All Posts

|

Contact Us | Small Business Resources | Podcasts | Get Our Headlines | Toolbox | How to Use MVP | Add Your Blog

Today's Top Posts

0 0 votes

The real business model for Web 2.0: corporate clients

by Josh Bernoff on 07/24/2008 06:22 1 comment ,15 views
Categories: Managing Technology

Everyone seems to want an answer to the question "When will Web 2.0 startups start making money?" The implication is that unless we can answer the question, the "bubble" of Web 2.0 will burst and all of us who believe in this stuff will be revealed as fantasists.

The fact is, it's incredibly hard to make money as a Web 2.0 startup aimed at consumers.

There are hundreds of these companies, and they all clamor to brief us at ...

0 0 votes

Small Business Marketing on the Internet

by Debra Murphy on 07/24/2008 06:22 0 comments ,8 views
Categories: Marketing Ideas

Getting found on the Internet is one of the most cost effective mechanisms for finding new business, yet many business owners don’t have the time to figure it all out or the budget to hire someone to do it for them. Using the Internet to market your business has its complexities like all marketing strategies, but understanding the basics can go a long way towards having new customers find you when they are in need of your services.

Th...

Latest Posts

0 0 votes

Your Social Media Mission - PR It Forward

by Jason Kintzler on 07/24/2008 06:46 0 comments ,13 views
Categories: Marketing Ideas

From the amount of response to PitchEngine, it's apparent that the majority of social media adoption is coming from PR professionals, not journalists. While there are some early adopters like Wired Journalists and others in the media world, the most aggressive campaigns and exploration resides within the PR industry. From social media releases and newsrooms to TwitPitches and Facebook profiles, PR people are finding ways to open up the conversat...

0 0 votes

Turning Great Strategy into Great Performance

by Skip Reardon on 07/24/2008 06:28 0 comments ,5 views

According to research conducted by the folks at strategy/execution specialists Marakon (as published by the Harvard Business Review), companies typically realize only about 60% of their strategies’ potential value because of defects and breakdowns in planning and execution.

By strictly following seven simple rules, you can get a lot more than that.

Keep it simple, make it concrete. Avoid long, drawn-out descriptions of lofty goals and instead stic...

0 0 votes

For Marketers, What Recession?

by Tom Pick on 07/24/2008 06:23 0 comments ,6 views
Categories: Marketing Ideas

News reports about the "R word" have certainly abounded since the beginning of this year. Articles and blog posts written to help marketers adapt and shift tactics in light of the economic slowdown have also proliferated, with Recession: The best thing for SEO from Brian R. Brown , Building Brands In A Recession by Cory Treffiletti, Marketing Tactics in a Recession from the Marketing Safari blog, and, more recently, A low-cost plan to elevate yo...

0 0 votes

Fertile Ground for ROI in BPM - Decisions!

by James Taylor on 07/23/2008 23:20 0 comments ,10 views
Categories: Managing Technology, Marketing Ideas

Ronan Bradley had an interesting article on ebizQ this week - Fertile Ground for ROI in BPM: Three Unlikely Areas. In it he outlined some areas of banking where business process management (BPM) could deliver an ROI.

Keeping up with regulations
In which he points out that “a feature of BPM systems (over custom coded solutions for instance)...

0 0 votes

Working Women: Finding Balance and Equality in Creative Organizational Design: Part 1 of 5

by Tracy ONeill on 07/23/2008 18:12 0 comments ,13 views
Categories: Business Transformaton

When I was a student in the Human Resource Development Master’s Program at Webster University, I was exposed to predominately female peers and professors. The women instructors were all professionals in their fields and had managed to climb the corporate ladder. Though very successful, none of them had children, and only one was married. On the other hand, the men instructors were all married wit...

0 0 votes

Small Business Letter from America at SmallBizPod UK

by Becky McCray on 07/23/2008 18:01 0 comments ,10 views

Small Biz Pod is a pioneering podcast in the UK, covering a whole range of small business issues. They also feature some text articles, and Alex Bellinger invited me to contribute a monthly column. He suggested calling it the Small Business Letter from America.

It would be pretty cheeky of me to speak for the whole country, so I give my perspective on national issues affecting small business. Health care insurance costs. Manufacturing and exp...

