Category: Advisor Garage Community

Overcoming Isolation as a Home Business Owner

As a home business owner, you will be faced with many obstacles. One of the most unexpected challenges for many home business owners is the feeling of isolation. New and seasoned home business owners encounter feelings of being isolated from the rest of the world, and even loneliness, at some point during their careers. The quiet home office is certainly a change from a populated office space at previous jobs.

Owning and operating a small business from home has many advantages, but working in an office with others has the social aspect that a home office lacks. This social aspect is a double-edged sword; most home business owners chose to work from home based on office politics or the independence that comes from going solo. Like it or not, co-workers, colleagues, and supervisors did keep you company at your old job.

How can you fight these feelings when your home office is quiet and you’ve been working alone for hours on end? The key is to feel as though you are part of society while not being distracted. There should be a balance between interruptions and total solitude. There are a few ways that you can feel as though you’re not the Lone Ranger while remaining productive.

Turn On the Radio or Television

Depending on your level of distraction and whether you are taking telephone calls, you could turn on the radio or television to keep you company. Light classical music works wonders, and some people find that having background noise helps cure loneliness. Other people find they get caught up in what is on television or are distracted by music.

Take the Dog (or Cat) to Work

The family dog or cat will definitely keep you company. Dogs are great, because you can also take them out for a walk to get some fresh air. Cats are perfect, as they are usually not distracting and need little attention to be content. If you have no pets, it may be a good time to consider getting one, simply for the companionship they provide. Unlike humans, pets do not require conversation to be companions.

Arrange Business Lunches

Arranging business lunches with clients and colleagues is a great way to network, build relationships, and socialize. Pleasant afternoon coffee outings and lunches with clients will also lead to quality word of mouth advertising. Many professional associations, including local Chambers of Commerce, have weekly or monthly business lunches. These are wonderful resources for new business and to simply get out and meet people in your community.

Join an Online Home Business Forum

There are forums online where home business owners from around the world gather to socialize and share ideas. These are a wonderful way to interact with others with little pressure to keep up a long conversation. Beware the vacuum of the Internet – hours can seem like minutes. Online communities such as Girls with Goals are huge distractions for many people; yet when visited in moderation, they are excellent a great source of human interaction.

Pick Up the Phone for Human Contact

If you are feeling isolated, call one of your clients to “touch base”. Maintaining contact with clients is always welcome; keeping open lines of communication allows you to better understand their needs while you are maintaining a positive presence.

Perhaps your line of business requires cold calling for sales or business leads. When you are feeling lonely, there is no better time to cold call potential customers and pitch your business.

You can plan a predetermined amount of time in your day for personal calls with friends and family. These calls will help you to feel as though you are still part of society even though you are working alone. Friends and family will usually be supportive and help you to remain positive during tough times. It is important to set a time limit, otherwise you may find time slipping away from your business matters.

Remember: You Are Not Alone

Every home business owner has the occasional day when they feel isolated, lonely, and even depressed because they miss daily interaction with co-workers. After hours and hours of being alone in a home office, a trip to the grocery store or dry cleaners can seem like a treat. It is important to remember that you are not alone. There are thousands of people, working frantically in their home offices who also feel isolated from time to time. Focus on your work, maintain a healthy lifestyle away from the home office, and follow these pointers. You’ll feel much better during your busy day.

__________________________

Erin Hurry
Girls with Goals
“Our Goal is Your Success”

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Word of Mouth Marketing

If you’re trying to market a product on a limited budget, you know what a challenge it can be. Why not harness the power of word of mouth marketing? Word of mouth marketing is one of the best forms of free advertising available to the cash strapped marketer.

To make word of mouth marketing work for your business, you must have a good product at a reasonable price. If customers are impressed with the value your product offers, they’ll enthusiastically spread the word to their friends and family. This is free advertising at its best! Here’s how to put the power of word of marketing to work for your business:

Girls with Goals Steps

1. When you sell a product, give your customers extra business cards or flyers to give to their friends and family. People love to share new discoveries with their acquaintances. Make it easy for them by giving them some of your sales literature.

2. Take brochures and business cards with you wherever you go. Pin them up on bulletin boards, put them into fish bowls at restaurants, and hand them to people you meet throughout the day. This is a quick and easy way to market your business. It’s a great form of free advertising.

3. Tell everyone you know what you do for a living. It’s said that every person you meet knows over 200 other people. By telling one person what you do, you’re reaching a large universe of potential customers. Use word of mouth marketing to spread the word.

4. If you get feedback from a particularly satisfied customer, ask if you can use their comments as a testimonial in your next brochure. Jot down their comments as well as their name and address. Before publishing their comments ask for their written permission by mail. After receiving their written permission, add their testimonial to your marketing brochure when you next update it.

5. Offer your customer a future discount for each person they refer to you. When your customer’s name is mentioned as a referral source, keep track of it in a notebook so you’ll remember to give that customer a discount on their next purchase from you.

6. When a customer buys a product from you, give them a coupon for a 10% discount on their next purchase. At the same time, give them several extra coupons to give to friends and family. People love discounts and will express their gratitude by giving you free advertising.

7. Always over deliver! Give your customers such amazing service that they can’t wait to tell their friends. Truly good customer service is rare these days. Go the extra mile and watch your sales skyrocket!

Isn’t it time for you to harness the power of word of mouth marketing to promote your own product or business? It’s a great form of free advertising. Give it a try and prepare for some great results.

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Lyro Speaks Back: Update~ $350K Virtual Investment ‘Restatement’

Lief Larson here.  One of the founders of Lyro.  Thanks for taking a look.  If we lifted up the skirt on our long-term objectives, that wouldn’t be much fun now would it? )

Plaxo is already following us.  We launched web searchable digital business cards before they did.  We had the social aspects before them.  But that doesn’t matter.  We like Plaxo.  We even like Goliath LinkedIn.  Both companies are good at what they do.  We are focused on the small and independent businesses, the entrepreneurs, the consultants who wants to get more out of the web and have better visibility.  Best of all, we’re asking for nothing in return.  If we help you and you find the site useful, you might upgrade.  It’s a pretty simple value proposition.

With regards to messages, our system is primarily open.  The downside to open is that if anyone can message you freely (or you message others freely)  we’d be setting up a system for abuse.  Nobody has time for “hot webcam chicks” when you’re out trying to find new business and opportunity.

I’m glad you’d have a willingness to put a “Virtual $100k” behind us and I’m looking forward to putting that virtual check to good use!

http://lieflarson.lyro.com

++

Thanks for the update and feedback Lief!  I really do appreciate your business and it’s business model and agree with almost all your points. The low ‘virtual’ valuation was driven by nothing more than wondering where the market potential was given the two goliaths we’ve discussed.  The irony is that I’ve been working on a site for sometime that is meant to address some of the weaknesses of the ‘blanket’ or everything to everybody approach by Linked In etc.

I’d like to increase the virtual investment to $350K. After all, us little guys have got to stick together.

Good luck and let us know how you get on with your great business: Lyro

http://www.Lyro.com

Andrew
Founder – http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

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It’s Our Movie: A $500K Virtual Investment

Itsourmovie.com 

I can’t tell you how much I love this business concept!  I’m not 110% convinced about the capability to make significant amounts of investor revenues but frankly…that’s just not the point of this neat new business.  So, let me tell you about “It’s Your Movie”.  The basic idea is for the online community to fund, audition and vote for characters in a movie called “The Flirting Club”.  It’s a complete mashup of a number of popular ideas…think “The Producers meets American Idol” and you are some of the way there!

