Image via WikipediaWriter Paul Graham just put out a fantastic essay called, "Why to Start a Start Up in a Bad Economy" It's really a brilliant piece and is a must read for anyone considering or currently involved with a start up company.
Graham makes many excellent points, but here are a couple of favs:
If we've learned one thing from funding so many startups, it's that
they succeed or fail based on the qualities of the founders. The
economy has some effect, certainly, but as a predictor of success
it's rounding error compared to the founders.
Another advantage of bad times is that there's less competition.
Technology trains leave the station at regular intervals. If
everyone else is cowering in a corner, you may have a whole car to
yourself.
So for any given idea, the payoff for acting fast in a bad economy
will be higher than for waiting. Microsoft's first product was a
Basic interpreter for the Altair. That was exactly what the world
needed in 1975, but if Gates and Allen had decided to wait a few
years, it would have been too late.
We have never been more invigorated by what lies ahead. It's definitely less crowded out there right now. Launch your preemptive strike and secure a beach front.
A couple of weeks back, I ran into Mike Wagner of the White Rabbit Group / Own Your Brand Blog and had a quick conversation. Mike is one of those listeners who make you jealous. He can get deep into the core of your conversation quickly and relate just about anything your conversation contains to a book he's read.
Balancing all the elements of a successful life takes discipline and I'm convinced...early rising. Every day I get up at 5AM or earlier I get exponentially more done. Maybe it just feels that way because by 10AM your hyper-productivity even surprises you! It's hard not to sacrifice something that's good for you when you get busy and immersed in life's work.
Take the time. Find a way to carve out segments of the week for activities are essential to your overall well being and success. Exercise. Read. Sleep. Relate. Embrace. Play.
Hi folks: The team has been working on some very exciting things here at Midwest Command. Over the last year, we've been producing robust multimedia content for our Interactive Learning Environments (ILE). We had many firms contact us and ask if we could do the same for them. They asked us to:
Turn so so presentations, marketing material, speaking engagements, and documents into rich multimedia with sound, voice over, imagery, and professional appearance.
Shoot company intro videos that capture the mojo of their brands in video that is "good enough for the web". Flaming fireballs optional.
Create robust and good looking blog based corporate websites for them that had a bunch of great organic Search Engine Optimization tools (SEO) working for them behind the scenes.
Create Interactive Learning Environments so businesses extend their brands and digital product offerings globally online.
Develop web video strategies and some stock "intros and outros" that companies can reuse over and over again.
Help them understand the online world, social media, and their online BUZZ.
createWOW provides Brand Amplification to small and medium businesses through multimedia, blogging and social media, and Interactive Learning Environments.
Ask your small business owner friends how much their "Yellow Pages" ads cost per month? Ask the same group how many of them go to the Yellow Pages to look up services/products available themselves? Could that resource be re-tasked?
It's a pleasure to work with SMB's. I know they get the shaft sometimes when it comes to these kinds of services because their budgets are small and their dreams are big. Well we're tired of you being on the receiving end of the shaft...and believe its our job to help you take advantage of as much of this technology as makes sense for you. We know how to provide IMPACT and RESULTS on a budget. It's how we've modeled our own business and we believe you should get the same treatment.
On behalf of the estimated 25 million small businesses existing in the USA (that includes the non-employer, solo-preneurs), I'd like to request a bailout. We don't have all of the baggage of firing 10's of thousands of workers, paying severances, and honestly, I think many of us are worth more than some of the firms you've helped.
I'd suggest letting Wall St. figure out their own issues (maybe it's time) and find a way to have some weekend meetings with us (we're way to busy during the day) and come up with a couple hundred billion for us. We'll be sure to give up equity for this but we won't personally guarantee it as I'm sure the boards of your bailed out firms haven't had to.
You seem to have figured out a way to really cut through the red tape, often coming up with deca-billion dollar packages in a week or less which is pretty amazing since getting a few bucks for our innovations.....well...those just aren't there right.
