One Company Exists Just To Market Your Golf Inventions
You want to know how many golf inventors there are? Just find out how many golfers there are, and you’ll have the answer. One company just opened its door to all those inventors.
Fairways International LLC is a licensing and distribution company that will sign all the right documents to insure that your invention is protected from theft when you allow the company to review your idea. Its staff
and consultants are intimately familiar with the world of golf from every angle and, if they think they can market your product they’ll do all the legwork from assisting you with filing patents to getting your product on golf courses all over the world.
What does Fairways International charge you, the golf inventor? Nothing. And that’s the way it should be.
A Start-up Takes on Wal-Mart
Recently-launched Alice.com is Brian Wiegand’s fourth Internet start-up, but the first to take on the consumer-packaged goods industry.
Brian Wiegand is no stranger to start-ups. His first business, BizFilings, launched in 1996 from his basement and later sold for $15 million to a public company. He and business partner Mark McGuire went on to start two others. The most recent was Jellyfish.com, which caught the purchasing eye of Microsoft only 18 months after its inception. The two could have stayed after the sale, but decided corporate life wasn’t for them.
Now the duo has launched their fourth online company, Alice.com, an online service in the consumer packaged goods industry. The site connects manufacturers directly to consumers, bypassing large retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target. Wiegand, Alice’s CEO, and McGuire, the company’s president and co-founder, recently explained their slightly unorthodox business model to Inc..
Read the interview at inc.com.
Start Up Competition in Silicon Valley
You might call it the “American Idol” competition of the entrepreneur set, as young inventors from all over the world are competing at Cisco in Santa Clara.
It’s called the Global Business Plan Competition, and it’s co-sponsored by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Sixteen teams of university students from throughout the world are competing for $250,000 in investment money for their inventions and creations.
For example, Stanford student Peter Frickman, who runs the start up Drip Tech, which is an inexpensive drip irrigation system for small farmers around the world.
One of the judges, venture capitalist Tim Draper points out that many successful companies are started in recessions.
”If you are a true entrepreneur this is the time to start a business,” said Draper. “You have to get creative because there isn’t always going to be money available.”
Other business plans include a more efficient way for companies to manage e-mail, and a way to convert rice husks into energy.
Bee all you can bee
Young entrepreneurs ditch the cubicle for a whole new take on office space
Amazing “Hibi no neiro” video
The video was shot for Sour’s Hibi no Neiro (Tone of everyday) from their first mini album Water Flavor EP. The cast were selected from the actual Sour fan base, from many countries around the world. Each person and scene was filmed purely with a webcam.
A Dozen Don’ts for Entrepreneurs
Most advice to entrepreneurs focuses on what they should do: build a great product, assemble a great team, provide great service. All are “duhisms.” Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs don’t realize that there are things they should specifically avoid doing too. These are also duhisms, but somehow no one ever talks about them. Here is my list of the twelve most important things that entrepreneurs should not do.
Don’t worry, be crappy. Perfectionism, first of all, is an illusion. Nothing is perfect. Even worse, perfection stands in the way of revenue and truly learning what customers think because nothing is in their hands yet. When your product is “good enough” (but not “perfect”), ship it, and see what happens.
Don’t give out lofty titles. Just because a roommate was there during the drunken weekend when you came up with the idea for your company, doesn’t mean he should be CTO. Someday, you’ll need to hand out titles like director, vice-president, and chief whatever officer, so keep them in reserve. Until then refer to each other as “co-founders” and describe the area of responsibility: for example, “programming.” If your roommates aren’t cool with this, they’re doing you a favor by showing their colors now.
Don’t hire your family. The probability that your spouse or relative is the best person you can get for a job is 0%. The probability that people will hate working at company with spouses and relatives is 100%. The probability that one of you will have to go someday is also 100%. Never hire out of expediency. Always hire the best person you can get. This usually means not hiring your family unless you’re Jack or Suzy Welch.
Don’t ask people to do something you wouldn’t do. This is the Golden Rule of business. If you wouldn’t fill out ten fields of information and provide a credit card number for a free password, don’t expect your customers to. If you wouldn’t work on weekends stuffing envelopes, don’t expect your employees to. If you wouldn’t invest in your company, don’t expect venture capitalists to.
Read all twelve at openforum.com
I Just Made $250K From App Store In Two Months
Steve Demeter developed the iPhone puzzle game Trism as a side project, but now he’s quitting his day job. Why? Because he says he’s generated $250,000 in profits since he started selling the $4.99 game on iTunes this summer. That’s after Apple (AAPL) has taken its 30% cut of total sales, and after subtracting his initial investment of about $5,000.
He says, he’s so pleased with Apple, that he’s going to work exclusively with them, and will pass on the chance to work on other platforms, like Google’s Android.
“Do I want to be spending 6 months to write the game, and another 6 months making it compatible? If I had Trism available for Android, and there are 50 Android devices and every time one of them crashes (the users) contact me, do I want that?”
So if he’s not expanding to the other mobile platforms, what is Steve going to do with his newfound wealth? He says he’s actively looking to hire more people – engineers and artists specifically. While he started off on his own, he now has four more people working for him in San Francisco, working on 5 more iPhone games.
