Category: web 2.0

Tumpang: One to Watch!

As never before the ability of online networks has the potential to shape the world.  Tumpang is preparing to take advantage of this dynamic by offering people who come together online the ability to put their joint purchasing power to work. 

The Tumpang model is interesting.  Manufacturers are asked to discount their products if Tumpang can guarantee a group purchase of a certain quantity of items.  Then, within their site, they offer the items for sale at the discounted price providing enough people agree to purchase the item at the discounted rate.  As individuals the customers may not be able to get these ‘bulk’ discount prices – as an online mini-purchasing group, they suddenly have more power.

Tumpang is currently focused on the Chinese market…but are making moves to go international.  There are two obvious challenges at this point:

Products are often country specific so although they have international plans, this may not translate well for the mini-groups.  Will a German purchaser be interested in a kettle for the Malaysian market? See my point?

Most of the products on the site at this point seem relatively low quality i.e. Tumpang does not seem to be striking deals with Apple, Panasonic etc but rather more unknown brands. However, as their purchasing power and traction increases this should give them more negotiation strength with the bigger, more popular manufacturers.

So, Tumpang is one to watch.  This crowd purchasing approach could create another shift in online purchasing.

Andrew
Founder -Advisor Garage
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

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3Luxe: A $500K Virtual Investment

3Luxe.com is a product search engine with a difference…other search engines use algorithms, numbers and fractions as the cogs and wheels to regurgitate a whole string of very near misses to everyone that plugs in a search phrase. 3Luxe uses no algorithms or numbers…it more relies on the taste and interpretive skills of its founder and pooled review site results to determine the top 3 products currently available. 

Like Flash floor cleaner and hundreds of P&G commercials, draw a line down the middle of your computer screen and compare and contrast – on one side you have a big complicated machine delivering a homogenized gloop of product results to anyone that asks and on the other side of the screen, the three best products in any given category according to the 3Luxe founders.

Business Model:

  • Advertising from key manufacturers who are ultimately lucky enough to have their product/s in one of the top three results
  • Affiliate links with Amazon or Shopzilla et al when people take the next step after the search and review and treacle forward towards purchase
  • Google ads (ugh!)

Some Core Functionality/Elements:

  •  Um…Search!
  • 3 Results only of perhaps the most expensive but kick butt products you can find in any given category
  • Thumbs up or thumbs down vote for any of the items returned
  • A very cool drop down of review results from cnet and others, along with consumer reviews from other sites
  • Bookmarking
  • Send to friend
  • Comment posting for all items

Likes:
Like, Like, Like.  This site is well built, thoughtful, intuitive and not surprising the Worple Brothers have got it right…I say not surprising because Doug Worple, the CEO is another former proctoid that went on to create what looks to be a very cool creative / advertising agency called Barefoot.  Like it or not, the great advertising agencies are helping to shape the tastes and desires of us all…so is it a shock that by combining their own tastes for items with consumer reviews from multiple sites they are delivering product results that actually seem to be the best 3 luxury items.  I guess my original concern was “What makes these guys able to choose the best three items that I’m going to like?” – but in a sense, better to combine the science of review sites such as cnet with some degree of taste than relying upon the Google number crunchers. This business model opens up a number of now obvious business opportunities i.e. segmented product search engines according to demographics – so now we have the ‘A’ search engine, anyone up for creating the ‘B1′ product search engine?

Dislikes/Suggestions:

  • The home page has more of a ‘website’ than a search engine feel.  You could argue that this is so different that going for the minimalist search format is wrong – but the current look and feel of the home page is almost of a templated website.
  • Taking a note from P&G brand training – too many fonts, and no clear obvious focus for the eye causes confusion in terms of what are the priorities on the page.  We have caps competing with flowing scripts with more modern fonts, moving photos and all in all its a great concept which, from a design perspective, needs some tweaks.

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would consider it a luxury if I were able to make a $500K virtual investment in 3Luxe. Good luck Guys!

http://www.3Luxe.com

Interested in other articles about Its Our Movie?

