Posts filed under ‘Internet Startup’
Australia’s top web 2.0 entrepreneurs
Chris Kettle – My247 (with Andrew Leask)
Kettle (at right) developed the idea for web and mobile-based entertainment information service in 1999. After working for a period at the Queensland power company Energex, he began building the business for real in 2003.
In 2005, My247 received its first round of capital, and Kettle is looking to another round now to fund its international growth. Already My247 has added 750,000 restaurants, bars, clubs and other entertainment venues to its online and mobile listings service, covering Britain, the US and Canada in addition to its original listings from Australia.
Interest is high, and a recent application for the Apple iPhone has exceeded expectations with more than 6000 downloads in 55 countries in just weeks of release.
Marc Lehmann – SaaSu (with Grant Young)
Marc Lehmann (pictured) had been working in finance at Deutsche Bank when he saw his opportunity. Having seen the potential of the internet for delivering financial information, he also noticed that many of the smart financial guys he was working with were too busy to do their own accounting.
There was an opportunity to combine the two, and together with web developer Grant Young he created an online accounting service, SaaSu. He is now on the verge of bringing on a major investor that he says will significantly reshape the business, adding sales and marketing expertise and providing funding to move more into international markets.
In September this year, SaaSu experienced its best month for both revenue and new customer sign-ups, with 46% of new business revenue now coming from offshore.
See the whole article http://www.smartcompany.com.au/Premium-Articles/Top-Story/20081027-Australias-top-web-20-entrepreneurs.html
Are You a Hustler?
Jermaine Griggs, who made millions teaching people how to play the piano online, grew up in the ghetto. Because his family struggled for money, he had a hunger to make money. At the age of twelve he signed up to be an Avon sales representative, while other men probably would not have done this due to the fear of being made fun of. Jermaine’s attitude towards making money, and his courage to ignore what others thought of him, helped him create a three million dollar company…all while he was in college.
One Man bootstrapped software biz success story
Storry – http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/?p=79
This is a story about a guy that quit his job launched his business and was profitable in less that 3 months
Making money – http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/?p=341
Another Start-Up Tries to Sell Wine Online
Mr. Benedict, who at 24 has only been able to legally drink for three years, said he first became interested in wine when he moved to Walla Walla to attend college in 2002. The region is a burgeoning wine destination.
He started the site with $2 million from angel investors as a free service for winemakers to post information about their wines online for other vintners or for visitors planning a trip to the vineyard. Winemakers quickly asked him to add an e-commerce feature so that consumers could buy wines. He did that a year ago, and 35 to 40 new wineries sign up each month.
The site, which was founded in 2007, has the requisite Web 2.0 tools for wine aficionados. Winemakers can post their tasting notes and tips for tourists who want to visit their vineyards. Wine drinkers can buy, rate, review and discuss wine. A blog offers recipes with wine pairings and interviews with winemakers, and a wine encyclopedia defines terms from “abboccato” to “zinfandel.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/another-start-up-tries-to-sell-wine-online/#more-1597
36 Startup Tips: From Software Engineering to PR and More!
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/36_startup_tips.php
This is a collection of startup tips covering software engineering, infrastructure, PR, conferences, legal and finance. They describe best practices for an early-stage startup. We hope that you will find these tips useful, but also please remember that they are based on subjective experiences and not all of them will be applicable to your company.
Business that lets you smash things for a price
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SAN DIEGO (CNNMoney.com) — When Sarah Lavely gets angry, she likes to break things. Not all the time, but on days when everything seems to be going wrong, she has been known to throw some plates against a wall. Fortunately, she has an easy outlet: Lavely is the founder of Sarah’s Smash Shack, a San Diego shop where customers pay to smash tableware like dinner plates, wine glasses, intricately lined sashimi plates, brightly colored vases and goblets.
The store’s pristine white shelves are filled with china just waiting to be broken.
“I picked pretty things because people are coming in here to do something they aren’t supposed to do,” Lavely says. “And breaking stuff like this is a little taboo.”
The smashing is done in special soundproofed “break rooms” where customers – outfitted in coveralls, boots, gloves and a helmet – stand behind a chest-high barrier and hurl breakables at a stainless steel-covered wall. All the broken glass is donated to schools and art programs throughout the region.