0 0 votes

Doubling Down

by Brad Feld on 07/23/2008 17:56 0 comments ,10 views

Fred Wilson - my friend and co-investor in Zynga - titled his post on Zynga's $29 million financing Raising The Stakes so I couldn't resist titling my post Doubling Down. And I'll echo what Fred said - I'm amazed with the hand that Mark Pincus (Zynga's CEO and founder) has and am delighted to be sitting at the table playing it with him.

Zynga just announced that Kleiner Perkins has led a $29 million round that includes new investor Instit...

0 0 votes

Twebinar tutorial: What you need to participate

by Paul Chaney on 07/23/2008 17:47 0 comments ,8 views
Categories: Marketing Ideas

If you've become a fan of Chris Brogan and David Alston's Twebinars, you know it takes a bit of doing to get all the pieces in place to successfully participate. During yesterday's Twebinar, for example, several questions were asked about...

0 0 votes

The Power of Positive Habits

by Bud Bilanich on 07/23/2008 17:10 0 comments ,4 views
Categories: Leadership, Startups

Outstanding performance is one of the five keys to success that I discuss in “Straight Talk for Success.” If you want to become an outstanding performer, you need to become a lifelong learner, set and achieve high goals and become...

0 0 votes

Remember the 3% - You Don’t have to be Popular to be Successful.

by Robin J Elliott on 07/23/2008 14:49 0 comments ,5 views
Categories: Leadership, Sales, Marketing Ideas

Most successful leaders believe that only 3% of people are truly successful, and statistics support this. Only 3% of the North America population, for example, reads books. If you look at retirement and wealth statistics, baseball batting averages, and business sales ratios, you’ll find that magical 3% everywhere. That means that 97% of people are not ideal [...]

Weekly Highest Rated

+3 3 votes

Baristas Unite! Social Networking At Street Level

by Andy Beal on 07/22/2008 17:46 0 comments ,31 views
Categories: Marketing Ideas

Coffee Small businesses in the US are struggling right now. Any edge or any hope that can be found is a welcome change from the continued onslaught of economic news around rising prices and shrinking wallets. I found one such story this morning over my cup of coffee. Oh and it was kinda cool that it was about coffee. I need that kind of early morning validation that my coffee drinking is still “in vogue”.

Anyway, in the Wall Street Journal this ...

+3 3 votes

Real World Adaptability: Trunk Club Rolls On

by Tim Berry on 07/21/2008 07:37 0 comments ,28 views
Categories: Leadership, Managing Technology, Managing People, Finance, Startups

What's not to love? It's a great business model, its founder is dedicated and -- more important -- quick to adapt, and she was a student in my 'Start Your Business' class a few years ago.

And things haven't gone exactly according to plan, but things keep going, and the founder keeps adjusting. That, to me, is real planning, as in "planning, not just a plan."

That's the Trunk Club, which is a couple years old now, was started in Bend (Oregon) a...

+3 3 votes

Jason Calacanis' Retirement Could Save Newspaper

by Jason Kintzler on 07/19/2008 13:53 0 comments ,321 views
Tags: business transformaton

A couple of weeks ago Jason Calacanis announced he was retiring from blogging. This, from a guy who many consider the catalyst to professional blogging. In his follow up email (re-posted here by TechCrunch), Jason details his reasoning and shares some insight into why he prefers the 'more intimate' approach.

As you can imagine, there were plenty of critics who cried, "publicity stunt" and others who felt inspired by his change in direction. I m....

+2 2 votes

On forecasts

by Charlie Hoult on 07/22/2008 14:58 1 comment ,27 views
Categories: Dealmakers, Finance

Inspired by a blog of Oli Barrett.

My grandfather was an actuary, so a professional mathematician in the insurance industry predicting probability of life expectancy. In a cruel irony, he died by looking the wrong way on London’s Tottenham Court Road, which Londoners will know is a one-way street. He confirmed that nothing was coming in the direction he checked and stepped into the road. Only to have a truck confirm that he had looked the wrong...

+2 2 votes

Startup Valuation, Preferred Stock and Common Stock Prices

by Jay Parkhill on 07/18/2008 01:17 2 comments ,80 views
Categories: Startups

This post may get a bit wonky. I’ll do my best to keep it straightforward.

I have talked to a lot of people in my career who get confused by the value of shares of stock in a startup company. A venture-oriented company has two or more different kinds of shares with different values attached. Here’s how to keep them separate.

Pre-Money, Post-Money and Per-Share Value
When a company does a financing, it sets a value for the en...

See All Articles >>