Today, Dell’s Small & Media Business (SMB) online marketing group launched a Facebook “community and guide” (translation: page) designed to help educate small business owners on “how to harness the power of social media to reach and serve their customers.” Dell is calling the Facebook “community and guide” Social Media for Small Business.
Guides on how to use blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
Screencast introductions to social-media tools
A discussion board
Best-practice sharing including a featured small or medium business of the week
Deals and news from Dell Small and Medium Business
According to this post by J.J. Davis, “early adopters” — I guess that means fans — will receive $100 in Facebook ad credits.
On May 11, 2005, I first used the term “acqhire” and was so amused with myself that I appended the post to define it: “When a large company ‘purchases’ a small company with no employees other than its founders, typically to obtain some special talent or a cool concept.” That post was about Google, then a mere $64 billion company, purchasing the two-person company, Dodgeball.com. (Ever heard of it? Didn’t think so.)
Earlier this week, Slate ran a story that picked up a theme written about often — that small companies Google acqhires often end up in a black hole. I have no personal insight into what happens at Google and I can’t say I agree 100% with him, but Jason Fried — who’s company, 37 Signals, has probably had plenty of opportunities to be acquired — has a great quote in the article that is worth repeating:
“You take great talents and you put them in this big company and they get drowned out by all this policy stuff,” Fried argues. “Putting a small company in a big company kills what was good about the small company.”
Here’s a MyBusiness magazine story I wrote about Jason in 2006 that explored his preference for keeping his company independent. From the time I spent interviewing him for the story and from being a user of his company’s products ever since, I’m glad he provides a balancing point of view to the notion that the only reason to start a business is to flip it. In the narrow niche that is covered by the tech blogosphere, that may be the goal, but for most small businesses in the real world, the magnet is independence and the opportunity to see an idea realized.
There will be no pity from me for those who have sold their startup to Google, only to see it sucked into a blackhole. Their product dreams may have been dashed, but they left with a lifetime’s worth of parting prizes. Next time, they’ll know better what matters.
I’m aware of IKEA’s success and fan-following, but I’ll admit, when it comes to shopping for anything that doesn’t plug in, I try to avoid all forms of the retail experience. But even in Nashville, where we have no IKEA, it’s a store that still has a big following. So much so, that two clever guys, Nick Ray and David Molnar, created a niche business called ModerNash that transports IKEA merchandise from the Atlanta store for pickup in Nashville*.
Featured today on the entrepreneurial niche-idea website, Springwise, ModerNash allows customers to submit their orders on its website, ModerNash.com, and the company will pick up the items in Atlanta and even assemble the furniture (for $25 per hour). They will handle returns (even for customers who didn’t order through ModerNash) and have partnered with some Nashville kitchen and cabinet installers for bigger jobs.
The idea is, conceptually, a bit like other companies that have sprung up to assist people in selling and purchasing things on eBay — concepts Springwise calls “feeder” businesses. I like these ideas because they follow a classic small business success strategy of finding a way to meet a need that is narrow and one where customers quickly become fans if you serve them well.
The obvious threat to ModerNash is that one day IKEA will open a store in Nashville. But by then, I’m sure they will have opened ModernKnoxville.
*Perhaps a commenter can add information about where they are located. Their website does not include that information.
[Note: After posting this, I discovered (via Merlin Mann) the video I've embedded below. In it, Ira Glass describes the gap between our taste and our ability to execute at that level when we begin working in a new medium. Read this post, the article it links to and the video and stop quitting just because you're not good at something new.]
Why do some people with lots of smarts and talent seem to flame out and never quite make it?
Carol Dweck, a Stanford psychologist who’s studied the question for three decades, believes the answer lies in how people think about intelligence and talent. According to the NY Times, “Those who believe they were born with all the smarts and gifts they’re ever going to have approach life with what she calls a ‘fixed mind-set.’ Those who believe that their own abilities can expand over time, however, live with a “growth mind-set.â€
Quote:
“People who believe in the power of talent tend not to fulfill their potential because they’re so concerned with looking smart and not making mistakes. But people who believe that talent can be developed are the ones who really push, stretch, confront their own mistakes and learn from them.â€
Over the years, I’ve seen incredibly talented young athletes, musicians or scholars hit the wall in their development. At the same time, I’ve observed young people who were less inately talented blossom into superstars. I used to think it had something to do with being “burned out” after years of being pushed to succeed so early. Over time, however, I’ve grown to think that being labled “gifted” early in life can trick a smart and talented person into believing hard work, determination and curiousity are less important than raw talent or brain-power.