Lavely, 38, is a former veterinarian. She began venting her frustrations on breakables as a child – she started with Christmas ornaments, then escalated to potted plants. As an angst-ridden teenager she targeted telephones and, once, a window.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/17/smallbusiness/smash_shack.smb/index.htm?postversion=2008092510
His First Million at 18 and Went On to Build a $300M Company
Entrepreneur breathes new life into funeral business
Over the past five years, Joachim, a college dropout, has helped revolutionize the stuffy funeral business with software that helps funeral directors create high-quality videos that celebrate someone’s life in grand, heartfelt fashion.
“We’re not hurt by the downturn in the economy,” Joachim said.
By last year, Joachim said he had amassed about 5,000 funeral home clients.
That is about one-fourth of the 21,000 funeral homes nationwide that conduct an average of 187 services per year, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.
Programmer Brings in $1 Million a month from Facebook
David Maestri created Facebook’s most successful widget, Mob Wars, but now he’s in legal trouble because he developed and launched the app while working for the company that would become the Social Gaming Network.
Sources tell VentureBeat that Maestri’s Mob Wars, a role-playing game for the Facebook platform, earns its creator $1 million a month off its 2,505,698 monthly active users, mostly by selling in-game player upgrades for real world cash. On top of that income, research firm DeveloperAnalytics says Mob Wars could make another $22,000 month selling ads because its users load the app’s pages around 60 times a day.
Trouble is, Maestri developed and launched Mob Wars in January, before quit software developer Freewebs in February. After watching Maestri rake in the cash for months, Freewebs — now called Social Games Network — finally sued Maestri on August 11, alleging breach of contract, breach of duty, misappropriation of trade secrets and interference with business relations. Maestri told VentureBeat that “Mob Wars is my creation and the legal process is moving forward.”
Billionaires: The Next Generation
When Michael Birch met an American brunette named Xochi at a college bar in London, he wasn’t just meeting his future wife. It was also the beginning of a beautiful business.
Earlier this year the couple sold their social-networking site, Bebo, to AOL for $850 million. Their cut: about $600 million. An impressive haul for anybody, but especially for Michael and Xochi, who are just 38 and 36.
In Pictures: Next-Gen Billionaires
The world’s current crop of billionaires has plenty of money but not much youth. The average age of the 1,125 people on Forbes’ list of the world’s wealthiest is 61. It’s impossible to predict exactly who will replace them, but don’t bet against people like the Birches.
Or 32-year-old Tiger Woods. When the golf champion returns to the links from a knee injury, he’ll continue a financial rise that could crown him the first billionaire to make his money through sports. We predict it could happen as soon as 2011 because of Tiger’s lucrative endorsement deals. (See “Tiger’s Next Trophy: Billionaire.”)
Deal maker Roelof Botha is another to keep an eye on. The 34-year-old venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital hit a grand slam with an early investment in YouTube. The deal yielded a 65-fold return for Sequoia, a storied firm that also employs current billionaire Michael Moritz.
Hedge fund manager Chase Coleman’s age, 33, belies his exceptional ability to manage money. His Tiger Global fund reportedly returned over 70% after fees last year, a performance over six times better than the hedge fund average. One estimate pegged Coleman’s earnings from his banner year as high as $400 million.
See Complete story
15 Year Old sells message board
SANTA ANA, Calif. – Young entrepreneur Hansup Yoon, 15, recently sold his creation ZuneBoards, an Internet forum devoted to Microsoft’s Zune media player, for $62,000.
The teenager, who lives in Fullerton, Calif., created the site months before Microsoft introduced its answer to Apple’s iPod in 2006.
“It was the most perfect time to start a Web site about Zune, and I was one of the first few to create a Zune-related site,” he said
Yoon built the site using the free MyBBoard software, later shifting to vBulletin and Joomla. In less than two years, it grew to 60,000 members with more than 270,000 posts, all about Zune. It has been making about $1,000 a month from Google Adsense and TribalFusion, both with tools that place ads that are relevant to a Web site’s visitors.
When he decided to sell, he posted it on SitePoint.com and other sales Web sites for a minimum of $30,000 or “Buy It Now” for $60,000. Two bidders chose the latter option, and crowdgather, a Woodland Hills, Calif., company that has bought more than 70 message boards and forums as a foundation for Internet advertising, upped its bid to $62,000.
See Full Story
http://www.bostonherald.com/business/technology/general/view.bg?&articleid=1115208&format=&page=1&listingType=tec#articleFull
Profiling Startups around the U.S
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/06/0627_fresh_entrepreneurs/index.htm
9 deadly startup diseases
Building a startup is hard. There are many problems that can hurt a startup—perhaps even kill it. This article examines some of the more common diseases that plague startups, and proposes some cures. All of these issues can be remedied if detected early enough, so it’s really worth being aware of them. That way, you can operate before they become fatal.
