ShareThis To Acquire fellow Widget Maker madKast for and undisclosed amount. Reports are sparse at this point, but madKast has amassed $300,000 from angels verse a $15 Million infusion ShareThis has garnered.
If you haven’t noticed ShareThis has been at the base of every post on StartupAddict Musings for the last 6 months or so. It truly is a great service and with the madKast team and IM and email share functionality the synergy is definitely there. Chalk two up for the startup good guys….a cool startup acquiring a cool startup.
If you’re trying to decide on a Franchising startup, you may want to consider focusing a business model aimed at baby boomers. Fitness centers, spas, senior care services and coffee shops are among the leading franchises. If you are an entrepreneur that is industry agnostic and just want to make money then consider the fact that a baby boomer retires every 16 seconds, talk about a built-in customer base. Even homebuilders have catered their inventories to Boomers to help insulate against the busted real estate market.
A quick look at the demographic trends shows why senior service franchises are so popular. By 2010, one in five Americans will be considered “senior,” and the number of Americans over the age of 65 will grow to 53 million by 2020. Moreover, average life expectancy has increased 15 years since the Social Security system was established in the 1930s.
Franchising comprises 10% of the private sector in the United States and will continue to blow full steam ahead in the boomer demographic. Be sure your business plan reflects the appropriate geography for the boomer demographic. Destinations like Fort Collins, CO and numerous cities in North Carolina have enjoyed steady growth.
Be sure to take a look at the top 10 investments to capture the baby boomer demographic as well.
Crowdfusion is on the move with $3 Million in the coffers from the likes of Marc Andreessen, Velocity Interactive Group and Greycroft Partners. The startup is attempting to be the next standard for “web publishing” (Think what wordpress did for blogging). There is a tremendous amount of buzz on this startup particularly because Andreeseen is involved. If you haven’t noticed his past track record, he basically has the midas touch. After signing up at the holder teaser page Crowdfusion relinquished this information:
Crowd Fusion’s mission is to revolutionize online publishing with a
unique combination of technology and strategy. Our platform is
engineered to help position topic-focused publications as the leaders
in their verticals by providing publishing engines for the entire web
content lifecycle.
The Crowd Fusion’s infrastructure and data-mining functionality equip
publishers with the ability to automatically scale as demand
increases. We provide a set of easy-to-use and dynamic tools that
accommodate a publisher’s needs as they arise.
The jargon laden business model sounds like the executive summaries I use to spew in my VC wars. What I find interesting is buddypress (a social version of wordpress) is right around the corner and with a 4 million plus built in audience. Matthew Mullenweg the founding developer of wordpress stated the following on his blog.
It’s clear that the future is social. Connections are key. WordPress MU is a platform which has shown itself to be able to operate at Internet-scale and with BuddyPress we can make it friendlier. Someday, perhaps, the world will have a truly Free and Open Source alternative to the walled gardens and open-only-in-API platforms that currently dominate our social landscape
As this category of more “integrated social publishing” heats up BuddyPress, Crowdfusion and many others are going to wage war on simplicity, monetization and plug&play for the little publisher who could.
The purpose of the case study was to test whether Doba is worth the upfront fee and/or monthly investment for an entrepreneur looking to cut their teeth in ecommerce via wholesale drop shipping.
Pros
Access to thousands of products priced below retail and you never handle inventory. I should point out this can happen with any reputable drop shipping company eliminating a competitive advantage for Doba.
Extremely large product selection. One-stop shop.
Cons
The push to marketplace feature (integrated instant push out to Ebay) works effectively but is useless because of the deep discount mentality ebayers are so typical for. Instead of Ebay focus on more profitable outlets that will garner a higher sale price but still be below retail. Go for more “retail” type outlets like Amazon, Craigslist, overstock, epier or an Adwords approach via niche keywords.
The so-so wholesale rate coupled with a flat Doba fee (usually $2.50) and a high shipping fee leaves a less than desirable profit margin for the ecommerce entrepreneur in most bargain outlets with Doba products.
A few recommendations I would throw out would be the following:
If you have experience in web development you should grab an open source solutions like ubercart (especially as part of Drupal) or Oscommerce. Take a solid month or two to build out your ecommerce solution and use Doba’s product line to fill your product coffers. Please note, whatever solution you choose CSV or XML import of the Doba catalog is paramount or you will be spending the next three years filling your ecommerce database one Doba product at a time.
If you are less savvy at web development then go for a popular licensed or hosted ecommerce solution like cubecart, agora cart pro or yahoo small business setup. All the tools will be built in for the novice and worth the investment.
