Darkstar

Wet T-Shirt World Cup

Wet T-Shirt World Cup: ""

Something probably not appropriate for the office, but an amazing example of what can be done with time and creativity.

So little time

From Adam Justo's blog:

"I’m reminded of how difficult it is to create something that people want to use while simultaneously making a profit from it.

It’s easy to create something that people want, whether it’s a product or service. The question is, are people willing to pay, and, if so, how much? If they’re not willing to pay, can you translate the bodies/eyeballs into a workable business via advertising revenue? If you can, how much work will it take to make that process happen, both in terms of finding the advertisers and figuring out how to make their advertising pay dividends so that they continue to want to be associated with you?

In many startups, especially Internet startups, the first step is in building the offering. If it’s good enough to attract attention, you then have to convert some of that attention to actual money. And while you’re trying to get to a healthy monetization level, you still need to provide all the things you provided to begin with that brought you the visitors/customers in the first place. And you have to do this double work with the same staff you had when you were doing half the work, which already seemed like more than twice the work that most humans could reasonably handle.

Even more difficult, if your business has ramped up to a decent level but not home-run territory, and the money’s starting to run low, you may have to shift gears to monetization before you’d like to, thus forcing you to somewhat take your eye off the ball in terms of providing the service or product that brings you customers in the first place.

It’s no wonder that sometimes the details get lost in the shuffle, or that as a business owner you simply have to choose what is the most important thing that needs to get done at a particular time, and live with the fact that there is something else that needs attention but will not be getting it at the moment.

And yet everyone wants to be an entrepreneur these days."

The Art of the Executive Summary

So what happens when you start one company and stumble into an entirely new opportunity that in some ways is many times larger than your original concept. Well, you build on what you have already done and be agile enough to realize a new opportunity. We are still very much focusing on launching chipin.com and have a product roadmap to enhance the system once it is launched for our core client base. But in order to raise the VC level Series A we need, we have to show why we are the next big disruptive business. Well, Netvocate is going to bit it.

So I am now reworking our preso, exec summary and bplan. Of course to keep things in perspective, I had a quick look at Guy's short article on what should be included. I have found there is no such thing as a template, but by looking at several resources it helps create a check list of what I want to include.The Art of the Executive Summary: ""

Also... blogging for change!

A simple post about leadership

A simple post about leadership: "

I'm reminded -- and I need to remind myself -- that leadership is made up of many things.' One component that I want to emphasize today is simplicity. Leadership is about making things simple. The world is a complex thing. In fact, the fourth law of business is that businesses tend to complexity.' The leader of a business must fight this complexity -- and communicate simplicity to the world, to customers, and to employees.'

"

The woeful story of Friendster, and lessons

The woeful story of Friendster, and lessons: "

Gary Rivlin, of the New York Times, has just written the best overview yet of the terrific bungle of social networking company, Friendster.

Jonathan Abrams, founder of Friendster, had a great initial vision, and sparked the social networking revolution by allowing friends to hook up with others. The company had an amazing lead, and potential.

But when he took money from high-profile venture capitalists, he paid a high price: These mostly ‘50-year-old white guys’ had their own ideas about how to run the company, and they got more heavy-handed when they realized how much Abrams was ‘over his head.’ In short, everyone was a fault, and it is a great lesson for entrepreneurs.

Here is the tragedy: Had one coherent vision won out, either Abrams’ initial vision for the more ‘closed’ version limiting people to communicate with profiles of their friends, or the more open model adopted by MySpace, the company may have succeeded. Had it forcefully implemented the ‘closed’ version, with conviction, it would have learned, like Facebook did, that gradual opening to others made sense. It could have evolved as it learned. Instead, it seems, the company was mired in indecision. Each executive change (happening every six months to a year) meant a new strategy, a change of course. And once Abrams was out — however arrogant he may have been — so was Friendster’s soul.

Aside from caution, the story also offers hope: If you’ve got a good idea and vision, you can succeed against a seeming formidable competitor that has all the money and best minds at its disposable.

"

(Via VentureBeat.)

The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups

The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups is a good look at the pitfalls you face.

YouTube timeline

YouTube timeline: by Niall Kennedy

. Every wonder what it took to create a 1.6 B company?