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 have read many posts and heard alot of casts where people talk about quitting their day jobs or dropping off school to build their start-ups, that’s cool and all but make sure you take a minute or several minutes to rethink that decision. With the present state of the economy, I can see why anyone would give up on searching for a job and focus fully on their start-up. We’ve all read those fairytale stories of how Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard to found Facebook, how Tim Ferriss quit his corporate job to build a successful business etc… but we never read those stories about how Joe dropped out of college to build a start-up but ended up homeless and hungry. The world we live in glorifies those success stories but forget the failures, not realizing how important it could be in teaching young Entrepreneurs to make the right decision.

If you feel as a young Entrepreneur that you have enough money to last you through your entire start-up process, then by all means follow your heart. The thing people don’t realize is that the money is not the only element of gain about having a job while chasing a start-up dream. If you know that your current job consumes too much of your time and you need to have a less demanding schedule, here’s a thought: find a part time job, a consulting gig at a start-up and keep a cashflow rather than giving it up all together. I always encourage Entrepreneurs to try associating themselves with other start-ups. If you can get a job at a start-up, try your best to! It’s a learning process that will prove immensely valuable. If you can’t get a full-time job there, truth is that a lot of start-ups outsource some aspects of their jobs – cease this opportunity, be active on their blogs and community, study their moves and make sure you learn something. It will come in handy. Here are some reasons why having a job helps your pursuit of start-up success:

1.) It keeps the money coming in. There’s always money floating around silicon valley and Investors are always looking for promising Entrepreneurs to invest in, BUT they are now very very careful with how much they spend. It’s more difficult to get money from investors these days if you are a first time Entrepreneur and the state of the economy can be blamed for that. Most Entrepreneurs have now turned to bootstrapping as the way of funding their business. How can you afford to bootstrap if you don’t have cashflow? even if you have money saved up somewhere, do you know how long that will last before you need more?

2.) It offers the opportunity to gain some useful experience. If you have a job whether in a start-up or not, you are bound to learn a thing or two that would be useful later on in your career as an Entrepreneur. You might find yourself learning how to manage other people, how to make the right business decisions, marketing and so forth. The possibilities are many. Now imagine if you were working at a start-up, you will see first hand what it takes to build/run a start-up. You are bound to learn important lessons, lessons like how to pitch investors, how to find the right work force, effective marketing strategy, carrying out customer tests etc..

3.) Having a job means Networking Opportunities. A lot of people associate Networking with having time to travel from event to event. On the job networking might be over-looked but there are many stories of people building relationships with co-workers, bosses or even clients and have gone on to build successful businesses with the help of these people. I can’t count how many ex-google employees, ex-paypal employees that have gone on to build start-ups that are performing better than okay at the moment. These people took advatage of the people they met while working at their old jobs and the results are obvious. So if you are a recent grad, it helps to atleast try looking for a job, rather than just focus fully on starting up a business.

4.) Having a Job means something to fall back on. Whether you like to hear this or not, most start-ups fail within the first year. I know every Entrepreneur believe it can’t be them, we all expect to succeed! After all we are the optimists and those investors are pessimists. But what if you do fail? what then? Having a job means something you can fall back on in this tough recession period where it’s more difficult to find a new job than it is for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle.

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Every start-up shares the same primary objective: Get lots of people to join my service/use my product. It’s always the same regardless of what industry you are in and the Entrepreneurs with the best networking skills are the ones who have the best ride. Networking is all about finding people who could be of help to you and reaching out to them. It’s really an art and if done early and effectively, your start-up might actually have a chance. Research shows that 80% of startups fail and shut shop within their first 6-12 months, as a new Entrepreneur you must find like minded people to interact with and learn from so your startup can perhaps be in that 20% that survives.

Networking for your start-up requires you as an Entrepreneur to be confident, vocal and able to relate with people. It’s about being able to convince people that you are good at what you do, that what you do is great and they should be interested in what you have to offer. Picking who to network with is a whole different subject and that depends on you and your business, but it’s important that you start networking early on and do it right. It raises awareness for your venture, it helps you build up a potential customer base, mentors and even potential investors.

