Here’s a Steve Job’s talk on the early days of Apple at the Computer History Museum in 1980. You can already tell that Job’s already has a strong vision of what the future is going to look like. Plus he looks like a hippie.

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I’ve had a few interesting assignments since starting my MBA program.

Last week we were split into groups of 7 and given a hypothetical situation: our entire team had crash-landed on the moon and we had to hike 200 some miles to reach the mother ship. We could only carry 10 items with us. The goal was to come to a group consensus on what 10 items to bring and list them in priority order.

We were given a list of 15ish random items, such as: water, pistols, a raft, and parachute silk.

The kicker was that we were videotaped as we worked. The intent being that everyone would get critiqued on teamwork skills.

It was intense to see how people interacted on screen. We had three guys be really aggressive, and just dominate the conversation. A few people would try to chime in only to be drowned out by the more dominant voices. I actually ended up being one of the quieter guys.

It was also enlightening to see tiny visual cues from body language. One person in my group asked if there was water on the moon, to see if we needed the raft. It was kind of a weird question because there is obviously no water on the moon. But another teammate gave this guy a look of pure disgust – something not exactly appropriate in a team setting. The guy that asked the question didn’t see the face at the time, but fortunately it was captured on film.

Assignments such as this remind me of just how hard it is to work in teams.

Working with a big team

When I used to work for a large company, poor communication flow was a huge problem. A lot of information was provided on a need to know basis. And this resulted in a lot of wasted time and energy.

Not saying that this was a problem with management because we were pretty lean and I know those guys were doing the best they could at the time. But when I was working on a project, I rarely knew if a peer from another site was working on a similar idea, or if they had already found a viable solution.

Even within the same team, there would be huge time delays because it just took time for information to get communicated through the right channels. For example, I would ask someone to complete a task, only to be redirected to their supervisor where I would then have to tell the supervisor exactly what I had just told the worker, so that the supervisor could tell the worker the exact same message.

A quantitative explanation for why large teams suck

It goes without saying that communication flows much more easily on small teams than large teams. If you’re the only person on a project, communication is simple. The only communication path is between you and the customer.

As the number of people on a project increases, however, so does the number of communication paths. It doesn’t increase additively, as the number of people increases, it increases multiplicatively, proportional to the square of the number of people.

I’ve always known this intuitively, but I’ve only recently learned that there is an actual term for this.

It’s called Metcalfe’s Law.

Metcalfe’s Law states that “the value of a communication system grows at approximately the square of the number of users of the system.” The corollary for teamwork essentially boils down to: The efficiency of the team is approximately the inverse of the square of the number of members in the team.

How to build the perfect team

What does this mean? Keep the team as small as possible.

To be more specific, in terms of entrepreneurship, I’m beginning to think that three people is optimal for a version 1.0 product release.

You can start out by reducing the number of people you plan to add to the team, and then reduce some more. If you can’t build your initial product prototype with three people, then you either need different people or you need to slim down your initial version.

Keep in mind, it’s ok to keep your first version small and tight. The main goal is to launch as quickly as possible to see if your idea has wings and, if it does, you’ll have a clean, simple base to build on.

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Whenever I launch something new I always get stuck on how much I should charge. It’s an especially difficult question to answer because how much you charge has a profound impact on how much money you make — or even whether you make any money at all.

While performing research on product pricing, I ran across this fascinating anecdote. Thought I would share it here today.

A story about product pricing

In 1938, two young engineers were ready to launch their first product. They’d struggled with what to build. After considering amplifiers, radio equipment, air controllers, harmonicas and even muscle-building elec- trodes for housewives, they’d finally decided to create an oscilloscope. Not wanting customers to be put off by a version one product, they sensibly called it the Model 200A.

The next step? Decide the pricing.

They eventually settled on $54.40. Was that because it represented the cost of manufacturing, plus a decent markup? No. These engineers hadn’t taken that into account. In fact, they soon realized that the cost of building each oscilloscope was more than the price they were asking. Was it based on what the competition charged? No. They hadn’t bothered to discover that General Radio charged $400 for an equivalent model.

They chose $54.40 because it reminded them of the 1844 slogan used in the campaign to establish the northern border of the United States in the Pacific Northwest (“54” 40’ or Fight!”).

What a dumb-ass way to price a product.

But these two young engineers recovered from their stumble. The Model 200A went on to become the longest-selling basic electronic design of all time, still selling 33 years later. The company they founded became an institution.

Their names?

Dave Hewlett and Bill Packard.

If Hewlett and Packard, two Stanford graduates with the rosiest of futures ahead of them, can flounder so badly when faced with the problem of how to price their products, what hope do the rest of us have?

Paul: It makes me feel marginally better knowing that two guys much smarter than I struggled with an identical issue and made an even n00bier decision than me.

Free tutorial on product pricing

Rather than break down the thought process that I use to determine a new product’s price, I thought I would share an ebook that I’ve found to be immensely useful.

CLICK HERE FOR A FREE EBOOK ON PRODUCT PRICING

The ebook is completely free, and at 81 pages, a pretty quick read. I am in no way affiliated with the author. Just sharing a resource that has brought me a ton of value, which I hope can help you as well.

While the ebook should provide some clarity, as this post’s title attests, I do believe pricing is an art. Pricing can be so hard that sometimes you just need go with your gut, pluck a number, throw it out there and see what happens.

