Global Entrepreneurship Week/USA is an initiative to shape the next generation of entrepreneurs and inspire them to embrace innovation, imagination and creativity. Founded by the Kauffman Foundation, it connects people everywhere as hundreds of thousands participate through local, national and global activities designed to help them explore their entrepreneurial potential.

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A few months ago, while on my morning commute to the office, I was listening to the so-called “experts” debate the state of the economy, and whether or not the current administration is hurting entrepreneurship with their small business policy and broad taxes, which treat massive corporations and small companies exactly the same. I instantly recalled an infographic David had showed me about the minuscule amount of funding being allocated to entrepreneurship compared to healthcare, education, tax relief, and so on. How surprised I remember being by the lack of funding for entrepreneurship given that entrepreneurs are our central source of jobs and innovation.

Entrepreneurs are America’s real “bailout” in the sense that by investing in them and their ventures, we would stimulate a real economic turnaround. Whether or not you agree with the politics, entrepreneurship is a vital part of any economic stimulus – so why did it seem like no one was talking about the lack of investment in the future of entrepreneurs?

I then asked myself why I had never heard of a National Entrepreneurs’ Day – did we have one of those? A day to recognize entrepreneurs and all the hard work they do, just like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and so forth? So when I got to the office, I started doing some research. As it turned out, there were lots of week-long events such as Global Entrepreneurship Week, where a self-selected group of people celebrated entrepreneurship, and global events such as World Entrepreneurship Day, but there was no single day in the U.S. – like Martin Luther King Day – during which we recognize the individual entrepreneur and the ways they’ve made our country (and world) more innovative, and our economy stronger. Even China has a National Entrepreneurs’ Day! The more research I did, the more it confirmed my suspicion: America, the most entrepreneurial country in the world, didn’t have a National Entrepreneurs’ Day.

So, I did what any other entrepreneur would do, and I decided to take action. I asked distinguished entrepreneur and former New Hampshire Governor, Craig Benson, what it would take to get the president to recognize the day – not an official holiday, but a day recognized on the calendar. “A million signatures ought to do it,” he said. No problem. David and I knew we had to leverage the power of social media so we came up with what we were calling, “A Twitter Petition to the First Ever President on Twitter.” We started getting featured supporters on board: First, Leonard Schlesinger, President of Babson College, then entrepreneurs like Matt Mullenweg, Jason Fried, Dharmesh Shaw, Jeff Bussgang, and others. Ashoka and Entrepreneurs’ Organization loved the idea. More and more people were supportive of the movement, and we started to build real momentum.

So, today, a few months after that morning drive, we launched the petition to President @BarackObama. I need your support – sign it. Get your followers to sign it. Tell others about it. Tell your governor, your mayor, your senators. Call your local newspaper, TV stations, and radio shows. Tweet about it, post to your Facebook wall, Digg it, StumbleUpon it, blog about it, email your friends, and do everything you can to help us get a million signatures. Once you sign it, you’ll be given a unique link to Tweet and send to your friends.

The more signatures you get with your unique link, the higher your name appears on the letter.

WHY do this? Do it as a favor to yourself, to your country and to the future. Entrepreneurs made this country what it is, and if given the proper recognition and support, they can build an even brighter future through innovation and hard work. Let’s make National Entrepreneurs’ Day happen now.

If you have questions or more ideas to raise awareness, leave a comment.

Highlights include:

• 52% of entrepreneurs use an iPhone

• 36% feel the recession hasn’t hurt their business much

• 28% feel 2010 is going to be the best year ever

Thanks to everyone who participated! (Click the image to see full size)

1. Make Money – David Heinemeier Hannson, Co-founder of 37signals

David from 37Signals gives an uplifting, straightforward talk on creating a profitable company, charging money for your product, and to solve simple problems. David and I have similar views on growing a business: do it yourself without venture capital, focus on entrepreneurs (he calls them Fortune 5,000,000), and solve a problem you face yourself. What changes can you implement to either make or create an additional $1 million a year from your niche target?

Connect with David on Twitter: @dhh

2. Break Conventions – Eoghan McCabe & Des Traynor, Founders of Contrast.ie

Breaking conventions is easier said than done, and Eoghan and Des do a great job showing us how to create a remarkable user experience by adding some personality and new thinking to your brand. How can you can make your user experience simply better using Eoghan and Des’ advice?

Connect with Eoghan and Des on Twitter: @eoghanmccabe and @destraynor

3. Create Purpose – Guy Kawasaki, Managing Director of Garage Ventures

Even web companies need to master the fundamentals. When you get past the fluff, Guy touches on a few important points every successful company should have such as a mantra, having a great team, a complimentary partner, and focus. Why exactly does your company exist and what milestones will help you achieve your goals?

Connected with Guy on Twitter: @guykawasaki

4. Be Remarkable – Seth Godin, Best-Selling Author

The title of Seth’s presentation, “Standing Out,” isn’t the most fitting. Standing out is not as important as Seth’s point on how to get your idea to spread, being remarkable, and focusing on fashion and design to fuel your brand. What’s your purple cow?

