After 4 weeks of work and planning, I finally released my latest project today, 15th August to the public. As expected, it is only a partial beta release. I say ‘partial beta release’ because there’s a lot of growth space for the project and many things I plan to add. Ok back to the basics, I hadn’t made much noise about Causerific prior to today, not because I wanted to keep it from people but primarily because I needed to focus on making it simple, building it right and getting it to the point where I thought it was worth sharing.

My idea for Causerific is simple: A platform for anyone who needs help, to come share this need with the world and find people who are willing/able to help. With Causerific, I want people to be able to post any “need” whatsoever and get it out there to the world. With that in mind, I made it possible for people to come in and donate money to a good cause or donate their time (by physically offering hep). Over time, there will be other ways people will be looking to offer help and ways to track these offerings. That’s the focus of the next update.

To create a cause you must sign up/in. I have tried to make the process as simple as possible and feedback/suggestion is very welcome. A key component of the site is the location and maps feature. With this feature, you can check in at your current location and find causes close to where you are. Some causes are listed as ‘global’ and others as ‘local’.

In conclusion, Causerific is simply a platform to connect people and so it is your important responsibility to verify the validity of causes before you donate time, donate money or even recommend it to people. Read the reviews, call the phone number listed or email the cause creator to find out how valid this cause is. At the moment, Causerific doesn’t verify, it is something we have in the works though. I certainly hope you enjoy using Causerific and find a way of making a difference in the world.

Causerific is on Twitter and Facebook.

E-mail: info (at) causerific.com

Tolu Babalola.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leaguescape, a recently launched poker-modeled Fantasy Sports site is trying to provide the one-stop shop for all things betting on Fantasy Sports. Following the online poker business model, Leaguescape is trying to revolutionize the Fantasy Sports industry as PartyPoker did poker.

In 2003, an accountant from Tennessee turned a $39 investment into $2.5 million. How did he do that? Chris Moneymaker became the first World Series of Poker Champion (WSOP) in tournament history to originally qualify from playing the online version of the game. Moneymaker’s remarkable victory sparked a realization that people could make more money sitting at home and becoming a professional poker player rather than going to work.  In ‘03, there were 839 entrants into the WSOP. In 2004, only one year later, the number tripled to 2,576 and in 2006, the entrant field was over ten times larger at an astonishing number of 8,773.

Likewise, it’s estimated by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association that nearly 30 million people play fantasy sports in North America alone. This figure has been growing at 15% a year and seems to be one big event away from exploding into every living room and office in the US – where fantasy football alone has an estimated $1.1 billion a week in lost productivity for employers. For the fantasy sports industry, these numbers mean big business, as Fantasy Sports is estimated to have a $3–$4 Billion annual economic impact across the sports industry overall. So with a “Moneymaker Effect,” could Fantasy Sports explode even further in the United States and around the world? It’s possible, and it helps that Fantasy Sports are exempt from the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), as it deems Fantasy Sports a skill game, providing a safe marketplace for Fantasy Sports “betting.” The average Fantasy Sports player spends about $500 a year, and with continued growth and a possible boom, the industry could continue to expand.

Leaguescape gives you ultimate freedom in customizing the leagues size, ensures your league is filled with paid players, and eases payments by digitizing them. Leaguescape also offers unique salary cap daily games where users draft a team within a salary cap and your players compete against another player’s team each day.

Leaguescape completely follows the poker model; meaning they allow play money which can be exchanged for real money, player points, reward systems (which can be exchanged for money), plan to offer rewards for the top performing player per sport, and unique promotions such as their 100% deposit bonus and $10 free signup bonus. Leaguescape believes that Fantasy Sport leagues don’t need to be filled with friends; rather they encourage playing with other unknown players, just as online poker does.

Leaguescape’s business model and fees are structured after online poker as well. A tournament in online poker has a 10% fee associated with the buy-in and it usually lasts 30 minutes to several hours. Leaguescape has the same 10% fee for each wager in its season long games, which last 4-6 months depending on the sport. For daily games, Leaguescape has lowered its fee to just 5%. Leaguescape applies a proven business model to an emerging Fantasy Sports industry; one that could spark an industry revolution.

Leaguescape is on Twitter

Chatroulette, for those who don’t know is the webcam network that lets you see and chat with complete strangers picked at random. It is the new web phenom and everyone is talking about it, from CNN to hallways in high-schools around the country. It is very easy to use the service, simply get on the site, activate your mic/cam and click next until you find someone you wish to chat to. Oh and one more thing, be prepared to encounter a host of disturbing images especially masturbating pervs. Of more interest to me is the fact that the service was developed by a 17yr old Russian school kid as a way to pass time with mates. Even he has no idea how the service has grown so much into some web heavy weight people can’t seem to get enough of.