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What techniques have you used to price your products? Have you had any pricing disasters?

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You didn’t realize you were at war, did you?

Oh, but you are.

It’s kind of scary, if you think about it. Just because you have a great product doesn’t mean anyone is going to know about it, and even if they know about it, there’s no guarantee that they’ll start using it, and even if they start using it, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll never pay for it. Not because it isn’t good and useful and worthy to be used, but because it isn’t interesting enough to win the war for paying customers.

My advice: play to win.

I recently revisited Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, an old text written originally to teach men how to slaughter enemies efficiently; however, the same principles can be applied to business management today. Borrowing some of its tactics, I’ve devised a battle plan for getting people to start paying for your products:

1. Take advantage of helpful circumstances over and beyond ordinary rules. 

   Just because someone hasn’t tried something before doesn’t mean it can’t be done. The marketplace is a constantly changing arena. Market conditions change. It bodes well to be cognizant of such changes so that the clever business can take the early advantage.

   When I first became interested in developing mobile apps, I only targeted the apple store. I briefly considered developing for android but quickly disgarded the idea because apple had a much larger user base. But considering how rapidly android users are catching up to iphone users, I wonder if I missed out on a valuable opportunity to sell to more customers. I could have taken advantage of a market still in its infancy to establish a greater presence, taking a greater chunk of the pie.

2. Rouse your men to anger, so they understand advantages of defeating the enemy, they must have rewards. Those who take down the first chariot must be rewarded.

   I’ve read that everyone on the 37signals team works in customer service. If you encounter a problem, you can email someone on the staff and the software engineer who is working on the program will directly help resolve your problem. This is one secret that allows 37signals to compete with giants like Microsoft and Google. Everyone on their team has firsthand experience of the pains that customers encounter.

   Don’t distort complaints by diluting the message through multiple channels. Make people who can solve the problem accountable. Then reward them lavishly when they do. Soon you won’t have only a few guys making sales; you’ll have your entire staff out there bashing heads.

3. Misdirection: when you surround an enemy, leave an outlet free. 

   Your customers aren’t exactly your enemy, but the advice is still applicable.

   All too often, sales pitches close with a metaphorical dead end. They give their last point, and that’s it. A sale is either made or it isn’t. Nothing more to see, show’s over, everybody can go home. And that’s exactly what happens. People click away from your business and lots of them never come back. Smart salesman direct potential customers to actionable exits.

   One of my favorite blogs turned software provider, Copyblogger, directs a link to a new project at the end of every blog post, email, etc. There is a reason for that. They know you’re going to leave, but they hope to guide you on how to leave.

   Think about it.

4. What enables the wise sovereign and good general to achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men is foreknowledge. This foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits; it cannot be obtained inductively from experience, nor by deductive calculation. It can only be obtained from other men. 

   Just a fancy way of saying get prepared. It’s difficult to make the confident sell if you don’t feel that you know much about your business, product, or industry. Beat the feeling by preparing yourself as much as possible. Learn as much as you can about your competitors. Then learn some more. The exploitation of your competitor’s weakness requires a deep understanding of their strategy, capabilities, thoughts and desires, as well as similar depth of knowledge of your own strengths and weaknesses. It is important to understand the overall competitive and industry trends occurring around you in order to have a feel for the “terrain” on which you will do battle.

5. In war, the best policy is to take a state intact; to ruin it is inferior to this….For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. 

   Sun Tzu calls this the need to “win-all-without-fighting”. Since the goal of your business is to survive and prosper, you must capture your customers. However, you must do so in such a way that your market is not destroyed in the process. A company can do this in several ways, such as attacking segments of the market that are under-served or by using subtle, indirect, and low-key approach that will not draw a competitor’s attention or response. What should be avoided at all costs is a price-war. Research has shown that price attacks draw the quickest and most aggressive responses from competitors, as well as leaving the market drained of profits.

Final thoughts

The war for paying customers never ends.

You’d think the war for paying customers would have an end, that one day you’ll be big enough where you never have to worry about losing a few customers, and you can relax a little bit.

You wish.

The war for customers never ends. Even if you capture every single customer interested in your product, you’ll still have to battle off a constant stream of competitors that would take them away from you. Your visibility is both an asset and a liability. Yes, it gives you power, but it also makes you a target. Lose focus, and you can lose everything.

If you think about it, the opposite is also true though. Just because you lost the war for paying customers today doesn’t mean you have to lose tomorrow. You can turn things around at any time. Best of all, now you have a battle plan that shows you exactly how to do it.

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]]> http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/your-business-vs-the-world-5-steps-to-winning-the-war-for-customers/feed 2 http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/the-future-of-user-interface-im-giving-away-a-million-dollar-idea-for-free?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-future-of-user-interface-im-giving-away-a-million-dollar-idea-for-free http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/the-future-of-user-interface-im-giving-away-a-million-dollar-idea-for-free#comments Fri, 16 Sep 2011 05:19:53 +0000 Paul http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/?p=1615 I’m a real sucker for natural user interface. Since co-founding a mobile apps company, I’ve become obsessed with seeing how users interact with technology. I want to know everything about everything, so that I can provide a superior user experience and crush my competitors.

