LSQHA Blog Reviews

Okay, so you'll have to file this one under "future weekend reading" because this book isn't out yet, but I thought I would provide a bit of a heads-up post in anticipation of what should be a very interesting read. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose is written by Tony Hsieh (pronounced "Shay"), CEO of online shoe retailer Zappos , and lands in bookstores in early June. Hsieh helped to create one of the most successful online retailers which was well known for its stellar customer service and which eventually was acquired by Amazon . Sponsor Hsieh's methods at Zappos turned convential wisdom on its head and helped land the company on Fortune Magazine's list of the best companies to work for in 2009 just before its billion dollar acquisition. Before Zappos, Hsieh was responsible for co-founding LinkExchange which sold to Microsoft for $265 million, and now for his third venture, Hsieh is authoring a book to share his experiences and methodology. "I wanted to write a book to talk about the journey that I took in life in terms of what would bring myself long-term happiness, and what I accidentally discovered is that you can actually take concepts from happiness and apply it to businesses," says Hsieh in a video promo for his book. "Part of the goal of the book is letting people know that there is another way you can make yourself happy, make employees happy, make customers happy and still make money." Hsieh recently pimped his upcoming book at SXSW with a promotional bus and managed to run into Leo Laporte's live stream parade to chat about his book. He also snagged a few moments from the eternally busy Robert Scoble to talk about about personal and professional happiness. The tech world is buzzing about Hsieh's upcoming book, as Kevin Rose , Tim Ferriss and even Aston Kutcher have been looking over pre-release copies. For more information about the book and its author Tony Hsieh, check out the book's homepage and be sure to check back here for a review in June when the book goes on sale. Discuss

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Weekend Reading: Delivering Happiness, by Tony Hsieh (Preview)

At this morning's roundtable I worked with five new entrepreneurs who came to the roundtable very well-prepared. They had already done a good deal of validation of their businesses and this led to a richer discussion about each business. An unusual piece of trivia: four were women and two were named Joanne. It is clear from the amount of work they have all already done so far that each has the essential work ethic needed to be a successful entrepreneur. Sponsor Sramana Mitra is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. She started holding free Online Strategy Roundtables for entrepreneurs in the fall of 2008. She has founded three companies and writes a business blog, Sramana Mitra on Strategy . She has a masters degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her three books, Entrepreneur Journeys , Bootstrapping, Weapon Of Mass Reconstruction , and Positioning: How To Test, Validate, and Bring Your Idea To Market are all available from Amazon. Her new book Vision India 2020 was recently released. Mitra is also a columnist for Forbes and runs the 1M/1M initiative. First, Mithun Ekbote introduced his company, PalmShell . He has the exclusive license for five years to sell a low-cost and more-efficient building material in India. While we discussed connecting with his potential buyers - the builders of low cost housing - he explained that he has learned that these builders in India often make more money if jobs go on longer than expected, as the property values continue to grow over time and they are able to raise their prices. They are not always interested in the more efficient option. In this case, I think Mithune may need to do some more validation to better identify his customer segment. Meanwhile, this is a good time for Mithun to explore partnering with an NGO that is aligned with his goal of building better low cost housing in India. The Ramakrishna Mission is such an organization and I will introduce him to the appropriate people there and see if we can move this effort forward. RKM is the largest NGO in India and I have good contacts there. Joanne Lang presented AboutOne , an online service that organizes your personal and household information. As a working mother of four boys, Joanne personally felt the pain of keeping everything organized. She initially targeted her service towards working moms, but through her validation process found that the target segments include military wives who move a lot, expats, and anyone caring for someone with a special need. After discussing her potential revenue streams, she said she feels she needs to raise funds in order to hire more employees to help develop the product. Not at all true! In fact, she can hire very good developers from India and Eastern Europe as contractors to help her continue to build at a sixth of the rates she is currently paying. I pointed her to Elance , Guru.com and odesk and we discussed the importance of checking the references of potential contract workers. This will save her money, help her finish building her product and build up her revenue stream. For all bootstrappers, using freelance developers is a key cost-saving mechanism. Joanne Griffith pitched Jane Hannah Media , a multimedia production company specializing in social media management and online profile building strategies for businesses and creative individuals. She would like to grow her business and has been successful working with small businesses, but their budgets are usually limited. As someone who has a variety of experiences working for companies like the BBC and NPR, she really needs to differentiate herself from the many competitors offering similar services. We discussed how she has started copyediting blogs, but I pointed out that this is a service that can been done very cheaply by people overseas and is a complete commodity. This will not help her differentiate her business. I also pointed her to Elance , Guru.com and odesk as sites to join and help her explore who her competitors are and where the opportunities lie. These sites, in her case, would be good channels for customer acquisition. And perhaps focusing on podcast or video is her way to move forward with something differentiated. Again, for all services companies, these channels are excellent means of accessing customers, building reputation and references. JT O'Donnell pitched her business, Careerealism as being like a career HMO. She has brought together a site that offers expert career coaching at a reasonable price. I like this project - JT has thought everything through quite well. Her question was should she focus on one vertical, and I think, considering the current job situation, that focusing on college students and recent graduates will work quite well. I suggested that she recruits unpaid interns from campuses to help spread the word about her service, and she loved this idea. She has been successful using interns in the past and repaying them with free coaching. This business is imminently bootstrappable - don't waste your time looking to get financed JT. Up last was Anita Lamb of Altitude Fasique , a clothing line offering trendy attire for tall working women. Anita has found what seems to be a great opportunity and has done her research. The TAM is quite large. But I believe that the designs as she describes them, fitted and tailored, do not lend themselves well to being sold online. My recommendation is that she changes her designs to focus more on the basics for this segment. I think she should set up a private label store online. My Web 3.0 framework offers a good formula for building your own brand online and layering in all the components. This business could fill a very nice niche and has the potential to grow into a very large business. These roundtables are the cornerstone programming of a global initiative that I have started called One Million by One Million ( 1M/1M ). Its mission is to help a million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond, build $1 trillion in sustainable global GDP, and create 10 million jobs. In 1M/1M, I teach the EJ Methodology which is based on my Entrepreneur Journeys research, and emphasize bootstrapping, idea validation, and crisp positioning as some of the core principles of building strong fundamentals in early stage ventures. You can find the recording of this roundtable session here . Recordings of previous roundtables are all available here . You can register for the next roundtable here . Photo by Justyna Furmanczyk . Discuss

