Buzzlogic ad network is the next generation “conversational ad network”. The company boasts the ability to follow the spread of influence based on a set of keywords and follow the social graph like a virus. According to Venture Beat:
“The company started out as a brand-monitoring service for PR and marketing types who want to keep track of everything being said about their brands, by whom, and how much power the people saying it have on the web. By choosing a set of keywords, users could see where the conversation around any topic started and how it spread.”
I posted about Lotame earlier in the year when they landed series B funding to the tune of $13 million from Emergence Capital, Battery Ventures and Hill Crest Management. Ironically, $13 million (a little more) is what Buzzlogic has been infused with over the last couple years from Adams Capital Management, Transcosmos and Ackerley Partners.
The big difference between Lotame and Buzzlogic is behavioral. Lotame focuses on what behavior a user conducts across one website or widget to the next, whereas Buzzlogic isolates bloggers with the most influence within a market niche and will match advertisers to the blogger for a premium.
Aside from being a very cool concept, there may be some real money to be made here for bloggers. At the very least it is a fresh alternative to adsense with a very unique monetary system….influence.
Being in the construction and real estate industry Biodiesel has come on strong as an alternative energy source. This time last year the general population barely heard of the word. Now, more than ever it is on every companies road map, especially in construction.
There are some misconceptions and myths regarding what biodiesel is and isn’t. Let’s see how you stack up on a few questions that are common fallacies.
Q: Biodiesel has no standard formula. A: False - Biodiesel actually meets the ASTM (American Socitey for Testing Materials) specification.
Q: Biodiesel is too young and has not been tested properly. A: False - Rigorous testing has taken place by Universities and the US Dept of Energy & Agriculture.
Q: Biodiesel is very similar to ethanol. A: False - Ethanol acts as a gasoline additive, whereas biodiesel is derived from chemical processing from plant oils, animal fats etc…
So there you have it Biodiesel demystified, half my readers will think this post is boring, but I wanted to share what will be in heavy equipment by 2012
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.
Lively by Google is a new asocial network that is set in the 3D virtual world, very similiar to second life. The power of lively is that it ties into your Google account. My interest in Lively is how it came in to existence and where it is going from a monetization standpoint. The original concept for lively was created during Google’s famous “20% time”. According o Mashables:
Lively came about during Google’s famous “20 percent time,” where engineers devote 1/5th of their time to their own ideas and projects. But, it’s safe to say that this project may turn into much more. Tying an avatar to your Google account that can be used anywhere there is a Lively room is a unique idea that takes advantage of Google’s huge user base
The 3D social network will tie into the data portability concept like, Open social, Friend Connect, Myspace and Facebook data all being a part of the 3D world. The monetization potential for Google to have premium rooms, sponsored clothing & accessories for avatars will be outstanding. Imagine logging into lively with highend sponsored Nike Gear on and every user who clicks on you to interact you receive Adsense. I quickly created an avatar in about 5 minutes and joined a room called coffeeHouse while experimenting with Lively, I’m the good look’in guy in the blue in the front.
You can also create your own room rather quickly by using my new favorite program I use reguarl for real estate development called Sketchup. Below is an embedded iframe for the “coffee house” room. This very easily good have been a “business center” room I created for liked minded entrepreneurs that read Startup Addict Musings.
Lively is further evidence social networks are migrating to the 3D space. It is the next evolutionary step from the current “profile” model in today’s social networks. I can only imagine what revenue streams will come from this and what Google’s built in userbase will do to Second Life.
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.
I have been working on several commercial real estate projects that utilize triple-net leases (NNN). A tip out of the gate is be careful the prospective tenants possess a clear understanding of triple net leases and what is involved.
There is really not a tremendous amount of mystique behind the NNN, other than a symbol for additional expenses paid by the tenant beyond the rental or lease payments. In a triple-net, the lessee will usually pay a monthly rent along with all taxes, insurance, and operational / maintenance expenses that occur from the use of the property. The lessor (investor) is responsible for capital improvements on the building, such as roof replacement or major structural components. Again, be very clear in the terms of the lease agreement who has responsibility for majors building systems like mechanical, HVAC, Electrical, as well as major repairs.
I’m sure all of you real estate entrepreneurs looking to jump into commercial real estate development with triple-net leases are asking about financing at this point. A common method is for the investor to form a LLC to hold the real estate and use a credit tenant lease method for financing. The investor borrows money to finance the property and pledges as security the rents to be received from the tenant.
This is an excellent method for obtaining construction money if you lack assets or collateral to pledge. However, this will require a creditable tenant with an executed long-term lease in place and a bank or conventional financing institution to go along with it. Also see non-recourse debt.