I devour UI articles on design blogs. I drain my wallet on new gadgets. I carpal my tunnels into various contortions in pursuit of this knowledge.

In case you’re curious, I believe that Apple still provides one of the best how-to manuals for good user design. But over the past few weeks I’ve been contemplating: does good user design really do anything?

Besides making my app look pretty, does it make customers fitter / happier / more productive / smarter?

For me – not really, at least not yet. I’m going to go out on a limb here and argue that a “natural user interface” is the wrong goal to have in mind while building a mobile user experience, because it says nothing about the efficiency of the operation or the ultimate result. What we want is a Dyson sphere.


What the hell is a Dyson sphere?!



To answer this question, I’m going to have to channel the nerd within and let Captain Picard explain. Reference Star Trek – The Next Generation‘s sixth season episode “Relics”:

PICARD: It’s a very old theory, Number One. I’m not surprised that you haven’t heard of it. In the twentieth century a physicist called Freeman Dyson postulated the theory that an enormous hollow sphere could be constructed around a star. This would have the advantage of harnessing all the radiant energy of that star. A population living on the interior surface would have virtually inexhaustible sources of power.

A more popular derivative of the theory is Larry Niven’s Ringworld, which has a Dyson ring encompassing a star, instead of a sphere. Basically, the premise is that a sufficiently advanced civilization will harness a lot more of the energy from its star than the radiant rays that just happen to hit their home planet.

My main point

Regardless of what you know about Star Trek, my point about user interface and user experience is that instead of attempting to make our computer interaction look more like “real life” or be more “physical,” the UX should attempt to make humans more efficient by capturing and using a larger portion of the user’s existing output. This might leverage the user of new or existing sensors in our devices — instead of just capturing a different, contrived sort of output.

Just as a Dyson sphere captures 100 percent of the star’s output, computers should capture 100 percent of a user’s output… and make sense of it accordingly.

An example might be having your cell phone record all of the ambient noise around you. What was the name of the person you were talking with at the party? Search through a time stamped and organized log of your conversation until you can find the part where introductions were made. Super creepy, but admittedly kinda cool.

I haven’t quite figured out how I can best package this theory into a new app or device specific to the industry I’m interested in. But I’m working on it.

And if you manage to beat me to the punch, I hate you.

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Have you seen any interesting uses of a Dyson sphere in real world applications? Got sweet ideas? Shoot me an email or share them in the comments below!

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]]> http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/the-future-of-user-interface-im-giving-away-a-million-dollar-idea-for-free/feed 2 http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/why-i-dont-care-about-your-idea?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-i-dont-care-about-your-idea http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/why-i-dont-care-about-your-idea#comments Thu, 08 Sep 2011 05:26:03 +0000 Paul http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/?p=1588

Since moving to Chicago and starting business school, I’ve been meeting tons of entrepreneurial spirited folks. I’ve been having a great time talking shop and swapping new ideas. These people are smart and accomplished. A lot of them even come from fancy Ivy League backgrounds.

But what struck me as weird is that a lot of them are really cautious. Really. Overly. Cautious. To the point where several of them have asked me to sign a nondisclosure before telling me the simplest idea.

After having dozens of ideas and working on several projects that haven’t exactly taken off, one thing I’ve learned is that ideas are worthless unless they are properly implemented.


Ideas are worthless

If I could quantify the value of an idea, it would only serve as a multiplier.

Explanation:

Awful idea = -1
Weak idea = 1
So-so idea = 5
Good idea = 10
Great idea = 15
Brilliant idea = 20

No execution = $1
Weak execution = $1000
So-so execution = $10,000
Good execution = $100,000
Great execution = $1,000,000
Brilliant execution = $10,000,000

To make a business, you just multiply the two.

The most brilliant idea, with no implementation, is worth $20. But the most brilliant idea coupled with great execution can potentially be worth $20,000,000.

My own big idea

Some of my close friends and blog readers know about the mobile education app business I’ve been working on.

(Sorry that’s why I haven’t been posting as frequently as I would have liked)

Before I started this business I only had an idea. But I didn’t have any qualms about telling people about it. That’s because even if they knew exactly what I wanted to do, these potentially shady people still had to copy and successfully implement my idea in order for it to be considered stealing.

I’ve been working on this project with one of my friends since April, and our apps still haven’t broken even yet. Throughout this process my team and I have suffered numerous setbacks and encountered countless roadblocks. I know exactly how hard it is to break into this app business. It is by no means easy money.

And this is why I don’t mind telling people my ideas. Because my ideas have no value until they’ve been implemented. And I don’t particularly care when someone excitedly tells me about their new idea and how they think they can “make it big.” Because there’s absolutely no reason to be interested until you see the idea implemented.

Brilliant idea implementation is elusive

Everyone can read a book. Everyone can come up with an idea. Everyone has a cousin that’s a web designer. Everyone can write a blog. Everyone can hire someone to hack together some type of product.

But what I’ve found to be the difference between you and everyone else will be how well you implement. Success is all about great implementation.

For mobile apps, that means doing a lot of things right. You can’t just have a clean interface design then fail with buggy code. You can’t have a beautifully coded program only to fail to live up to your customer’s expectations with crappy content. A great app is worthless if poor promotion means no one ever knows about it. To score big, you have to combine all these elements.