Business Model:

  • Members of the public can buy a ’stake’ in the movie of $10, $100, $100.  What’s not clear on the site is what stakeholders get for their stake although the site does say the higher the stake the more ’say’ in the movie.
  • Advertising is another revenue stream for “Its Our Movie” although as the site currently has a 4,000,000 Alexa ranking the revenue is likely to minimal at this point.
  • Movie Rights and Sale:  I could find no reference to movie rights or sale as it relates to stakeholders but it is a new business so that may appear in their FAQs.

Some Core Functionality/Elements:

  • Auditioning:  To audition for a part, members download the script, choose a character and video themselves. After uploading the Audition to http://www.youtube.com / http://www.metacafe.com / http://www.dailymotion.com the code is then re-pasted within the “Its Our Movie” Website so the community can review and vote on the auditions
  • Characters: A summary of each character is included in the site and video auditions can be added against each character
  • Voting: Members can vote on a 1-10 scale for each audition.  They will also be adding the ability for people to vote via text message/SMS
  • Photos/Videos: Photos and videos of each person auditioning
  • Member blogs
  • Member forums (Is this a Drupal site with a skin? Hummm)

Likes:
Sometimes new business are not about money…OK, rarely new businesses are not about money because money is oxygen for startups but in this case, its about the excitement of being involved in creating a movie. Doesn’t EVERYONE want to be involved in creating a movie? Even if it’s a bad movie for goodness sake.  Now here’s a little prediction, as momentum grows for this new site then it won’t be long before Simon Cowell and the rest get wind of it.  Before you can say “Teletubbies” I’m guessing that this process may move from the web to other mediums.  When that happens then this could become a significant opportunity for the founders.  If I was a stakeholder, I’d be looking for some reassurances that I’m buying a tiny piece of that potential success. 

Dislikes/Suggestions:

  • Be explicit about what stakeholders are getting!  It’s great that you’ve raised $100K but if you want to hit the $1M target then I would outline what those folks were getting…really clearly! 
  • My understanding is that the Director is Alex Jovy. Is it THE Alex Jovy that received an Oscar-nomination for his film Holiday Romance who also went on to produce and direct the thriller Sorted starring Matthew Rhys and Jason Donovan? If so, let us know people! At the moment it looks like some obscure guys idea that is absolutely exciting but we need to know it’s legitimate and this isn’t paying for someone’s extended vacation in the South of Spain.

Additional Opportunities:

  • Plug this into the TV machine and turn it into a show.

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would personally stake a virtual $500K providing someone gave me virtual percentages of the revenue.

http://www.itsourmovie.com/

Interested in other articles about Its Our Movie?

Andrew – Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

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Add Facebook, Twitter or Top Blogs from TechCrunch and Much More to ***Your My AdvisorGarage***

New Free Service Just Launched!  Your MyAdvisor Garage gives you the ability to create your own personalized summary of the Advisor Garage site, other sites via RSS feeds and add ‘droplets’ such as Top Tech Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and much more. The new MyAdvisor Garage service duplicates the functionality of tools like MyYahoo! and Google’s personalized homepage.  So you can select the blogs, content, feeds and additional services that interests you and create your own tools and content within your MyAdvisor Garage page within Advisor Garage.
Give it a whirl, its on the left side of your page.  Let us know what you think and if there’s any way we can make it more valuable for you.
See an example: http://www.advisorgarage.com/community/mysite/andrew

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My DNA Fragrance: A Virtual Investment of $250K

And now for something completely different! Not a neat and innovative website but an actual, real product…something you can touch…well, not so much ‘touch’ as smell. My DNA fragrance is a new company which offers individualized perfume based on your own individual DNA. Each fragrance is a one of a kind product which My DNA creates after you submit a swab of your saliva. My DNA then uses a patented and revolutionary new process to create your individual fragrance which arrives in a clinically approved 4oz. aluminum bottle with a fine midst sprayer and if you want to do it properly, create your own bottle too.  As My DNA puts it, it’s not self centered, it’s self scented!

And yes, I know the swab sounds kind of a gross way of giving My DNA your DNA but you only do it once and it’s alot more pleasant than some of the alternative ways of giving up your DNA. 

Business Model:

  • A one time swab kit and lab fee: $99
  • Your own 4oz bottle for women: $89
  • Your own 4oz bottle for men: $59

Some Core Functionality:

  • One time swab process to give your DNA via a kit my DNA send then just re-order
  • Patented fragrance development

Likes:
Why smell like a guy who’s played polo all day?  Why smell like a suit designer? Wouldn’t it be better to have a fragrance that is in tune with your own smell…sort of like buying white wine to go with the fish? I’m not sure that metaphor actually works but as regular fragrances are created without ‘you’ in mind then how can they compliment your personal fragrance notes? Alright, that’s enough…my real point is this is different and believe or not, my belief is that there are enough people out there who will make a concept like this work and help create a sustainable profitable business.

Dislikes/Suggestions::

  • The website needs to be significantly improved. The design is fine but not in keeping with the potential strength of where this brand needs to position itself.  It looks like a website created by a one week contractor. This takes away from the ‘Selling a Dream’ approach and brand that will translate into real and significant revenue. And guys, please use the whole page and pretty please take off the ‘Disney’esk’ sparkles that appear when you move to a navigation button.
  • The price point is a lot less than I expected.  This is NOT a business where you gain traction through a lower price point and increase your prices later.  Increase your prices now!  Double your prices and you should see an increase in volume. 
  • In the website descriptor at the top of the browser it says ‘Discount Perfume, Discount cologne’…no, No, NO!  People don’t spend money on a unique and exclusive fragrance if they’re told it’s discount.  Make it super exclusive…better yet, get some photos at some exhibitions with celebs. Seriously – avoid discount and double your prices.
  • Allow website users to refer others to your site – you’ll be glad you did.
  • DOUBLE YOUR PRICE!
  • The only real worry I have is ‘is this real?’ Will a fragrance be unique because of my DNA or just unique because it get’s pulled out of that moments fragrance catalog – a fragrance lottery if you will.  And if it is created specifically for me and will smell better because of it. Prove it on your website or at least outline the rationale.

Additional Revenue Opportunities:

  • Consider launching personalized shower gels, soaps etc 

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would bath in my very own citrus notes a virtual $250K and pass it over.

http://www.mydnafragrance.com/

Interested in other articles about My DNA?

Andrew – Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

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Startup Techniques: Understand Yourself and What the Business Needs (3)

This is the third ‘Startup Techniques’ blog posting on creating and moving your own Winning Startup Idea into the real world.  The first posting “Startup Techniques: Creating Your New Business Idea” included techniques to create your own winning startup idea and the second post “Startup Techniques: Qualifying Your New Business Idea (2)” gave some tips on how to qualify the idea to make sure it’s really the one that you should be investing your heart, soul and time on.

So what do I do next when moving a Winning Startup idea forward? If the idea has really grabbed me my temptation is to start figuring out all of the pieces that are needed to move it from idea to real business.  To start thinking about the people I’ll need to find, figuring out how to test the idea, how much money it’s going to need and the 101 other elements.  It’s at about this time when you need to figure out a few things before you start getting carried away.

