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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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