While the idea itself seems pretty genius and really captivating, it’s the quantity of lewdness that turns people off. The lewdness is so much that you will certainly have a scarred mind at the end of your chatroulette experience. A friend of mine once described it as Russian roulette but with genitals rather than bullets. It’s almost impossible to get through 10 people without running into a perv! It’s that terrible. Even the founder, Andrey Ternovskiy, understands that his little project turned web phenom might be under threat of fizzling out should he not do something to stop the trend. But how can you fully get rid of these pervs? It remains to be seen what measures he will take.

On the other hand, Chatroulette does seem to be a brilliant little startup. It is very addicting and one can’t seem to stay away. The premise is that you get a random stranger in your screen everytime you hit next. It could be a guy, a girl or some weird picture/video playing. Either way, you don’t get to pick who you will chat to. The hype building around this little project hasn’t gone unnoticed however, investors are already looking to throw some money into the project and make it even bigger. I am anxious to see where they go from here with chatroulette, even though it shows traits of brilliance, it is still terribly marred and that could limit or completely halt its growth.

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While there’s no shortage of blog platforms out there on the market, most of them are basically a re-hash of the same old things. If you want simple blogging, options exist, but they are usually quite limited in what they let users do.

ReachBy.com is a simple blogging platform with some new and unique advantages that make it a solid startup. After chatting a bit with Tolu, we came to think that the readers of Generation-Y Startup might be interested in hearing about it.

A beta version of ReachBy was recently released. Here are some reasons why we think it has a bright future ahead of it.

Reaches a Wide Market

ReachBy provides features for new bloggers and savvy pros alike.

For those new to blogging, a ReachBy “Stream”, as they’re called, is a compelling place to start an adventure into the blogosphere.

We know that setting up and designing a blog is confusing for many people new to the practice. People simply don’t want to invest time or money into starting a blog, especially when they don’t know if they’re going to stick with it. A ReachBy Stream makes it easy. You just sign up for an account and then you’re basically ready to go. You can upload your avatar and a background picture to customize your Stream, similar to Twitter.

Experienced bloggers might be interested in ReachBy, too, since the dynamic interaction platform allows readers to contribute their own blog posts to a Stream. With this, you can take content contributions from anyone, without having to give them sign-in access to your blog. It’s similar to posting on someone’s Facebook wall. But, in this case, bloggers can take contributions from readers or other writers, then edit the content and post it. Of course, the system also allows readers to comment on posts.

For example, let’s say your favorite rock band is the Kings of Leon and you decide to start a Stream about them. Then readers and other contributers can add updates, performance reviews, post videos, discuss the latest album, etc. Basically, anyone can add to the Stream of content, and you act as editor to make sure all the content is the right fit.

Social Integration

All of the ReachBy pages have social sharing tools embedded — a must have for any great blog platform today, but something that can be too complicated for some people to do on their own.

ReachBy also lets you promote your Twitter or Facebook page, or even other websites and blogs, by adding social icons links to your Stream. We’ve made this easy for anyone to do. Just paste a link and the icons are automatically added.

Because it integrates with social media so well, we think ReachBy can play an in-between role. Meaning, in addition to serving as a full-service blog, it can also act as a place to continue conversations and create connectivity between social media and blogs.

User Centric Approach to Ads

There have been other blogging startups based on interacting communities — like Vox. I was actually a Vox beta tester in ‘06. Vox is a great site, with great designs. It was developed by Six Apart, which is obviously one of the best startups in the past decade, so I’m not out to knock Vox. It was, and still is, a lively, fun community. However, the thing that always bothered me about Vox was that they put ads up all over my content. I had no control over it whatsoever and I began to feel exploited. At least Squidoo shares ad revenue.

ReachBy gives you full control over whether or not ads appear on your Stream. If you do decided to put ads up, guess what? You place them with your own AdSense account. Meaning, if there’s revenue made from ad traffic, you keep all of it. ReachBy places its own ads on some main pages, but it doesn’t touch one penny of income that you might generate from visitors to your Stream.

We think this is a good way to attract and motivate users. We’ve made the process of placing ads on your Stream as simple as possible.

Usefulness

We can think of many ways that experienced bloggers might make use of a ReachBy Stream.