Oh I know I'm being naive and I just don't get the whole "Stability of the Financial System" stuff. Well I do. But since you're either using my tax money to do this....or printing wheelbarrows full of cash to make this happen, either way I'm getting the shaft.
I guess I'll just sit here with my 30% down boring 30 year fixed rate mortgage and dream about what it's like to get bailed out for making poor decisions vs. living with the consequences.
"In intentionally continuing to fly the aircraft, the carrier did not
follow important safety regulations intended to protect passengers and
crew."
Wow. Just wow. If that makes you a bit squirmy in places...catch this quote:
The FAA is also seeking fines against American
for violating drug and alcohol testing procedures involving several
dozen flight attendants and other employees, only one of which was a
pilot, Dorr said.
The
airline also did not make timely inspections of its emergency lighting
systems inside aircraft for several years, the agency said.
Double wow. I've been loyal to American Airlines for over 10 years now. Granted, I'm guessing the other airlines aren't much better but what is it going to take to make this industry right?
I thought our safety was of primary concern. Can we attribute these lapses to "cost savings?" Are certain people "too busy" to get to these issues? Are drug test results overlooked or missed because someone in charge just had too much to do?
I'm asking the questions because I don't like seeing someone's hand forced by a regulating agency. What more is happening that we DON'T know about?
Let's say you are an SMB (small to medium business) in the Des Moines metro. You have a nice website that's well put together and appealing. You've got a nice "about" page with little JPG's of your employees and a quick bio about them. Not bad. But in the SMB space you CAN and SHOULD be able to STAND OUT and be heard from! But what to do?
Here's a quick checklist we've been working through.
When I visit your site:
Is there anything there conveying what it's actually like to do business with you? Blog posts, videos, interviews, audio clips, testimonials, case studies?
Does your site in any way indicate to me that you're different than "everyone else that provides the same service or product as you do?"
Do you make it easier to say "yes" than the competition?
Do you offer multiple modes of contact to reach different demographics? In not too many years, those "kids" who text message all day may be running the office. Do you accommodate that mode of communication deemed critical by current and future generations?
Do you offer RSS feeds for news releases and/or blog posts? Most likely if you are blogging the answer is yes. Blogging is NOT a requirement to provide RSS feeds of your news releases however so don't count out one because of the other.
Are you leveraging any social media platforms? Twitter is a prime example. The other day I put out a call for someone to create a logo...fast. I got 4 replies from Twitter from local designers and within 4 HOURS I had prototypes in my inbox. Maybe people won't ask you questions about your accounting business in twitter that often today...but just give it a while. (HINT: That's code for do something about it now).
We'll add more to this list soon but hopefully there's some food for thought in here. If you'd like to chat more about some of these things, give me a shout.
It seems I'm reading daily about issues with airlines facing some kind of unplanned landing. Whether or not these issues were "real threats" is less important to me than the frequency with which they are happening. I read a major airline pilot's blog that chronicles issues facing pilots, service crews, and the industry as a whole...and it's not good. His accounts of "squeezing through storms" and landing in major crosswinds since fuel levels are "critical" are far too common.
I believe the airlines industry is "saving" its way into a disaster. That disaster will be the deciding factor in transforming an industry that refuses to face reality. It's going to take a national tragedy to halt the downward spiral of a business that continues to keep prices low when it's losing billions...merger after merger.
The recent grounding of American Airlines MD-80's for inspections that hadn't been completed (no matter who's fault it was AA or the FAA) shows a serious lack of attention to detail.
Today I read this article that highlights the growing discontent among pilots and the fuel savings issue. More and more are coming forward to complain that saving fuel by reducing the load on board is causing close calls that will lead to disaster (less on board means more efficiency from what's there through reduced weight.)
In March, for example, an airline pilot told NASA he landed his
regional jet with less fuel than required by FAA regulations. "Looking
back," he said, "I would have liked more gas yesterday." He also
complained that his airline was "ranking" captains according to who
landed with the least amount.