My friend, Benny, over at the Get Busy Living Blog shares a great example about how he incorporated all of these elements to hit it big with a successful app. The key is balance. You can’t make it without a great idea. But if you tilt too far in one direction, focusing only on your idea, then sorry, you’re headed for failure. Constantly seek out the weak points in your idea, implement and relentlessly focus on improvement.

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]]> http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/why-i-dont-care-about-your-idea/feed 4 http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/top-30-startup-founder-directoryblogs?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=top-30-startup-founder-directoryblogs http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/top-30-startup-founder-directoryblogs#comments Mon, 18 Jul 2011 07:00:02 +0000 Paul http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/?p=1545

As part of my goal to one day build a successful company, I have turned to learning from others who are already doing it or who have done it before.

To help others interested in sharing this path, I compiled a list of the Top 30 Startup Founder Blogs that I’ve been following and learning from. The bloggers featured on this list are all current or recent startup founders. They all run non-company-related blogs and share nuggets of wisdom based on their personal experiences in the trenches.


Why Top 30?

Indeed why not top 50? Top 100? There are a ton of successful entrepreneurs that run highly insightful blogs. But in following the spirit of the pareto principle, I believe that these 30 blogs should be effective at giving you the minimum effective dose to get started. Anyways, if you’re serious about starting a business, you should be more concerned about launching your own products than reading about other businesses anyways.

Rules for Inclusion

In order to create a ranking with some semblance of cohesion I decided on some rules for inclusion:

• Must be a current or recent founder of a startup.
• Site should not exclusively be a personal or company blog.
• Must be written by a single author with only occasional guest posts.
• Blog author should not be working primarily as an angel or VC investor.
• There must be at least one post so far in 2011.
• Site must be old enough to have data registering at Compete.com

The statistic used to rank these blogs is their average monthly unique visitors in June 2011 from Compete. While imperfect, I felt that this measurement would be a quick way to verify that other people are finding these blogs to be valuable resources.

I’m also curating a twitter list called Startup Founders where you can follow the Startup Founders listed here.

Top 30 Startup Founder Blogs List

1. Seth Godin

American Way Magazine calls him, “America’s Greatest Marketer,” and his blog is perhaps the most popular in the world written by a single individual. As an entrepreneur, he has founded dozens of companies. Yoyodyne, his first internet company, was funded by Flatiron and Softbank and acquired by Yahoo! in 1998. It pioneered the use of ethical direct mail online, something Seth calls Permission Marketing. His latest company, Squidoo.com, is ranked among the top 125 sites in the US (by traffic) by Quantcast. It allows anyone (even you) to build a page about any topic you’re passionate about.

Twitter: @thisissethsblog / Blog: http://sethgodin.typepad.com / Compete: 143,103

2. Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. Previously, he was the chief evangelist of Apple. Kawasaki is the author of ten books including Enchantment, Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College

Twitter: @guykawasaki / http://blog.guykawasaki.com / Compete: 42,365

3. Dharmesh Shah

Dharmesh is the founder and current CTO of Hubspot – a software company that provides marketing tools to help businesses generate traffic leads through their websites. Dharmesh started his first company at 24, which did pretty well.  It got a bunch of awards, attracted a bunch of smart people, reached millions of dollars of sales and was ultimately sold for millions of more dollars to a much larger technology company. He now continues to work on startups and blogs about them at onstartups.com

Twitter: @dharmesh / Blog: http://onstartups.com / Compete: 41,053

4. Joel Spolsky

Joel started his career at a little software company called Microsoft outside of Seattle, as a program manager on the Excel team. Then tired of having no life outside of work, he co-founded Fog Creek Software in 2000, which is what he’s been doing ever since. The company has been growing steadily without any outside investment. And despite the so-called downturn has managed to double sales every year. His business philosophy has always been to build the kind of software company where programmers and software developers are the stars and everything else serves only to make them more productive and happy.

Twitter: @spolsky / Blog: http://joelonsoftware.com/ / Compete: 39,798

5. Neil Patel

Neil is the co-founder of CrazyEgg, a site that allows website admins to visualize user experience on a website in real time, and KISSmetrics, a web analytics company. He’s currently spending all of his time on KISSmetrics, where he’s working on creating that 100 million dollar company.

Twitter: @neilpatel / Blog: http://www.quicksprout.com / Compete: 26,539

6. Matt Mullenweg

Among his many accomplishments, Matt is perhaps most famously known as the founding developer of WordPress, the Open Source software used by about 12% of the web. He started off doing consulting for CNET networks, then in late 2005, he founded Automattic, the business behind WordPress.com and Akismet.

Twitter: @photomatt / Blog: ma.tt / Compete: 21,906

7. Erica Douglass

After selling her online business at age 26 for $1,100,000.00, Erica created a blog to help teach others to grow their own business quickly. Recently, co-founded Whoosh Traffic, and SEO company, to help your website get an avalanche of highly-targeted traffic.

Twitter: @ericabiz / Blog: http://www.erica.biz / Compete: 21,680

8. Jason Freedman

A Y-combinator alum, Jason also boasts a Tuck MBA. Jason is the co-Founder at FlightCaster, a service that predicts flight delays.