Here are some idea on how you can network early and effectively

1.) Set up a temporary welcome page on the internet while building. Here’s an idea that alot of start-up have employed recently and it works like a charm. Instead on being offline and completely behind the scenes while building your start-up, how about letting people know about you during this time? how about giving people the gist behind your business and getting them excited about it? The trick is to set up your domain name, put up a page that welcomes people, tell them what you are building, when you will go live and offer an opt-in e-mailing list if they want to be updated with news about the startup. It will surprise you how many people sign-up, boosting your potential customer pool even before you launch.

2.) Go to the After parties of events you can’t afford. I watched a recent presentation by Kevin Rose at the FOWA ‘09 in London and this was one of the points he made that I could totally relate to. Kevin is a guy I completely respect, he’s very daring, does things people consider against the norm and it always works out for him. For those who don’t know him, Kevin is founder of Digg and wefollow. Like me, many young entrepreneur know that we should be interacting with the likes of Chris Sacca, Ashton Kutcher, Dave McClure, Ron Conway etc… but the only way we could get to reach and pitch these people is at start-up events or investor conferences. The problem is though, it could cost up to $5,000 to get in. Step up After party. They are cheaper, easier to get in (you can volunteer to help on the night) and are more relaxed. Just remember to have a demo of your startup handy. Visuals work better than words, ask Aaron Patzer.  After spending several hours per day for 6 months building Mint.com, he embarked on a networking campaign. He got turned down by virtually everyone until he pitched a partner at First Round Capital outside a Networking event in 2006.  “I had a server running on a laptop in the trunk of my car,” Patzer says. “He waited a couple of minutes. I ran out and got the laptop and fired up a demo.” The rest is history.

3.) Exploit the Social Media channels. With Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo and other social networks available these days, it’s easy to build a brand and build a following for it. Find people who can help you realize your start-up dreams and start connecting with them. Share information about your business, tell the world what’s new and what’s going on in your community. Follow/friend/interact with VCs, potential mentors, other entrepreneurs or anyone who indicates interest in your niche. In time, you will have a substantial network of people for your start-up. The means when you launch, you will lauch with lots of users versus no one if you are quiet during your building period.

4.) Foster relationships with Journalists and Media. Take the opportunity to build relationships with people that can put your start-up in the public eye. A lot of journalists and press people have blogs these days, are on twitter and it doesn’t harm to leave a comment here, retweet there and interact all over. By building a relationship with them you are improving your chances of getting a positive response when you ask for a favor. Take advantage of whatever you get; if you don’t shoot, you will not score.

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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.

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.

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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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This is a post I have been working on for quite a few weeks now and only just concluded that it’s got enough information and ready to be shared. Each day I stumble on myriads of blog posts about how to succeed in business or how start-ups succeed, I rarely see people talking about failure in start-ups and how to avoid it. Failure is hard, it is exceeding difficult to bare. However, it is also a state we all find ourselves in at some stage in our lives. If you ever find yourself in this state, just make sure you learn from the experience and use it to better yourself.

“A failure is a man who has blundered but is not capable of cashing in on the experience” – Elbert Hubbard

A start-up is like any other endeavor in life, you either succeed or you fail. I have seen and read several stories recently about failed companies and all that has inspired me to put together the most popular reasons why startups fail.

When one builds a start-up, it is (usually) because the person has found a hole in the market. He has found that the market demands a certain product that is either not yet available or is available but in a way that doesn’t completely satisfy the people. I have found that most start-ups that failed to get off the ground did so for practicing the opposite of this. This culminates in my first point.

Supplying what wasn’t demanded.

I find that majority of start-ups that never failed to cut it ignored the number one principle for whatever reason. People only pay for what they want. Many entrepreneurs believe they can come in and “create a niche” out of nothing or spark demand by putting a product out there. There are certainly times when this will work but most times it doesn’t. You will end up investing money and time into creating this product that doesn’t appeal to people hence killing your business.