Fortunately, we have some role models — Tiger Woods springs to mind — who have never let great gifts and talent trick them into having a fixed mind-set. Woods, surely one of the greatest to ever play the game of golf, is always seeking a deeper understanding and constantly working on new ways to improve his skills.
I think many successful companies develop fixed mindsets. They refuse to believe that a company with people less talented and not as smart as them can ever have the ability to surpass them. They refuse to push, stretch and confront their own mistakes and grow from them. They refuse to be like Tiger.
The good news? According to Dweck, individuals can change. They can overcome the fixed mindset. So can companies.
Bonus video: Ira Glass on not giving up when you’re working in a new medium.
Early this morning, I read The Next American Frontier, an op-ed piece by Michael Malone in the Wall Street Journal. It contains some rather profound observations and led me to start making notes that will at some point turn into a rather long post. But not now. Now, I’ll just point the Malone’s essay and pull this quote:
“Half of all new college graduates now believe that self-employment is more secure than a full-time job. Today, 80% of the colleges and universities in the U.S. now offer courses on entrepreneurship; 60% of Gen Y business owners consider themselves to be serial entrepreneurs, according to Inc. magazine. Tellingly, 18 to 24-year-olds are starting companies at a faster rate than 35 to 44-year-olds. And 70% of today’s high schoolers intend to start their own companies, according to a Gallup poll.
An upcoming wave of new workers in our society will never work for an established company if they can help it. To them, having a traditional job is one of the biggest career failures they can imagine. Much of childhood today is spent, not in organized sports or organizations, but in ad hoc teams playing online games such as Half Life, or competing in robotics tournaments, or in constructing and decorating MySpace pages. Without knowing it, we have been training a whole generation of young entrepreneurs.
And who is going to dissuade them? Mom, who is a self-employed consultant working out of the spare bedroom? Or Dad, who is at Starbuck’s working on the spreadsheet of his new business plan? In the past there have been trading states like Venice, commercial regions like the Hanseatic League, and even so-called nations of shopkeepers. But there has never been a nation in which the dominant paradigm is entrepreneurship. Not just self-employment or sole proprietorship, but serial company-building, entire careers built on perpetual change, independence and the endless pursuit of the next opportunity.
Without noticing it, we have once again discovered, and then raced off to settle, a new frontier. Not land, not innovation, but ourselves and a growing control over our own lives and careers.
Reading this, along with thinking about “noise,” has led me to a unifying theory that I’ll discuss later. Developing.
Recently on this blog, I dipped my toe into a debate about the age of individuals who start and run businesses. My point then (and now) is that while intuitively convincing, the empirical evidence related to business creation and success suggests that numerous factors are important to the success of an enterprise and that if you focus too much on one factor (age), you’ll be lulled into crediting the wrong factors — and making connections that perhaps should not be made.
So it is no surprise I — at least on an intuitive level — agree with and endorse the arguments made in this NYTimes.com article that American education, societal, cultural and parenting factors may be playing a role in juicing up entrepreneurial urges among American young people.
However, lest we forget, the whole “idea” of America was created by individuals who were small merchants, farmers, artisans and others who were, what today we’d call, “self-employed.” I’m all for celebrating youthful entrepreneurship, but I merely want to remind people that the idea that opportunity is something provided by big institutions — and not created by individuals — is a notion that was popularized in the Industrial Age or that dates back to pre-colonial European institutions that placed power and opportunity into the hands of religious, feudal, or other forms of tribal entities.
There may be something about contemporary American society that is encouraging young people to get in touch with their inner-entrepreneur, however that “inner-entrepreneur” is part of a DNA that can be traced back three centuries.
I must admit, using the headline question “Is 30 too old to start a company?” is a great way to generate comments and links. And, no doubt, in certain business niches — VC-backed online startups based in the Silicon Valley, campus-vicinity restaurants, youth fashion, pop music or anything related to pop-culture — the intuitive answer is yes.