Ultimately it's the captain's call on the fuel load (per the above article)...but it's kind of like the "15 pieces of flair" conversation that Jennifer Aniston has with her boss in Office Space. The implication is that "you can" do that...but "you SHOULD" do this. Pilots can make the call but the mother ship seems to be silently punitive and edgy with pilots that carry too much fuel (ie waste the airline's money). Call it management by browbeating.
I'm a big free market capitalist guy so I'm tormented by this issue. Have airlines become "public utilities?" Do we need to go back to a regulated, government "owned" system? I cringe at the thought.
I'm guessing that ticket prices would have to at least triple for these airlines to make a profit. That would probably cut their businesses by 75%. At that point, our aging airlines would probably have to ground and sell of 75% of their aging fleets. These are the same fleets that are very fuel inefficient and have airframes/skins that are technically sound but I suppose those lifespans are engineering guesses? Wouldn't this be a good thing to thin the herd? I don't supposed the Wall Street folks have this in mind.
Could we possibly move to a system where there's not 8 flights a day to Chicago to connect me to Anywhere USA...but maybe a couple times a week direct from Des Moines to major cities? Could the VLJ (very light jet) market fill in the blanks here with connections, hassle free short hops, and daily "air taxi service" from Des Moines to Sioux Falls? Other business models have been very successful reducing choice and simplifying things for consumers. Maybe it's time the airlines gave us fewer options, increased prices, reduced their gargantuan size and faced the economic realities that have stared them in the face for over a decade.
Your business model is flawed and you will probably ask us for some type of bailout again someday and I simply don't want to pay. Make travel as outrageously expensive as it should be...and something will step in and provide a solution.
Until then, I'll be content to drive or stay home and do things virtually.
I'm getting closer to pulling the trigger on www.CentralIowaAngels.com. I've been casually surveying and vetting the concept of an organized Angel network that provides:
Frequent pitch meetings with qualified angel investors on a regular schedule.
Angels that understand not every idea is worthy of funding...but recognizes ideas that don't fit this group's profile may have application elsewhere.
Angels that understand the value in people even if their ideas are deemed unfundable. Perhaps someone pitching a tech idea as a CEO would be a perfect fit as a technologist somewhere else.
Angels that bring connections and expertise to the table since this is typically the most important factor in the funding equation. Writing a check is easy. How to spend the money isn't.
Angels that understand and embrace the concept of risk capital not as guaranteed as humanly possible forcing the nascent firm to jump through myriad hoops to get governmental grants, incubation, and other string laden funding...capital.
Angels looking to fund small prototyping/proof of concept deals ranging from $25k-$100k to quickly inject life into ideas here in Iowa that end up funded as $3.5 million deals in larger cities 12 months later, in addition to larger deals.
Angels that understand that Iowa's startup climate is tremendously under served. There are countless entrepreneurs toiling over solutions that are fundable and profitable business models waiting to emerge...if only...
Do you have more items you'd like to add to this list? Please either add them in comments or email me personally. If you're interested in helping me put this together, please contact me via email at doug AT mitchgroup.com.
Also, please forward this onto perspective Angels and companies seeking funding if you don't mind. I'd like the input.
**UPDATE**. Wow. The flood of interest and new twitter followers is amazing. This is further reinforcement that this idea is sound. More to come.
Starting Oct 21 - Nov. 14, I'll be in front of another group of progressive business leaders eager to understand the key aspects and tools used in social media marketing in Des Moines. (West Des Moines class starts on September 24). The Blogging for Business class is offered through the Des Moines Community Education program and it's VERY affordable. (Most likely $50).
Spread the word to friends, blog lurkers, and business leaders you know if they'd like to get a great lay of the blogging land...along with a great quiver full of other tools to become findable on the web.
The class will take place Tuesdays from 6:30pm-8:30pm and will last 4 weeks.
Watch for the catalogs to show up in your newspapers and/or mailboxes.
Image via WikipediaWriter Paul Graham just put out a fantastic essay called, "Why to Start a Start Up in a Bad Economy" It's really a brilliant piece and is a must read for anyone considering or currently involved with a start up company. ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=389ad181-988a-4471-9aab-1ea6bbabe96c)
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