When Apple came up with iPods, it was because people needed a way of carrying music around easily. Music was already there, and people wanted a way to have their music with them when they are outdoors, indoors and on the move. The existing means were chunky and unattractive. See that was the demand and Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. was kind enough to order John Rubinstein to build us one.

Having a bad team at the helm.

I once heard at a start-up convention that it was a terrible idea for one person to start a company by himself. The speaker went on to say it was a huge red flag and can be interpreted as saying the founder couldn’t convince anyone to partner up with him maybe because the idea was garbage or the founder has a questionable personality. I agree to an extent that it is always good to have partners. That way there will be people you can share ideas with, brainstorm if you are not so sure about a next move, lift you up when the blues are catching up with you and so forth. But I don’t necessarily agree that it could mean failure for you. What I do think will bring failure is having the wrong people building and running the start-up. It could be one person or 10 people, but if they are not right for the task for whatever reason, you will run into problems.

Sacrificing Value for Profit.

The purpose of building a start-up is to make profit. People might beat around the bush and say oh, I wanted to create something people really needed and make life easier for us all, not so much for the money. I don’t like when people say that. Yes maybe you did want to make life easier for everyone but you decided to patent and market it because you wanted to make money off this “help” you are giving people.

Regardless of how much you itch for profit, make sure you don’t maximize it at the expense of the long term value. You want your customers to believe in you to give them the best value for their dollar. It’s not too farfetched that there are entrepreneurs who use cheaper raw material to build a product because it increases their profit but in so doing sacrificed the quality of the product and the trust of their customers. Eventually they will realize that someone out there makes the same product with better value for the same cost, and they will stop patronizing you. So, advice:  don’t jeopardize long term value for immediate profit. It will kill your start-up

Poor Funding.

This is a popular one. Many times I close my eyes and just imagine how many great ideas are still only ideas or prototypes because the founders cannot secure enough cash to make a full functioning product. There must be loads of them. It is important that Entrepreneurs do extensive research into the several methods of getting early investments before they start building. When you have limited budget, it could lead to a limited product. It could lead to the entrepreneur cutting back on a number of features or parts of the start-up that are critical to its survival. There are several ways to go about seeking funds for a start-up but keep in mind that it takes a great product, a great team and a great bit of luck to actually get the right amount of funding.

Unfavorable Location.

When Y combinator was built, they did so with the idea of putting founders in a place that will favor their growth and keep them away from distractions. When building a start-up it’s a good idea to be in a place where the market for your product is highest and where the industry has its best players in. Why do you think silicon valley is home to most web startups in America? It’s because the gurus are there, that’s where investors, experts who know the A-Z of the web startup industry move themselves to. They want to be around likeminded people who will keep inspiring them.

Bad Marketing.

If you build the world’s greatest product and no one knows about it, then you will fail. Marketing is absolutely critical to the success of a start-up and no wonder most start-ups spend a huge chuck of their funds on spreading the word. Someone once told me that “if you build a great product, people will come”. I completely disagree. They might come but like 10years later and you will probably have failed 9 years before that anyway. Key to a successful startup is the marketing plan. You must know which target market will purchase your product and come up with a brilliant way of getting the word across to them. If you don’t, chances are that ‘It’s a wrap’!

There are certainly several other reasons why start-ups fail, here are just the most popular ones I have noticed and wanted to share. If you do know any others, kindly share with the rest of us.

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.

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I recently came across this website called IdealPitch and thought I needed to share with other entrepreneurs. I am personally not so big on VCs but if you’ve been involved in a start-up in the past, you know that there comes a time when you really do need funds from an external source. I am almost at that stage and so I set out to look for ways of getting money from Angel Investors and funding groups. That’s when I discovered IdealPitch.

The website is pretty user friendly and easy to navigate. Its premise is this, get several entrepreneurs with innovative ideas on the same platform with suitable Investors and let them interact. Simple as that. The service lets you create a user account as either an Entrepreneur or as an Investor, describe yourself a little and start looking for matches. Entrepreneurs are allowed to give a brief pitch of about one paragraph or two explaining what they are looking for, occupation, expected ROI and so forth, while Investors are also allowed to do the same.