Normally at the top of my list is how do I fit in with this idea?

For a product let’s consider just a few of the different steps in the process from idea to real product:

  • Developing product drawings (Engineering Skills)
  • Developing a prototype (Engineering)
  • Prototype testing (Engineering)
  • Determining how to produce it in larger quantities (Engineering)
  • Testing the Market (Marketing)
  • Determining Price Point considering the margins required by the sales channel (Marketing)
  • Sanity checking the numbers (Production costs vs. price point to sales channel) (Finance)
  • Understanding and selling the product into the sales channel (Sales)
  • Marketing the product to retailers and the end consumer (Marketing)
  • Managing the invoicing, customer service, tracking cash (Finance etc)

These are just a few broad steps on the road to making a product idea real.  This list is by no means all inclusive.  The point here is that there are multiple component parts necessary to build a business whether it’s a product, service or website.  When you are sure this idea is the one, begin to map out what the idea needs and to overlay that with your own strengths and capabilities.  This will act as a pointer for you ~ it should help make obvious who you will need to find to join the team either actually or virtually.

Thankfully whether your winning startup idea is a product, service or website there are some relatively fixed ‘categories’ that need to be considered whatever the business. Here are some of the key categories and a few thought jogging questions, there are many more:

The Customer:

  • What are their needs?
  • What are they prepared to pay for? How Much?
  • How do they buy products like this? A store / website / telephone / television? 

Competition:

  • Where do customers currently buy or go to use products like this?
  • What products or services do they offer?
  • How much do they charge?
  • How do they sell and market their products?
  • How many competitors are there?

The Product:

  • What does it need to do?
  • How will it be much better than what the competition offer?
  • Who can prototype and build it?
  • How much does it cost to produce?
  • What is necessary to produce it?
  • Who will produce it?

Sales:

  • Where will you sell this product?
  • Who will sell it for you?
  • How will you pay them? Salary or commission or both? Yes, there are sales people who will work for just commission (Blog Post to come)

Marketing:

  • How does it meet the customer need?
  • How is it better than what the competition offers?
  • How much can we reasonably charge?
  • Are we looking for volume of customers or a select group of customers?
  • What do customers need to know that will make them want to buy it?
  • What are the ways to tell potential customers about the product?
  • How much do they cost?
  • Are there any ways of telling potential customers about the products cheaply?

Some of these questions may not work for your idea but most should.  As you go through them more questions should pop up. And don’t worry if you don’t know all of the answers, you won’t. Fact. But you will probably be able to make some really educated guesses in the areas that relate to your personal strengths and won’t have a clue in those areas that are too far out of your own skills and experiences ~ another good pointer the types of people you will need to flesh out the idea and really start the tactical planning of “How to Launch Your Winning Startup Idea”. But again, that is the subject of another blog posting.

I hope this posting helps. Again, questions, comments, relevant rude remarks always welcome and ‘Yes’ this posting could have included much more, in fact, it could have gone on for at least another 50,000 words but like most entrepreneurs I have a tendency towards ADD. Let me know where I should dive deeper and I’ll do my best!

Andrew
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

NOTE: I grant permission for every reader to reproduce on your website or blog the article you are now reading. But copy this article ONLY, without any alteration and please Include the copyright statement. (NOTE: I am giving permission to host on your website this article AND NO OTHERS. Reprinting or hosting my articles without express written permission is illegal, immoral, and a violation of my copyright.)“Copyright © 2007, Advisor Garage LLC. Advisor Garage Blog. All rights reserved. Permission granted to reprint this article on your website without alteration if you include this copyright statement and leave the hyperlinks live and in place.”

Startup Techniques: Qualifying Your New Business Idea (2)

Hopefully you read the previous post “Startup Techniques: Creating Your New Business Idea” and tried one of the following suggestions for coming up with your personal ‘Winning Startup Idea’.

Just as a reminder:

  1. Product Design New Application: Think of how one product or design can be re-deployed to solve other problems
  2. What If?: How could a great product or business be a ‘world class’ business? How does it need to change or improve?
  3. The Pissed Off Brainstorm: If only X did it this way….why couldn’t they just do Y?

Great!  Have you found that idea that makes sleep near impossible? THE idea that is now starting to bloom and grow in your brain whether you want to think about it or not?  If you are reading this and even now the idea is demanding attention then maybe you’ve found your own Winning Startup Idea.  Is that all there is too it?  Of course not. This is just the beginning but it is one of the most challenging elements…

The frank reality is that the idea you’ve just conceived is at the start of it’s life and I can promise you that as you move it forward, it will shift and change to the point where when it becomes ‘real’ you probably won’t even recognize it as the same idea.  That’s OK. Every winning startup idea grows up eventually when it hits the real world and spends some time with it’s initial customers. These initial steps are what this post is about.  Initial steps to take a fantastic and very personal winning startup and make it ready to be shared and experienced by it’s customers.

So here it is, your very own winning startup idea – what’s next?

At this stage I normally take a look at myself and examine whether I’m passionate enough about the idea to really grab a hold of it with both hands and push it forward no matter what.  No matter what! Any obstacle, any person telling me that it won’t or can’t happen.  There are always people who will tell you 101 reasons why your idea will fail.  If I’m only half hearted about it now then sooner or later I’ll run out of steam and waste time. My own time (forgivable) and other people’s time (unforgivable).  So this is usually the point where I decide to sleep on it.

OK, so I’ve slept on it and the first thought that pops into my head when I wake up is my winning startup idea…even while mentally sweeping out the cobwebs of sleep my brain starts to turn over the idea and look at it from different directions.  As I mull it over I start to see how it can be made better, how it could be not just a winning idea but Great one.  Yippee, this is one of those ideas – one of the one’s that even if I wanted to, I can’t push side.   That mental shot of near caffeine has happened again. Isn’t life great?

Next, I write the idea down and I don’t worry if its rough…I’m not going to use this document to raise money…just as a tool to develop the idea and test it out.  After getting every part of the idea down on paper I promise to give myself 24 hours before coming back to it. I cheat…I can’t help it, a few really interesting elements come to my mind an hour or two later and I have to add them to the document in case I lose them.  OK.  That’s it. 24 hours. Right.  So next day I read it through and see what other refinements or ideas come to mind. 

Yep, the document makes sense. So who do I know that has expertise relating to this type of business or perhaps know someone who does?  Let’s take the drive through whole food deli idea from the previous post.  Who do I know that has some business experience in restaurants?  Scratching my head the honest answer in my case is ‘no one’.  Damn! 

Lucky for me the internet has websites and forums such as Advisor Garage (http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community) with advisors with experiences across multiple industries.  So, my next step is to find someone that really understands this space and connect with them.  Keep your own reach out at a high level, give them enough information that they can get the gist of the idea without giving away the crown jewels. Remember, not everyone is ethical out there. But likewise, without some risk, this idea will remain in your head and will never become a reality.

OK, now it’s your turn – you’ve run your winning startup idea by someone who understands the space and if you’re lucky, they’ve given you some more ideas, some contacts, told you about potential competitors and if there aren’t any, have probably told you you’re mad.  Don’t sweat ‘mad’, so was Thomas Edison and Marconi in their early days. These are your early entrepreneurial days, take pride in mad…mad is better than bored and boring while watching TV. Sorry NBC!

