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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