, and sometimes I think they’re right. In either case, I think about it. Because the way to get better is to be open to criticism.

A lot of young Gen Y entrepreneurs tend to get stuck after the idea is conceived and they’ve written their business plan. Can you tell us briefly how you started your first company? From the idea conception, through seeking funds, marketing and launching?

My first company was one I thought about for a year before I started. I knew I had intellectual property — math software from my investor’s company. I realized that I could buy math.com pretty cheaply, and then I looked around for what else could go on the site. I found out that Swarthmore College had a huge grant from the NSF to build math teaching tools, but Swarthmore had no idea what to do with them. So I put them on my site. And I decided that with that stuff, I needed to market to teachers. That’s how I figured out what my business was. It was incremental and I was very flexible. It’s important when you think of a business idea to know that a business is a bunch of very small, always changing ideas. It’s not one, big, stagnant idea.

You talk a lot about your constant quest for more funds for Brazen Careerist. Can you shed light on the effect of the sad state of the economy on securing funds for already established companies like Brazen Careerist? What about new start-ups run by novice entrepreneurs looking for seed funds?

There is plenty of money for companies that have a good idea. Really. The reason we ran into trouble is that we did not time everything well. But even when we were in really really bad shape, there was funding for us. You need to have all your ducks in a row to get funding. There is sort of a checklist of stuff you need. If you have that, you’ll get money. If you don’t have that, it is probably not the right time for you to get funding.

I have been told several times by many C.E.Os I have had the privilege of sitting down with that in business, it’s more about who you know than what you know. Do you agree?

Yes. Definitely. You need to be able to surround yourself with people who can fill in your own gaps in skills. I am constantly calling people for help and advice. I think young people don’t realize how often — each day! — very experienced people ask for help with an email or something like that. You need a network of people you can ask for help.

This is actually why Brazen Careerist works so well for entrepreneurs. Because for an entrepreneur their network is everything. And you need to be part of a community of people who can collaborate with you. That means you need to be talking with people to find out their ideas.

Also, entrepreneurs typically do not have useful resumes. They work for themselves and they change jobs a lot. Most people who are entrepreneurs also have been fired a few times: Not good for the Resume. Brazen Careerist’s ideas-based resume is perfect for the entrepreneur who is full of ideas and short on linear, corporate experience.

What are your views on the continuous rise and rise of social media as it pertains to company and personal branding?

My views? I don’t know. Is this controversial? It seems good for everyone. People telling more about themselves means that people can make better decisions about who to work with.

How did you start out as an entrepreneur? Most if not all entrepreneurs experience failure at some point, how did/do you deal with them? And how well do you handle rejection?

I keep trying. I have had a lot of failure in my life that I keep plugging away at so that it is not actually a failure. Most of how we approach life’s hardships is hard-wired — how optimistic we are. And you can test yourself to see the optimism you were born with. A friend once told me that entrepreneurs are optimists and VCs are pessimists.

The biggest thing about facing failure is to just get out of bed in the morning and try something else. Keep trying. Brazen Careerist ran out of money a few times. And we all just refused to give up.

What is the best advice you’ve ever got?

The more you know yourself the better you’ll be at getting what you want — in all aspects of life. You can know yourself faster by going to therapy.

When Penelope Trunk isn’t working, speaking e.t.c. what does she do for fun?

I think there is time in life to only do three things well. We spend a lot of our lives denying this, and trying to make it not true for us. But it’s true. So, like most people my age, I have time for work, kids and a significant other. That’s pretty much it. I mean, I work out a lot, but it’s not nearly as high a priority as the other stuff. The faster you can admit that you only have time to do three things well, the faster you can stop making yourself crazy trying to do more.

Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to do this! On a final note, give me and other gen Y entrepreneurs reading this one advice.

Be open to criticism. If someone thinks you can’t take it, you won’t get feedback, and you won’t grow.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Entrepreneurs: Make Decisions (startupprofessionals.com)
• 15 Tips for a Successful Entrepreneur (menson.wordpress.com)

Did you say that you meant well and it wasn’t your fault? That you couldn’t be in 10 places at the same time and that you had no clue it was happening in your company? I doubt people will accept that if you are the CEO. When Amazon bought Zappos, there were only two names I kept hearing that whole day : Jeff Bezos and Tony Hsieh. When NeXT failed, Steve Jobs was all anyone talked about. Infact you probably heard and read ‘Steve Jobs’ more than ‘NeXT’. The owners are always tied to their business, whether they do well or not.

Running a business is like flying a Boeing aircraft, you as the Entrepreneur are in charge of everything and ultimately making sure the ‘object’ – in this case your business gets from point A to B – in this case zero profit to the several million dollars you dream of.

A local bookstore here in Towson, MD closed down yesterday and it had a sign on the the door that read “ Due to certain circumstances beyond me, I have decided to close down the store and not continue with our usual service to you our loyal clients. Thank you…Blah Blah”  I patronize this bookstore since it’s the only one around me that has an amazing collection of soccer magazines from around the world and always had my favorites : fourfourtwo and Champions. Initially, I felt terrible for him because he seemed like a great guy and carried on well whenever we spoke. I thought he had closed for personal reasons or financial difficulty, but I later found from one of his employees that he actually just sucked at being a business owner. According to the guy, the bookstore had become a haven for underage kids to come in and consume alcohol, they had missed deadlines for ordering several books and magazines from international distributors on several occasions, books disappeared faster from the shelves than Usain Bolt chasing a crook and he always blamed it on the “lackadaisical attitude and incompetence” of his staff.

One thing I have learned about running a business is this, Regardless of how big your business is or grows out to be, you are still doing the job of everyone on staff, only that you are getting a bit of help from each of them. This is much better and a safer way to work than just assuming everyone does a function and then at the end put it all together! Here’s why:

1. If the business fails, it is YOU who has failed.
2. It is your money that’s lost and/or that of some investors that definitely won’t let YOU have a good day for the next few years.
3. The employees you lay the blame on will only pack up their things, get a job somewhere else and move on. Where does that leave YOU?

What if one of the employees slack off? (and they can, it’s not their business after all) what will you do then? What if you ask an employee to place an order for books that only get shipped once a month from England and this employee forgets? I don’t think the customers will blame the employee, will they? That’s why I said every function and task that must be performed are your duty and if you have to call the employee 10 times and ask to see confirmation of the order before you bring an end to your own day, then that’s what you must do. It’s staying on top of your game like this that sets a “successful entrepreneur” apart from an “entrepreneur”.

Sometimes however, we must admit that things do get out of hand and the circumstances are probably beyond the business owner. I am currently thinking of the Dominos pizza situation, where the workers acted really shamelessly, what could the business owner have done? I heard that the particular store where it happened was closed down by Dominos, what happened to the guy who actually owns that outlet? his business is down the drain? Is there anything that business owner could have done to avoid the situation? Makes we wonder really.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Did Amazon get a good deal from Zappos? (dailyfinance.com)