Twitter: @jasonfreedman / Blog: http://humbledMBA.com / Compete: 18,601

9. Gary Vaynerchuk

At 8 years old he was operating 7 lemonade stands in his neighborhood and by 10 he had moved onto selling baseball cards at local malls. In high school while working at his family owned liquor store, Gary started reading The Wine Spectator and wine books, and realized collecting wine offered an allure similar to his previous hobby of collecting baseball cards. With a wealth of knowledge and an entrepreneurial spirit, Gary spent every weekend of his college years at his parents’ wine store. Recognizing the importance of e-commerce in 1997, Gary launched Winelibrary.com and helped grow his family business significantly from $3 million to $45 million by 2005.

Twitter: @garyvee / Blog: http://garyvaynerchuk.com / Compete: 18,026

10. Chris Dixon

Chris Dixon is the co-founder of Hunch. He is also a personal investor in several early-stage technology companies, including Skype, Foursquare, Kickstarter, Canvas, Stack Overflow, TrialPay,DocVerse (acq by GOOG), Invite Media (acq by GOOG), Gerson Lehrman Group, ScanScout (acq by Tremor Video), OMGPOP,BillShrink, Panjiva, Knewton, and a handful of other startups that are still in stealth mode.

Twitter: @cdixon / Blog: http://cdixon.org/  Compete: 11,222

11. Jason Calacanis

An American Internet entrepreneur and blogger, Jason’s first company was part of the dot-com era in New York, and his second venture, Weblogs, Inc., capitalized on the growth of blogs before being sold to AOL. Calacanis founded Mahalo.com, a “human-powered search engine” that helps you “learn anything.”

Twitter: @jason / Blog: http://calacanis.com / Compete: 11,143

12. Marc Cenedella

Marc Cenedella is the CEO & Founder of TheLadders.com, the world’s largest professional jobs website.

Twitter @cenedella / Blog: http://www.cenedella.com / Compete: 9,073

13. John Battelle

Battelle is one of the original founders of Wired magazine, the founder and the CEO of The Industry Standard magazine and website, and “band manager” of the collaborative weblog Boing Boing. He is a journalist as well as founder and chairman of Federated Media Publishing.^[1] He is a visiting professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley and also maintains Searchblog, a weblog covering search, technology, and media

Twitter: @johnbattelle / Blog: http://battellemedia.com / Compete: 9,020

14. Gabriel Weinberg

Before he built a reputation in the hacker community for being the solo-founder behind the unfunded search engine Duck Duck Go, Gabriel Weinberg bootstrapped NamesDatabase, an online directory which he sold for $10 million.

Twitter: @yegg / Blog: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog / Compete: 8,959

15. Jason Cohen

Jason is the Founder of four companies including Smart Bear and WPEngine. He founded Smart Bear, a software testing and QA tool package, from nothing to generating multiple millions in profit. Jason is currently also a partner at Capital Thought, a technology consulting firm and startup incubator in Austin, TX.

Twitter: @asmartbear) / Blog:  http://blog.asmartbear.com / Compete: 8,541

16. Ben Yoskovitz

Ben is a Founding Partner at Year One Labs, an early stage accelerator in Montreal. He also founded Standout Jobs, a social recruiting services site. Ben is a hands-on type startup guy, and now enjoys helping companies grow successfully from the idea forward.

Twitter: @byosko / Blog: http://www.instigatorblog.com / Compete: 8,126

17. Patrick McKenzie

Patrick is an ex-Japanese salaryman, who currently runs a small software business. His main product at present is Bingo Card Creator, a tool aimed at making elementary school teachers’ lives easier.

Twitter: @patio11 / Blog: http://www.kalzumeus.com/blog / Compete: 6,697

18. Eric Ries

Eric Ries is an author, speaker, and consultant for The Lean Startup. Previously, he co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996).

While an undergraduate at Yale Unviersity, he co-founded Catalyst Recruiting. Although Catalyst folded with the dot-com crash, Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and user-generated content.

Twitter: @ericries / Blog: http://www.startuplessonslearned.com / Compete: 6,670

19. Tim Berry

Tim Berry is president and founder of Palo Alto Software, founder of bplans.com, and a co-founder of Borland International. He taught starting a business at the University of Oregon from 1998 through 2009. He is author of books and software including Business Plan Pro, published by Palo Alto Software, and The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan, published by Entrepreneur Press. He has a Stanford MBA degree and degrees with honors from the University of Oregon and the University of Notre Dame.

His main blog in Planning Startups Stories; he also does Up and Running at Entrepreneur.com, and appears on several other blogs.

Twitter: @timberry / Blog: http://timberry.bplans.com / Compete: 6,573

20. Noah Kagan

Noah is the self proclaimed Chief Sumo of the awesome software deal site appsumo.com. In a previous life Noah was also Director of Marketing for Mint, the personal finance site, and founded Gambit, a payment engine for virtual games.

Twitter: @noahkagan / Blog: OKDork.com / Compete: 6,097

21. Rob Walling

Rob has been building web applications professionally for 12 years, and has worked as a consultant, a freelance developer, the development manager for the City of Pasadena, and a team lead for the world’s largest prepaid credit card company. He sells the leading ASP.NET invoicing system on the market, runs an online school for startup founders, a web application for creating personal wedding websites, a niche website for lineman jobs, and hosts the podcast “startups for the rest of us.”