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Startup Strategy Roundtable: Beyond Validating Your Ideas

Last summer IBM began asking their 120 venture capital partners what it would take to launch the world's most successful initiative for helping startups capture new business. They concluded that the initiative had to be offered to startups for free, with no upsell and regardless of VC status. Add to this IBM's preferred software, as well as access to IBM's social network of 8 million IT professionals and you have IBM's version of BizSpark . So today is launch day and Drew Clark, Director of Strategy for IBM's Venture Capital Group defined Big Blue's new initiative for startups as a "small crisp set of capabilities that are what startups most want." Sponsor Of course what IBM offers is anything but small. With over 400,000 employees world-wide their strategy to collaborate with startups in areas of health care, energy efficiency, retail and manufacturing under the SmarterPlanet vision is significant. At the start of the year we covered CEO Sam Palmisano's London speech about IBM's heavy investment into this sector, which is often refered to as smart systems or internet of things. Yet there have been few commercial success stories for startups in this sector so it stands to reason that IBM needs to focus on supporting startups in this emerging market. Drew Clark recognizes that this initiative may not be for everyone, but if your startup is in alignment with IBM Smarter Planet ambitions they want to work with you. So today in Bangalore, India they are announcing their Global Entrepreneur Initiative . Claudia Fan Munce of IBM Venture Capital Group says, "Our vision of a smarter planet is really a collaborative vision. It's about collaborating with all aspects of the ecosystem: with academia, with government, and more importantly, with the real innovators." The initiative's aim is to help your startup find and develop your niche with markets and developers who most suit you, which they refer to as "impedance matching." Here's a breakdown of what IBM offers once you sign up , and are accepted: Access to IBM's Software IBM provides software access either on-premise or in a cloud computing environment to help you build your software applications. Expertise will also be made available to help you better understand how to navigate and fully utilize the full range of the software options IBM is making available. Access to IBM developerWorks Last April we told you about IBM's big geek network, reportedly the largest online technical resource for software developers in the world. Today, half of the world's developers use it; that's around 8 million members. Dedicated Project Managers to Help You Build, Market and Sell Jim Corgel, IBM ISV and Developer Relations, says that "...real project managers are going to be assigned to work with our entrepreneurs." So whomever your target client is, from consumers, to small businesses, to large corporations, to governments both small and large, IBM has a project manager familiar with that territory. Work Side-By-Side With Scientists and Technology Experts With more than $6 billion per year invested into Research, IBM has more than 3,000 workers in eight major labs around the world. In 2009 year they produced nearly 5,000 patents. With this many patents being produced imagine how eager they are to work with startups who can help get their new patented technologies into the market place? Attend Global SmartCamp Mentoring and Networking Workshops Smart Camps will be occurring every other month around the world. Locations over the course of this coming year are: Boston, Paris, Stockholm, Dublin, Israel, England, and the Silicon Valley. At Smart Camp you'll not only get feedback on how to present and refine your startups, but you'll also be able to network with the people most prepared to guide you in gaining the notoriety your startup deserves. The Smart Camp Community is also a collaborative online group where your projects can be reviewed and refined in connection with upcoming Smart Camp events. The criteria for start-ups to participate in the IBM Global Entrepreneur Initiative are; 1) the company must be privately-held; 2) in business less than three years; and 3) actively developing software aligned to IBM's Smarter Planet focus areas. To apply go here . Discuss