If there was chemistry between you and your advisor, start cultivating that person as your mentor.  Be appreciative of their experience, let them know that they could be the key to your success – they actually might be.  If they have helped you identified similar business models or competitors, make it your first business to know everything about them. What do they do, how do they do it, what do they charge and most important, what do their customers think of their product or service? See any chinks in their armor? If so great!  This tells you what you’ll need to do better to start pleasing your customers, making money and building your market.

But one person, a winning startup idea and a rough idea draft is not a business.  You’ll need some critical elements and no surprises for what they are:

  • People
  • Money
  • Product
  • Initial Customers
  • Business infrastructure

But securing those elements is material for the next few posts…if you have thoughts, questions, comments or rude remarks about the above, let me know.

Andrew
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

NOTE: I grant permission for every reader to reproduce on your website or blog the article you are now reading. But copy this article ONLY, without any alteration and please Include the copyright statement. (NOTE: I am giving permission to host on your website this article AND NO OTHERS. Reprinting or hosting my articles without express written permission is illegal, immoral, and a violation of my copyright.)“Copyright © 2007, Advisor Garage LLC. Advisor Garage Blog. All rights reserved. Permission granted to reprint this article on your website without alteration if you include this copyright statement and leave the hyperlinks live and in place.”

Startup Techniques: Creating Your New Business Idea (1)

I’ve have never tried to get this very personal process down in one place before.  From idea through to a real business step by step with as many of my own personal techniques and suggestions thrown in as we go.  There are rainforest amounts of books printed about people’s startup experiences – what I’d like to try here is to write about the real techniques and steps I have been through many times before when taking a new business idea and working to move it through to a real product or service.  Hopefully a more grounded approach than some of those ‘How to’ or ‘My experience as an Entrepreneur’ books. Well, we’ll see. Questions and comments very welcome!

So, want to start a business? Have the necessary passion to start a new business but are unsure where to start? Looking for that new, innovative, winning new business idea? Or perhaps you’re waiting for divine inspiration to serve up that winning idea like money from heaven before you actually get up off that sofa and GO FOR IT.  Sorry to burst your bubble – waiting won’t make it happen.  You have to ‘create’ it yourself.  But maybe it’s closer and easier to get than you think, maybe you can come up with that idea today.

Here are a few ways that work for me – so much so that they’ve become almost unconscious processes that happen on autopilot and better yet, their easy. Give them a try.

When asked where my ideas for new business come from I often joke that it’s a ‘disease’, something which is uncontrolled, being delivered in the grey matter between my ears without conscious thought or a process.  That’s close, but not exactly how it happens.

During my first interview for a role at Procter & Gamble fresh out university one interview question still sticks with me.  The interviewer passed a glass across the table and asked me to name ten uses for it.  Use number 1 was…a glass, she was unimpressed. Use number 2 was a paper weight, (better but still no cigar), number 3 was a lens to read small print in a document and before I knew what had happened, ten different and increasingly creative (read – crazy) uses had spilled out in the interview room.  That process is not too dissimilar from the process you could try. This redeployment of one product idea (in my case stackable Pringles) into another product category (Fire Escape Ladders) helped me come up with the idea for my first company, X-IT Products to produce an idea I’d had for the world’s smallest, safest, strongest fire escape ladder.

A refinement on that creative free thinking is what we’ll call ‘What if’.  Find a product, web service or business that is in the space that you are passionate about and really impresses you.  Thought of it? 

What’s great about that business? What do you really like about it?  Now think about what would make it even better? That would take it from being a great business and make it a world class business.  Write down every idea that comes to you….when you feel yourself drying up, read through the list and see if that squeezes any more ideas out of you.  Take a read through that list and see if any light bulbs go off in your head – any really obvious improvements or refinements to that already great business?

The third approach that might work even better for you is what I’ll call the ‘Pissed Off’ brainstorm.  Has a product, service or business failed to live up to it’s promise?  Maybe they over sold you or your expectations were mis-aligned with the reality of the business.  Maybe they screwed up or the product was faulty. Perhaps they don’t exactly meet your need.  But who cares? You do, because this is an opportunity to figure out what the business or product needed to do to deliver on it’s promise, to meet and exceed your expectations.  And if they aren’t meeting your needs because of some flaw, figure out what needs to happen to solve it. 

Let’s try an example, I’m driving from New York to Philadelphia – it’s lunch time and I’m hungry.  Watching the signs as I travel, what are my options?  Ah, here we are – McDonalds, Wendy’s, Dunkin Donuts and a few no-brand obscure Italian restaurants. More often than not if I’m hungry enough, I’ll drive through and buy something.  But just once, wouldn’t it be good if I could get something that was healthier.  It’s true that most of these places sell salads but then the light bulb goes off!  Before Whole Foods selling organic and more ‘wholesome’ food, most supermarkets were similar. Whole Foods changed the supermarket ‘game’ – what about a motor way food joint that changes the game in the same way as Whole Foods?  A quick, drive through that offers freshly prepared, all organic, non-greasy, non-salad food?  As of today, at least on the routes I drive, they would be the only food chain of its type. Talk about cornering an underserved market. Surely not everyone want’s a burger or a slice of pizza? Is this a winning idea? Who know’s but it could make someone a lot of money if it takes off. Don’t forget my percentage if you make this one a reality! -)

So, there are other ways that these ideas are created but hopefully these few are good as a start, so:

  1. Product Design New Application: Think of how one product or design can be re-deployed to solve other problems
  2. What If?: How could a great product or business be a ‘world class’ business? How does it need to change or improve?
  3. The Pissed Off Brainstorm: If only X did it this way….why couldn’t they just do Y?

Try these approaches and see where they take you.  Feel free to come back and post how you get on.  Maybe then I can write an article on some ‘what to do next’ steps for your new winning idea.  When you find your winning idea then you are already further along than most ‘would be’ entrepreneurs, now to go an make it a reality. Let me know if there’s any interest in those thoughts.

Andrew
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

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You’ve Created Your Winning Startup Idea ~ First Steps (2)

Hopefully you read the previous post “Create that Winning Startup Idea” and tried one of the following suggestions for coming up with your personal ‘Winning Startup Idea’.

Just as a reminder:

  1. Product Design New Application: Think of how one product or design can be re-deployed to solve other problems
  2. What If?: How could a great product or business be a ‘world class’ business? How does it need to change or improve?
  3. The Pissed Off Brainstorm: If only X did it this way….why couldn’t they just do Y?

Great!  Have you found that idea that makes sleep near impossible? THE idea that is now starting to bloom and grow in your brain whether you want to think about it or not?  If you are reading this and even now the idea is demanding attention then maybe you’ve found your own ‘Winning Startup Idea’.  Is that all there is too it?  Of course not. This is just the beginning but it is one of the most challenging elements…

The frank reality is that the idea you’ve just conceived is at the start of it’s life and I can promise you that as you move it forward, it will shift and change to the point where when it becomes ‘real’ you probably won’t even recognize it as the same idea.  That’s OK. Every winning startup idea grows up eventually when it hits the real world and spends some time with it’s initial customers. These initial steps are what this post is about.  Initial steps to take a fantastic and very personal winning startup and make it ready to be shared and experienced by it’s customers.

So here it is, your very own winning startup idea – what’s next?