Twitter: @robwalling / Blog: http://www.softwarebyrob.com / Compete: 5,401

22. Ash Maurya

Ash is the founder of USERcycle. He is a huge proponent of lean startups and has been rigorously applying Lean Startup techniques to his products which I write about at his blog and has recently turned into a book titled: Running Lean.

Twitter: @ashmaurya / Blog: http://www.ashmaurya.com / Compete: 5,110

23. Biz Stone

Co-founder of Twitter, Biz Stone has been named Nerd of the Year by GQ, one of the Most Influential People in The World by TIME magazine, Entrepreneur of the Decade by Inc Magazine, and one of Vanity Fair’s Top Ten Most Influential People of the Information Age but Biz Stone, 37 is best known for over a decade of developing collaborative web systems freely accessed by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

Twitter @biz / Blog: http://www.bizstone.com / Compete: 4,859

24. Joel Gascoigne

Joel is cofounder of bufferapp, one of my favorite everyday tools. Joel classes himself as a fledgling entrepreneur, and claims he hasn’t “made it” yet, but he don’t hesitate to build and ship products. Joel has had some level of success with many products, and with each one he releases Joel learns more.

Twitter: @joelgascoigne / Blog: http://joel.is / Compete: 4,082

25. Jason Baptiste

Jason is the CEO/Co-Founder of Onswipe, which provides a platform for platform insanely easy publishing on touch enabled devices. In his spare time Jason is an advisor of startups and an avid runner. Jason received a BS from the University of Miami in Computer Information Systems.

Twitter @jasonlbaptiste / Blog: http://jasonlbaptiste.com / Compete: 2,615

26. Colin Wright

Colin runs a branding studio called Colin Is My Name. He also founded a company called Ebookling, through which he hopes to help build a strong independent publishing community and turn more authors into authorpreneurs. Colin somehow manages to do this while moving to a new country every 4 months. He blogs about his adventures at exilelifestyle.com

Twitter: @colinismyname / Blog: http://exilelifestyle.com / Compete: 2,327

27. Vinicius Vacanti

Vincius is the co-founder of Yipit, a service that finds you great local deals by learning your tastes. He shares the lessons he learns as a first-time entrepreneur in Silicon Alley on his blog VinciusVacanti.com

Twitter: @vacanti / Blog: ViniciusVacanti.com / Compete: 1,202

28. Alexis Ohanian

TechCrunch calls Alexis “one of the more passionate and audacious young entrepreneurs in tech.”  After graduating from UVA in 2005, he started a little site called reddit.com, which is now one of the top 100 visited sites on the internet. Alexis also  founded Breadpig, which creates geeky things, sells them, and gives away all the profits – $180,000 so far. He’s a contributor with regular appearances on Bloomberg TV as “hoodie-clad tech entrepreneur” and he gave a TED talk at 26 about a whale named Mr. Splashy Pants.

Twitter: @kn0thing / Blog: http://alexisohanian.com / Compete: 605

29. Ben Rubin

Ben is the co-founder of Zeo – a tool that uses SoftWave sensor technology to measure brainwaves comfortably in the home and accurately tracks sleep phases throughout the night. Ben is deeply passionate about ‘tracking everything’ – understanding that it’s a powerful way to learn about your life to make positive changes.

Twitter: @bsrubin/ Blog: http://bsrubin.com / Compete: 352

30. Hiten Shah

Hiten is the CEO and Co-Founder of @KISSmetrics. He is also one of the founding partners behind Crazy Egg and ACS. A direct quote from Hiten: “I love creating something out of nothing and helping other entrepreneurs do the same.”

Twitter: @hnshah / Blog: http://hitenshah.name / Compete: 185

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As always, if there is any information missing or incorrect, please leave it in the comments below. I hope this serves as a useful resource for everyone.

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]]> http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/top-30-startup-founder-directoryblogs/feed 16 http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/how-to-give-introductions-that-don%e2%80%99t-suck?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-to-give-introductions-that-don%25e2%2580%2599t-suck http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/how-to-give-introductions-that-don%e2%80%99t-suck#comments Tue, 12 Jul 2011 06:10:08 +0000 Paul http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/?p=1529

I’ve realized that I suck at giving introductions. When I was involved in Toastmasters, I used to give hasty introductions for speakers. If the speaker was lucky, I would mention his title, maybe his occupation, and finish by saying something along the lines of “please help me welcome…” blah blah blah.

This type of introduction might be considered functionally sufficient… but it’s also completely boring. It reflects the minimal effort and preparation I took in getting to know the person I’m introducing, and it doesn’t build up any level of interest from the audience.

Now I like listening to podcasts when I’m driving, and I’ve only recently noticed that podcast hosts like Jay and Sterling from over at the Internet Business Mastery podcast deliver masterful introductions. Every time they introduce a guest to the podcast audience – even as the introduction is going on – I start to get excited and eager to hear what the interviewee is going to say.

Listening to these podcasts made me realize that there is much I can do to step up my game at giving introductions. They made me want to learn how to give introductions that didn’t suck.

Why you should give an awesome introductions

From a top-level view, introducing people is a basic means to give two or more people an opportunity to get to know each another. A strong introduction helps establish a person’s credibility. It creates interest in the person being introduced and what they have to say. Introductions also act as a bridge, helping unacquainted people find common areas of interest. And most importantly, how you’re introduced can make a huge difference on the first impression you make.

