When starting a company, entrepreneurs are usually in cost savings mode, which generally means, trying to minimize how much debt they take on personally. Even with friends and family or seed money, the initial investment goes quickly with expenses such as developers, designers, legal costs and other miscellaneous expenses. So it is extremely important that the service providers you choose provide you maximum value for your dollar.
The biggest cost for a startup is often design and development of the website. There are three avenues that are available to entrepreneurs to a developer, a technical co-founder or hiring a developer full time or hiring an outsider service provider that does web development and design. In the first two cases, you are building your company and team and you can be sure you will get maximum value from those individuals. But when choosing or hiring an outside person to do you work, it is essential that there is a relationship other than “deliver and get paid.”
There are a few essentials entrepreneurs should consider in choosing a service provider including who referred them to you or their references, price, how they work with entrepreneurs and their value add.
References are essential. You want to know that the company or individual will do quality work but more importantly, that you can work with them. I have seen many entrepreneurs hire web designers oversees because they are cheaper only to spend more in the long run because the language barrier and way that the service provider works made the process much more difficult than it really is. I also know those that spent a lot of money and never launched their site because Read more…
Every entrepreneur wants their startup up and running the day they cultivate their idea, but development takes time. This time gives you ample opportunity to create partnerships, develop strategy and test your website so it is ready for use. Only then can you set a launch date. The question then becomes how do you launch your site, especially in the age of social media where everyone will post, like and share that they have a new profile on your site or that they were the first users of the site. This launch strategy is essential and should be part of the preparation your company undertakes.
Yesterday, February 1st, a new company Wahooly.com was supposed to launch at 4pm EST
. They integrated with Klout.com and offered their first accounts as a perk on Klout. TechCrunch covered their launch with a post/article that was released at the exact time the site was supposed to be launched and the same was done on many other tech sites. The Wahooly.com site even had a countdown to launch for 24 hours and at 4pm, it shut off and said “NOW.” There was only one problem, the site never launched!
For over 3 hours, the only message on Wahooly’s twitter was “DNS is propagating, should be live for some as it makes its way across the world.” I am not Read more…
I got a LinkedIn request to connect the other day from someone I have never heard of. It said I was his classmate when I went for my MBA, but I am pretty sure I never met this person before. Further confirming my suspicion was that I got a few Twitter mentions from the same person asking for my email address and for me to add them on LinkedIn so we can connect. I responded that I only connect with people I have some professional relationship with already and that they can send me an email introduction. This got me thinking about how people use social media to network and how people connect with others on social media sites. What is the value of a connection or friend? How can we measure followers and members of a circle?
After thinking about this for some time, I realized that every social media site serves its own unique purpose and they are used in different ways. While some people view it as a popularity contest and accept requests from anyone, using the sites properly will lead to increased value for you and those connected to you. Below is a listing of the sites as I see them and some guidelines to using them effectively.
1. Facebook. This site is a true social networking site for friends to share content and pictures and keep up with each others’ lives. Friend requests should only be sent to actual friends or people you have met a few times. Facebook friends do not mean you are really friends but rather want to share content. If you don’t Read more…
Over my short “career” as an entrepreneur, there are two traits that seem to play an important role in the success of a startup. The first of these is the track record and network of the founder and the second being a great team. The former is about traction and your Klout. If you have successfully exited a company or founded a company that is well known, the people you engage with in real life and social media are those with a large sphere of influence and can help you expand the reach of your company rather quickly. For instance, when a VC leaves to start a company, he has a much easier time raising funds and getting to launch because his circle already includes those that would fund him and publicize his company.
However, in my eyes, having a great team is more important and has a longer lasting impact on your company and more importantly, you as an entrepreneur. There is no one person that knows everything about business or starting a business. Some people are idea people and others are more process and execution Read more…
I was recently interviewed by Alexis Miller for the International Business Time Television series on entrepreneurship. See the interview below.
Whether your company is successful or not, it is exciting to tell people that you are a founder of a startup. The fact that you actually started something is more than most people can say and gives you some credibility as an entrepreneur. But the fun part comes when you need to make your business cards and you start “handing out” the titles that you will use. The titles of CEO, Chairman, Chief Revenue Officer, Chief Marketing Officer and other big name positions are always fun to give out. But what do they mean, especially when you are first building your product, and how can they affect the company in the long run.
One of the cool things about being a founder is that you will always be the founder. No one can ever take that away from you and it is a part of the company’s history. However, every other position is negotiable and very often, the founders find that they are not right for those jobs. This may not occur at the outset, but often that is because everyone wears multiple hats and works to get everything done together. In the early stages of a company, there is very little separation of Read more…
Small business owner vs. entrepreneur: What’s the difference or are they the same? This question is something I have been struggling with for a while, not because I don’t know the difference, but because I think it is very hard to define. The main reason for that is the challenge in defining an entrepreneur. The term is becoming overused and almost generic. Almost everyone that I know who starts a business calls himself or herself an entrepreneur. From friends who started making baby/kids clothing, to lawyers who started their own practice to people who started websites and blog to those starting their own companies; everyone calls themselves an entrepreneur.
I recently posted this question on the KAYWEB Angels group page and received some interesting responses. However there seems to be some common thoughts between all of the answers, which are that an entrepreneur is about creating change and having a vision often bigger than their company. These are two unique traits to entrepreneurs that can differentiate them from a small business owner.
Both small business owners and entrepreneurs are risk takers. In many cases, these two groups put their financial future at the mercy of their business. Taking Read more…
Gary Whitehill, founder of Entrepreneur Week, once told me that one of the hardest things to understand in life is that you’re not what you are, but what you’re perceived to be. In this day and age of social media, I think this is one of the most important things for people to remember. First impressions last a lifetime and in today’s day and age, our first impression is made with the information that people see about us online. Let’s be honest, when we connect with a person at a meeting or are introduced through a mutual contact, the first thing we do is go to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to learn more about this person. If the individual has no information available or a spotty resume on these sites, part of the excitement of the initial introduction is lost immediately. The person will now have to overcome this void in order to make a great first impression.
In today’s age of the internet, you are your own brand and how you market and sell that brand will make you a success. According to Forbes, personal brand-building in the digital era requires topic expertise, audience engagement and scalable support systems. You need to take an active role in building that brand so Read more…
