Ed Batista, GSB Alum and instructor, reviews a recent presentation in San Francisco by Chris Anderson about his new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Especially interesting is the idea of the promotion of celebrity, and of 'quantifiable reputation', something which may now be possible with social networking, where one can constantly track "friends" and "followers". Ed goes on to reflect on his experience as an executive coach, and how that relates to these developments.
The entrepreneurial inspiration can come from the most unusual sources. For Jess Smith, the studio art grad, the idea of his very successful business was born out of misery of fractured bones as a result of the bicycle accident. Jess painted his whole wrist cast, and when his doctor saw it, he really liked the design and said that he would gladly buy such art if someone offers. Thus, the idea of Casttoos has emerged. It’s simple; the design is printed on the adhesive film which melts into cast after 10 seconds of hairdryer blowing. And the world seems to notice and to like it. How big is Jess’s market? In his words, about 10 percent of the population is healing from a broken bone at any given point in time. You can read this short feature called “If it’s Broke, decorate it!” in July issue of Entrepreneur magazine in Jackson library, and do as I did: go to the company’s website and check out designs yourself.
June issue of Entrepreneur magazine comes with a list of 100 companies whose business ideas are innovative and sustainable. Each of the featured 10 companies gets a short story on how the idea emerged and developed into a thriving business, such as a Jiggerbug phone, or distribution of stylish and safe POC ski helmets. However, the remaining 90 companies mentioned in small print are equally exciting and boom with interesting ideas and unorthodox approach to the old practices. For example, Bonded Logic inc. makes insulation material out of recycled denim, and its product provides better sound-blocking capabilities than fiberglass. Much more can be found in print issue in periodicals display in Jackson Library or online.
Can shoes make the man? Well, shoes, innovation, great service and a staff of devoted Zapponians (aka employees) have certainly made Tony Hsieh a happy, wealthy man. Zappos.com started as an online shoe retailer but has since expanded to incorporate an array of other goods. Hsieh has not only mastered online marketing but has created an innovative and efficient distribution center with 70 robots that can ship a pair of shoes in 8 minutes flat. But what Mr Hsieh really cares about is making sure his employees and customers feel good, really good. His focus on happiness has brought the company accolades, and Zappos often scores high on lists of best places to work. Hsieh empowers employees to make customer service decisions without having to move up the chain of command. Read the entire Zappos story in the May 2009 issue of INC magazine, or on their website.
One of the first IPOs of 2009 was Opentable.com trading under the ticker OPEN. Originally called EasyEats.com this company allows people to make restaurant reservations online as well as through any mobile device. Investors seem to like the fact that OpenTable is not dependent on advertising for revenue instead pulling in revenue from the restaurants participating in their service. Read more about some of the challenges facing OpenTable in the San Francisco Chronicle article. Analysts are hoping this IPO is an early indication that Silicon Valley and the IT industry are showing some signs of life.
"The bloody sport of mixed martial arts is about taking down your opponent with style. Outside the battle cage, it's about winning your audience with fashion". So begins the article A Roundhouse Kick in the Pants in the May issue of Entrepreneur magazine. Apparently in addition to blood and bruises, MMA is generating a style statement, spearheaded by clothing firms like Affliction. Based in southern California, Affliction has teamed up with Donald Trump to market to the growing MMA fan base, which has leaped 11% since 2000 according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. Other companies hoping to springboard off MMA culture include Bellator Fighting Championships, which in addition to producing a TV fight series also sells apparel -- T-shirts, hoodies and skull caps. Ralph Lauren it ain't, but it seems to be a growing market.
The SF Chronicle asked readers to send their best ideas for startups, then chose a dozen from more than 250 submissions and ran them by some venture capitalists.They list a few of the finalist in today's article.
Do you have that next great idea?
If you are thinking of putting your creative ideas into a venture, you might find useful a few tips from Asheesh Advani, the veteran-entrepreneur and the president of Virgin Money USA company. Asheesh gained his experience in raising money during the last recession, and he offers three tips on raising financing for a new business. If interested, read an article in in March issue of Entrepreneur magazine or online.