At this stage I normally take a look at myself and examine whether I’m passionate enough about the idea to really grab a hold of it with both hands and push it forward no matter what.  No matter what! Any obstacle, any person telling me that it won’t or can’t happen.  There are always people who will tell you 101 reasons why your idea will fail.  If I’m only half hearted about it now then sooner or later I’ll run out of steam and waste time. My own time (forgivable) and other people’s time (unforgivable).  So this is usually the point where I decide to sleep on it.

OK, so I’ve slept on it and the first thought that pops into my head when I wake up is my winning startup idea…even while mentally sweeping out the cobwebs of sleep my brain starts to turn over the idea and look at it from different directions.  As I mull it over I start to see how it can be made better, how it could be not just a winning idea but Great one.  Yippee, this is one of those ideas – one of the one’s that even if I wanted to, I can’t push side.   That mental shot of near caffeine has happened again. Isn’t life great?

Next, I write the idea down and I don’t worry if its rough…I’m not going to use this document to raise money…just as a tool to develop the idea and test it out.  After getting every part of the idea down on paper I promise to give myself 24 hours before coming back to it. I cheat…I can’t help it, a few really interesting elements come to my mind an hour or two later and I have to add them to the document in case I lose them.  OK.  That’s it. 24 hours. Right.  So next day I read it through and see what other refinements or ideas come to mind. 

Yep, the document makes sense. So who do I know that has expertise relating to this type of business or perhaps know someone who does?  Let’s take the drive through whole food deli idea from the previous post.  Who do I know that has some business experience in restaurants?  Scratching my head the honest answer in my case is ‘no one’.  Damn! 

Lucky for me the internet has websites and forums such as Advisor Garage (http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community) with advisors with experiences across multiple industries.  So, my next step is to find someone that really understands this space and connect with them.  Keep your own reach out at a high level, give them enough information that they can get the gist of the idea without giving away the crown jewels. Remember, not everyone is ethical out there. But likewise, without some risk, this idea will remain in your head and will never become a reality.

OK, now it’s your turn – you’ve run your winning startup idea by someone who understands the space and if you’re lucky, they’ve given you some more ideas, some contacts, told you about potential competitors and if there aren’t any, have probably told you you’re mad.  Don’t sweat ‘mad’, so was Thomas Edison and Marconi in their early days. These are your early entrepreneurial days, take pride in mad…mad is better than bored and boring while watching TV. Sorry NBC!

If there was chemistry between you and your advisor, start cultivating that person as your mentor.  Be appreciative of their experience, let them know that they could be the key to your success – they actually might be.  If they have helped you identified similar business models or competitors, make it your first business to know everything about them. What do they do, how do they do it, what do they charge and most important, what do their customers think of their product or service? See any chinks in their armor? If so great!  This tells you what you’ll need to do better to start pleasing your customers, making money and building your market.

But one person, a winning startup idea and a rough idea draft is not a business.  You’ll need some critical elements and no surprises for what they are:

  • People
  • Money
  • Product
  • Initial Customers
  • Business infrastructure

But securing those elements is material for the next few posts…if you have thoughts, questions, comments or rude remarks about the above, let me know.

Andrew
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

Create that Winning Startup Idea (1)

Want to start a business? Have the necessary passion to start a new business but are unsure where to start? Looking for that new, innovative, winning new business idea? Or perhaps you’re waiting for divine inspiration to serve up that winning idea like money from heaven before you actually get up off that sofa and GO FOR IT.  Sorry to burst your bubble – waiting won’t make it happen.  You have to ‘create’ it yourself.  But maybe it’s closer and easier to get than you think, maybe you can come up with that idea today.

Here are a few ways that work for me – so much so that they’ve become almost unconscious processes that happen on autopilot and better yet, their easy. Give them a try.

When asked where my ideas for new business come from I often joke that it’s a ‘disease’, something which is uncontrolled, being delivered in the grey matter between my ears without conscious thought or a process.  That’s close, but not exactly how it happens.

During my first interview for a role at Procter & Gamble fresh out university one interview question still sticks with me.  The interviewer passed a glass across the table and asked me to name ten uses for it.  Use number 1 was…a glass, she was unimpressed. Use number 2 was a paper weight, (better but still no cigar), number 3 was a lens to read small print in a document and before I knew what had happened, ten different and increasingly creative (read – crazy) uses had spilled out in the interview room.  That process is not too dissimilar from the process you could try. This redeployment of one product idea (in my case stackable Pringles) into another product category (Fire Escape Ladders) helped me come up with the idea for my first company, X-IT Products to produce an idea I’d had for the world’s smallest, safest, strongest fire escape ladder.

A refinement on that creative free thinking is what we’ll call ‘What if’.  Find a product, web service or business that is in the space that you are passionate about and really impresses you.  Thought of it? 

What’s great about that business? What do you really like about it?  Now think about what would make it even better? That would take it from being a great business and make it a world class business.  Write down every idea that comes to you….when you feel yourself drying up, read through the list and see if that squeezes any more ideas out of you.  Take a read through that list and see if any light bulbs go off in your head – any really obvious improvements or refinements to that already great business?

The third approach that might work even better for you is what I’ll call the ‘Pissed Off’ brainstorm.  Has a product, service or business failed to live up to it’s promise?  Maybe they over sold you or your expectations were mis-aligned with the reality of the business.  Maybe they screwed up or the product was faulty. Perhaps they don’t exactly meet your need.  But who cares? You do, because this is an opportunity to figure out what the business or product needed to do to deliver on it’s promise, to meet and exceed your expectations.  And if they aren’t meeting your needs because of some flaw, figure out what needs to happen to solve it. 

Let’s try an example, I’m driving from New York to Philadelphia – it’s lunch time and I’m hungry.  Watching the signs as I travel, what are my options?  Ah, here we are – McDonalds, Wendy’s, Dunkin Donuts and a few no-brand obscure Italian restaurants. More often than not if I’m hungry enough, I’ll drive through and buy something.  But just once, wouldn’t it be good if I could get something that was healthier.  It’s true that most of these places sell salads but then the light bulb goes off!  Before Whole Foods selling organic and more ‘wholesome’ food, most supermarkets were similar. Whole Foods changed the supermarket ‘game’ – what about a motor way food joint that changes the game in the same way as Whole Foods?  A quick, drive through that offers freshly prepared, all organic, non-greasy, non-salad food?  As of today, at least on the routes I drive, they would be the only food chain of its type. Talk about cornering an underserved market. Surely not everyone want’s a burger or a slice of pizza? Is this a winning idea? Who know’s but it could make someone a lot of money if it takes off. Don’t forget my percentage if you make this one a reality! 🙂

So, there are other ways that these ideas are created but hopefully these few are good as a start, so:

  1. Product Design New Application: Think of how one product or design can be re-deployed to solve other problems
  2. What If?: How could a great product or business be a ‘world class’ business? How does it need to change or improve?
  3. The Pissed Off Brainstorm: If only X did it this way….why couldn’t they just do Y?

Try these approaches and see where they take you.  Feel free to come back and post how you get on.  Maybe then I can write an article on some ‘what to do next’ steps for your new winning idea.  When you find your winning idea then you are already further along than most ‘would be’ entrepreneurs, now to go an make it a reality. Let me know if there’s any interest in those thoughts.