For example, compare:

This is my friend Paul and he’s a writer.

VS

This is my friend Paul and he’s an author.

I’ve pulled these lines introducing friends to girls at bars, and can tell you from first hand experience that the author line engages 100% better than just being a writer.

What about…

This is my friend Paul who’s currently unemployed.

VS

This is my friend Paul who’s a social entrepreneur working from his home office.

Which person would you rather talk to? I can tell you from personal experience that no one really wants to talk to a bum that’s unemployed. But social entrepreneur? Sounds fancy. What does that even mean? Boom. Instant conversation…

Ideally a successful introduction occurs after any introduction where immediately afterwards you can fade into the background and let the two new contacts acknowledge each other and engage deeply into their own conversation.

Framework for an awesome introduction

Keeping this end goal in mind I wanted to devise a basic framework for standout introductions that can be applicable to every possible situation. As a simple-minded person, I try to make this framework as idiot proof as possible. You should be able to use this model to introduce a friend, a guest speaker, or even a professional contact – awesomely.

How to Give an Introduction Point 1 – create interest

The most important thing you should do is to take note of the purpose behind the new relationship. Are you introducing friends? A guest speaker? A potential client? Depending on the context – think about the guests credentials. Be selective. Look for what it is that establishes the guest as a reliable authority the focal point of the relationship. Is it a mutual hobby? Business opportunity? Go beyond the guest’s resume. Look also for a human-interest angle that helps create rapport with the audience.

It doesn’t have to be funny in order to be engaging. One introductory tip that has always made a strong impression on me is to include something about the speaker, perhaps an anecdote or a shared experience that may be relevant. For example in the latest Copyblogger podcast, host Robert Bruce, introduced a social media expert, prefacing the introduction by first delivering a brief monologue on go-to industry experts on certain topics. He listed some big names specific to product launches, graphic design, web development. Then on the topic of social media, he listed the name of his guest. I thought this was a superb introduction because it instantly triggered credibility for the guest, placing him on par with big time names that I already recognized. This type of introduction primed me to listen to whatever the guest was talking about because before he even spoke I already felt that I could benefit from his expertise.

How to Give an Introduction Point 2 – Keep it short

The spotlight is on you only briefly, before the new contacts take over. For small, informal meetings where everyone knows one another, less than a minute of introduction usually is all that’s needed. Sometimes, 30 seconds or so will do the trick.

At the other extreme, at a formal meeting, you’ll need more time, especially if the speaker is not well known to your audience. Still, try to keep your introduction to about two minutes. Announce the speaker’s name last. If you announce the speaker’s name earlier, the audience may applaud and interrupt your introduction.

How to Give an Introduction Point 3 – Show your enthusiasm

If you show that you’re sold on the introduction, it’ll help your audience feel that way too. Be animated. Smile.

If you’re in a formal meeting, continue to face your audience as you mention the speaker’s name. Remain standing until the speaker stands and acknowledges your introduction.

Then step back; your work is done.

Five introduction mistakes you should not do, and these are all missteps I’ve made at one point or another

• Don’t go overboard with praise the guest can’t live up to.
• Don’t point out any of the guest’s shortcomings.
• Don’t raise an issue that may spark disagreement or controversy before the person even gets a chance to speak.
• Don’t use trite, stilted language. Such as introducing a speaker with the words, “a person who needs no introduction.” Besides sounding cliché and on my list of personal pet peeves, this raises the question as to why an introduction is necessary in the first place.
• Don’t mangle the person’s name. If the person’s name is an unusual one, be sure you know how it’s pronounced. Few things can be more embarrassing to your guest—or to you—than mispronouncing someone’s name. The best way to check, of course, is by simply asking the person. If the name’s a tongue twister, write it down phonetically in your notes. Some guests have definite preferences in how they like to be addressed. In some of the best-known cases, it’s Bill Clinton, not William; Dick Cheney, not Richard.

Last but not least

In researching this post, here are a few things that I learned about introductions that I didn’t know before.

• The basic rule is that the name of the older or higher ranking person should be said first.
• When all other things are equal, the name of the person that you know better should be said first. In a business situation, the client is always considered higher ranking.
• Finally, at a party, guests should always be introduced to the guest of honor.

I felt that these were pretty obscure rules for etiquette. But I don’t make the rules I just abide by them!

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What’s the most awesome introduction you’ve ever heard? Let’s hear them!

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]]> http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/how-to-give-introductions-that-don%e2%80%99t-suck/feed 9 http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/internet-trolls-and-the-money-grubber-manifesto?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=internet-trolls-and-the-money-grubber-manifesto http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/internet-trolls-and-the-money-grubber-manifesto#comments Thu, 07 Jul 2011 07:00:57 +0000 Paul http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/?p=1505

Anyone who has been online for any bit of time realizes that trolls lurk everywhere. This is Inclusive of facebook friends, blog followers, and in general people in real life that just criticize your actions. As long as you’re speaking out, you’re bound to attract people that disagree with you.

To share a personal example, one of the biggest criticisms I’ve received on this blog is that my posts get too detailed and analytical. I’ve only told a few close friends about the existence of this blog, and those that actually read it say that sometimes my content gets too intense with the number analysis – analysis that they don’t care too much for – and they wished I would just skip straight to the conclusion.