Everywun, the website that allows you to support a worthy cause by simply clicking online, pulls communities and resources together for great causes. For example, pick a charity badge of your choice from Everywun and post it to your blog as follows. Each subsequent click on the badge by your visitors generates income from a corporate sponsor that has contracted with Everywun in an effort to support that charity. This badge is for US Education & Connectivity: using technology and the Internet to support education in the US.
Lack time and money to do good work? Everywun is a great solution.
SFGate, December 5, 2008
Some artists have begun to figure out ways to make money and make art — aiming to end the notion that “starving” and “artist” are necessarily linked.
In these somewhat tubulent financial times, is it a good thing to go out on a limb for your artistic dreams?
Read about some entrepreneurs who are trying make a career out of their art.
The Tesla, the 100% electric car by Tesla Motors, opened a store last month in Menlo Park at 300 El Camino Real, just north of the Stanford Shopping Center. It's designed as a showroom and partly as a museum type exhibit, showing prototype models used in designing the company's electric car. -- San Francisco Business Times
The car was conceived by Martin Eberhard, and was named after Nikola Tesla, an eccentric late 19th century genius inventor. Driving the streets of Palo Alto in 2003 when Eberhard was looking for his next project, he began to notice that the same driveways that held a Prius often also had a Porsche 911 or other luxury sports car. "It was clear that people weren't buying a Prius to save money on gas - gas was selling close to inflation-adjusted all-time lows," says Eberhard, "They were buying them to make a statement about the environment." So why not, he reasoned, allow this deep-pocketed clientele to make that statement driving a car that exceeded the performance of a Porsche?
Read the Tesla story in Fortune Magazine
Watch YouTube's Tesla Electric Car with Eberhard and Elon Musk, Chairman of Tesla Motors.
Also, The unveiling of the Tesla Motors Electric Car and Interview With Elon Musk Tesla Motors
As the clean environment is staying on top of the industry and investment agendas, Vinod Khosla appears to be a top private investor for the environmental enterprises. In it's July-August issue, Fast Company magazine runs an article about Vinod Khosla and his latest venture, Calera. Calera started as an idea of Stanford University scientist Brent Contstantz about making cement without generating carbon dioxide. At the first glance this idea might seem impossible because the very process of producing cement implies the release of carbon dioxide. However, the Stanford scholar attempted to approach the problem. With the theoretical foundation laid out, Brent emailed Vinod Khosla. After an hour-long meeting, Khosla took upon himself the funding of Brent's enterprise. That is a typical style of the investor who committed around $450 million of his personal wealth into the environmental start-ups. Calera, what Vinod Khosla believes to become “our biggest win ever”, is now getting ready for opening its first cement plant and start pilot production by the end of this year. Read more in journal's print issue in Jackson periodicals collection. Stanford users can read the article online when it becomes available.
Guy Kawasaki has drawn on his VC experience to pen an amusing set of pick up lines entrepreneurs use on VC veterans. Included in each is the venture capitalist's hard-edged take on the line. If you are in the market to pitch your revolutionary new ideas, you might read this cautionary list before you start cruising Sand Hill Road. As a bonus, included is a link to the VC Alltop news site.
May issue of Entrepreneur magazine features its 14th annual ranking of the fastest-growing entrepreneurial companies. Some of the qualification characteristics include the following: the company should be founded between 1999 and 2003; its sales figure should be no less than 100,000 in 2003 and not to exceed 1 billion in 2007; the company should show a positive job growth. Only 0.3 percents of all American businesses meet the criteria. The top 100 are selected by the magazine.
This year, there is no dominating industry among the top 100 companies. The scope of business activities for the selected companies ranges from self-storage operations to mortgage banking, and natural gas distribution. An interesting statistics accompanies the list, such as the sources of funding. It shows that only 3% of the selected companies are VC funded, and 79% started on the founders’ savings and personal funds. Look at complete list in the magazine in the Periodicals display area at Jackson Library or online.