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

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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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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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PlanHQ: A $750K Virtual Investment

PlanHQ.com is an online Business Planning and startup development tool.  Doesn’t sound very sexy does it but you’d be wrong. Having been crazy enough to start three different businesses, I can painfully testify that writing and even more challenging…sticking to the thinking within a good Business Plan is extremely tough.  Plan HQ is an innovative web application that helps entrepreneurs and startups not only create a business plan, but allocate tasks and track progress across the key players. If Plan HQ gets the kind of traction it should then Plan HQ will be a great little business with any number of service and product extensions for the entrepreneur.  Move over 37Signals!

Business Model:
Plan HQ has a nice and simple business model…all elements of the application are hosted by Plan HQ. No downloads, no maintenance, no hosting, no contracts – If Plan HQ does work out for you or you stop needing their service, just leave.  Think ‘Salesforce.com’ for business planning.  Plan HQ offers a 30 day free trial (http://www.planhq.com/signup/) and then the fees are based on number of users on a monthly basis.  So membership types and prices:

Mini   = $9 month / 3 users / 5 active goals
Small = $24 month / 5 users / 10 active goals
Professional = $49 month / Unlimited Users / 10 active goals

Some Core Functionality:
The Plan HQ Product is sub-divided into some management categories that are usually ‘key’ for most startups and early stage companies and of course there’s a ‘Dashboard’ so you can manage and track the imperative tasks. Management ‘uber’ categories include:

  • The Dashboard – Covering main tasks, actions, upcoming goals, financials
  • The Market  – Your Markets, the Competition, Customers and basic market and customer analytics
  • Goals – Actual Goals, Add new goals, confidence of achievement and more
  • Financials – Performance, Indicators, graphs 
  • The Business Plan Document itself
  • Team – Who have you got, who do you need

Likes:
I really like the Plan HQ business model and the product itself, it’s especially relevant for those businesses that are focused on moving towards significant growth and the Venture Capital route.

  • The Product seems to cover the key elements of what a young company needs to focus on and allows enough configuration that the users are not ‘locked in’ to Plan HQ already good business management methodology
  • I hate to put it like this but for those ‘new’ to building businesses from just a plan, the product can really help ensuring the key team members focus on what’s important to any business but especially the ‘young’ business…Customers, revenues, the team and fund raising.
  • As its a web ap, this product is especially helpful for a distributed or virtual team and also for bringing angels, other investors and advisors easily into the key decision making process.  It could actually help get Advisors pulling their weight by locking them into real trackable actions. Wow! Could this product really do this?

Dislikes:
Not so much dislikes as potential questions and ‘like to sees’:

  • Paypal as a form of payment.  As a small business owner I don’t like adding my credit card to ongoing online services.
  • The positioning is ‘Create, update, track and collaborate around your business plan’. Business Plans eventually fall by the wayside as the business scales and grows beyond a certain stage or size.  As a ‘virtual’ investor, I’d like to see how all the data captured through initial usage and the service ’scales’ with the business. i.e. beyond the business plan and becoming an ongoing discipline and tool for managing the business ongoing.
  • I’d like to see a referral program and a ‘Reseller’ model.  For example, a startup I’m involved with ‘Advisor Garage’ (http://www.AdvisorGarage.com)  has 1000+ entrepreneurs, angels and VCs onboard.  This is a service many of our members would probably like to use – can our company ’subscribe’ and offer the Plan HQ service to our members for a fee?  I hope so! Let me know if any Plan HQ folks read this…

What’s unclear:

  • how the data exports or integrates with other systems – i.e. quickbooks etc
  • Are the ‘Permissions’ configurable? Will all signees be able to access all data? Would a CEO want that?