4.5 Execute Financially – Aaron Patzer, CEO of Mint.com

Why 4.5 you ask? Although I like Aaron’s story of how and why he founded Mint and his advice to entrepreneurs on overcoming doubt and structuring a team, I’m against early stage venture capital, handing out shares like candy, and starting a company without a co-founder. But nevertheless his advice on how to manage financials and plan for the unexpected is good whether or not you’ve decided to take on VC. Are you prepared for the stages in your business?

Connect with Aaron on Twitter: @apatzer

You have 90 seconds to pitch an investor about your new, incredible business idea that’s going to change the world and make millions of dollars. How do you do it? Simply break your story into five parts using this guideline of how I’d want to be pitched:

• What is it, who’s your target and what’s the value? (20 seconds)

  Get me excited. Focus on the value of your service rather than the features. Tell me quickly what it is, who your target market is, and tell me how it’s going to help them do something better, faster, or more easily. Focus on value and the void you’ll be filling.

• Pricing model? (10 seconds)

  How much does it cost and how do you plan on making money? Recurring revenue or one-time fee?

• Why is it unique or buzzworthy? (20 seconds)

  What makes your product or service unique? Why will anyone care? What are you going to do to get people talking about it?

• Funding requirements? (15 seconds)

  How much money do you need to get started and why? Very high level overview.

• The team? (25 seconds)

  Who makes up your team and how are you going to make it happen? Why should I invest in you? Why are you the best person for the job? This is the most important section so take your time and remember, investors will be investing in you and your team, not your idea.

Good luck.

So when we started creating our new TV commercial, we knew it needed to not only raise brand awareness, but also needed to give viewers a reason to stop, rewind, and watch it. And I’m not talking about gimmicks like intrusive ads as you fast forward or hidden/subliminal messages. I’m talking about real, good commercials that make you go “hmmm.”

With recent figures showing that at least 1/3 of US households have a TiVO/DVR device with an average of 70% of people fast-forwarding through commercials, creating an ad in this environment is pretty damn hard, but obviously not impossible.

A study done this past November at Boston College, and featured in Wired said,

“…the act of fast-forwarding through ads causes viewers to pay even more attention to the center part of the screen — the better to know when to return to “play” — even as advertisements whipped past at 20x the normal speed without sound. Apparently, our brains are still able to process images and retain brand messaging even when we’re only seeing one out of every 24 video frames.”

Even if 70% of people are fast forwarding through your commercial, you can still seemingly reach 100% of your viewers.

For the Grasshopper commercial we had to hit on the two key elements to reach our DVR-centric audience:

• Create brand awareness

• Grab attention at high fast forward speeds

So what did we do?

• We put our mascot, Gary, into an animation where he is centered, staring at you throughout the spot even as you fast forward through the commercial

• Added a cool morphing effect that kept his face centered but the background constantly changing

Fast forward the commercial and the message (and the visual) isn’t lost. He just looks like micro-machine man.

Creating a commercial for a Tivo/DVR world isn’t impossible. It just takes some creative thinking and research.

Here are a couple articles to help you plan your very own TiVo-Proof ad:

• How Advertisers Can Foil the Fast-Forward Button: Ads You Have to Watch

• Consumers To Marketers: Fast-Forwarding Through Commercials Means We’re Less Likely To Hate You

• Many DVR Users Watch Ads Anyway; Even Fast-Forwarders Are Exposed

• Slow Those Fast-Forwarders, Study Says, With Emotion

Dear Grasshopper Entrepreneurs,

Ah, what an eventful year it’s been. While large corporations received big bailouts, entrepreneurs like you used the unpredictable economic climate to create jobs, innovate, and help turn our economy around. Your passion for finding new solutions to old problems makes us want to find even more ways to help your businesses grow in 2010.

You inspired us

Since many of you sign up for Grasshopper shortly after starting your business, we’ve had the chance to see people joining our entrepreneur movement in droves. Many of you faced enormous adversity, perhaps after being laid off from a job or in attempting to find capital to get your business up and running. So many of the entrepreneurs we’ve spoken to have made the “big leap” this year after facing uncertain times, and have turned a less than ideal situation into an opportunity to pursue your passion. Your stories have been moving. Your resilience and commitment to making your dreams a reality has inspired us.

The year of Grasshopper

It’s been a busy year here at Grasshopper. We re-branded after six years by FedEx-ing 25,000 chocolate covered Grasshoppers across North America and started a movement to inspire entrepreneurs. We also improved our service based on your feedback, started a blog with real advice from entrepreneurs in the trenches, and launched our first Grasshopper Labs product, Chargify. Thankfully, we have a great group of employees here who – first and foremost – are working hard to serve you and the tens thousands of other Grasshopper Entrepreneurs out there. They also do an amazing job making our company an incredible place to work.

Expect more in 2010

More features. More products. More opportunities to grow your business. These are just a few of the amazing things we have in store for you in 2010. Expect more features to improve how you use your Grasshopper service, look forward to more products from Grasshopper Labs to ignite business growth, and more opportunities to generate buzz and awareness for your business through our successful Tell Us Your Story program. You’ll even have an opportunity to be featured in a Grasshopper TV commercial. Make sure you stay in touch with us.