At first hearing this made me consider changing up what I write. Maybe I should tone done down the analytics and write more about personal development and business ideas.

Then I remembered a story I read as a child. It went a little something like this…

Parable of the Old man, The Boy, and The Donkey

There was an old man, a boy and a donkey. They were going to town and the boy was riding the donkey, with the old man walking alongside.

As they rambled along, they passed some old women sitting in the shade. One of the women called out, ”Shame on you, a great lump of a boy, riding while your old father is walking.”

The man and boy decided that maybe the critics were right so they changed positions.

Later they ambled by a group of mothers watching their young children play by the river. One cried out in protest, “How could you make your little boy walk in the hot sun while you ride!”

The two travelers decided that maybe they both should walk.

Next they met some farmers working in the field, and as soon as the farmers catch sight of them the farmers start laughing.

“How stupid you are to walk when you have a perfectly good donkey to ride!” one yelled derisively.

So both father and son clambered onto the donkey, deciding they both should ride.

They were soon settled and underway again. They next encountered some children who were on their way home from school.

One girl shouted, “How inhumane to put such a load on a poor little animal.”

The old man and the boy heard logic in this criticism. They felt like horrible people. After some thought they came up with what they thought was a reasonable alternative. They both got off the animal and instead picked up and carried the donkey.

But as they crossed a bridge, the father and son lost their grip on the confused animal the donkey fell into the river and drowned.

Moral of the Story

The moral of the story, of course, is that if you try to please everyone you might as well kiss your ass goodbye.

You have to be fully self-expressed. Don’t do it the way other people want you to do it. Do it the way you want to do it.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that my writing isn’t for everyone. People won’t always agree with how I do things. They might not like the language that I use. But I can’t please everyone with the topics I cover, so really there’s no point in trying.

What I’m a Money Grubber is About

Personally, I get tired reading about big ideas discussed in vague generalities all the time. I can only process so much feel good theory in a given week.

What I would much rather find out are specifics about how other people are crushing it with their businesses. I want to read case studies revealing how people are out there doing it. How-to stories about how people are taking their marketing to the next level. I want to see numbers behind their business. I want to see exactly what’s working for them and at what level, so that I can learn what may or may not work for myself.

And that’s what I’m trying to make this blog about. In this blog, I write in the exact same voice as how I talk. And I write with the purpose to share everything that I’m doing. Including giving away all the nasty details that other people don’t feel comfortable talking about.

It isn’t always going to be sexy. Crunching numbers and looking through traffic stats isn’t glamorous. And honestly, I’m sure some of the marketing tactics that I try seem downright scammy to most people.

But I’m always going to try and be totally transparent about what I’m doing – sharing what I’m learning – so that people can build on what I’ve learned.

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Thanks for reading this little rant, and know that I do cherish the few people here who regularly follow along. I learn as much from your comments as anything else I do.

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]]> http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/internet-trolls-and-the-money-grubber-manifesto/feed 7 http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/the-best-post-youll-ever-read?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-best-post-youll-ever-read http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/the-best-post-youll-ever-read#comments Mon, 27 Jun 2011 07:00:34 +0000 Paul http://www.imamoneygrubber.com/?p=1458

I stumbled onto this gem of a poster from The Donut Project and felt an instant kinship with the message.

As I read it, all I wanted to do was kick over my desk, throw my coffee against the wall, and scream “fuck, there isn’t a fucking obstacle I can’t fucking overcome, not a problem I can’t solve!” … But unfortunately, I didn’t.

The coffee here is delicious and the desk, well, it’s pretty heavy. So… I’ll just save all that raw emotion for later when I’m at the gym.

How are you using the F-word

My point here today is that this just goes to show you the raw power behind the F-word.

Yes, there is still a huge stigma against using the F-word. It’s shrouded in negative connotations, depending on the context. But in modern times, I feel like this word has evolved. It’s transformed from just an expletive — into this extreme modifier — get you worked up till your head explodes — type word.

Funny thing is I used to be against the use of expletives. Kind of pansy really. I actually felt that swearing was a cop out. The easy way to emote. My line of reasoning was always that there are so many words in the English language. Surely I could find one that could describe my thoughts and emotions in a non-offensive manner.

But that’s changed. Used in the right context, in front of the right audience, expletives are simply another tool to grab attention and compel action.

My F-Word Headline Split Test

For example, here’s a quick test I ran on twitter last week.

I posted a link with the headline “Free Is Not A Business Model.” And linked to an article I read on ridiculouslyextrodinary.com. I had a 4% click through rate (CTR).

The next day I posted the exact same article link, modifying the headline to read “Free is not a FUCKING Business model.” This time I had a 17% click through rate!

A 300% improvement with the use of a single word.

And this hasn’t been an isolated incident. I’ve been testing random headlines over the past few months and have noticed that any expletive laden headline typically generates a 200% – 300% improvement in CTR, regardless of whether the expletive makes sense or even serves a purpose.

I haven’t completely worked out the details yet. Does this reflect more on the efficacy of expletives as words to capture attention, or is it just my particular audience?

Honestly, who cares. All I know is that IT FUCKING WORKS!

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What’s your favorite headline formula? Any good ones that are more family friendly?

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