When you decide on your ecommerce solution dropshippers can be used to flesh out your product lines. Shopster is another popular competitor to Doba. If you want to get more of a direct relationship with wholesalers rather than middle men like Doba and Shopster than think about visiting Worldwide brands. Also peruse through this small biz article.
In summary:
Doba is far from the panacea for a drop shipping startup especially for the “get rich” entrepreneur looking to kick back, never touch a product and clear 20% every sale on Ebay. Doba should certainly be considered for any drop shipping strategy but only in conjunction with an exclusive ecommerce store promoting successfully researched niche products.
For the average Joe, skip Doba’s upfront fees and parlay the money into an ecommerce website along with a healthy SEO campaign. When you get some real traffic you can always consider adding Doba. Like so many other startups the real success will come from research, elbow grease, passion and a little luck.
Cuil is a new search kid on the block and supposedly the next Google Killer. The founders of Cuil, pronounced cool, (actually Gaelic for knowledge) have one good reason to tout their startup search engine is better than Google….they use to work there! Tom Costello and Anna Patterson are the husband and wife team behind Cuil.
Google acquired the technology behind Anna Patterson’s last search engine four years ago. She spent two years at Google after that before leaving the company, gradually constructing Cuil along with a few former Google engineers.
It makes you wonder if the former engineers fast-tracked the building of Cuil after Google gobbled up DoubleClick and asked certain employees “Did you sign the non-compete” —“great, you’re fired”. That tends to put a strain on the “Don’t be Evil campaign”.
So what makes cuil so cool?
1. Voracious indexing - over 121 billion pages indexed and Cuil is not stopping until entire web is indexed.
2. Richer Web 2.0 type display results with associated imagery and social features.
3. Cuil presents searchers with content-based results, not just popular ones
4. A nice ajax search box that finishes search terms as you type.
So is the Cuil algorithm superior to Google when it comes to indexing the monsterous web? I may be premature in saying this but…No. I am not formally schooled in search tactics such as relevancy and search architecture but I can determine a good search result when I see one. Let’s take a look between Cuil and Google for the search term “startup addict”
(yes, I’m vain, like the rest of the world).
Google is far more relevant for the term. The startupaddict.com (the social network) is #1 with a popular blog post being number #2. You continue down the page and Google has place carefully weighted results appropriately.
Cuil decided to show “aggregators”, “blog networks” and a “few poachers”. As well as a technorati search, and user-submitted video site. I also noticed bogus imagery associated with some results. It’s nice to have an image with text results, but it should be relevant. It appears cool is going over wrappers of content rather than the actual meat and source of the content.
For the sake of disclosure, I did 5 more searches and felt Google’s algorithm to be superior. All in all, I do like Cuil, although monetizing looks like an issue unless the company goes to a column format of sponsored results.
Cuil received series A funding from Tugboat Ventures and Greylock Partners, and series B funding from Madrone Capital Partners. Monetizing the site may not be the goal at all because Cuil smells like a buy-out rather than a next-generation search engine. Three major VC’s threw hefty money in a market place that is dominated by one major player and billions in the piggybank. Can you say exit strategy….if you can’t Microsoft can.
If your searching for your next startup idea or attempting to capitalize on trends, Paul Graham from YCombinator came up with a nice top 30 ideas he would be willing to fund.
1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom.
2. Simplified browsing.
3. New news.
4. Outsourced IT.
5. Enterprise software 2.0.
6. More variants of CRM.
7. Something your company needs that doesn’t exist.
8. Dating.
9. Photo/video sharing services.
10. Auctions.
11. Web Office apps.
12. Fix advertising.
13. Online learning.
14. Tools for measurement.
15. Off the shelf security.
16. A form of search that depends on design.
17. New payment methods.
18. The WebOS.
19. Application and/or data hosting.
20. Shopping guides.
21. Finance software for individuals and small businesses.
22. A web-based Excel/database hybrid.
23. More open alternatives to Wikipedia.
24. A buffer against bad customer service.
25. A Craigslist competitor.
26. Better video chat.
27. Hardware/software hybrids.
28. Fixing email overload.
29. Easy site builders for specific markets.
30. Startups for startups.
* Full descriptions are over at Ycombinator.