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would ask PlanHQ to include me in their ‘Virtual Investment’ plans to the tune of $750K. Once they establish this market, their are so many obvious product extensions that driving great revenues will be easy and hey…they have the tool to manage those new businesses.  Great job Plan HQ!

http://www.planhq.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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Drupal Camp LA – A Free Event to learn about a rapid web site development f

Need a web site for your startup? Do you develop web sites for others? “Drupal” is a robust, mature web site development framework with a global development community. (The Advisor Garage Community is a Drupal site.) The Los Angeles Drupal Users Group is hosting a free Drupal Camp for developers as well as interested non-technical entrepreneurs and

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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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37signals profiled in Time Magazine

At 37signals, a company with just eight employees whose Web-based collaboration software is used by thousands of small businesses, there isn’t time to sit around a conference room sipping latte and deconstructing memos. Come to think of it, there isn’t even a company conference room. There are just a couple of cubicles, loads of brainpower and three simple goals: make useful business software, make it easy to run, make money selling it. Repeat.

An article with some great ideas and lessons for entrepreneurs. Worth a read! 

http://www.advisorgarage.com/community/node/128

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

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Venture Capitalist Gives Entrepreneurs Funding Advice

One of the most honest and insightful interviews with a Bay Area Venture Capitalist on entrepreneurial fund raising. A complete, not to be missed interview for anyone interested in venture capital fund raising, startups, entrepreneurs or general ‘business’ Includes advice for getting a VC attention, what motivates a VC and more. A useful article!

Please DIGG this article if you agree…

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Top Five List for Building Your Personal Community Site Brand

You are a brand! What me? Yes You!  How many online accounts do you have? How many online communities are you a part of?

If the answer is more than one then yes…you too are a brand.  The question is, are you making the most of your brand?

Top Five Personal Brand Building List:

1)  Brand Image:
Pick a personal photo or icon and use it consistently.  If you have multiple accounts with sites such as Facebook, go back to each of them and use the same image for each.

2)  Brand Messages:
If you are like me, whenever you sign up to a site, the goal is to get through the sign up process as quickly and pianlessly as possible right? Wrong.  Open a blank word document, look at one of your online profiles, cut and paste the text into the word doc and then spend ten minutes thinking through what you specifically want people to know about you.  Rewrite it, tweaks, polish, refine.  When you are happy, go and post that set of personal brand messages into all your profiles.  So consistent brand image and now consistent brand messaging.

3)  Brand Coverage:
Which sites have you joined?  How many?  Pick those that mostly closely align with what you want to get out of being part of a community site and focus on a small number.  Get those profiles perfect!

4) Share of Voice:
Spend time in those communities that you really want to be a part of, sharing, adding value and being part of the group.  Build up your Share of voice in those groups, be a ‘go to’ person if possible – ‘Can’ those memberships that you joined one wet rainy afternoon and now don’t have time or motivation to continue.

5)  Brand Equity:
As you get more involved, keep refining your positioning within the communities – make sure that your profile improves as you do.  Keep it up to date and your brand will strengthen and grow.

Just a few personal branding thoughts – in a nutshell, focus, clarity, consistency, and activity. Add them together and your online personal brand can be a global powerhouse and who knows what benefits that will bring!

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

Advisor Garage Community Online Networking

If you want to find the Advisor that can make all the difference to your business, Or want a way to centralise and manage all the advisory opportunities and make connections, well, the Advisor Garage is perfect for you.

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Online Business Networking Exchange: The Advisor Garage Community

So what if you could combine the focus of OpenCoffee Clubs – introducing investors, experts and entrepreneurs in a relaxed environment – with the scope and reach of LinkedIn?

One possible solution is offered by the Advisor Garage Community, which gives you the opportunity to build your own personal network. This makes for an interesting additio

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San Diego Group launched in Advisor Garage Community Site

A member of the recently launched Advisor Garage Community Site has just set up with San Diego networking Group.

Groups are a ‘members only’ section of the Community site that offers private forums, blogs, networking event creation, invite others, post videos, images and a whole lot more.

The proclaimed purpose of the San Diego group is “a business forum for those in the San Diego area, and those who would like to connect with folks that are in the area.

Please share your expertise, questions, requests for assistance, and intel on items of business interest relevant to the San Diego area – I look forward to networking with you!”

In the San Diego area and would like to network with other entrepreneurs, startups, advisors, angels and business people? 

Check it out:  http://www.advisorgarage.com/community/node/55

Not in San Diego – Why not come create your own Group for wherever you are and build your own entrepreneurial network.

Andrew
Founder