However, the Vallywag folks are going to flunk “Freakonomics” if they attempt to prove anything statistically convincing with that chart accompanying the post. Valleywag writes, “a quick check on the great tech companies of the last three decades shows a pretty brutal rule. The most spectacular successes are launched by founders still in their twenties.” As I feel certain that reporters and bloggers will soon be quoting this “research” to prove something, I feel compelled to say, while fun and entertaining, the chart proves nothing. First, the list is said to be of “great tech companies of the last three decades” when it should be labeled “tech and online media companies we could think of that would prove our point that if you’re over 30, you are too old to start a company.” At least they admit their data was crunched by Valleywag, which is right up there with saying your data was crunched by The Onion.
In reality — or, as we say, the real world — successful companies (and failing ones) are started by teenagers and retirees and every age between. If one has a serious interest in this topic, I suggest reading the book The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses by Columbia B-School School professor Amar Bhide. First published in 1999 and based on data about Inc. 500 companies in 1989, the book is not a how-to or beach read. It is a serious attempt to explore the economics of starting and growing a successful business. Bottomline: The factors that go into business success are far-reaching and varied. Trying to peg success to one factor, like the age of the founder, is folly.
Yesterday, I said I don’t like blogging about the “transactions” of magazines. That declaration, of course, leads to one of the rules of blogging I’ve discovered during the past six or so years: Whenever you say you don’t blog about a certain topic, you’ll spend the next month blogging about that topic.
Longtime readers of this weblog know that for over two years, I’ve been over-the-top with my praise of the concept of JPG Magazine. On so many levels, the magazine and the people behind it have provided those of us who are firmly rooted in both the magazine/print and online/community worlds with a glimpse into how the two do not compete, but, rather, compliment one-another. I rarely speak publicly on the topic of the future of magazines without using JPG as an example of one-or-another lesson.
As I often speak and write about small business and entrepreneurship, I am sad to learn that they now are providing an example of some of the harsh realities of that topic, as well. They have discovered that when a shared passion becomes a business, the dynamics of the relationships among those involved can alter greatly — and lead to trainwrecks.
In some heartfelt posts today, Derek Powazek and his wife and co-founder, Heather Powazek Champ, talk about their departure from the company they helped to create. I’ve heard many stories like these. I’ve even participated in a couple.
Jason Calacanis (as quoted by Dave Winer) once said, “If a deal is worth doing, it’s worth documenting with a good agreement. If it’s not worth that, then don’t bother.” Last August, I found myself with Jason and Dave in an impromptu conversation with a young web entrepreneur who was going through a high profile start-up business divorce. Despite not always taking the advice myself, we were pretty unanimous in our advice for the young entrepreneur to move on: that the controversy and strife of a business relationship breaking up was merely a temporary setback — that the opportunity ahead was too grand to be absorbed with the failure of a single transaction or attempt — it is inevitable that conflicts will occur when strong-willed, ego-driven human beings are involved. (Again, I only wish I would follow such sage advice that I freely extend to others.)
Other than as a fan, I have no personal knowledge of the business of JPG magazine or 8020 Publishing, the company it spawned. I do not know personally its founders or investors. I do know this: they are pioneers. Their work will lead to many great things. Whether or not it is with that specific company and that specific magazine, I have no idea. But I can say this with some degree of certainty: They all have a great deal of opportunity ahead of them. The quicker they move through the current crap, the better off they’ll all be.
As for those of you starting businesses with partners, remember the Jason (and many others) rule: If it’s a deal worth doing, it’s worth documenting with a good agreement.
Update: On Techmeme, there are many posts that focus on who is right and wrong. I’m not suggesting in this post that the parties are not correct in airing their differences or pursuing whatever course they desire to settle their differences. My focus, rather, is on a universal lesson — not my personal opinion of, as we’d say down south, “who shot John.”
Later: CEO Paul Cloutier posts a polite but oblique announcement on the 8020 weblog. Excerpt: “Despite our best efforts, we couldn’t come to an agreement and parted ways though Derek remains a shareholder in 8020 Publishing. We recognize Derek’s contributions to JPG Magazine, past and present, and wish him well in his future endeavors.”