There is an article in the San Francisco Chronicle today about a company called LaserMonks.com. In 2002, Bernard McCoy founded an online ink and toner business that today has grown into a multi-million-dollar operation. Contrary to the way most businesses work, his own salary hasn't increased in proportion to the company's profits. The company is named LaserMonks.com because Bernard McCoy is a monk. McCoy is one of six Cistercian brothers who pray, work and live at Our Lady of Spring Bank Abbey in central/west Wisconsin. The monks "have no personal income or personal possessions," McCoy explains, but "monasteries, by the Rule of St. Benedict that we follow, are required to be self-supporting."
Read about how their business developed and evolved.
DEMO is an event where the world's most promising new technologies are presented and can be the launchpad for many emerging technologies. Some of the demos can be viewed on the DEMO website. An article in the February 4 issue of Fortune gives an overview of which startups have a good chance of making it big in business in their article entitled Got Cash? One startup with lots of buzz is Mint.com which provides free money management software on the web.
The February 4 issue of Fortune also lists the 100 Best Companies to Work For.
The 2008 Hot List is out. Entrepreneur magazine has compiled a list of the hottest industries this year. The article interviews industry experts on where they think their particular industry will be strong. Ladies specialty shoes, handbags and lingerie will be big as well as crafts and handmade goods and who can resist ice cream. Another hot group are baby boomers: senior services, health-care staffing, senior products and gyms targeted at seniors.
Young and rich. What's not to like? Entrepreneur magazine (October 2007) highlights Young Millionaires, budding entrepreneurs who found an idea and converted it into success. Among those who describe their rise to the top: Kelly Flatley, 28, and Brendan Synnott, 29, whose Bear Naked manufactures all-natural granola products; Herman Flores, 34, Myles Kovacs, 33, and Haythem Haddad, 31 of Dub Publishing Inc., which puts out the hot auto mag DUB; the Vanderhook brothers (Tim, 26, Chris, 28, and Russell, 30) of Specific Media, an advertising firm whose clients include more than 200 of the Fortune 500; Megan Duckett, 35, whose Sew What? Inc. manufactures custom theatrical drapes and flame-retardant fabrics; Devon Rifkin, 33, of The Great American Hanger Company, which sells more than 400 types of hangers; and many more. Read about it online or in the issue in Jackson Library.
Summer issue of AlwaysOn magazines published its annual rating of top private companies. The companies are chosen based on criteria of innovation, market opportunity, and stakeholder value creation. This year, the editors also considered how greentech the companies are. The selection process reveals rather interesting facts such as the growth rate in start-up financing, increased number of mergers & acquisitions, and IPOs compared with the last year. As for the industry trends, much of the business is directed towards refining the mobile technology, social networking, and “virtualization" of consumer services. The ultimate winner is San Jose based company GAIA Online which main line of business is an avatar-based teen virtual hangout. For complete list of winners, read the magazine in Jackson Library.
Tim Berry, President of Palo Alto Software and principal creator of Business Plan Pro, answers Guy Kawasaki's 10 Questions on How To Write a Business Plan. Among them: what are the most important qualities of a plan, what's the optimal process for writing a plan, how can you project numbers for a business with no history, and some common mistakes in writing business plans. We frequently get asked about business plans at Jackson Library. There are books on the subject, but if you're writing a plan, or about to write one, you might want to take this free guidance from an expert.
With the price of Goggle stock trading at $500+ per share, the company made over 700 people the millionaires with the minimum worth of $5 millions. And what some of these people do with their new wealth is the topic of the “Close to the Vest” article in July issue of Forbes magazine. Some people, like Craig Silverstein, continue to work for Google, though in Craig’s words “economically you are volunteering to be here”. Others are up to their own enterprises. For example, Bismarck Lepe who’d started a company which creates high-definition video sites or Alberto Savoia whose software-testing company Agitar was valued between $50 and $100. Is it good for Google? In the words of Laszlo Bock, VP of people operations at Google: “If we seed the next 200 great start-ups, that’s no bad thing.” Read the whole article in the journal located in the Library’s periodicals section.
