May 6th 2010 Posted at Business Development, General Information, Productivity
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I am playing around with the idea of a new theme for the site. Click on over and let me know what you think of this one. I am planning on changing the colors, but I like the basic layout.
May 5th 2010 Posted at Business Development, General Information, Productivity
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This blog was hacked earlier this week, in the massive attack on WordPress blogs hosted by GoDaddy and Network Solutions. I am going to be using this basic theme for a while, as I am busy fixing the rest of the hack on this site and those of my clients who were attacked as well.
Thanks for your patience!
March 3rd 2010 Posted at General Information
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Business Week has an article featuring Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr:
Fake, center (next to the dog), with the Hunch team.
Getting the Startup Equation Right – BusinessWeek
The Entrepreneur: Caterina Fake, 40
Background: Social media pioneer and co-founder of the photo-sharing service Flickr, she led the technology development group at Yahoo (YHOO) after it acquired her company in 2005. In 2008 she left Yahoo and joined Hunch as co-founder.
The Company: Hunch is a recommendation tool that uses machine learning to harness its users’ knowledge and offer customized answers to their questions. The 12-person business launched the public version of the service in June 2009, had 1.2 million unique monthly users in January, and has raised $6 million in funding.
Her Journal: I have always been very interested in invention and creation and the Great Idea. But the idea is just the starting point, just the first step. You also have to find the right people to help you do it. No successful company has have ever been the product of just one person.
The way the story is told is that Martha Stewart or Steve Jobs or Richard Branson is the sole driver. But that’s because people like to have a protagonist, just as there’s a protagonist in every novel. A group of people makes a bad protagonist. Turning an idea into a company means you have to find brilliant, capable, amazing people and put together a team. [Ed. note: emphasis mine] And then you have to get everybody on board with the Great Idea. And then figure out how to get there.
Putting together a team to help you implement your idea is essential, and quite probably harder than you think. I have put together a couple of teams, and been on some teams, and it is not easy to keep everyone motivated and in the game.
My number one tip for making it work: establish a budget early on and “hire” the team members. The financial incentive works very well. Building a team of entrepreneurs is like herding cats. It takes a lot of time and effort and the cats don’t like it very much!
February 15th 2010 Posted at General Information
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Daily routines for maintaining your Social Media Presence from Chris Brogan
Your Farmer List
By “farmer list,” let’s call this the chores you’ve gotta do every day. They’ll be different for everyone, but let’s lay out some starters to get you thinking. Then, the real opportunity will be for you to lay out your own farmer list, inspired by what this one makes you think. And by the way, this might remind you of 19 presence management chores you could do every day. It’s not entirely unintentional that I’m revisiting this.
Daily Chores
* Get your blog post up. Make it helpful, worthy of comments, and unique.
* Comment on other people’s blog posts.
* Share other people’s blog posts.
* Comment back to people who’ve commented on your blog.
* Read something not related to your market.
* Connect with five people not in your vertical or your geography.
* Reconnect with people who matter. Drop an email or call. Don’t ask for anything.
* Look at the map of where you think things are going for your business. Anything change?
* Read the “weather” from the blogs you follow. Anything there?
* Think about what seeds you might plant for future projects.
* Share at the farmer’s market your best yields.This is just a starting point to a much better list that you’ll write.
What goes on YOUR farmer’s list?
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