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New IBM Strategy: Help Startups Capture More Business

Back in January, a healthy comment discussion followed a post in which we looked at the topic of "spec work," or freelance work done for a client before an agreement of compensation is formed. One of the most vocal opponents to spec work is Andrew Hyde of TechStars and StartupWeekend fame, whose blunt opinions sparked a debate over how a marketplace for freelance work should properly function. Today, Hyde and a few friends are launching Pick , a marketplace and directory that connects clients with freelancers. Sponsor Freelancers in fields like design, development, photography, copywriting, marketing and management can sign into Pick and create a profile to share their portfolio and contact information. More importantly, however, Pick asks freelancers to list their work availability and a price range. This allows clients to narrow their search to find freelancers in the specialty they need based on location, availability and price. "The [freelance] process is a mess. There are a ton of freelancer sites out there, but freelancers never promote them because they largely exploit the community. I thought there had to be a better way," Hyde told ReadWriteWeb. "I wrote my solution and said someone should build it, and nobody did, so here we are." Through the creation of Pick and the growth of its community, Hyde hopes to put a dent in other marketplaces which he says are providing platforms for what he calls " exploitsourcing ." With a 2008 post titled "Spec Work Is Evil / Why I Hate CrowdSpring ," and in 2009's " An Open Letter to 99designs ," Hyde has become a leading voice in the movement against spec work and the services he believes promote it. "It is a major ethical flaw of both parties," said Hyde of spec work in 2008. "Some designers I have talked to have escalated this lack of ethics to be on par with some very serious crimes, while other see it as dumping oil down a rain drain. A lot of people don't take this lightly at all." On the bright side of the negativity surrounding spec work, Hyde has channeled his passion against the practice into a new place for clients and freelancers to meet without the worry of exploitation. For startups that need design, copywriting or other freelance services, Pick could soon become an excellent alternative to the more common marketplaces. Having just launched, the service is a bit of a ghost town and is currently invite-only, but Hyde hopes to see around 1,000 users by week's end. Freelancers can request an invite and clients can currently visit the site and browse the available profiles. Discuss

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TechStars' Andrew Hyde Launches Freelance Marketplace Startup

I've learned a lot about startup culture since I started writing about it at the beginning of January, and there is a trend that I have noticed that is different from the stereotypical outsider's point-of-view - one that I had not too long ago. There seems to be a growing number of companies that are holding off from either being bought out or going public because they are more vested in the interests of their company or their idea than they are about having a big payday. Sponsor IPOs have fallen off a cliff in recent years, and it seems like each month we hear about who is potentially looking to buy Twitter or Yelp . Facebook is huge, and makes a good amount of money, but it is still a venture backed company with no IPO. Over the weekend, Spark Capital investor Bijan Sabet published a blog post that reaffirmed my theory that more companies are perfectly content with raising round after round of funding. And when they do allow themselves to be bought, Sabet says that startups are getting a lot pickier with who they will sell to. "Recently I heard about a startup that turned down a higher offer from one company in favor of a lower offer from a different buyer," writes Sabet. "It's not enough to wave a huge checkbook around. That isn't sufficient for the best startups. Big companies need to show startups how they will fit into the bigger picture, give the startup employees challenging & important positions, demonstrate why the combination will be in everyone's interest." Startups and entrepreneurs are maturing. Quickly launching an innovative idea in hopes of being snatched up by Google in order to sit on the beach and sip mai tais until the cows come home is fading - if not already erased - from the "get-rich-quick" stereotype. Entrepreneurs these days are more genuinely passionate and attached to their companies (or their "babies") and want to see the product succeed more than they want to benefit financially from it. It is this passion that has morphed into a stronger sense of self for startups; they are more confident with their positions and are not afraid to turn down a multi-million dollar buyout if the terms don't look good to them. For many entrepreneurs, a big payday is certainly a goal, and Paul Graham even recently defined success as "the founders end up rich," but more seem to be holding out and holding on to their companies. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that venture capitalists are getting better at identifying the truly passionate entrepreneurs from the ones looking to turn a pretty penny from whatever idea gets the job done. This concurs with the general consensus from a roundup of VC pitch advice last week: you are pitching yourselves just as much if not more than you are your idea. VCs are more interested in investing their money with passionate entrepreneurs than a fantastic idea because, after all, a great idea in the wrong hands can fail spectacularly. Discuss

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As Startups Grow Up, More Seem to Hold Their Ground