Andrew
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

TableXChange: A $250K Virtual Investment

TableXChange is exactly what the name implies – a website that helps people secure hard to get reservations at some of the most exclusive restaurants.  Want to impress by taking a date to Il Mulino’s to sample the divine Italian food of Chefs Fernando and Gino Masci but didn’t think to book ahead?  If you’re lucky then you can buy someone’s existing reservation – the price for a secured reservation for two this Friday at 8pm is $35 bucks.  Not too outrageous when you consider that’s the cost of three jars of Pomodoro Pasta Sauce through Il Mulino’s website.

Business Model:
Sellers can list as many reservations as they wish on TableXChange.  There is a $40 cap on the amount that they can charge reservation ‘buyers’.  How does TableXChange make money? Simple, for every reservation ’sold’ TableXChange makes 12% of the agreed price.  If the reservation does not sell, no harm no foul, it was free to list and the failed ’seller’ does not owe TableXChange any cash at all. So, sell a reservation for $30, then TableXChange takes a $3.60 cut.  You get $26.40 – not bad since you didn’t actually pay anything for the reservation – just five minutes on the telephone. Even at AT&T rates – that’s still a pretty good deal! -)

Some Core Functionality:

  • Free to list and free to search by restaurant, date, time, neighborhood and price
  • Free to cancel the sale at any time as long as it’s not sold. 
  • No personal information is shared between parties – accept probably the name of the reservation i.e. Table for 2 for Smith but this only occurs when the reservation is sold
  • Only three (3) reservations max at the same restaurant per night allowed
  • Payment within 48 hours of reservation sale
  • Pay and receive payment via Paypal. Easy!

Likes:
A neat idea!  Could do favors to buyers, sellers and restaurants especially if restaurants fill more tables if reservation makers sell their reservations rather than being ‘no shows’.  As a busy married guy the ability to get reservations at the last minute at great restaurants could really help…especially for this special days when I know I should have booked 45 days beforehand, but let’s face it, who really thinks that far ahead?  

Dislikes:
Just a few questions/concerns:

  • As there is a $40 cap on the reservation price and a maximum of three reservations per restaurant per night, the very ’special’ restaurant, in high demand will not be at the real market rate and should be snapped up quickly. This means that the really great restaurants that should ‘drive’ the adoption of this site may not actually be on the site for too long.  If they are not there, why should I go?
  • At some point these guys should try to integrate into a larger site that offers users the ability to see if there are reservations available without needing to buy it through the system.  It would be plain annoying if I find I could have just called and booked direct for free.
  • One obvious one is that TableXChange is just New York City and the Hamptons at this time. More place please.

Suggestions:

  • Lost revenue opportunity:  Members need paypal, they refer people to paypal but don’t use a paypal referral number. Odd!  They could be making additional revenue from paypal for referals. This doesn’t cost members anything but is a ‘thank you’ from paypal.
  • The restaurant listings do not include restaurant website links, descriptions or reviews.  I know I should know every restaurant on the site by reputation but the reality is, I don’t! If I’m going to pay someone $30 for a reservation, I’d first like to check out the restaurant, the Zagat rating (here’s another potential revenue stream for TableXChange) and customer reviews.

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would virtually invest $250K! Today New York and the Hamptons, Tomorrow the United States, and Friday the World! There are some obvious spinoff opportunities but I’ll leave that for dessert!

http://www.tablexchange.com

Andrew – Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

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Sorry Guy It’s Not So Easy: The Flip Side of Entrepreneurship

This is a guest posting by Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin, a company that enables people to buy homes online. He offers a counterpoint to my posting about how easy it is to make millions of dollars with “user-generated, long-tail, Web 2.0, social-networking, open-source content.”

Last month, Guy called James Hong and Markus Frind heroes for running multi-million dollar websites like Hot or Not and Plenty of Fish in their underwear. Their stats are jaw-dropping: twelve billion page views, 380 hits per second, two hours of work a day.

Lately I’ve been thinking how hard, not how easy, it is to build a new company. Hard has gone out of fashion. Like college students bragging about how they barely studied, start-ups today take care to project a sense of ease. Wherever I’ve worked, we’ve secretly felt just the opposite. We’re assailed by doubts, mortified by our own shortcomings, surrounded by freaks, testy over silly details. Trying to be like James or Markus has only been counterproductive.

And now, having been through a few startups, I’m not even sure I’d want it to be that easy. Working two hours a day on my own wasn’t my goal when I came to Silicon Valley. Does anybody remember the old video of Steve Jobs launching the Mac? He had tears in his eyes. And even though Jobs is Jobs and I am nobody, I knew how he felt. I’d had the same reaction–absurdly–to portal software and more recently to a Redfin, a fledgling real estate website.

“The megalomaniac pleasure of creation,” the psychoanalyst Edmund Berger wrote, “produces a type of elation which cannot be compared with that experienced by other mortals.” Jobs wasn’t just crying from simple happiness but from all the tinkering, kvetching, nitpicking, wholesale reworking, and spasms of self-loathing that go into a beautiful product. It was all being paid back in a rush.

Like the souls in Dostoevsky who are admitted to heaven because they never thought themselves worthy of it, successful entrepreneurs can’t be convinced that any other startup has their troubles, because they constantly compare the triumphant launch parties and revisionist histories of successful companies to their own daily struggles. Just so you know you’re not alone, here’s a top-ten list of the ways a startup can feel deeply screwed up without really being that screwed up at all.

  1. True believers go nuts at the slightest provocation. The best people at a start-up care too much. They stay up late writing Jerry Maguire memos, eavesdropping on support calls, snapping at bureaucracy, citing Joel Spolsky on Aerons, and Paul Graham on cubes. They are your heart and bones, so you have to give them what they need, which is a lot. The only way to get them on your side is to put them in charge.
  2. Big projects attract good people. If you aren’t doing something worthwhile, you can’t get anyone worthwhile to work on it. I often think about what Ezra Pound once said of his epic poem, that “if it’s a failure, it’s a failure worth all the successes of its age.” We’re not writing poetry, but it matters to us that we’re trying to compete with real estate agents rather than just running their ads. You need a big mission to recruit people who care about what you’re doing.
  3. Start-ups are freak-catchers. You have to be fundamentally unhappy with the way things are to leave Microsoft, and yet unrealistic enough to believe the world can change to join a start-up. This is a volatile combination which can result in group mood swings and a somewhat motley crew. Thus, don’t worry if your start-up seems to have more than its fair share of oddballs.
  4. Good code takes time. One great engineer can do more than ten mediocre ones especially when starting a project. But great engineers still need time: whenever we’ve thought our talent, sprinkled with the fairy dust of some new engineering paradigm, would free us from having to schedule time for design and testing, we’ve paid for it. To make something elegant takes time, and the cult of speed sometimes works against that. “Make haste slowly.”
  5. Everybody has to re-build. The short-cuts you have to take and the problems you couldn’t anticipate when building version 1.0 of your product always mean you’ll have to rebuild some of it in version 2.0 or 3.0. Don’t get discouraged or short-sighted. Just rebuild it. This is just how things work.
  6. Fearless leaders are often terrified. The CEO of the most promising start-up I know of recently used Hikkup to anonymously ask his Facebook friends if we thought his idea was any good. Just because you’re worried doesn’t mean you have a bad idea; the best ideas are often the ones that scare you the most. And for sure don’t believe the after-the-fact statements from entrepreneurs about how they “knew” what to do.
  7. It’ll always be hard work. Most start-ups find an interesting problem to solve, then just keep working on it. At a recent awards ceremony, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tried to think of the secret to Microsoft’s success and could only come up with “hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, work.” This is an obvious cliche, but most entrepreneurs remain fixated on the Eureka! moment. If you don’t believe you have any reliable competitive advantage, you’re the kind of insecure person who will work your competition into the ground, so keep working.
  8. It isn’t going to get better–it already is. In the early days, start-ups focus on how great it’s going to be when they succeed; but the moment they do, they start talking about how great it was before they did. Whenever I get this way, I remember the Venerable Bede’s complaint that his eighth century contemporaries had lost the fervor of seventh century monks. Even in the darkest of the Dark Ages, people were nostalgic for…the Dark Ages. Start-ups are like medieval monasteries: always convinced that paradise is just ahead or that things only recently got worse. If you can begin to enjoy the process of building a start-up rather than the outcome, you’ll be a better leader.
  9. Truth is our only currency. At lunch last week, an engineer said the only thing he remembered from his interview was our saying the most likely outcome for Redfin–or any startup–was bankruptcy, but that he should join us anyway. It’s odd but the more we’ve tried to warn people about the risks, the more they seem to ignore them. And since you have to keep taking risks, you have to keep telling people about them. You don’t want to be like Saddam Hussein, who never prepared his generals for invasion because he couldn’t admit he didn’t have nuclear weapons.
  10. Competition starts at $100 million. A Sequoia partner once told me that competition only starts when you hit $100 million in revenues. Maybe that number is lower now. But if you do something worthwhile, someone else will do it too. Since you can’t see what’s going on behind a competitor’s pretty website, it’s natural to assume that all the challenges we just went over only apply to your company. They don’t, so keep the faith.