Startup Disease 1: The Imaginary User Syndrome
A product that’s not geared towards a specific user is unlikely to benefit anyone in particular; hence, there’s no such thing as a generic user. No matter how great your initial vision might seem, if you don’t have a target audience in mind, your startup will lack direction and flounder. In addition, it’s difficult to market to everyone, so not only will your product suffer, it’ll be hard to sell too.
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/nine-deadly-startup-diseases
Website Flippping
Dave Hermansen did not own a bird or a cage when he bought bird-cage.com, an online store, for $1,800 three years ago. He simply saw a Web site that was “very, very poorly done,” and begged the owners to sell it to him. He then redesigned the site, added advertising and drove up traffic. Last December, he sold it for $173,000.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/technology/29flip.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Entrepreneur brings in $10 Million in 1st year
Murray set up the company in September last year after spending five years in R&D to get the technology up to scratch. She invested £200,000 of her own cash into the start-up, but it was tough going from the off. “I could have given up a thousand times,” says Murray. “There were so many complexities involved in designing the actual device. Radio is a black art, you can’t theorise a working system. It’s all about trial and error.”
The service currently boasts 4,000 customers. Murray predicts this figure will hit 10,000 by 2009 and pull in a turnover of £4m
Make Money While You Wait for people .
Waiting around for the cable guy tops the list of customer grievances about cable service, according to a recent survey by TeleNav, a company that makes GPS tracking devices. But one entrepreneur, Herve Aimable, sees opportunity in frustration. He runs a service in New York called Wait For Me. It’s exactly what it sounds like: He has hired and bonded five people who do nothing but wait in people’s homes for the cable guy. Each four-hour block costs $250. Since 2006, Aimable has brought in $60,000 from cable-sitting. “This is a valuable service, but it’s sort of a paradox, because you are getting paid for waiting,” Aimable says. Well, not just waiting—these are mostly actors. Says Aimable: “They sit around, they think, and they vocalize.”
Back to BWSmallBiz April/May 2008 Table of Contents
Quittner is a staff writer for BusinessWeek in New York
How to make money on the internet .
This is a video from the inventor or founder of Ruby on Rails .
pimpmysearch.com – Viral Marketing Genius
I dont know anything about this site but I keeo getting invitation mails from people I know . The site is about 1 month old and they already have an Alexa Ranking of about 2000
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/pimpmysearch.com
I dont know if they are making any money but this is a product that encourages viral marketing .
Tips for creating a successful new online product
There is much talk these days about building a product for a niche and making a lifestyle business out of it. Much of the online literature about starting up is focused on how to create some fantastic product which will gather millions of visitors and make you a billionaire, and the “new wave”, so to speak, proposes that rather than taking a 1 in 10’000 bet that you can make billions, it is better to take a 1 in 10 bet that you can make millions.
Since I have started two such businesses already, here are thirteen tips from my own experience.
What to build
1. Build for someone specific
It’s very tempting to create a product for the widest audience. “Everyone can use our product, therefore if even a tiny proportion use it, we’ll be rich!” Beware the generalised product. If your product is not built for anyone in particular, it will not be good for anyone in particular. The worst possible market for a product is “small businesses on the web”.
On the other hand, if you build something that is directly useful for even just one real human being, chances are there will be others like that user and your product will have some success.
2. Don’t be afraid of targeting a narrow niche
Niches have numerous advantages. There’s less competition in niches, which means that your marketing dollars will go further to get you new customers. It’ll be easier to target likely buyers since there are probably already channels (blogs, magazines, trade shows) targeting that niche, that you can make use of.
Niches also tend to be very badly served in today’s world. If you look into almost any niche you will find a plethora of awful products that are just begging to be replaced by something better suited. Being able to build great products cheaply is a fairly recent development, and most pre-existing businesses have had to make do with duct-taped, poorly conceived solutions that are begging to be replaced. The smaller the niche, the lower the bar to success.
3. Solve a real problem that costs money
As DHH pointed out, the way to realistic profitability is not through gathering an outrageous number of eyeballs, but through creating a product that people are willing to pay for. The easiest way to get someone to loosen their purse strings is to convince them that using your product will pay for itself
Full Story Here http://www.inter-sections.net/2008/05/07/13-tips-for-creating-a-successful-new-online-product/
Startup and Entrepreneur News 