The Texas Startup Blog has a great series of posts describing how they’re taking an idea from a cocktail napkin and putting into the real world. They’ve come up with a great idea. It’s a edgeio type concept “resumes on the edge”. You can read about the whole thing via the links below.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
All

technorati tags: startup, resume, microformat, alexandermuse

A few weeks a go Josh Kopelman wrote a really popular post on his blog that expressed his concerns about web 2.0 entrepreneurs marketing to too small of an audience.

”A good review in Techcrunch can get a company their first 5-25K beta users very quickly. However, I’d strongly caution entrepreneurs from taking their initial consumer adoption metrics and extrapolating them too far into the future. I believe startups will find it difficult to cross the “Techcrunch chasm” between the Web 2.0 geeks and Mainstreet USA.“

Techcrunch has over 50k readers and he thinks that those 50k + readers are not a “mainstream America audience”. Well, he’s partially right. Those 50k + readers are not your typical casual internet user. That audience, is what I would call, power internet users and early adopters. They are the people who can make or break a product. They are also the best beta test audience, for several reasons, mostly because they are willing to give quality feedback. But, the most important attribute of that groups is that they are influencers. That makes them a very important group of people to market to. If you’re building a new web product or service, that potentially, will have “main stream” appeal, but you don’t have a budget to “blow it out” from the beginning. Then, why not market to that Techcrunch group for a lot less dollars. If you have a good product, they will evangelize for you. If your product is not so good they’ll tell you that also. Either way, I think the best way to launch your new web product is to market to that group of 50k + users. They will add value to your product or service.

technorati tags: marketing, startup, techcrunch, redeyevc, joshkopelman

I was going through some of my old business plans today and was shocked and amazed of how much things have changed in the web world. One section of my business plan caught my attention more than others; Technology. You can read it below.
———————————————
3.4 Technology
Our technology investments will be concentrated in four areas, ERP systems for e-commerce fulfillment and business automation, CRM for customer relationship management, profiling, and site customization, site hosting, and Web Design/Development.

Our first phase ERP and CRM technologies are currently being implemented by eQuarius, Inc. in Seattle, Washington. The platforms for ERP and CRM are Great Plains and Onyx respectively. EQuarius is one of the top e-business implementers of both Onyx and the Great Plains products in the country. Both Great Plains and Onyx lie on top of the Windows NT operating system, and both software vendors have very strong ties with Microsoft. The site itself will be hosted on Microsoft’s Site Server platform. Equarius has conducted many successful similar implementations, and the risk of cost overruns due to technical snags is minimal.

The site and all critical applications will be hosted by Futurelink Corporation of Irvine, California. Futurelink will be responsible for all hardware, backups, security, upgrades, and ensuring the proper functioning of all applications. They will maintain a redundant copy of the site at another one of their hosting facilities in Canada. In the event that local conditions have a significant impact on the performance of the California site, the Canadian site will act as a backup.

Our first phase architecture will consist of a hybrid 2-tier/N-tier architecture. Great Plains has developed a series of COM objects enable a robust and cost-effective 2-tier implementation with Site Server. Our initial implementation of Great Plains will make use of these standard objects. Equarius will build an middle tier on the front end of Onyx as part of the Phase I project. Phase II will expand this middle tier to Great Plains. The creation of a comprehensive middle tier reduces the likelihood of site downtime, eases the integration with drop-shippers’ systems and other systems, and speeds up the response time from the consumer’s perspective. Assuming adequate financing, we expect to have this tier in place and tested prior to the Christmas shopping season. We estimate that the total cost for implementing Phase II will range between $500,000 and $700,000. This includes approximately $200,000 for integrating suppliers’ warehouses. This will cover the integration of anywhere from 2-7 warehouses, depending on the state of their existing systems.
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This is definitely one of those hindsight things. If I knew then what I know now, well, let’s just say, I would have done things a whole hell of a lot differently. What were we thinking; ERP, CRM, N-tier architecture. Even then we could have gotten by with much, much less. Today, I could certainly build a robust e-commerce (front and back end) web site for next to nothing. Live and learn.

technorati tags: erp, crm, ecommerce, greatplains, onyx

I got my copy of the June issue of Business 2.0 yesterday. On the cover is a big teaser pic for their feature article, written by Michale V. Copeland and Om Malik. How to build a bullet proof startup. With the exception of a few, there are no bullet proof startups. Don’t get me wrong, the article has some solid advice and um, cool illustrations. I think they had the wrong approach when writing the article. Lots of companies don’t start with VC money these days and most sure as hell don’t have $500k to $1M to develop a beta product. As I’ve written in other posts, the tools are available now that will allow you to start a legitimate company with much less capital than Business 2.0 trys to tell you.

You can read more at the following:
Business 2.0
GigaOm
SignalVsNoise

technorati tags: startup, web2.0, CEO, business2.0

MSN Money has a really good article on entrepreneurship for young entrepreneur. Good stuff, well worth the read. You can check it out here.

technorati tags: entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, msn

The Hardest Lessons for Startups to learn

Paul Graham has posted a really cool list of advice for startups. Below are some of my favorite ones. Go to PaulGraham.com to check out the entire list.

2. Keep Pumping Out Features.

Of course, “release early” has a second component, without which it would be bad advice. If you’re going to start with something that doesn’t do much, you better improve it fast.

4. Fear the Right Things.

Another thing I find myself saying a lot is “don’t worry.” Actually, it’s more often “don’t worry about this; worry about that instead.” Startups are right to be paranoid, but they sometimes fear the wrong things.

7.Don’t Get Your Hopes Up.

This is another one I’ve been repeating since long before Y Combinator. It was practically the corporate motto at Viaweb.

Startup founders are naturally optimistic. They wouldn’t do it otherwise. But you should treat your optimism the way you’d treat the core of a nuclear reactor: as a source of power that’s also very dangerous. You have to build a shield around it, or it will fry you.

technorati tags: startup, cpaulgraham.com

This is a great read from Marc Hedlund.

I started out this year’s talk with a set of “proverbs” I’ve collected or thought up over the years. I liked the format of a Go book I recently read, called (not surprisingly!) “Proverbs,” and decided to adopt it for the talk. These are basically little nuggets of wisdom for bite-sized nutrition.

Go read Entrepreneurial Proverbs

technorati tags: o’reilly, marc hedlund, ceo, entrepreneur

Mark Cuban has made is Power Point slides available for public consumption. Actually, it’s his speeches from 1999. In his words:

I doubt they will be as entertaining to others as they were to me, but heck, you never know. Flashbacks can be fun

Check them out here.
By the way, his stuff is downloadable via Box.net, which I’ll be doing a profile on next week.

technorati tags: mark+cuban, blogmaverick, box.net, keynote, dallas

Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte from thisweekintech have a good PodCast interview with Alex Bard of Goowy.com. Go check it out. Goowy has some cool new features coming soon.

I did a couple of posts previously, about Goowy, here and here.

technorati tags: goowy, Leo+Laporte, thisweekintech, gui, email

Tom Coates has posted a great slide show presentation from his “Future of Wep Apps” presentation. Go check it out.

technorati tags: plasticbag.org, tom+coates, web+apps