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Andrew
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

Social Flowers: A $150K Virtual Investment

Social Flowers is an innovative idea!  If you are part of a social network (and let’s face it…who isn’t nowadays) then using ‘Social Flowers’, you can send flowers, gift baskets, balloons to another member of your social network even though you don’t necessarily have their contact information, name, address etc.

Business Model:
Like most online flower stores, customers are charged for the actual items along with a service charge.  Items range from around $35 and can go up to $200 or thereabouts.  If you wanted to be even more extravagant than that, I’m sure Social Flowers will probably create something just for you and your social networking pal!  Thankfully there is no distracting google ads etc so this is a nice clean site.

Some Core Functionality:
Here is how the process works.

  • In a social network, the sender selects the Social Flowers application. The sender then selects the recipient of the flowers from their list of friends.
  • When the recipient has been selected, the senders clicks on a link which takes the sender from the social network to the SocialFlowers.com website.
  • At SocialFlowers.com, the sender chooses the flower selection, goes through checkout and enters credit card information.
  • The sender is returned to the social network. The Social Flowers application inside the social network sends an email on the sender’s behalf to the recipient letting them know that they have been sent real flowers.
  • In the social network, the recipient receives an email letting them know they have been sent flowers from the sender. The recipient clicks on the link in the email and goes to SocialFlowers.com where they are asked to provide an address for the delivery of flowers. The recipient is returned to the social network after a delivery address has been provided.
  • Social Flowers fulfills the delivery of fresh flowers to the recipient from the sender using our network of over 30,000 local florists across the United States and Canada.

Likes:
This is a nice and simple business model and it’s interesting that a ‘traditional’ business like a flower delivery service is working to cross the web 2.0 digital divide and with luck capitalize on the relationships people are establishing online.

  • A key ‘like’ is that I just plain haven’t seen this kind of business before so you have to tip your hat to the maverick that thought of the idea. For that reason alone, I wish them loads of luck!

Dislikes:
I have a few concerns:

  • Will people really pay $40 to pay to send flowers to a person they have never met, don’t even know their real names or where they live?  Isn’t part of the joy of giving seeing the persons face after receiving your thoughtful gift?  My wife and Mother are lucky if I send them flowers using an online service – would I or most other people really be thoughtful enough to send flowers to someone they don’t ‘really’ know?
  • The site is bland.  The design could be much more innovative, especially as it’s supposed to appeal to the web 2.0 crowd. At this stage it looks like a template that they have been given by an interflora type company. Social Flowers is part of Florist One who state they are first and foremost a florist. That’s good to know but come on guys – turn the visual experience up a notch!
  • I’ve received phishing emails telling me someone has sent me virtual flowers and the like.  This may cause challenges for this business model given someone is receiving flower notifications from people they don’t know. Does Social Flowers still charge even if the flowers can’t be delivered or aren’t received?

Suggestions:

  • As they are focused on web 2.0 market, try using some of the common tools of this space.  Customer reviews, send to friend, bookmarking, community etc – If community members send each other flowers, add a card with a special reference number to your website so the recipient can write a ‘thank you’ and start a more personal dialogue with the sender via your site.  This would create a lot more traction.

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would virtually invest $150K as I don’t trust that virtual friends will really do anything more than send virtual flowers to each other.  But perhaps the world really is crazy and I could be VERY wrong about this!

http://www.SocialFlowers.com

Andrew – Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

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Elevator Pitch Roundtable – VCTaskforce

If you are an entrepreneur in a startup and currently seeking capital, come prepared with your best 60-second elevator pitch. If you are an investor come and listen to entrepreneurs pitches. You never know where you’ll find your next deal. Find out how our panel of investors rate the

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Building a Credible Brand for Your Small Business …

Building a Credible Brand for Your Small Business … Then the entrepreneurial spirit came calling again. This next move came about the same time that Sun Microsystems introduced Java, the programming language. As a software developer at the time, Burns knew that Java was the technology for which he had been waiting. So in 1995, Burns, together

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Interview: Some good advice – Andrew from Advisor Garage

Advisor Garage and the Advisor Garage Community is an online service for entrepreneurs to connect with Advisors, Angels, Venture Capitalists and other entrepreneurs. It was established by three people – the founder (Andrew Makunas) and two really fantastic tech guys. Another interesting interview from Loscreador. Let’s find out more…

The idea for Advisor Garage came to Andrew Makunas at Harvard Business School. He was guided by various advisors there who helped him realize his ideas and start his various businesses. Advisor Garage hopes to achieve that same goal, but for entrepreneurs all across the world.

Advisor Garage is still in the initial stage, but promises to be a huge success with the every increasing number of talented entrepreneurs and always helpful guides who want to help. Andrew has taken these both and created a wonderful combination.

In this insightful talk with Los Creador, Andrew tells us what he wants Advisor Garage to achieve and the journey that still has a long way to go.

Los Creador: How did you get the idea for AdvisorGarage?
Andrew Makunas: As an entrepreneur, I realized that one of the most challenging and time consuming tasks for entrepreneurs is the ability to connect with great advisors, investors and new team members. In my case, it took months to get everything lined up to get my businesses really thriving. Advisor Garage was created to make that process much easier and faster. Speed is critical when starting businesses because every day without revenue is a day closer to failure. If AdvisorGarage can help connect the dots for an entrepreneur then they are much more likely to realize their startup dreams and objectives.

