Entrepreneurial Lessons from the Obama Campaign

Barack Obama's victory in the US presidential race is nothing if not entrepreneurial. He used innovation, communication and genuine passion to take on the establishment (and win). Here are some of the entreprenerial lessons from the Obama campaign:

1. Don't be scared to take on the establishment
2. Build a purpose and brand that people can believe in
3. Establish support from the ground up - one supporter at a time - as compared to working from the top down
4. Leverage technology (for communication and for collecting resources)
5. Build your financial resource base as you go - not all at once but inline with the momentum you create
6. Establish meaningful associations - Biden, Oprah, Buffett etc - who will speak for you when you cant
7. Follow through and persevere - even when others are trying to pull you down

Trend Questions

Trendwatching.com is a great website. The people at trendwatching use spotters all across the globe to monitor and report on the latest social and business trends. Their reports provide valuable and useful insight for any innovator, entrepreneur or marketer.

A few weeks back they asked people to email them trend-related questions. They have just released the aggregated Top 15 Trend Questions (and Answers).

Top 15 Trend Questions (and Answers) with links to the answers:

* Q15: “How do I spot and apply trends?”
* Q14: “What are good trend resources?”
* Q13: “What will be the next Facebook or Google?”
* Q12: “What’s next for ?”
* Q11: “So how does PERKONOMICS relate to…?”
* Q10: "What trends are affecting ?”
* Q9: “How do I know a trend isn’t just a fad?”
* Q8: “When is the right time to act on a trend?”
* Q7: “What are the trends in ?”
* Q6: “Who sets trends?”
* Q5: “How do I become a (better) trend watcher?”
* Q4: “How much influence do trend watchers have?”
* Q3: “What is a trend’s life cycle?”
* Q2: “What’s going to be big in 2009?”
* Q1: “How is the financial crisis going to impact my business?”

brand YOU!

Here are the slides from the brand YOU presentation - thanks to all those who attended the young CAs event - hope you enjoyed the presentation

Brand You

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: branding brand)

No Capital, No Collateral, No Problem

Thanks to all those who attended the Kaya KM Momentum Seminar on "Starting Your business with no Outside Capital". There was a great energy and excitment in the room.

Here are the slides from the presentation. Enjoy.

Starting your business with NO outside money: No Capital No Collateral No Problem Small

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: finance up)

The Business Planning Paradox

Business planning is one of the most vigorously discussed topics in writings on entrepreneurship. Some people say do this and some say do that -- this presentation does NOT prescribe what you should not do BUT it provides insight into the essential contradictions that a manager or entrepreneur faces in the business planning process.

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World's Best Presentation Contest

Business the South African Way :)

I sometimes write about pitching for new business. Well pitching for new business in South Africa can sometimes have subtle unexpected challenges (especially for me -- the poor guy from Benoni):

Three contractors - one from Lenasia , another from Pretoria , and the third from Benoni - are bidding to fix a broken fence at the Union Buildings in Pretoria .

They go with a Union Buildings official to examine the fence.

The Pretoria contractor takes out a tape measure, does some measuring, and then works some figures with a pencil. "Well," he says, "I figure the job will run about R900: R400 for materials, R400 for my crew, and R100 profit for me."

The Benoni contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, "I can do this job for R700: R300 for materials, R300 for my crew, and R100 profit for me."

The Lenasia contractor doesn't measure or figure, but leans over to the Union Buildings brother and whispers, "R2,700."

The official, incredulous, says, "You didn't even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?"

The Lenasia contractor whispers back, "R1000 for me, R1000 for you, and we hire the guy from Benoni to fix the fence."

"Done!" replies the government official.

Thanks to William McIlree for passing this on (it made me laugh)

Principles of High Perfomance

The other day I was reading Triathlete Magazine and I came across
11 PRINCIPLES that high performing athletes tend to live by. The more I read through them the more I thought that they are even more relevant for an entrepreneur than a triathlete -- so whether you are a triathlete or and entrepreneur -- I reckon that these principles are valuable and important:

1. Learning over ignorance
2. Simplicity over complexity
3. Proficiency over incompetence
4. Excellence over mediocrity
5. Process over results
6. Progress over deterioration
7. Decisiveness over vacillation
8. Balance over extremism
9. Efficiency over wastefulness
10. Confidence over self doubt
11. Humility over arrogance

What's your pitch?

Many entrepreneurs yearn to get their idea out there, to pitch their idea to a meaningful audience, to network and to get feedback on their new business concept. You ask yourself questions such as:
How do you know if your new idea is worth anything?
Will people buy?
Could I get funding?
How do I find prospective partners?