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” -Theodore Roosevelt
Overhead is the 600lb gorilla you have to reduce to a chimpanzee. In order to cut business overhead and run a healthy business you need to know your fixed and variable costs. There are two fundamental steps that can be taken to improve profitability in this category. The first is fixed cost, these are payments you have to make each week and month and have very little control over. However, there may be wiggle room in your fixed costs such as switching Internet providers or outsourcing certain tasks. Most of the fixed costs will be set in stone like a 20-year business lease etc. The bottom line is too lower your overhead by streamlining and reducing your fixed costs. The second step is reducing your variable costs, such as discretionary purchases the business makes. If you are a retail store hard up for cash, do you really need to make a capital investment for a building exterior face-lift or does it make more financial sense to choose advertising and customer reward programs instead. These variable costs will make or break a company and are decisions astute managers and owners are faced with on a daily basis.
Time allocation toward earning money.
There are 8 to 10 hours in a normal business day and if you spend six hours doing administrative work and operations support, where is new business revenue coming from? The best business advice I ever received from a mentor was “lead with your marketing foot”. If you want to improve business profitability, than six hours of your work-day should be allocated to bringing in new and repeat business. If you’re good at admin and operations than hire out marketing and sales. If your forte is marketing and sales than hire out admin and operations. Whatever your flavor make sure you appropriately allocate your time and personnel to where the revenue truly comes from. The rest is just “busy work”. Who cares if your busy….are you making any money?
Kill unprofitable products or services
Businesses of all sizes struggle with divisions, products or services that are not profitable or border-line break even. Usually, these products and services stay in existence because the more lucrative products subsidize the laggard services. Improving business profitability is learning to identify and cut-loose the unprofitable products and services. Then reallocate the resources of the dying product or service into a profitable division. In some cases ending the product or services is inevitable because it is a monetary disaster, never fall victim to your own pride, just end it and move on.
Regardless of your business size, following these three fundamental steps is the yellow brick road to improving business profitability and efficiency. Good Luck and- Dream Big * Be Great.
For all you entrepreneurs looking to incorporate video in your websites or blogs, a new CDN (content distribution network) known as Magnify might be the answer. Magnify enables the following:
• Enterprise strength video discovery
• Full suite of social media tools
• Automated video relevance
• Advertiser safe curation
• Free upload, hosting, and page layout
The social media features for building a community around your video is a powerful feature for this self-service CDN. In addition, Magnify allows you to monetize your hard work and community of users with integrated advertising. The program is called adshare and Magnify’s website states the following:
With AdShare, you simply put your own ad network tags into the Magnify.net pages, and you’ll get 50% of the ad impressions delivered directly to your ad network. No new accounts to set up, no waiting for a “rev share” check.
Magnify is aimed at web publishers and video bloggers and delivers relevant content to your audience on the cheap. Mashable stated the following:
Magnify is really targeting small- to medium-sized businesses with the new CDN offering, giving a self-service option where brands can push their own content. As this could very well be marketing video material, it offers a central place to upload videos with more control options for advertising and delivery.
Magnify has a solid business model in a high growth video market.
Vermont my neighbor state is known for being a little different and you can add requirements for Limited Liability Company formation to the list. Apparently on June 6th a bill was signed that will no longer require LLCs to have a physical address (in Vermont anyway). This trumps Delaware in startup friendly law and will enable Internet startups to flourish by existing only virtually if so chosen.
Unfortunately, this will probably allow fraudulent companies to flourish as well. However, the bill does have merit in the Internet age with companies being created as holding companies for blogs or other web-based use.
Every Entrepreneur needs to master the ever evolving and elusive viral marketing secrets that turn startups into legends. First, lets make sure we are all on the same page in our terminology. Wikipedia has one of the best technical definitions of Viral Marketing:
Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.
[1] Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily.
[2] Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages. The basic form of viral marketing is not infinitely sustainable.
Now that we all know what the real definition of viral marketing is lets explore some of the techniques. Web Marketing today-Wilsonweb is a great resource for garnering attention for your startup. Be sure to to read the in depth article for the six viral marketing techniques.
1. Gives away valuable products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others’ resources
Although, be warned, viral marketing isn’t always a rosy picture. Inc. has some interesting examples of Viral Marketing campaigns that take more effort than is probably worth. In other words, hidden costs to put on a viral marketing campaign can make it more expensive than originally intended for marketers.
Vibe Media’s “Vibe Verses” campaign, which invited users to post, share, and rate rap lyrics online. A winner was picked by user vote, and won a prize. The campaign went viral in 36 days and drew tons of traffic to the site, making it profitable. But along the way, Vibe reported there were many efforts to game the vote, which made the campaign harder to organize and administer than they had expected.
