Posted: January 22nd, 2010 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Education, Food for thoughts, Groups | Tags: Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Interesting, Startups | No Comments »
CrowdFlower is a company that allows companies to outsource their repetitive tasks such as data verification and filtering. I think initially this can be very useful for internet companies that need to have content verification and data check services. Usually, it is not cheap to hire people to do this kind of job and the error rate is quite high for this type of repetitive task. I think the value proposition is to offer this type of service where companies do not have to hire people and have higher quality of service. It is a promising service.
The company received an additional of $5 million funding as stated from http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/crowdflower-raises-five-million-to-boost-crowdsourcing/.
Posted: January 3rd, 2010 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Education, Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital | Tags: Articles, Education, Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital | No Comments »
This is very helpful for my New Venture Project timeline.
Quick summary:
- Trying to raise money too late
- Trying to raise money too early
- Lacking a realistic assessment of the companys’ value
- Not building enough substance before approaching investors
- Not splitting the message into smaller chunks
- Preparing poor pitch material
- Pitching to the wrong investors
- Not pitching at all
- Getting too greedy
- Not willing to share risk
Read the whole post at Arctic Startup via 10 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Often Make When Raising Capital.
Posted: December 29th, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Startups, Web 2.0 | Tags: Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Interesting, Market, Productivity, Startups, Tools | 1 Comment »
Spudaroo.com
Spudaroo.com is a website that allows people to pay 3rd parties to create website documents, business plan, blog content, slide presentation, and even resume for lazy people. This is a Canadian startup and I wonder how effective is to outsource this type of work to others. I can’t imagine someone who doesn’t know me to write up my resume. Even worse, it is not a great idea to ask someone else to write a business plan for you if that other person doesn’t know the business or the industry at all.
Lastly, I think the name is really hard to spell and search on Google. Though, it is creative.
Posted: December 22nd, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Education, Entrepreneurship, Food for thoughts, Startups, Venture Capital, Web 2.0 | Tags: Business plan, Canada, Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Food for thoughts, Internet, Venture Capital | No Comments »
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Aeryon
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CognoVision
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Avatar Builder
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Dayforce
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D-Wave
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Zoompass
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GanSystems
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GlassBox TV
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Social Software Solutions
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Metranome
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Morega
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NimTech
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Overlay.TV
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Peerset
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Post Rank
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REMCO Solid State Lighting
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Rypple
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Sixtron
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Skymeter
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You I Labs
Posted: December 20th, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Education, Entrepreneurship, Framework, Startups, Venture Capital | Tags: Articles, Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Startups, Venture Capital | No Comments »
I should be studying for my final exams, but I couldn’t resist reading posts from Startable. This time, they are sharing a neat and simple framwork to make a great business plan pitch. After reading it, it actually gives us tips to how to write and organize a business plan. I was very interested in the marketing part where it gives an idea of what VCs are looking for marketing data in the business plan.
Quick summary of the post:
- Passion - training and training will lead to a passionate pitch.
- Simple, Short and Concise - grab your audience attention in less than 10 minutes.
- Pictures are worth a thousand words – avoid putting all your business plan in one slide, use images instead.
- Convey what your business is in 90 seconds – tell your audience what you are offering to the market in 90 seconds.
- Keep text in a slide to no more than three lines – don’t put all business plan in one slide!
- Target market and market size – who you are selling to?
- Marketing - how are you going to sell to those people?
- Competition – list 3 competitors and why you are better then them and barriers to entry.
- Product - what makes your product unique? Any IP?
- Revenue potential – project and assume with pride, don’t be over consevative nor creative.
- Costs - identify cost and provide scalability savings.
- Team - why your team is the best to run the business?