I particularly like this service because of how easy it is to use. It is sort of a very basic social networking site for people involved or looking to be involved in start-ups. I definitely encourage everyone to check it out. They are growing fast and have a vast collection of Entrepreneurs and Investors already patronizing them.

IdealPitch blogs here

IdealPitch is also on Twitter

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I was just thinking about the things that really fire up young entrepreneurs these days and decided to pen down a few. There are quite a few things that certainly warm my heart as a gen y entrepreneur and I don’t think it much different with others that fall into this category. What gets a young entrepreneur going? What’s the young entrepreneur’s kryptonite? I decided to get on Twitter, Facebook and some other social networks and find out if other people’s reasoning was similar to mine and most of the replies I got were pretty much the same.

Tech savvy people and environment: The millennial entrepreneur, actually, the typical gen y-er is well vast in most things tech related. These days most young people are walking around with cool gadgets and working daily tasks with tools that the older population are probably not so familiar with. The typical gen y entrepreneur believes he/she will relate easily with a tech savvy person and they will have things in common, so they are easily drawn to each other. Technology drives business in the world we currently live in, so when we discover people who appreciate it as much as we do, we immediately feel this North pole-South pole attraction.

Socially mindful people and environment: So New media and social networking is the big thing on the internet now and gen y-ers are in the middle of it all. This generation grew up in the middle of the buzz so it’s sort of customary for us to carry on with our lives on these channels. If you utilize these social media and just carry on with these tools, we definitely have a soft spot for you.

Those who carry around Tim Ferriss’ “The 4-hour workweek”: It’s just the way it is. I get a lot of stick from people when I say the typical gen y entrepreneur would rather have his day very short and chill for the rest of it than wake up at 7a.m and be at work till 6p.m. I am not saying millennial entrepreneurs are lazy, but we kind of think people like Markus Frind rock! I mean the lad works 1hr/ day and his company’s average annual revenue is $10million. These are the sort of people we draw inspiration from, so if you are down with these methods, then we are down with you.

Cheap stuff: I know everyone likes being prudent with funds, but millennials are especially careful. Young entrepreneurs are very financially intelligent and have grown up reading books and blogs detailing how to retire rich and how to stay away from spending money on things they can get for free. The typical millennial entrepreneur is not always keen to sign up for Adwords, he/she will much rather look for channels where they won’t have to spend a dime. Here are some things you will see:  (a)We will create a Facebook fan page and invite all our friends to join, then ask these friends to invite their other friends and so forth. We will then send message after message until we reach out to enough people. (b) We will get on Twitter and make so much noise that we are hard to ignore…the point of the whole thing.  (c.) We will walk up to people on the streets and try to charm these innocent people into patronizing us and our service. E.t.c.

Believe it or not, we will rather go through all these stressful situations than shell out hard earned bills. It’s just the way we are wired; cheap stuff puts a smile on our faces.

Independence: In case you didn’t know, gen y entrepreneurs don’t like being told what to do without having us understand why we are doing it. There’s a difference between being stubborn and being genuinely inquisitive. Most gen y entrepreneurs are the latter. I personally like to take advice from people especially those who are more experienced in my field, after all they have been through what I am currently going through, so I would expect them to know more. However, millennial entrepreneurs don’t derive joy from just the monetary reward of doing something, we get our thrill from learning something new and understanding why we are having to do what we do. While we do take advice and other people’s opinions, we are usually self-directed and we like to call the shots.

The smart and the Innovative: Gen Y entrepreneurs are suckers for new information! If you are one of those with something novel to share, you will get us going. I like listening to people, I believe everyone has something good to share and I find myself constantly getting drawn to those people who think out of the box and whose concepts are somewhat controversial. I am sure this is not something only I suffer from. We like to learn, so if you have something innovative to say, you are a winner in our eyes.

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