LC: What’s Advisor Garage all about?
Andrew: Advisor Garage and the Advisor Garage Community is an online service for entrepreneurs to connect with Advisors, Angels, Venture Capitalists and other entrepreneurs. The core site allows entrepreneurs and advisors to search according to their interests and needs so they can reach out to people that can help them move their businesses forward. The newly launched Advisor Garage Community site gives members the opportunity to connect right now with other Entrepreneurs, Angels and Venture Capitalists members through the free blogs, forums and networking groups. They can build up their personal entrepreneurial network through a ‘linking’ system with private messaging.

LC: Skilled and experienced advisors would be the bedrock of AG. What is your plan to attract such people to your site? What do you offer them?
Andrew: There are multiple ways that Advisors find out about AdvisorGarage. Perhaps the most important is member referral or recommendations. AdvisorGarage has grown to include hundreds of advisors through word of mouth. In addition, the management team reaches out to their own personal network and alumni of their own business schools and encourages them to join. But the real ‘hook’ for advisors is to discover fresh new entrepreneurial talent and great new businesses. Advisors and investors love the idea of discovering new innovative people and businesses and Advisor Garage and the Advisor Garage Community are good channels to do this.

LC: How many people are involved with AdvisorGarage? Tell us a little more about them?
Andrew: Advisor Garage was established by three people – the founder (me) and two really fantastic tech guys. The interesting thing about the team is that none of us work full time on Advisor Garage – we frankly cannot afford to as we do not charge for the service and will not do so until much later. What we would ideally like to do is to take any revenues we make, when we make it and channel is straight back into product development. We have already mapped out where Advisor Garage is going and the services we would like to provide for our members. We would like to pass every dime the site (eventually) earns into improving the services and offerings for the members rather than paying expensive salaries. For those reasons, we build and manage Advisor Garage during our long nights and too short weekends. Part of the entrepreneurial journey I guess!

LC: What are your plans for the future of the site?
Andrew: Ah ha! If only I was allowed to tell you! What I can say is that now that we have the basic Community site live (http://www.AdvisorGarage.com) we would like to refine and improve it and from there we have another two or three key services that revolve around helping entrepreneurs with their key challenges at various stages of development.

LC: How did you begin your business networking?
Andrew: I don’t think I ‘business network’, I think I generally enjoy spending time with people and both new and old contacts. Its not a conscious effort, meeting and working with people is something I just plain enjoy.

LC: Which site do you visit everyday other than your own?
Andrew: Techcrunch.com

LC: Who are your idols in the IT space? What is it about them that you think is really great?
Andrew: There are too many people – if pushed it’s probably Guy Kawasaki. What’s great about Guy? He tries to give back to the broader entrepreneurial community and the upside of that is it also builds his personal equity and brand.

LC: What is the greatest challenge to your success? How did you or plan to overcome it?
Andrew: The greatest challenge to our success (and still is) is building a comprehensive member focused site that delivers the range of services that can really help them and their businesses without cash. Could we go out and get cash from angels or VCs? Probably, but we want to focus the business on our members rather than on the bottom line so we struggle every day to manage and improve the site from our own personal savings.

LC: What was the one main reason for starting something on your own?
Andrew: I can’t help it. I’m an entrepreneur! I basically come up with new business and product ideas on a daily basis. The shower is usually where it all happens! Some ideas ‘stick’ others disappear when the next idea comes along. I’m compelled to pursue the ones which stick. Advisor Garage was one of those.

LC: What is the one accomplishment till date you’re most proud of?
Andrew: Aside from the personal stuff, probably designing and launching the world’s smallest, safest fire escape ladder which is now a permanent exhibition in New York’s MOMA and being sold in multiple accounts. It feels good to have brought a product to market which saves lives.

LC: What’s that one big dream or accomplishment you are working towards?
Andrew: The next iterations of Advisor Garage and related services will be the next set of accomplishments. In terms of dream – to help a significant number of entrepreneurs build great and successful businesses world wide.

LC: Time to play soothsayer. What according to you is the next big thing?
Andrew: I’m not sure there is truly a next big thing – I thing all next big things come back to the consumers. If they don’t then they are destined to be the next big ‘has been’.

LC: Any advice for other web entrepreneurs out there?
Andrew: Whatever you want to try, give it a shot. Don’t worry too much about Business Plans, its better to get it out there and modify and build as you get customer feedback. Pick the right team members from day 1. Get some good advisors and leverage them until they squeal!

LC: How early in life did your relationship with computers/internet start? Tell us about your first few interactions with technology.
Andrew: This will show my age but my first ever computer was when I was about eight or nine. It was called a Sinclair ZX81 and that was closely followed by the Sinclair Spectrum, the Commadore 64, and the Apple LC…after that I’m afraid I sold out to Windows machines and so after that point the computers stopped being memorable.

LC: Which was the first company you worked with? What did you do there?
Andrew: The first company I worked for was Procter & Gamble. I was a brand manager for Cover Girl cosmetics – a bit weird for a guy but it taught me some good lessons on marketing and delivering great products to consumers.

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LC: Can you elaborate on your hobbies and what you enjoy doing to pass your time?
Andrew: Spending time with my family and martial arts – a combination of JKD, Muy Thai and mixed martial arts. It’s a great way to get your mind to switch to something aside from entrepreneurialism.

LC: Where are you based now? Any plans for the immediate future.
Andrew: I’m in New Jersey right now. Immediate plans for now are email this to Los Creador and go get some lunch.
BTW, please check out our new Community site . A shameless plug but as we have a zero dollars marketing budget I won’t apologize too much ;-)

Thanks for the interview…

Andrew

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User Points and Free Advertising within the Advisor Garage Community

We have just added a small amount of advertising on Advisor Garage to promote our new tool bar!  We would like to offer our members the ability to promote themselves or their businesses to the community.  You may have noticed that each member gains points as they contribute to the Community.  Points are gained for inviting others, creating a blog posting, comments and so on.

We would like to offer active members free text or image ads for one month when they gain at least 250 points for relevant member content.  So the small print here is the points must be gained for adding value to the community…if someone votes for your content you get points, if they vote it down you lose points. Nice and simple huh!

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The Art of Doing It Yourself by Vivek Wadhwa

You don’t have to wait for venture capitalists or angel investors to lend a hand. Follow these tips to get the ball rolling on your own. If you have a great idea that can change the world, then bootstrap your way until you can prove it. Funding will come just when you don’t need it.

I founded two tech companies, co-produced a Hollywood film, and helped raise close to $100 million in private and public financing. Over the years, I’ve also mentored dozens of entrepreneurs. There always seems to be a catch-22 — you need seed financing but no one will give you a cent until you have a marketable product. Ironically, raising millions of dollars is always easier than raising thousands.

BEYOND IDEAS.  A myth propagated by business schools is that the way to build a venture is to create a great business plan, perfect your elevator pitch, and present this to venture capitalists. If that doesn’t work, you knock on the door of angel investors.

Ask any entrepreneur who has called on venture capitalists and they will likely tell you that it is almost impossible to even get calls returned. If you get lucky and are invited to present your idea, the due-diligence process will drag on for many months while you mortgage your assets and survive on hope. If you do hit the jackpot, you are required to trade away your first born in exchange for an investment.

To be fair, most business plans don’t deserve funding. Venture capitalists receive hundreds of plans every week, and few are worth the paper they are printed on.

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Andrew
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

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