Pitching the next great idea to prospective business partners, investors, service providers and fellow entrepreneurs just got easier with Vator.tv—a new venture that combines online video and networking. Based on the proverbial elevator pitch—the notion that you should be able to sum up a new business venture in the few minutes it takes to ride an elevator—Vator.tv is an online marketplace for new ideas. “Anyone, across all industries, at any stage, can share ideas, products, services and businesses with the rest of the world, mainly through video.”
Here's how it works: you sign up for a free account. You then create pitches for your ideas, projects or businesses in a rich media environment by uploading video, images, PPT or PDF files. You can choose to share their pitches with a personal network or with the entire Vator.tv community. You can build your network by inviting friends to join or browsing through other ideas and connecting with like-minded people on the site. The website includes tips on creating compelling pitches, such as how to pack the most punch into a three-minute video clip.

Vator.tv’s revenue will likely stem from advertising and sponsorships. Launched in June 2007, Vator.tv has some big names behind it, including angel investors Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Richard Rosenblatt, former Chairman of MySpace, and Georges Harik, a former Google executive who helped build Google's AdSense technology. What's more, the company is already putting its money where it's mouth is by hiring a Pakistani group of web developers who won the business through their very own video pitch. Another promising application of video technology in a Web 2.0 environment, Vator.tv is one for entrepreneurs and investors to keep their eyes on.

Pitch your idea on Vator.tv and see how many stars you earn.....

SlideShare = COOL tool

I have recently discovered SlideShare -- a website that allows you to:
1. Share your slide shows with others
2. View really cool slide shows posted by others
3. Link up wit others based on similar interests in the slide shows on the website.

If you like (1) cool slides, (2) to stay at the cutting edge of thinking in a particular area or (3) to link up with others with similar interests then slide share may be worth a look.

If you want to check out some of my presentations -- here is one on "my top 10 basic business principles" -- simple but hopefully powerful:

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Its for FREE - so how do make money???

Chris Anderson, the author of my book of the year in 2006: The Long Tail, has recently written a great feature in Wired magazine on the power of FREE!!! He has created a useful taxonomy for a new kind of business model in which some aspects of the offering are given away for nothing. Giving things away for FREE makes it really easy to appeal to consumers to use your product BUT even though the end users get something for free, someone in the economic ecosystem is making money -- in some cases loads of money. The different models Anderson lists are:

The freemium. Basic versions of products (such as software) are given away for free, while premiums and upgrades are offered for a price. The reason that works is that the cost of providing the basic version is pretty low, and the profits made on the upgraded version are substantial. Examples of this model that have recently sucked me into buying the upgraded version of a service or product for a premium price after using the free version include:
Linked in – the online business networking tool
PB wiki – the service that enables you to create and host wiki websites (I use as course portals for all the courses that I teach).
Survey Monkey – the online data gathering service that enables you to set up an online quiz or questionnaire.

Advertising. This is probably the best known of the ‘free’ models and has formed the basis for many traditional industries, from newspapers to television. Where advertising dollars go now, however, has been subject to radical change, which in turn has dramatically shifted the economic underpinnings of many industries, while creating great wealth for others. The core idea is that advertisers will pay to get your attention, regardless of the ‘free’ offerings you actually came to consume. Think gmail, magazine websites: Entrepreneur mag etc, and well-visited blogs: Guy Kawasaki or Seth Godin.

Cross-subsidies. These are the traditional loss-leaders well known to retailers. The idea here is that you give away one product (or portion of a product) in the pursuit of charging higher prices on others. Offers in the supermarket that loose money, low-priced CD’s at Wal-Mart or Happy Hour drinks at the local pub are all provided to get you to actually buy the more expensive offers (the CD player at Wal-Mart or the food at the pub). The key assumption in this model is customers actually are open to cross-purchasing which is not always the case – with the internet making it far easier to “shop around” customers may be very specific about what they purchase where.

Zero marginal cost. Software distributed over the web and digital music would fall into this category. While there is a cost to create the initial offer, the cost of distributing it broadly is very low. Sometimes, the free good is actually a come-on for another item. For instance, while it may be impossible for a singer to limit the distribution of songs in digital form, they may actually make their money on concert sales (a variant on the cross-subsidy idea). Many open-source software businesses are established on this model – they give the software away and then charge for a manual or a service to assist in effectively using the software tool.

Labor Exchange. In this model, marketers offer you something for free in exchange for your providing information or assistance to them. Anderson uses the example of Google providing ‘free’ directory assistance because they can use the calls to improve their voice-recognition technology, potentially opening the way to a huge market down the road.

Gift economy. In this model, things are given away for free out of altruism or because people simply enjoy doing the work required to create the goods. The classic examples here would also be some open-source software and Wikipedia entries. People voluntarily create and consume the free good.

I think this is a really cool feature that adds a whole new dimension to understanding business models and appreciating how to make money on and an off the web.