The article in June issue of Inc. magazine is based on the exclusive interview with Jonathan Abrams, the founder of social online networking concept and its flagship Friendster. The article follows the story from the glorious debut of Friendster through the events that eventually led to the total fiasco of that promising startup. Quite ironically, Jonathan Abrams sees the root of the problem in the fact that he himself turned the control of the company to the best of the Silicon Valley venture investors and management team. Read the article to learn the whole story and also to find out about Abram’s latest enterprise, the Socializr, the invitation site where its creator tries to accomplish what he failed to achieve with Friendster.
The feature article in June issue of Business 2.0 magazine reveals the identity of Kevin Ham, the mogul of the “real estate on the Web”. The ownership of 300,000 domains generates Ham around $70 million a year in revenue. However impressive and timely Ham’s enterprise in acquiring domains names is, there are other “domainers” who are also successful and competitive. What distinguishes Kevin Ham from the rest is his scheme of banking on possible typos that people make while searching via direct navigation, e.g. bypassing the search engines and entering the url in the browser. Yahoo registered yahoo.cm domain where extension cm identifes Cameroon. Ham made a deal with the Cameroon government, and every person mistyping 'com' for cm ends up at Agoga.cm, the site owned by Kevin Ham and filled with advertisement which generate a “per click” revenue for Yahoo, Kevin Ham, and Camtel of Cameroon. Find more details by reading the story.
Charles River Ventures. Watch the three winning pitches of the first ever CRV Entrepreneur Idol (coming to a grad school near you soon). Judges George, Bill Tai and Susan Wu of CRV, as well as Silicon Valley famed blogger and journalist, Matt Marshall chose their top 5 contestants out of 60 MBA candidates. The top three got to present their pitches to the audience, and the ultimate idol winner was selected by the audience.
Winners included Ned Tozun - Solid state LED for the developing world, Foreverbright, Rohin Dhar - Online job recruitment services, PersonForce, Jeff Piper - Hedging instruments for residential real estate market.
The New York Times is introducing a new online section on small business that will feature resources for entrepreneurs, managers, and all those interested in starting a business. Look for regular columns such as the 'Entrepreneurial Edge' by James Flanigan, 'Tool Kit' by Paul Brown, and 'Shifting Careers' by Marci Alboher. Check out news, features and more at www.nytimes.com/smallbusiness.
Yair Goldfinger, a successful serial entrepreneur and co-developer of instant messaging service ICQ (acquired by AOL for $407 million in 1998), is now serving in the capacity of a founder, investor, and CTO of the new company, Dotomi. Dotomi’s business is personalized and targeted advertisement over the Internet with the idea of bringing the customers back to the retailers’ sites; Dotomi’s revenues are totaling in millions of dollars since the launch of the company in 2003. Read the article in March 19th issue of Red Herring to learn more about Dotomi and to find out which companies constitute Yair’s present investment portfolio.
'How to Get the Attention of a Venture Capitalist'. That's the name of a new blog by Guy Kawasaki (The Art of the Start, The Macintosh Way.) Inspired by a question he fielded at a retreat, he decided to flesh out his answer on his blog with 6 tips on how to inject yourself into the VC jet stream. These include ... well, perhaps you should check them out for yourself.
Guy Kawasaki is full of praise for Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days. On his blog, Kawasaki pronounces it a gold mine of great stories and ideas about entrepreneurship. He notes that some tales are so amusing the book might well have been called Flounders at Work. For example, Ann Winblad (Open Systems), in a scene reminiscent of The Producers: "So I get in front of these 60 or 70 guys and these guys are probably all in their 50s and I’m in my 20s, and we had a 'blue light special,' where we said, 'If you give me a check today for $10,000, you can have unlimited rights to one of our modules.' …I went home with, I think, like 12 or 15 of these $10,000 checks in my purse."
The main points of the book, Kawasaki opines, are that entrepreneurship is about tactics, boldness, and pushing on despite limitations. As a blog photo reveals, his own copy of the book is already bristling with post-its for new ideas.