CNET and others are reporting that Google will officially launch the anticipated subscription-based version of its Google Apps hosted services for businesses. The Google Apps products, previously called Google Apps for Your Domain, also now include Google Docs & Spreadsheets, which combines online word processing and spreadsheets, and they will support Gmail on BlackBerry devices. The $50-per-user-account service will offer more storage and customer support than the free, ad-supported Apps product. (It’s free through April 30.)
Later:InfomationWeek reporter Paul McDougall’s article on the announcement says Google is targeting large corporate customers (i.e., Microsoft’s customers) as well as the small business market.
Quote:
“But it’s not just penny-pinching small businesses that are eyeing Google Apps. Corporate powerhouses General Electric Co. and Procter & Gamble are among the early adopters. For GE, it’s less about the cost and more about “the easy access that [Google Apps] provides to a suite of Web applications,” said GE chief technology officer Gregory Simpson, in a statement.
As part of its efforts to bundle services that small businesses (and individuals) can operate using their own domain (insert Seinfeld joke here), Google is now offering the ability to register a domain. (I’ll let the experts on such tea-leaves esoterica at Search Engine Land figure out why Google is using GoDaddy and eNom to power it.) The bundled services work if you have a domain you’ve already registered and control — this is merely a new feature being offered to those who want to register a new domain.
Another reminder: What you’ll be paying $10 to Google for, you can purchase from GoDaddy for $9. [Later: Commenter 'balzack' (see comments) points out that Google is throwing in the privacy feature GoDaddy charges $9 for, so a better comparison is $9 vs. $18. If that's a feature you want, the Google option seems a bargain.]
Why would people pay Google $10 for what they can find elsewhere for $9 or free? The words convenience and simplicity spring to mind. Also, having a $10 charge in the context of offering something free may seem fair to those setting up such a bundle of services. Also, it takes a very small-amount of geekiness to register a domain on one service and provide Google the means to utilize it for the free services. (Anyone can do it, but it may take a lay-person $10 worth of hassle to figure it out.)
On Monday, Google responded to Microsoft’s announcement two week’s ago of Office Live. Both Google’s and Microsoft’s products are growing suites of hosted web applications and services bundled together for the small business market. While Google’s services will look familiar to anyone who has used G-Mail or the Google calendar, there is an obvious difference: the services utilize a domain mapping scheme that replaces the Google URL with that of the small business.
The Microsoft product announced on October 31 is robust sounding (and only available for Windows users using IE, so my ability to review it is zilch). In addition to the “free” version (that includes a free domain name hosted by Microsoft), there are two premium tiers that offer additional storage and features.
Google’s announcement today is rather subdued by comparison to the full feature set announced by Microsoft: essentially, that its recently announced beta for offering a hosted private-branded G-mail service for small businesses will be expanded to include additional “Google Apps for Your Domain” features. These features include the following hosted services:
Gmail hosted email (@yourdomain.com)
Google Calendar
Google Talk instant messaging
Google Page Creator (for simple web page design)
A branded “Start Page” (a customizable home page where a company’s users can log in to their email and other services)
An administrative control panel
As I mentioned in my earlier post, it is just a matter of time before the existing Google services and a few more are bundled together under a brand (most likely Google office — or something a little more inventive than the current “Google Apps for Your Domain”) and marketed as a simple web application suite of services for small businesses.
Below is a screen grab of my very empty hammockpublishing.com e-mail inbox hosted by Google. Director of Hackology Patrick Ragsdale and I are messing around with it and will keep you posted as features are added. (Note: the company’s primary domain is hammock.com)
“While most people recall the colossal flops of the period (Webvan, pets.com, etoys and the rest) the survival rates of the era’s companies turns out to be on a par, if not slightly higher, than those in several other major industries in their formative years.”
The revisionist history is found in a paper analyzing business plans from the dot-com era that suggests the dot-com bust was concentrated in companies that followed the theory that getting big fast is the way to success (and it was, for a few lottery winners). However, dig down into what really happened and you’ll discover lots of dot-com startups that followed the traditional small business approach (small niche, little overhead, and, oh, what’s that?, revenue) that are still thriving companies, but you’ve never heard of them.