For more info and responses – link to Chris Anderson's blog entry on the topic or check out the article in Wired: Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

The Beauty of Good PowerPoint - PresentationZEN

We are trapped in world of BORING, MEDIOCRE PowerPoint presentations. People tend to use and re-use the same templates, fonts and clip-art making one presentation seem like the next and the next and the next. Then you get people like Guy Kawasaki, Steve Jobs and Seth Godin who set themselves apart by creating really cool, simple powerful slides.

A few years back Garr Reynolds made it his mission in life to save us from a certain slow painful death from boring corporate PowerPoint. He launched a really cool, insightful and relevant blog called Presentation Zen. He has now followed this up with a SUPERB book by the same name: PRESENTATION ZEN. If you expect to develop or deliver a slide presentation in the next 12 months then you have to read this book.

Things I love about the book:
The book highlights fundamental design principles in an easy to understand way -- even a boring accountant (like me) can get what Garr is saying.
Garr uses many before and after examples of slides to illustrate the principles he introduces.
Garr draws on the thinking of many other insightful authors such as Dan Pink - A Whole New Mind, Chip and Dan Heath - Make to Stick and Ben Zander - The Art of Possibility.
The forward by Guy Kawasaki - all done in slides - is super cool.
Garr Reynolds did the entire design and layout for the book himself.
The book touches on all aspects of presentation - preparation, design, development and delivery.
Garr shares web resources for cool pictures
The book includes examples of good presentations for a whole range of topics from other other presenters

It is a GREAT book that will transform your view on design and enable you to create and deliver top quality presentations.

Entrepreneur Mag New Website

Entrepreneur Magazine (by far the best magazine focused on new business development in South Africa) have recently launched a new, upgraded website. It is RICH with VALUABLE resources for anyone wanting to launch or grow a business.

You can link to some of my recent feature articles from Entrepreneur mag through the website. So if you are struggling with (1) writing a business plan (2) raising capital (3) measuring performance in your business (4) a fear of failure then some of the these resources may be of use to you.

Check out these articles:

How to Write a Business Plan – Step-by-Step
Entrepreneur's comprehensive five-step guide to writing a knock-out business plan.

No Capital, No Collateral, No Problem
Don't let a lack of cash sabotage your start-up or growth plans. Turn sense to rands and bootstrap your business to get going.

Made to Measure
Driving a powerful new car without instruments to give you feedback on its performance can be equated to setting up a promising new business and not measuring and reporting back on its performance. Too many business owners find themselves in this position.

Road Map for Business Survival
It happens to the smallest companies and the largest corporations. a time when crisis strikes so hard it threatens their very existence and puts the character and resilience of leadership to the ultimate test. In this special report, Entrepreneur showcases companies that faced a crisis and lived to tell the tale. Plus the real life account of a corporate success that turned into tragedy

Facebook = Opportunity for Entrepreneurs

On 24 May 2007 Facebook opened up their platform to 3rd party developers. This means that for the past 7 months coders and entrepreneurs have been able to create new applications for Facebook. This has resulted in over 14000 new applications -- some of them are useless and will soon die while other applications are really useful to those of us that use Facebook. For example I love the books application -- I am able to load up a record of all the books I have read, am currently reading and still want to read. I am able to write reviews for the books I have read and I get book recommendations (via Amazon) from based on my reading history. In isolation this application has limited power but as I get to see the book reviews and recommendations of some of my friends on Facebook so I get ideas for new books I would like to read and to comment on other peoples reading preferences. It is like an ongoing book club meeting with my best friends (minus the wine and gossip that usually goes with most book club get together). This application may not appeal to everybody but for me -- an avid reader -- it is really cool.

The developers of the books application make money through commissions on books that are sold on Amazon.com via their Facebook application. They get access to a huge user base (Facebook is the 5th most popular website in the USA), I get access to great book recommendations and an insight into what my friends are reading and Facebook have more users spending time on their site as more and more useful applications are added by third party developers (and this results in more targeted advertising revenue for them)

The underlying message here: there is a new economy developing dubbed "THE FACEBOOK ECONOMY". This economy offers excellent opportunities for entrepreneurs from anywhere in the world to to create applications and access a large user base via the internet in order to generate previously ignored revenue streams.

For more on THE FACEBOOK ECONOMY see the recently released Knowledge@Wharton article entitled: "Scrabulous and the New Social Operating System: How Facebook Gave Birth to an Industry"

Calling all Web Entrepreneurs - Collecting Data For Business Model Research

HELP!!!

I am doing some exciting research project on business model development in web-based entrepreneurial businesses. If you are a CEO and/or founder of web-based business that was launched in the last 5 years then you are invited to PLEASE participate in the initial data gathering process for this research project.
Click on the following link to contribute to this research:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=dDtyCOG_2f9oWYQXFkaKkeZg_3d_3d
The survey takes no more than 10 minutes to complete and every person who participates will be given access to regular updates on the findings from this research project.

If you are not the founder of a web-based business but you know an entrepreneur who has founded a web-based business in the past 5 years, please forward this posting to them.