In its January / February issue, Hispanic Business offers up its 16th Annual EOY (Entrepreneur Of The Year) Awards. More than 600 business leaders assembled in downtown Los Angeles to honor men and women who are upcoming leaders in the Hispanic community. Tony Rey, Jr of Rey Homes was 'Heavy Industry Winner'. Enrique Tessada also took top honors; his infrastructure solutions company, Tessada & Associates, ranks in the Hispanic Business 500, with revenues of $70 million. Other winners included Rainer "Ray" Gonzalez of Pacer Health Corporation, Capone De Leon of ManJon Studios, and Anthony Valdez of A. Val Construction Corporation.
Guy Kawasaki (The Art of the Start) is at it again, with "Is a Business Plan Necessary?" Writes Kawasaki: 'Before you dedicate your life to crafting a business plan the length of a book, read from the 1/9/07 edition of the Wall Street Journal in an article called "Enterprise: Do Start-ups Really Need Formal Business Plans".' A study analyzed 116 businesses started by alumni who graduated between 1985 and 2003; comparing success measures, the study found no statistical difference in success between those businesses started with formal written plans and those without. If you are hip-deep in writing a plan yourself, you might want to check this out.
Using the phrase "That's Hot" is probably passé by now, after having been overused by America's favorite socialite. However, Entrepreneur magazine has collected a list of ideas they think will hit hard this year in what they call their "Hot Center". Most of the ideas can be split up into two groups, baby boomers and the rest of us. With the first baby boomer hitting retirement at the beginning of this year anything to do with health, staying healthy and grandchildren seems to be a good place to start a business.
Entrepreneur magazine's December issue brings you their 2007 Hot List -- the most popular predicted business trends for the coming year. Sizzling new opportunities range widely: Green Products , Teen Party Planning, Burger Restaurants, Wine, Social Networking, Baby Boomer Counseling, Nanotechnology, Home Automation and Media Storage, Bluetooth Gear and ... Chocolate! "Creative" funerals are on the rise, niche gyms geared to child fitness are here, radical new varieties of salad are tickling palates, and a surprising number of mature baby boomers need career guidance. Organic frozen baby food is hitting market shelves, while the National Science Foundation estimates that by 2015 the U.S. will command 40% of the $1 trillion worldwide market for nanotech products and services. Read more about it
A recent Stanford Report article highlights the online video library of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP) .
At the 'Educators Corner' of the STVP site, one can find brief video clips and podcasts by hundreds of industry experts offering advice and personal experiences on innovation and technological ventures. Most of the video clips are 1-3 minutes long. In her interview with the Stanford Report, Tina Seelig, the executive director of STVP, stated, "Each of these speakers has found a great way to identify opportunity, to create value and to leverage resources ... This is essentially what entrepreneurship is about."
'Create Jobs, Eliminate Waste, Preserve Value.' This is the name of Inc. magazine's December tribute to Ken Hendricks, their Entrepreneur of the Year. The article calls Hendricks a 'walking textbook on identifying and exploiting business opportunities', a man with ideas and the energy to make them happen who is now worth some $2.6 billion. "The money don't mean a damn thing", chuckles Hendricks, who lives in a 3,200 square foot house in the town of Beloit, Wisconsin, not far from his birthplace. He remains unassuming; author Leigh Buchanan recounts accompanying Hendricks to a friendly local tavern, where he and his wife Diane eat several times a week, for a Stump Burger. Included in the piece is the sidebar, 'How to Buy a Business', with Hendricks' 5 rules for a successful acquisition. Hendricks has the golden touch. He marvels: "I'm the 107th wealthiest person in the U.S., but getting here has just been step by step. I can't believe how easy it's been. What a country!"
As many know the Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded to Muhammad Yunus this year for his work in establishing the Grameen Bank. India has become one of the most fertile grounds for social entrepreneurship in the world. So many people can be helped out of poverty with little financial backing. In the spirit of giving, Jackson Library has created a Hot Topics page devoted to Social Entrepreneurship and its benefits.
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