Follow us on Twitter

Connect with us on Twitter by following @Grasshopper and look for many more Grasshopper team members there, too. We co-founders are also on Twitter, so follow us for insight into our entrepreneurial journey, and lots more. And remember, you can always call us 24/7 at 800-820-8210.

Happy holidays and looking forward to making 2010 a year to remember.

Regards,

Siamak Taghaddos
Co-founder & CEO
Twitter: @staghaddos

David Hauser
Co-founder & CTO
Twitter: @dh

Step 1. Choreograph an amazing video with a popular song.

Step 2. Feature 172 extrovert students.

Step 3. Seed the video by getting each of those students enthusiastically spreading the cool new video they were a part of to their, on average, 130 Facebook friends who then, in some way or another, pass it on to 130 more people because “OMG look at my BFF Sara in this amazing video!”

Well done, Luc. You just gave all of us something to think about…

*Step 1 may not be easy for everyone.

I recently talked with Under 30 CEO on how travel can fuel inspiration and creativity. Here’s an excerpt:

How do you find inspiration and creativity for your company?

My best ideas don’t come from a clichéd “ideation session” or a set time of day; they happen when I’m outside the office. So I travel. A lot, if for no other reason than to get the creative juices flowing. There’s a reason why the top floors of a building are the most expensive to occupy, why top executives have the best views of the city, and why city planners and military generals create models to stare down at: When you have a bird’s eye view of the world, it’s a lot easier to put challenges into perspective and strategize your way around obstacles. Having a bird’s eye view of the world lets you see what’s both immediately in front of you as well as what’s on the horizon. Combine that with a plane moving 500 miles an hour and a good book, and you get the perfect storm for new ideas and creativity. For inspiration, I look at companies doing great things, reading stories about successful entrepreneurs, and how everyday challenges create opportunities.

Read the rest of the interview at Under 30 CEO

The twelve people I have listed below are certainly not the only entrepreneurs out there offering valuable information but they are some of my favorites:

Ben Yoskovitz

• @byosko
• Who: “CEO/Founder Standout Jobs. Blogger. Entrepreneur. Father. Opportunity-seeker.”
• Why: Ben interacts with his followers and presents great information for start ups.

Mike McDerment

• @MikeMcDerment
• Who: “FreshBooks CEO”
• Why: Mike does a great job of answering questions about FreshBooks, interacting with his followers and keeping everyone updated on events and engagements.

Dan Martell

• @danmartell
• Who: “Canadian entrepreneur; investor, San Francisco immigrant, lover of metrics and marketing. all around nice guy.”
• Why: A nice mix of social media marketing, humor and business tips.

Elizabeth Shea

• @eliz2shea
• Who: “CEO/Founder of SpeakerBox Communications, a tech PR agency focused on driving business results in B2B and B2G”
• Why: Up on all the business events, technology news and social media.

Jason Fried

• @jasonfried
• Who: “Founder of 37signals. Architecture and tea enthusiast, too. Entrepreneurs: Simple is an asset.”
• Why: Great interaction (esp. with customers) along with some quality business info.

Marcel LeBrun

• @lebrun
• Who: “CEO, Radian6 – social media monitoring, analysis and engagement platform”
• Why: Fun to follow with a mix of person interests and business information. As a CEO great to see so many responses to followers.

Leo Laporte

• @leolaporte
• Who: “I’ve experiments to run, there is research to be done, on the people who are watching TWiT Live.”
• Why: Interesting guy covering everything from music to business to search. Also a Grasshopper customer so I am partial.

Joel Spolsky

• @spolsky
• Who: Software developer and the author of Joel on Software
• Why: Get insight into his company along with solid business advice.

Susan McKenna

• @mckennasmark
• Who: “Owner of McKenna’s Marketing, Tweet Toolbox, BuzzHumor, StinksnThings and other fun adventures!”
• Why: Funny, RT quality information and offers some nice social media tips for businesses

Steve Woda

• @SteveWoda
• Who: “Founder of buySAFE. Entrepreneur. eCommerce. Internet Safety and Security. Economics. Surety Bonds. Wharton MBA.”
• Why: Great articles and RT for businesses and startups.

Mark MacLeod

• @startupcfo
• Who: “I help fund, grow and sell tech startups. Currently CFO at Akoha and Tungle and advisor to other web startups”
• Why: Funny and smart is what you will get from Mark. Information for VC and startup folks

Fred Wilson

• @fredwilson
• Who: “I am a VC”
• Why: Personal insights, music, event info and of course business and startup tips.

I also thought I’d throw in two others you may already know as a bonus:

Zappos

• @zappos
• Who: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh
• Why: Get a glimpse of what life is like in the Zappos office along with some motivational quotes to pick you up.

Jason Calacanis

• @jason
• Who: “I’m a cereal entrepreneur: Founder of Weblogs, Inc., TechCrunch50, Silicon Alley Reporter, Engadget & Mahalo.com”
• Why: A very smart guy doing interesting things. Find events and get startup tips.