Let’s say you develop an open-source web app or a Wordpress theme, but already have a website with information and download links for your product.

A ReachBy Stream might act as a place to get collective feedback and discuss future enhancements. It can also serve as a location for users to crowdsource solutions and help each other out with answers. Basically, you can use ReachBy as a forum on anything, then link it all back to your home website, Twitter account, and Facebook fan page. This gives you an instant way to provide support and communicate openly with your users, without having to give out your email, invest money, or spend a lot of time developing a wiki or forum on your site. Plus, if your Stream builds an audience, you can capitalize on it with ads. This is a better route than opening a Google or Yahoo discussion group. You have more control and you can make money.

Also, because the ReachBy technology platform was designed to be lightweight and fast, it loads very quickly on mobile devices. If you save a ReachBy Stream as a bookmark on the home screen of your iPhone or iTouch, ReachBy uses the avatar image from the account to automatically generate an icon with that image. Pretty fun.

More Features Coming Soon

Since ReachBy is run by a small nimble team, we’re working to make it even more interactive and dynamic. Some very novel and very cool ideas are being developed, and hopefully, we’ll be able to release them soon.

What Do You Think?

If you have a chance to visit ReachBy.com, we’d love to know what you think of the site and how we might improve it. In fact, we’re looking for beta testers to give us some feedback, so if you have a moment to help us out, we’d love to hear your thoughts. We appreciate any help we can get in our work to make ReachBy better.

I’d also like to thank Tolu for giving us a chance to tell you about ReachBy!

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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Social Media and Web 2.0 has really swept across the internet community like wild fire and the effects it’s had are remarkable. When I decided to start building my start-up, I knew my main obstacle would be the marketing aspect once I am done. This is certainly not because I lack the skills to successfully get the word out, but the resources I will have to work with on my PR and Marketing campaign are very limited. I am bootstrapping and will do so until the I convince the right investors that I am worth their coin. However, the emergence of Social Media has really cut down the costs of most marketing campaigns if you know how to take advantage of it.

When we say Social Media, one word immediately comes to the mind of the young, tech savvy individual – Twitter. Whether you like it or not, Twitter is an amazing platform for people to build and grow relationships. If you are an Entrepreneur and you are good at networking with other people, you can win several thousands of followers just from Twitter alone. On the other hand, there’s a whole lot more to Social Media than just Twitter. Websites like Facebook (0ffering fan pages or company pages), MySpace, Scribd, LinkedIn have all shown potency as a means to reaching a targeted audience.

I first heard the phrase ‘Social Media’ a little over 2 years ago, and have always been fascinated by how people jumped on the bandwagon. We are talking about a network of websites whose premise is to get people to interact with others. It first started off as people staying in touch with their friends and then it grew into getting to interact with friends of friends and so on. Today, the openness and the ease with which people can communicate with other people (friends and strangers) on these platforms have made Social Media Networks a revelation in the world of Marketing.

Three brands that stand out to me when I think about social media and businesses are: Zappos, Ford and Dell. Now you may say these brands are all popular names and it is only natural that people flock towards them. While I agree with that stance, I also still believe it takes some good strategizing to achieve what they have achieved using Social Media.

When I first examined the Ford Brand presence across the social media sphere, I imagined that these networking sites were built for Ford. Ford has taken a few specific networks, focused on them and built a community in each network. They also built a ‘media hub‘ that brings together all their feeds, networks and online presence in one place.  They have used Social Media to handle their PR effectively and this can be observed in how they dealt with the copyright infringement fiasco they dealt months back. Not only can Social Media win you new costumers, it can help you define your public image.

Dell and Zappos have done very well with Twitter especially. They have used this network to develop intimate relationships with their customers, announce new developments, get feedback and so forth. The success of these two companies can only inspire young, new Entrepreneurs like myself. Their stories have taught us the importance of building personal relationships with fans/customer, being open to their needs and being readily available to interact with them.

The moral lesson of this post is just to encourage every new entrepreneur, whether you are still in stealth mode or you have gone live with your product, learn to embrace Social Media. Study some of the success stories of companies on Social Networks and take follow their lead. I understand that not everyone is Social Media savvy and can handle Marketing for a start-up, in those cases you can always outsource. You can also look for firms that are specifically build for this purpose – to market for startups. People like Samir Belwani, Reem Abeidoh, Rebecca Ryckman are all brilliant Social Media Strategists with good experience. Remember that the startup journey is always a lesson, you might learn that you failed or learn that you succeeded, all that matters is that you learn.

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.

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