Quote that anyone thinking of a Web 2.0 startup should print out and read everyday:
“Most of these survivors, though, aren’t the titans like Amazon or eBay, but much smaller efforts such as wrestlinggear.com, which sells equipment to high-school and college wrestlers, what Prof. Kirsch called precisely the sort of demanding niche market for which Web shopping was invented. The fact that so many dot-com companies survived suggests that even more could have started. But that didn’t happen, says the study. Investors following conventional wisdom of the day were interested only in companies that could dominate an entire industry. In looking for these, they ignored smaller niche opportunities that had the potential to become modest but profitable enterprises. “It turns out there were lots of nooks and crannies for entrepreneurial action,” says Prof. Kirsch. “But those nooks and crannies might have been $5 million or $10 million businesses — well worth doing, though not necessarily for VCs.”
Related: My recent rant regarding myopic VCs who only invest in startups 20 minutes from their offices.
Sidenote discovery: The owner of WrestlingGear.com has a blog.
Jeff Cornwall: “Neither party seems to understand where we are in our economic history. We are now in a period of economic transformation: unlike any we have seen in over a century.”
Small business is a topic I write about elsewhere — as in my day job, so typically I eschew it here. However, as small business technology seems to be getting lots of attention today, I’ll wear my professional small business marketplace watcher hat and make a few observations about today’s announcement from Microsoft regarding Office Live, a tiered suite of online services for small businesses. Coupled with the announcement yesterday of a free accounting software product for the small business market, this is a major escalation in the arms race between Microsoft and Intuit — with other deep pockets like Yahoo!, Google, eBay and Amazon also in the fray, along with an endless array of other players focused on niche small business technology and online opportunities and specialized needs. (I guess, in a big-tent way, this includes me, but here I’m focusing on the tech-provider giants.)
First off, Microsoft’s announcement is impressive: a three-tiered “freemium” product (free plus two pay options with additional services and features). One of the major advantages Microsoft has in the small business market is an army of resellers and Small Business Specialists. These folks are, in most instances, small business owners themselves who have the relationship and trust of their clients. How these “middle” players direct their small business clients in adopting the new online services vs. selling them desktop software and servers is a mystery to me.
Here is some context for today’s announcement — most are things I have blogged about in the past:
Like Microsoft, Intuit has a major off-line advantage in the market with the accountants and bookkeepers who are “professional advisers” for clients who use Intuit products. For example, one of the most impressive company-sponsored wikis I am aware of is Intuit’s TaxAlmanac.org which it hosts primarily for this professional (and referral) community. Intuit has also launched a “social network” site for small businesses called Jump Up.
Intuit and Google have teamed up on the next version of QuickBooks. This is big news as the installed base of small business Quickbook users is dominant. At the time of the announcement, it appeared that there was room for both parties to work with other players.
Recent announcements by Google of services aimed at the small business market, including today’s acquisition of JotSpot. Google is also beta testing a version of G-mail that allows a business to use its own domain name instead of “GMail.com.” It now has an ecommerce transaction engine. With a few tweaks, the Blogger platform could be the simplest way a small business could set up a website. Wrap all that up with a branded product (most likely product name: Google Office) and you’ve got an impressive (and, more important, simple) solution for many small businesses.
Amazon has been announcing all types of services in the data and fulfillment arena designed for small and medium-sized businesses. Their web hosting services may compete with the other players, but the fulfillment service is unique and could be integrated into the offerings of others.
eBay is a major player (remember, it owns PayPal) in certain segments of the small business world and its acquisition of Skype has led the company to work on developing something Meg Whitman calls, “click to call.”
Most important point: This is not a new battle. It has been taking place for at least a decade. What’s new is the shift of the battle from the desktop to the browser; from boxed software to web applications. It’s now a Web 2.0 thing. It’s really fun to watch.
Disclosure: Most of the companies mentioned in this post have advertised in magazines published by Hammock Publishing, but none are clients — but, hey, my e-mail address and phone number are easy to find.
Small business is a topic I write about elsewhere — as in my day job, so typically I eschew it here. However, as small business technology seems to be getting lots of attention today, I’ll wear my professional small business marketplace watcher hat and make a few observations about today’s announcement from Microsoft regarding 
